FIND YOUR PURPOSE - If You Feel LOST & UNHAPPY In Life, Watch This! | Jay Shetty

Jay Shetty 0:00 When I finally got a job after 40 rejections, and I met people and they were 21 and I was 26 now, by the time I started my first job, I was 26 years old, I realized that I actually had the greatest advantage, which was I had massive self-awareness. I knew what my strengths were, I knew what my s- what my weaknesses were, I knew what I had to offer, and I knew what I wanted to do. And I was just like, "I just took the biggest risk, potentially one of the biggest career risks in life by becoming a monk. I shouldn't be scared of anything anymore."

Alex Lieberman 0:30 [Instrumental music] Welcome to Imposters, the show where I have revealing conversations with world-class execs, athletes, and entertainers about their personal challenges and how overcoming those challenges has shaped their careers and lives for the better. And I hope that it helps you along your personal journey. I'm your host, Alex Lieberman, co-founder and executive chairman of Morning Brew. Before we get started, make sure to subscribe and click the bell so you get notified every time Morning Brew drops a new video. Let's dive in. My guest today is Jay Shetty. Jay is the host of the podcast On Purpose, and the author of the New York Times bestselling book, Think Like a Monk. For the past several years, Jay has been working hard to, as he puts it, "Make wisdom go viral," which he does by sharing insights with his millions of followers on Facebook and Instagram, and with his over seven billion views on YouTube. Jay's wisdom has been lauded by powerhouses like Oprah and Ellen, and has been named on Forbes' 30 Under 30 list. But Jay's path to success has been anything but linear, as we'll discuss in our interview. In fact, to get to where he is today, Jay had to take some incredibly hard and unconventional career risks, and overcome massive amounts of imposter syndrome. Jay Shetty, thank you so much for joining Imposters.

Jay Shetty 1:50 I wanna say thank you to you. I mean, we've been working towards this for a long time.

Alex Lieberman 1:54 Yeah.

Jay Shetty 1:54 So I'm so grateful for all your love online. I love connecting with someone over Twitter. I think that's what we connected over?

Alex Lieberman 2:00 Yeah, we, we connect over Twitter at first, then a few times on Instagram, a few times over email. But it's just interesting, the world we live in, where I have so many friends that I've never actually met in life, but I feel a closeness to them-

Jay Shetty 2:11 Yeah

Alex Lieberman 2:11 ... in, in so many ways.

Jay Shetty 2:13 Yeah, definitely. I feel that warmth towards you too, and I'm, I'm glad that we're finally meeting in person, but thank you for the opportunity.

Alex Lieberman 2:18 Absolutely. So I don't know how else to say it other than it feels like you've had seven careers in your life. [laughs] Like, it, it, it feels like you have just experienced so many different things. Um, and people, I think today know you as someone who's making wisdom go viral, as a podcast host, as someone who's written a book, does all these things. But you've had so many other experiences in your life that have kind of informed where you are now. And so I would love for you to take me from the beginning. What was childhood like for a, a young Jay Shetty?

Jay Shetty 2:49 So I did this interesting activity recently where I sat down and I realized I'd been working for around 20 years now.

Alex Lieberman 2:56 And how old are you now?

Jay Shetty 2:57 I'm 34.

Alex Lieberman 2:57 Okay.

Jay Shetty 2:58 And so around 20, 22 years. And I just, I was like, "Wow, that's, that's an interesting number," and I sat down and I wrote down every job I'd ever had. I have it in my notes section on my phone. But, um-

Alex Lieberman 3:07 How many jobs?

Jay Shetty 3:08 I think I can say it from my memory. Let me go through it. I don't know the number, but so it was newspaper boy, like paper delivery dude. Uh, worked in a grocery store stacking shelves. Then worked in retail selling like women's clothes, denim, that kind of stuff. Then was a tutor. I coached students at college to make extra money in younger years in things like economics and psychology and philosophy and things like that. And then I lived as a monk for three years. Then I worked as a digital strategy and innovation consultant at Accenture. Then I was a senior host and producer at Huffington Post. Then I started my entrepreneurial journey, which now has led to books, podcasting, media, everything else. So at least eight different jobs.

