Justin Baldoni interviews Jay Shetty ON: Self-Compassion & Finding Your Purpose Through Service

and admits that he is still working on healing himself. Everyone, please welcome back Justin Boldoni and someone who hopes his book will inspire other men to let themselves be vulnerable as well. This is one that I don't want you to miss. Can't wait for you to hear this conversation. There's some big reveals in this one. Welcome to the

Man Enough podcast. Man Enough is a conversation about what it means to be a man today and undefining all of the stereotypical, traditional ideas of masculinity to make room for anybody who identifies as a man to be allowed to be a man. We want to create a world where there is more unity and equality, and that starts with uncomfortable conversations where we go deep and we are growing and learning in real time. We have not arrived,

We're just beginning. Check us out at man enough dot com or you can like it and subscribe to us wherever you get your podcast. Hello and welcome back to man Enough. I'm Justin Baldoni here with the incredible list Plank, Jamie Heath, and the one and only, my dear friend mister Jay Shetty Dude. We're finally doing that. We're doing it. Thank you for having me. Guys, you have you been on a podcast. I've never been on a podcast three co host, so this is not yours. This is special.

This is very special. I just wanted this to be your first podcast, but he's never been on any podcast. This is This is the first time I've been on a podcast which has such a beautiful, clear purpose to help people redefine who they want to be in the world. And so it is the first time, and it's the first time that I'm being interviewed by Justin. I've had him on the podcast before, which has been really special.

It's the first time we are meeting and Liz have been a huge fan of for like the last five years. I've just been name dropping all of her video names since we've met. And I'm so grateful to get to meet you today, Jamie. Indeed, thank you for having me, Thanks for being gotcha. You're just You're just special. You're a special man. It's like you meet people that you know, we're sent by God to with a purpose to just like make it a little better. And you're one of

those people. You are a bestselling author, you are a former monk and a purpose coach. You're the host of an incredibly popular podcast on Purpose, Speaking of Purpose, which has more than sixty four million downloads. Your YouTube videos have been streamed two billion times. That's like a third of the planet. And I hope you find success. Maybe one day you can be on the podcast. When you guys, you finished your studies, you turned down jobs in the business world to go live in India and become a

full time monk. That inspired your book, Think Like a Monk. It came out in September twenty twenty during this pandemic, and I know you've talked about it so much. Hopefully we will get to talk about it and so many more other things. But it's it's sold out so many copies, and with that in mind, love to welcome you our show to men enough thank you for embarrassing me is awkward to just like here you're you know, even a portion of your life story and your successes, right, yeah,

perceive successes? Well, I get it, you know, I no, I value everything you just shared, like I'm so great and blessed to have that. But I have this practice that we were trained in as monks that when someone notices something good about you, even what you were just saying earlier, you accept and you receive it, but you think of the person that helped you get that skill or ability or habit or practice that helped you develop that intentionally on intentionally, and you pass it on to them.

So I love doing this because I can just sit here and think about all my teachers and monk teachers and pass it back to them and thank them in my heart. So it's an opportunity to be thankful and grateful. So I love that you've been on the podcast for thirty five seconds and you've already dropped something that's helpful to me because I have a hard time accepting compliments. I just have a hard time with it and I love. I love that I can accept it and thank somebody.

I can do that. Yeah, it's simple. I can do that because I stand on the shoulder of giants. Right, I appreciate that. All right, all right, thank you. I've noticed too before you before I hope you don't mind me putting this out. Before we started, I saw you. I looked over you, and your eyes were closing. You just look like thirty fifty sixty seconds. Is that something that you learned during your Yeah, what monastery? During your time? Yeah, it was the idea of using any opportunity before you

begin something, you're setting your intention for service. So before you begin anything in the day, whether it's eating or even sleeping or spending time with someone or I mean, we literally are serving humanity through Justin and all of you and the incredible work that man enough to us. So to just set your intention and be like, Okay, let me get out of my own way, let me be a channel, let me serve, let me you know not.

So it's not really a prayer. It's a prayer. You could call it a prayer, absolutely, Yeah, you could call it a prayer. But the clear thing is you're setting your intention for service. Yeah, so a prayer to be of service. Absolutely. So I'd like to start by asking you when was a time where you just didn't feel

like you were man enough. I'd probably see him my whole life like it's it feels like such a real thing because when I was growing up as a young boy, I was overweight and I was one of the few ethnic minorities in my area, and so I was bullied at primary school and I'd always be picked on or the mick taken out of whether it was racism or whether it was about my weight or body image and

all of those kind of issues. And I actually didn't take it that personally because I'd go home and my mom loved me a lot, and so I was raised. I feel like I was literally raised by my mom, And that's one of the reasons why I never felt man enough, because my mother was the most involved parent. My dad was very much aloof let me make my decisions, failure's choice is, but my mother was always there. My mother taught me how to shave my face, she taught

me my skincare routine. She taught like my mother was like the first person to teach me a lot of what people's dads usually teach them, and that wasn't because my dad was a bad father. It's just that that was his style. And we have a great friendship now. But with my mom, she was the one of mold. So I never felt man enough because I didn't have a man teaching me man things, or however you want

to put it. I was always surrounded by my mother and my sister and powerful women in my life, and I wasn't really exposed to how for males or any of those figures. So how's that manifest? Like people call your mama's boy? Did they call your names? Yeah? All of it. I remember when when someone would pick on me at school, I'd go tell my mom that my mum would come to school to like, you know, like they're like, why are you treating my son like this?

And that's like the worst night I've ever a kid, right, Like It's like everyone in the school is like, oh Goshler, it's Jay's mom again. And you know, my mom can be pretty protective of me, especially when I was younger, and so she'd get right in there with the headmistress's office or the dean's office and just be like, can't have this happen, and then everyone would find out and then and would laugh at you more. And so I think I think it ended up. I actually think it

just made me more of who I am today. But when I went to high school, I started to crave more male attention. So going from that, I then went to an all boys school. Oh wow, So I went to an all boys school from the age of eleven to eighteen. And at that point you have no one else's validation or recognition to get apart from other boys. Right now, I want to fit in, did you? So?

Did you seek or crave that attention? Absolutely? That's when I was like, oh, now I want to be seen as strong, and I want to be seen as cool, and I want to be seen as the guy, and I want to be seen as this and that. And so I think that manifested in being quite competitive. And so I wanted to get a spot on the school's rugby team. I wanted to get a spot on the school's swimming team. I wanted to get a spot on the stool I did. I think a big part of

it was that masculine feeling that it gave me. And so I think it manifested in insecurities at high school. So as I got older, I actually think between fourteen to eighteen, it manifested as insecurities of seeking validation and recognition for that which was not me. So I wasn't looking to be loved because I was empathetic and compassionate

and kind, which is how my mom raised me. I was looking to be liked because I was bold and courageous and strong and physical and competitive, and so you almost start looking for validation for the things that you're not, so you became you were performing absolutely every day, absolutely absolutely. Masculinity feels like like it's a total dance, right, It's a total choreography, and you're kind of watching other men like do it right, Like even the handshake, Like how

am I supposed to like do the hug? Then the pole,

then the there's like a pole, there's a tap sometimes. Yeah, there's a lot of different It's very funny, not funny, but you can be entertaining it as a woman to just kind of watch that and be like, I'm so happy I don't have to figure that out, but but I want to come back to the you know, your point about service, which you really opened up our conversation with I feel like we overemphasize service for women, right that you are at the service of the people around

you and that's your value in the world, and we kind of under emphasize service for men. And it seems like for you finding service as purpose was really very meaningful part of your identity. I'm wondering how you see, you know, us being able to make that connection, what a service look like for men, and how is it tied to masculinity. Yeah, I mean I saw. What I was saying was I saw my mother's sacrifice growing up. So my mother was raising me and my sister deeply

would love have always felt love by my mother. And then she would also have her own business, so I didn't even know. I didn't know she was an entrepreneur. But she was an entrepreneur, which was so weird because she never made herself out to be an entrepreneur. And so she had her own business. She started it so that she could work more flexibly, and she was taking care of my sister. She'd drop us to school, she'd

pick us up, she'd make us dinner. She'd be working as well, and at one point became the main breadwinner in the family as well, and so I saw my mum serve or sacrifice in this way, and so I feel like I got trained by watching her and observing her. And then when I met the monks, who the predominant monks that I lived with were all men, and service

was at the core of their entire being. So our teachers would always tell us that the only way a culture succeeds is if everyone wants to serve everyone else. And so that was like the encouragement of that culture. And that's where it became so real to me and for me, service and masculinity go hand in hand, but service and humanity go hand in hand. And I think this is it's slightly veering off from where we are,

but I think it's an important point to make. Is when I lived as a monk, we stopped identifying as men and women, and we were asked to identify as consciousness. And that distinction and difference just kind of created this huge like weight of my shoulders because now I was like, Oh, I'm not masculine or feminine, or I'm not this or that. I'm just I'm just I'm just consciousness. I'm a human,