Alex Lieberman 3:56 Which I think is such an important thing to, to call out, because I think people will look at you today and be like, "God, this guy, he, he has it all. He's in his mid-30s, super wise, he's built a massive audience, you know, he has all these different lines of business. Like, clearly he has it all figured out." And I think just by you laying out these, whatever it is, nine, 10 jobs that you've had, it has been anything but a linear path to get there. And I'm sure from your perspective, it's like you don't have it all figured out at all. You're just working your best to do it.

Jay Shetty 4:25 No, I have it completely figured out, actually.

Alex Lieberman 4:26 [laughs]

Jay Shetty 4:27 No. [laughs] Yeah, no, no, not at all. Not at all. And, uh, and yeah, it's just fun looking back that way-

Alex Lieberman 4:32 Yeah

Jay Shetty 4:32 ... and trying to piece it out. But sorry, I'll answer your question. I just thought that was interesting and, and I recommend everyone does that activity. I think we often also think about our careers as when I graduate from college.

Alex Lieberman 4:42 Totally.

Jay Shetty 4:42 And like, but that's, that's not your career. Like, your career starts whenever you choose for it to start. Uh, the question about my childhood or where the first job began?

Alex Lieberman 4:50 Your, your childhood.

Jay Shetty 4:51 Yeah. I'd say that I was born and raised in a family where obedience, discipline were top priority. Performing well at school was really important to my parents, and so despite me going to a fairly rough school where education wasn't a priority of my peers, my parents were emphasizing homework, after school work, extracurriculars. I was being trained from the age of eight to get into a grammar school, which is a school you have to take an exam for that gives you a private level education without having to pay for it. My parents didn't have the money to send me to private school, but they wanted me to work hard in order to do that. And so I felt like I lived a very disciplined life. Uh, loo- at that- obviously, when you're a kid, there's moments where you accept it as normality, and then there's times when you're like, "Oh, I just wanna hang out." And now I look back and feel really grateful that my parents made me do that, because I think it gave me a certain way of working that I wouldn't have developed otherwise. And I was pretty much a teacher's pet up until about age 14, and then age 14 was when I went off the rails, started to rebel, started getting wr- involved in the wrong groups, wrong circles, getting involved in activities that I wouldn't recommend to anyone. Um-

Alex Lieberman 6:02 Like what?

Jay Shetty 6:03 Everything from experimenting with drugs through to, uh, violence through to- You know, just, just nefarious, stupid activities

Alex Lieberman 6:13 Yeah

Jay Shetty 6:13 And stuff that I think most kids do, but I think we just got into it really young. Like, 14 was a bit young for that. And then by the time I was 18, I was kind of done [laughs] and I'd kind of exhausted all of the craziness, and it was actually my dad who started handing me biographies and autobiographies. So my dad was worried that I didn't like reading, and so was my mom. I really hated reading fiction.

Alex Lieberman 6:36 I was the same way.

Jay Shetty 6:36 Hated reading fiction. So I don't think I read a book until I was 14. My dad started giving me biographies and autobiographies, and I read Malcolm X, I read Martin Luther King, I also read David Beckham and Dwayne The Rock Johnson because I was a big wrestling and soccer fan growing up. And so I was reading these really diverse biographies and autobiographies, and I was thinking, "Wow, these people have all done something phenomenal with their life." And that's where I started to get fascinated by personal development and personal growth without knowing what that was.

Alex Lieberman 7:05 So two questions. One is when you were going through kind of this phase after 14 of being more rebellious, um, of just experimenting, what was it inside of you that was driving you to do this? And do you think at that point in your life you had a sense of who you were or what you wanted to be?

Jay Shetty 7:20 Yeah. Yeah, there was a certain self-awareness at the time that I could hear as a little voice in my head or my heart that was like, "You don't wanna do that. You're not good at that. Do this." And it was actually healthy. So my parents wanted me to do medicine or science or, you know, law or engineering, and for me, those things scared me. I was like, "I'm not really interested in those things." And I could have that voice inside of me that was like, "Do art, do philosophy, do economics, do design." Like, those were the things I gravitated towards. And it was almost like I started to listen to that voice, and I started to not ignore that voice because it was so strong, and I almost had this rejection towards anything else that wasn't that. At the same time, I think there was a bit of me being naive. There was a bit of wanting to fit in. There was wanting validation, wanting to be cool, wanting to be liked, and then that part of me was seeking the wrong activities or the bad circles. So it's like this weird juxtaposition of your self-awareness, which is guiding you in the right direction, but then your low self-esteem, which is guiding you in the wrong direction. And so you've got these two things pulling on you, and you obviously don't know this as a 16-year-old. I can only say this in hindsight. But at the time I just thought, "Yeah, I fit in here. I'm trying to look cool here. I think people will like me if I'm this way." And then it's like, "But wait a minute, I don't wanna be forced to do things I don't care about."

Alex Lieberman 8:43 Right.

Jay Shetty 8:43 So that's-- I was grappling with that.

Alex Lieberman 8:45 Absolutely. I'm interested, you know, as we move forward in your life, you ended up going to school, uh, to, to university, um, thinking you were going to work in whether it's financial services or consulting, and then kind of in by happenstance, you were introduced to the, the work of, of monks, and ultimately decided after, you know, three summers of visiting the ashram to become a, a monk for three years. How hard was that decision when you just had talked about during your rebellious years, at least a part of you was driven by kind of, uh, the need for validation? It-- I would say it wasn't necessarily a popular decision to become a monk. Like, it wasn't something that was familiar to other people. So how were you able to

Alex Lieberman 9:30 kind of withstand call it the pressure from others to do what was expected of you?

Jay Shetty 9:35 Yeah. I think we're always living two lives. One is the life you want, and the other is the life you think others want you to live.

Alex Lieberman 9:46 Mm-hmm.

Jay Shetty 9:46 And we get stuck in between those two lives, and often we feel like we're living too far off the edge of what other people want us to live, and often we feel like we're living too close to the version we want to live. And that dance is really fascinating as life goes on. And what I found at the time was I was being drawn closer and closer and closer to my own values, and I was being drawn closer and closer and closer to what was important to me. So at that time, if you asked me what I thought I was gonna be, I would have said something like, "I'm gonna be a rapper." Right? I love spoken word. I love writing lyrics. I loved music. I played the drum kit. I played the piano growing up. I can't play a- anything anymore. Uh, and, and I was highly into music and I was like, "I want a career in music." That's what I probably would have said. And then as time moved on, I, uh, would have moved away to being, "Okay, let's be more realistic, Jay. You can't do that. That's not real for an Indian kid growing up in London. Let's be more realistic." And I was like, "Well, maybe I wanna be a, uh, an art designer or an, um, art manager at a magazine," because I loved art, loved design. And then it's like, "Oh, no, no, Jay, be more realistic. That's not really a career path because everyone in your-- everyone who, who you're surrounded by is doing far more serious and real careers than that. Okay, let's go and get a business degree." Right?

Alex Lieberman 11:07 Yeah.

Jay Shetty 11:07 It's like you literally-

Alex Lieberman 11:08 Totally

Jay Shetty 11:08 ... go from this is the truth of what I want, to let me water it down a bit, and then to let me completely water it down. So I remember telling my art teacher, who I was really good friends with at, at college, telling him, "I'm turning down my offers to

Jay Shetty 11:20 go to, like, art school," which is what I thought I wanted to do, to go and do a management science degree, you know, at Cass Business School.

Alex Lieberman 11:27 Yeah.

Jay Shetty 11:28 And, you know, he was joking around. He's like, "You're such a sellout." [laughs] Like, he was like, "You're such a sellout." I was like, "I am. I'm a sellout."