I'm a soul. Whatever, you want to call it, I'm energy, and that energy is wired for service, and so the energy inside each of us at this table is wired for service. So the way it connects is that we've been designed to serve. But unfortunately, and I've heard that a lot from women, is that often it turns into being a martyr or going to the point of self sacrifice and self sabotage because of how it's encouraged more and I was speaking at this event and a man

came up to me. He was probably in his forties, and I had just told a story about how when I met the monks at eighteen, they shifted my perspective to service. And he said to me, he goes, You're so lucky that you got that at eighteen, and I was like, yeah, I no, trust me, Like I'm so grateful to my teachers. He goes, no, no, no, really, he goes, I only realized that someone else mattered when I had a child, And he was like, that's the only that was the first time I realized that someone

apart from me mattered. And you know, he was obviously being really vulnerable, and I appreciated him sharing that, and I met it with compassion. But I think that's the case that for a lot of men that I don't think we're trained early on in our life to realize that not just to our kids matter or our partners matter,

but everyone matters, and more people matter. Well, you're rewarded if you don't, right, like on the rugby team, you know, sort of the culture you're describing where you get rewarded if you are individualistic, competitive, and you know, have this kind of added to And again for women it's the opposite. We get heavily punished when we when we take on

those characteristics. That's true. Yeah, but that ungendering is so interesting, right, that happened, and that surplus of energy that you felt is something that we could all access, right if we weren't weight down by these gender stereotypes. It's like the freedom, right. Yeah. So you're saying that you had sight, you had knowledge growing up by your mother, and you kind of held that to yourself. I gave it up because I saw it as less than So it's not even that I

held it back. I gave it up and substituted it, traded it in for your man card, correct for this toxicity, which then obviously encouraged more people to go down that path. And then I think the best thing I've done to try and remove that is when I became a monk. I became the mentor to a lot of young men in London. And those young men are still involved in my life. So I've known them since they were like

sixteen to eighteen years old. They were like twenty to twenty eight years old now, and so I feel like those twenty five guys, they know who they are, Like, those are like my favorite success story because those they I just see them make amazing decisions with their partners, their careers, Like they're all most of them in relationships now, and I see the husbands and the fathers they're becoming, and I mean it's it's you know, many of them become fathers before I am one, And it's just inspiring

that they're also leading that way and showing me that people don't have to make as bad a mistakes or go as far as I did. Right, where do you go, like when you're struggling, you know, when you and your wife are having a fight, or if you ever have a fight. I don't know if you guys have fights, where do you go? And share that because you are you are a spiritual gurroof to millions of people now, right and in many ways, and so many people look to you for advice, But who do you go to?

Where do you go when you need help? Yeah? So the first thing I'm going to address that they're arguing my wife, because I think that's such a good thing to talk about. This is what I find fascinating about the way humans are wired. And and I'll give an example. So my wife's been my first guest every year when we launched a new season other podcast. So she's been on the podcast three times, the guest we've had on

the most. And every time we'll do like a one and a half hour episode of everything we struggled with that year, and so we talk about like the mistakes, the failures, the things that went wrong, and the number one comment will be relationship goals, and then I'm on comment will be couple goals. And what I found is that the human desire to be inspired and want someone to project perfection onto anyone is so strong that my honest comment back is always please listen to what we

just said. Yeah, and I'm listening right like yeah, like and not in not listening in like, and I know you don't mean it's not in an attacking Please just listen to me. Like, I just told you that when I first started dating my wife, I thought she wanted to be wooed like in the movies of Hollywood, and I got it all wrong because I was doing all this flashy stuff and my wife's actually a simple person, did not want any of that. I just told you.

You don't we have the same story. Yeah, yeah, we haven't. I didn't know that. I don't think. I don't think we had on a double day. We didn't talk about we did not talk about identical story. Really, yeah, keep going, please keep going. So so my point is being like, if I've just told you that, actually, for the first two years of our marriage, sorry two years of our relationship,

we didn't understand each other. Don't just look at us and go like, oh, yeah, you guys got green eyes and they match, and so you match, and like, you know, it's there's just so much more to it. And I find that as humans, we so want people to be perfect that we create a pedestal even if someone's telling you the truth. And I think if we just sit and all listen to each other. Then a we won't be let down by people and be we won't put people on the pedestal. But but who do I go to?

So the first thing I definitely turned to my texts, and I know we share this in common. But the bugod Geeta has has been such a companion and guided my life from so long since I was eighteen, that I turned to it all the time. My monk teacher who's now seventy years old, who you actually met, Yeah, when he came to my home, so you've you've met him, And he's now seventy years old. He grew up in Chicago and hitched hike to India at the age of nineteen.