Alex Lieberman 11:33 [laughs]

Jay Shetty 11:33 "I'm terrible." Uh, and that's kind of where I ended up. And it's really fascinating that I went there because I was like, "This is the safe thing to do," and then I do the least safe thing in the world by becoming a monk. And so it's really fascinating how I went on that end of the spectrum, and then I wanna go back. So I think what happened is there's only so long you can stay away from your true calling, and you can push it down. You can ignore it. You can suppress it as much as you like, but it's going to keep showing up in really uncomfortable ways. And it will start quiet, but it will get louder. And for me, it got really loud at 21. When I thought to myself, "Which life do I want to live? Do I wanna live a life of chasing success, or do I wanna live a life of service?" And I would say that that decision at 21 became easy because of the three years of experience before, and I think people look at that as like, that's a big change. But that big change was easy because there were lots of small experiences that led up to it. And so every summer, like you rightly said, I'd go to live with the monks, and that mini experiment every summer made me confident that if I did this long term, that I would enjoy it. And I think people think, "Oh no, you just changed your life." It's like, no, I didn't. So, and you're right, I'm glad you raised this because a lot of people say to me today, they're like, "Jay, you really, like, use this monk thing as part of your story." And I'm like, "Trust me, becoming a monk [laughs] is not a story." Like-

Alex Lieberman 12:59 Yeah. Yeah

Jay Shetty 12:59 ... when you're 21,

Jay Shetty 13:00 becoming a monk was the least cool thing I could possibly do. My, my friends, and this is honest, just my guy friends thought I was gay. Like, literally, that's the response I got. That's how far behind things were.

Alex Lieberman 13:11 Yeah.

Jay Shetty 13:11 Like, "You're gay, right?" Like that's... And I'm like, "How is this..." Like-

Alex Lieberman 13:15 Yeah

Jay Shetty 13:15 ... how is that even connected?

Alex Lieberman 13:16 Totally.

Jay Shetty 13:17 But, but that's what they thought. Girls didn't wanna talk to me anymore because they thought they weren't allowed to talk to me and, and what was happening-

Alex Lieberman 13:23 Yeah

Jay Shetty 13:23 ... on my path. And then my family thought that I'd wasted my parents' investment in me and my education.

Alex Lieberman 13:29 Yeah.

Jay Shetty 13:29 And so everyone's saying, "You've committed career suicide, you're never gonna get a job again, and you're ruining your parents' life."

Alex Lieberman 13:35 And it's just so interesting, again, just thinking about your own development and your own awareness, that you were able to get to a place where despite all of that, you know, people saying, "Oh, you must be gay," or, "You can't see women. Oh, it's career suicide," that somehow you had gotten to this point in your life where you felt enough connection to your values or what you deemed to be your calling, that you were willing to do that. Because I would say that is very difficult at any stage of life, but it's exceptionally difficult as a 21-year-old when there is so much social pressure.

Jay Shetty 14:06 Yeah, and I give all the credit to my monk mentors and teachers and guides because it's not-- I didn't have that resilience, but they'd given me an experience of something, and I believe that that experience was more powerful than my feelings-

Alex Lieberman 14:21 Yeah

Jay Shetty 14:21 ... or what I was hearing. And that's why I think we try and make decisions in our head, and we try and figure everything out in our head, and we're like, "If I can figure this out in my mind, then I'll figure it out in life." And it's like, no, go and have a real-life experience. Go and do the thing for a short amount of time, and then you'll know what to do. And so I think you can only spend that much time in your head figuring out personality tests and conversations and questions and reflecting and introspecting, and after a while, you just gotta go do the thing. And if I never went and spent those summers living as a monk, I would never have wanted to be one because I wouldn't know what it feels like.

Alex Lieberman 14:55 Totally. I'm interested for you to talk in a second about when you went to become a monk, the work you did, and how you knew that you enjoyed that work, because what I've even realized, right, after, um, selling a, a business in the last few years and thinking about what's next, um, I always will intellectualize, "How do I know if I am enjoying the things that I'm doing? Do I love this work? Am I passionate about it?" And the issue is, the more that I overthink, "Am I passionate about this thing?" the less I feel passionate about it-

Jay Shetty 15:23 [laughs]

Alex Lieberman 15:24 ... because I'm intellectualizing the experience. So tell me, you know, what was it like to be on the ashram for three years,

Alex Lieberman 15:30 and how did you know at least some part of that work was truly what your calling was?