Stories insane, Yeah, he's And And so when I'm when I'm struggling with something in a major way, when it's like a real like like I feel like it's a tragedy at this point, then he's the person I go to because he always helps me see the reality and see the truth. Again, there's monks in between that journey, So he's like kind of at the top of the order. But then there's other ones that are more like older brothers, and I can be more vulnerable with them than I

don't feel like. So you have monks, are like monks and they're there to help you, like just recalibrate, bring yourself to accounts. So for men who don't have monks one dial, what is what is your advice for that to do business in a more spiritual way. So spirituality and business is an interesting concept because a lot of people today see it as an oxymoron or you know, mutually exclusive. And the truth is that spirituality is so

powerful that it actually spreads across everything. And I know all of you understand that, but it's like, if spirituality is what we all say it is, then it has the purity and the power to spread across anything. And again going back to our previous theme, the key element is is this for service of humanity for others or is this in the service of myself? Now that's a fine line, and I've been on the wrong side of

that line plenty of times. So there's plenty of times when I assess options and opportunities in front of me and I realize I'm only taking that option because there's ego involved. I'm only taking that option because there's an opportunity or there's a big payout or there's a nice dollar sign next to it, and I'm only doing it for that. And I've said yes to stuff like that

plenty of times to know that I'm not perfect. But the awareness is what I would encourage people to do is having the ability to be like, here are the three four options in my life right now, let me write a word above them, which is the intention of why I'm choosing that. And if the word isn't love or service, it's not going to feel good after over finish it. And so that's what I would encourage people to do as a reflection without needing anyone in their

life or anyone around them. I love that. I love that. There's this quote. I don't know the quote exactly, but one of the central figures in the Behagh faith talks about abdul Baha that when you are suffering and when you are going through something and you cannot find a way out, to immediately go be of service to another. Because when you are service to others, you find that your own pains and things, um just dissipate through that.

So when you talked about earlier about being wired for service, So while I think that also there are some people that are put into service toward two others, not to be of pure service, because they're forced to be put there. Um, women are some wives oftentimes unless we do something different. I have these conversations with Liz all the time. The service that I've always seen with women in my life, my mother, grandma, all of them, they it was, it was.

There was a lot of sexism going on as well, not necessarily by my father, certainly, I want to I want to say no, but all of the stuff that was being experienced. So I think that this idea of service being elevated, but service being forced, how do we how do we really talk and how does service and cabitalism right like which feel at odds m How do

you how do you reconcile that. Yeah, there's a beautiful statement by Peter Diamandis and he says that we should redefine the word billionaire to be someone who impacts the lives of a billion people. Now, whether you think of that from spirituality or from a money perspective, the wealthiest people in the world are creating something that services the most amount of people. And the scale of the problem you're solving and the depth of the issue is how

much money you make. So if someone created a cure for cancer and was able to scale it across the world, they would probably be the wealthiest person on the planet because they created something out of service. Now you may say, well, Jay, well no, many people out of wanting the money will figure that out. I'd say that they may, but I'm hoping that on that journey they'll upgrade in their desire

and their intention will be purified. And I think this was what I loved learning from the Barge Ghita, which was this idea of there is no pure intention. All intentions are percentages and divided. So when you first start something, you may have a seventy percent pure intention, but there's thirty percent of ego in that. Or when you start it's probably the other way around twenty five percent good intention then seventy five percent ego, but it's purified in

the process. So even if you look at people who've set out their lives, and I work with many of them, who set out at the beginning of their lives to become wealthy and famous. When they became wealthy and famous, they then realized that wasn't the point, and they were

purified in the process of achieving their goal. And so the way I think about it is that in a capitalist society, even the people that are succeeding are succeeding because of service, whether it's conscious or not conscious, whether it's intentional or unintentional, there's still only like Amazon is successful because we all want its service, Like we want to be served by Amazon, right, And I'm not promoting

or deep promoting Amazon. I'm just making the point that because it serves a daily need for the majority of the population, they are financially successful because of it. Does that make senseless? I don't know if I'm answering your question. Well, and I want to and I see your face, so I'm like, I want to, well, because I feel like it doesn't purify like Jeff Bezos. Actually, I don't care about pissing off Jeff Bezos doing it with love. Um,

you know, Jeff Bezos, I don't think. I don't I don't have any evidence that he was purified by becoming a billionaire, Like he still has twenty eight bathrooms, but then he's preventing his workers from unionizing, right, So like, yeah, I guess I'm still wondering how to reconcile those things.

And we've talked about the intersection of masculinity and risk about how you know, women are willing to take big risks when it comes to redistribution, when it comes to more taxation, when it comes to the environment, and it's actually men who and particularly white men. Sorry that I'm just talking. I'm just speaking the data. It's particularly white men because yeah, the ten most wealthy of those people are are white men. Um, you know, they have the

most to lose. So I think about that all the time, you know, I and I you know, I'm bringing this up because it's something that that I grapple with. Yeah, where I feel like my heart is in the right place, and I've known when it's not, or when I've done something I'm like, this was not for the right reason. But yeah, how do we do how do we reconcile those things? I think? And yeah, whether anyone's been purified or not, and where their journey of life goes, well,

we'll find out, right with everyone. I really believe that everyone's on this recurring journey of life and it's all to get people to realize that service is the only goal. And we kind of have to keep having life experiences and failures and shortcomings and issues and everything going wrong to only remind you of that and that being the only satisfying thing. The way you reconcile it is only

through stillness and solitude. Like if you don't spend enough time alone every day and try to hear yourself and try to hear the words of your spiritual teachers, guides texts, then you are only going to hear the noise from society outside, and that's what you'll end up following. Or if you're switching off the noise to listen to a podcast like this and all the other episodes that I've seen, the guests you've had on, and the types of conversations

you're having on, you're all performing a service. And by the way, everyone who's listening is also serving by learning, So it's not only the giver that is serving, the receiver is also serving. I think the bigger challenge is also that we've just lacked examples of that, And so to me, it's like I would be traveling with one of our senior monk leaders. You know this gentleman seventy

years old. I'm like twenty one years old and every day we'd wake up in the morning and he would bow down before me on the floor to honor the soul that's within my heart. And I would do the same bag, but he would always beat me to it, and there was no one watching. There were no fanfare, there was no audience, there was no one to do it for. I wasn't Jay shed like. I was just a kid who's twenty one years old, And that's how we were taught to behave with each other with that

much level of respect. Now, he would have done that with anyone in the room. So the reason I'm sharing that is, like, when I experienced that level of masculine or whatever you want to call that, Like, you know, if when I experienced that, it gave me faith that a man could be extremely powerful by being extremely humble, that a man could be extremely could penetrate my heart by being really kind and caring and compassionate. But if you've never experienced that, how are you to believe that

that's possible? Yeah, I think the first step is to seek and find. Like, I think it's hard to tell anyone to the formula for how to navigate that without them finding a purpose that is bigger than themselves. Yeah, like it's hard for anyone to navigate life. Sometimes your purpose, bigger than yourself becomes your family and your love for your family, and that's as far and wide as your mind wants to go. And that's beautiful. And for some people it becomes the world, and for some people becomes

their town and their city. But everyone has to have something, you know, those beautiful words of Martin Luther, King of You know, if you have nothing to die for, you have nothing to live for. Like that to me is the clear purpose of life where we have to seek out what it is that we really care about and what we really believe in. And that can be your family. That's totally fine. Like this doesn't have to be like a I'm going to become an activist and change the

world conversation. This is I care about the quality of life my family has, but I think about quality based on the depth of their experience of life, not just what they have. And I'm going to live my life or try and live my life in that way. And so to me, the first step is to seek mentors, coaches, guides, guidance. It has to be it always is. I had the fortune of interviewing Walter Isaacson. He's famously known to write

the biographies of the biggest icons of all time. So he wrote the official biography of Leonardo da Vinci, Einstein, Steve Jobs like you know, just it's insane. And he worked at CNN and Time before that. And he wrote a new book about a lady named Jennifer Dowdner who is the founder of gene editing. Now. She's a female scientist who was told by her school teachers that women

don't become scientists, right like women's can't be scientists. She just won the Nobel Prize for her discovery, so amazing, and he just wrote a book about her life. It's called Codebreaker. The reason why I'm sharing all of that is that some girls going to pick up that book, or guy both or anyone or they are going to pick up that book and they are going to find

their role model in that book. We all find we may not have a monk on speed Dow we may not have met a monk when you're eighteen, but you're going to find when you start searching and looking, and when you find that, you're going to read it, You're going to internalize it. And it's going to change how you think. And I just feel that encouraging people to find coaches, guides, and mentors is the best thing I can do, because there's no one we admire that doesn't

have that. Whether they're an athlete, whether they're a singer, whether they're a musician, whether they're a videographer or editor. Everyone's had mentors, guides, and coaches, but it's become so far removed from our lives today that everyone thinks they have to figure out for themselves, and that's where the mess is created from. It sounds like an obvious point, but it's almost like we obviously haven't pushed it enough. Because as a man, to take another person as your

mentor also requires you to have humility. You've got to forgive yourself, You've got to be compassionate to yourself. So the simple act of taking on a mentor actually does more for your masculinity than anything else. And also being a mentor, yes, right, you reach, you reach a place and you have your success or you have achieved something, and then being of service to that person who's sending

the elevator back down. But it's the biggest, it's the biggest myth of masculinity that we have to do it by ourselves. Yes, like that. We you know that we can't ask for help, We can't ask for guidance, We can't ask for those things. Yeah. Yeah, I want to ask you something real quick, Jay, because because I don't know how you do it. And social media, I want

to talk about social media for a second. We talked about a little bit when I joined your podcast, But we know what social media in many ways does to

our brains. We get dopamine hits left and right, much more than you know we ever have in human history, like dislike, followers, comments, all of which are contributing, I think to a different kind of pandemic, which is like extremely low self worth, seeking external validation, and everybody wanting to become the center of attention, an influencer, to have influence.

And then you mix in like what's becoming trendy or popular or woke in culture, and then you have service, right, and these lines get very blurred, like I've struggle like do I post that? Doing not post that? Like oh that didn't get as many likes? And I still have those thoughts, And I just imagine fifteen year olds and twelve year olds now that are getting social media and all of these things. And I remember watching this, like

I swear she was eight years old. She was doing she was by herself in a CVS doing a TikTok, holding the phone by herself, and I was really confused. And I looked at that and my heartbroke just thinking about the performative aspect of what social media does. How have you stayed above water? How have you not been affected? Or are you ever affected? And I guess that's my question is are you also affected by if something doesn't have a lot of likes or if a podcast doesn't

have a lot of downloads. Because you seem impermeable in that way, like you have the teachings. You're so rooted in the teachings and in your meditation and your practice that it's like if you're not shaken by the outside world, but you're teaching people this wisdom, this ancient wisdom, but yet you're doing it from the swamp. How do you stay out of it? And do you struggle? Ever? You fall in and you fall in again all the time.

Social media was my last resort to try and share a message that I deeply believe the world needed and so if I had it my way, I would never have taken to social media. I would have done it through one of these official channels that wouldn't give me a chance. And I think people don't think that. People think, oh, yeah, you joined social media because you want to get it. It's like I joined social media because I didn't know

any other way to spread the message. So going back to mistakes on social media or failures, I've fallen into it so many times that I fall into on a daily basis. If your life revolves around serving through social media, you have to become phenomenal at social media strategy. It's you can't separate the two. You have to The problem is when the strategy overtakes the sincerity. The problem is when the strategy overtakes the creativity or overshadows the creativity.

The problem is when the strategy just becomes a game and now you're just living in this fake world you've created. And that's the problem. When you just look at the likes and you don't look at the comments, when you look at the views, but you don't look at the engagement. And when I say engagement, I mean the depth of it. What are people saying, how are they feeling? That's what

humanizes it again for me. So that's what I'm holding onto is the humanizing of it, of seeing like, how is this genuinely having a human impact not a data impact. And I think that's where our mindset is strategist versus spiritualist goes is. As a strategist, you're meant to think data, but as a spiritualist you're meant to think depth, and so you can't let data overshadow depth. And what I love about algorithms is that they always keep you humble.

You will never beat the algorithm. It will always keep you humble. So if you're actually doing it for likes and love and hearts, you will give up. But if you're doing it because you just want to find what is going to connect with people, what is going to resonate, what is going to cut through, then that's something that will keep you humble in the process of it, because you'll never win. You've been able to separate how a video does or performs from your own self worth, oh

for sure. And I think that is really kind of the key and the question for when that TikTok or the Instagram video turns off, they're left with themselves. Yeah, and you know, one of the things you teach us being with yourself. But if they don't know how to be with theirselves, so I guess this is this is an opportunity. I'm asking you to talk to them. If someone's listening right now, who's struggling with that, because I have struggled with it, especially from a service perspective, like

I'm here to be of service. Why am I making this about? Why do I care? Why should I care? I don't care? Do I care? I do care? I care too much? No, I didn't get you know. And it's like, should I post that? No, But this is my platform. I want to post whatever I want. I want to post the picture of the sunset, but no one's gonna like the picture of the sunset, justin to post something. And I've had these conversations with myself and

the fact that I'm having them drive me crazy. And you just strike me as somebody who doesn't have them as much. And maybe that's because you have a sense of self. A practical answer is all the work goes in thinking about something up front. So when you set

your intention, when you're creating a piece of content. So my books the biggest, deepest, most meaningful thing I put out in the world, in my opinion, And I spent a lot of time writing it, researching it, thinking about the every day you were on a mission three four hours a day, you were literally yeah, yeah, and we I knew that I wanted science in it, and I wanted monk research in it, and so I had had

monks resetting, I had a scientific research ye Like. It was a real team project to get it to be what I wanted it to be. And I put in all the work up front because my intention was if you create something with the love, with the service, with the intention of that, then that's what people are going

to feel. Whereas if I create it with the intention of going viral or which would you can't actually do because viral, by nature and by what it is, means that you can't predict it like people can do that. People decide that with the book. If you're obsessed with X result, it ruins the process. So for me, when I'm in the process, I really shut my windows and I close the doors, and I'm like, this process has to be as pure as possible, as possible, as possible.

So it's not one hundred percent, but it's as good as it can get. And when we look at and you know, when we talk about how do we share this with the world, let's also make the process really good. Are we sharing in the right places? Are we getting it right? And then when you share it, you know that you've done everything you possibly could to make it worthwhile, and if it doesn't work, you can take that because

you've done everything. The problem is when you put something out with the desire of, oh, it's going to do great. I know, I'm masterminded this, it's perfect, and then it doesn't do well, then it affects you. Whereas when you've built all your self worth in the process of that. And so I sent my publishers an email and I'm saying this because I'm proud of myself doing this, and

I'm going to say that here. I send them an email the day before the book came out and we had no idea what was going to happen or anything, and I said, I just want to thank you for this process. It's been the best process I've ever had. I love you guys. It's been amazing. It's You've been the best team I've ever worked with that I really appreciate you, from the editor down to the fact checker, down to this whatever, everyone on the team, and I just want you to know I'm already proud of what

we've achieved. And I send that email after them, and I remember the president of the company that I work with he replied to me, because Jay, we never get one of these emails the day before the book comes out. It was like, we always get this if the book does well or whatever. And I was like, no, I genuinely feel so proud of what we've achieved already. Whatever

happens happens. I had my UK publisher tell me, Jay, you know what, we're probably not going to hit number one on the Sunday Times in the UK because you know there's some big hitters in the UK coming out this week. Are you okay with it? I was like, dude, I have written the best book I possibly could. We've done the best launch that I probably could have done. I couldn't have done anymore. I'm good, like whatever, I

don't care. And it's like, to me, that's the only way to not care is that you put all your heart into the creation. So that's the practical answer, the philosophical answer, and the more spiritual answer is I'm flawed. I do seek validation in what people think of me. I do get upset if someone doesn't like my videos and like someone else's. And I forgive myself. I'm compassionate, and I start over again. That's just the real answer, Like, that's just the truth. I mess up, I fall down.

I get that I'm I do get worried about, Oh, well, will I be relevant next year? Oh? I do get worried about, like, oh will people care about me? I do get worried about like have I said anything good on this podcast right now? Like? Is there anything that I've said that is actually even worth this podcast? I do think about that, like every time I think about it, every time I record a solo episode of my podcast, and I think about it all the time. But what do I do I allow myself to feel that, I

allow myself to experience it. I forgive myself for judging myself, and then I start again, and I start every day as if it was new. And my wife and I have this amazing ability we both have. It is that we can go to sleep, forget the night before, and start again, and I think my memory literally does that. I erase all of my failures and mistakes from the day before and just start afresh every day, because it's the only way I know to allow myself to have

another go at it. Just the idea of allowing yourself to have some compassion for yourself. And I think everyone who's sitting out there who's judging themselves accept that you judge yourself, be compassionate, but then seek to redirect that energy. Whatever table you're at and whoever's at that table is

what you judge yourself by. So when we heard that famous quote of you are the average of the five people you spend the most time with, actually what the truth is, your values become the average of the five people and their values. I love that. When we talked you and I did like a pandemic check in with like a man enough kind of check in, and you had admitted that you were addicted to video games for

a little bit. I was, and and that was big In the book, I talked about, you know, an ongoing struggle I've had with porn since I was you know, a kid, and and you said it caught you by surprise that you were addicted. You found yourself like, you know, taking all of this emotion and just playing video games and hours would pass by. Yeah, I'm curious which one. By the way, So FIFA, NBA two K, two K twenty one now I have and Assassin's Creed. It's is

really mess Wait wait an playing Assassin's Creed. Yes, yes, so I'm curious how bad did it get and what pulled you out or or is that still an ongoing thing that you're you're just struggling with a little bit, or is it a you know, oh my gosh. So yeah, we just found out as the pandemic, I realized we were going to be stuck indoors. I thought maybe this is gonna be last a month, That's what I thought. And I was like, all right, well, what am I

going to do with this time? Like a lot of things were getting canceled at the time and things like that, and we had a friends staying my wife's friends staying with us, so they would always be spending time together and everything. So I was pretty much on my own and instead of meditating more or reading more, I ordered a PlayStation, which, by the way, I hadn't played video games for ten years, like I just hadn't. I hadn't watch TV religious like properly, like watch the series on TV.

I'd watched movies. I love movies. I dodn't watch a TV show for like ten years, but I literally would sit there and play how was an? How was it? Video games? And I think I didn't stop playing for like it took like three to four weeks before I realized that I'd been playing video games for eight hours a day, eight hours time was wasted. All of I thought I was dealing well with what was going on, but actually I was just using that as my escape to what was actually happening in the world. And I

know it sounds stupid. It's like our video games, but it's not. It's terrible. I mean when I would play Assassin's Creed, I would walk out there. My wife was just like, you look like you've just exited a war. Are you okay? Like she would literally look at me, like our camera crews laughing, they're like, oh, I feel that. She was literally like are you Like she would see me come out of the room. I'd come out of

the cave of like, She's like, are you like? I don't think that game's good for you, Like I don't think that game's good for your energy. And it was like three to four weeks in where I realized I was like, God, the world suffering right now, Like I should be serving. I'm sitting here playing video games. But I have to allow myself and cut myself some slack. That that that was my escape at the time. I just hadn't slowed down and I hadn't stopped for like the

last three to four years. Yeah, I hadn't allowed myself to have any downtime because I was building and serving and creating that that was my outlet. You still realize that it starts to damage your relationships, Like my mom was like, why not calling? Like, I'm not calling my mom and I'm playing a I was a video again. Yeah, I'm not calling my system. I'm playing I was a video games. They're not spending time on my wife. From you know, it's kind of like anything that doesn't have

moderation involved. Yeah, then it's toxic, right, and you drink too much water. And then my therapist put it this way, if it's fine, it's acceptable behavior if you're doing it, and afterwards you don't feel any shame. Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, but if you feel bad they're terrible and that you do it again, then you should look at it. Well, there are bad things you men can do that they

don't feel about. Well, yeah, I'm for somebody who's like, by the time you get to therapy and you're actually working on that thing and you're like, hey, you're trying to understand it, by that point, it's like, okay, well this is probably unhealthy for you if you're if you're that reflective and you're already there, right, So yeah, it's it's it's interesting that it seems to be the women in your life that sort of pointed that out. Always, like the women women like my mother, my sister, and

from my wife. I've just learned, like like I dedicate my book to her because she is more monk than I'll ever be, and that's so humbling. When when we got married, I was like the guy who'd been a monk and meditating for all these years, and even some of my spirit spiritual friends were like, oh, you can't marry her, she's new to spirituality, et cetera, et cetera. And my wife, like, my wife wakes up earlier than

I do. She meditates for longer than I do. She is she's amazing, Like she's far more spiritual than I'll ever be. And and I love that because I need that she's amazing. Yeah, and I need that. If she wasn't that, maybe I wouldn't be who I am today, Like maybe I would have got more deviated from the path and lost my way. Jay, You're you're incredible. We're going to go to these last questions. Welcome to this week's Man Enough Podcast Rapid Fire Question, Lau, do you

want to start all right? The rapid fire question? When is the last time that you cried? It was probably when I was you know what, I yeah, it was probably this Because I don't live in the same country as my mom anymore, and because of the pandemic, I don't get to see her as much anymore. I used to go back regularly. I feel like whenever I'm leaving London and my mom cries, I cry because it's my mom, Like I love it, like she did every She's done

everything for me. And the thing about love is there's no way of repaying it, so you can only keep trying. And I think that that's the beauty of love. And also the hard part of love is that you can't repay real love. And I feel like I'm always in debt to my mom in a good way. And so, yeah, i'd say that tell me something that other people value that you don't, I'd say it's probably being understood. I'm okay with being misunderstood. Wow, I just think it's reality.

I just don't think you will ever be understood by everyone, and so it's okay. Like I don't value being understood any I used to. I used to love being I want to take that as a superpower. Yeah, I'm going to add one, What are you afraid of? I'm afraid of not reaching my potential. I'm genuinely afraid of that. I do think about that, like I think about the future, and I'm like, I don't want to die having thought that I didn't try my best to do everything that

I was meant to do. And my teacher told me something once which which set the pedestal of potential much higher. And he asked me once, he said, well, what are you doing right now? As an update? And so I was telling him. I was like, I'm doing this podcast and we've launched this book, and I was just sharing it out of love and gratitude to him. And he said, he said to me, Goes, you know, for all of these things that you're doing, I have no expectation, but

I simply demand the purity of your heart. And I was just like, oh, that's a lot harder. And that's my biggest fear that I don't live up to that, because I feel like I would have wasted all the love that he's given me over the years and the amount of investment that these teachers are put into a random kid from London who is on his way to do all the stupid things that people do. And they've they've they've loved me through so much and it upsets me to think that I mess it up. So, yeah,

when was the last time you apologize to someone? Today? To my wife, we were doing a video together and I was rushing to come here or somewhere else and I was I had the worst and energy, and she stopped me and she looked me in the face and she was like, are you okay? Like what's up? Like I can tell that you're just frustrated to be here, but you need to do this right now, and are you okay with that? And and then I was like, all right, let's just do it. I don't like your

energy right now. And then I went back to it and I gave her rug and its like I'm really sorry, look, I'm just you know, I've had a lot on this last week and whatever. So yeah, that was sure. And the final question, what does it mean to be man enough? Oh? I think, in my opinion, what it means to be mad enough is to There's a beautiful statement by Russell Barkley where he said that people who need the most love often ask for it in the most unloving ways.

And I think what it means to be mad enough is to be able to approach everyone with that love, recognizing that the pain they're causing you or anyone else is coming from a place of them being unloved at some point in their life. Wet, you're my friend or man enough. Thank you so much for being here. Thank you, Liz, thanks so much for you. I know I know you had to move a lot of stuff run to make us happen, So thank you so much. This is so special.

I learned some sweet If you want even more videos just like this one makes you subscribe and click on the boxes over here. I'm also excited to let you know that you can now yet my book Think Like a Monk, from thinkli amnkbook dot com. Check below in the description to make sure you order today.