Jay Shetty 15:36 Yeah. So there's, there's two parts to any work we do. There's the process and there's the result, and loving the work you do means you love the process and you'll accept the result. Whereas the way we've been trained in modern society is all that matters is the result. If the result is good, then you must love your job. If you see someone win an Oscar, they must love their job. If you see someone make lots of money and sell their company, they must be happy. So we define someone's happiness based on how the result is, whereas all ancient wisdom would suggest is happiness is based on how much you enjoy the process, and the process is as enjoyable as you believe it's aligned with your values and what you care about. And so at the time, my goal of becoming a monk was simple. I wanted to learn to master my mind, my ego, my envy, my jealousy, my comparison, and my illusion, and I wanted to serve. I wanted to improve the lives of other people. I wanted my life to make a difference in other people's lives. So I knew that as long as I was doing work in those two areas, no matter what activity you do, you'd be happy. And I think that's another challenge we do. We get locked up in the activity. Do I like being an interviewer? Do I like being a writer? Do I like being a podcaster? And if you ask me, I'm like, "I would use any tool possible to master my mind and improve the lives of other people." I'm not attached to what medium or forum. I only use social media because it was the last option. It was the last thing I wanted to use, but there was no other option that I had because no one else would give me a chance. So I'm not attached to the medium or the role. It's like you're focused on what do you want to bring to the world, and what intention are you bringing in? So to me, it's about figuring out what you're truly trying to create for yourself. And so during my time as a monk, I was waking up at 4:00 AM. We were meditating for four to eight hours a day. You're sleeping on the floor. You don't have a bed. All your possessions fit inside a gym locker, and you do that every day. Do I enjoy that? No. Am I passionate about that? No. But I believe it's gonna help me master my mind. Okay, I'm in. I can do that, right?

Alex Lieberman 17:54 Yeah.

Jay Shetty 17:54 Every day we were out in the sun. It's 110 Fahrenheit, right? It's, it's hot. You're out there laying bricks. You're out there doing agricultural work on the farm. Do I enjoy that? No. Do I really love that? No. But do I believe that, that it positively improves the lives of other people that we're serving? Yes. Okay, it fits. And so I enjoy the process because I trust the process is giving me what I need, but I don't have to enjoy that direct activity-

Alex Lieberman 18:22 Right

Jay Shetty 18:23 ... because that's pleasure.

Alex Lieberman 18:24 Well, and I feel like that's such an important nuance, right? Because you talk about enjoying the process, and if someone hears what you're saying, like, "No, I didn't enjoy laying bricks, I didn't enjoy agriculture," they'd be like, "But isn't that the process?" And I think this, the distinction you make is there are activities that sit within this process. It's not necessarily about enjoying those, it's about how do these serve ultimately what you're trying to accomplish, the values you're trying to live out.

Jay Shetty 18:47 Correct. And that, that ac- w- yeah, I, I love that you're making that distinction, and I d- maybe I can articulate it better. I didn't love the activity, but I loved what was happening to my intention while I did the activity.

Alex Lieberman 19:00 Yeah.

Jay Shetty 19:00 And that's what you're falling in love with, and I get that that's a really, like, meta, ethereal idea.

Alex Lieberman 19:05 [laughs]

Jay Shetty 19:05 But it's like, you, you are looking at that going, "I do this because I know what's being built right now while I do this." That's loving the process.

Alex Lieberman 19:15 I think what Jay is saying here is so important. If you have a clear sense of your own values and you're able to see how the work that you do serves those values, it can feel easier to embrace the sometimes mundane or tedious or completely unenjoyable aspects of your job. Sometimes taking a second to step back and remind yourself of your intentions and why you're doing the job that you're doing can have a really powerful effect on your willingness to push through the worst aspects of it. We're gonna take a quick break here, but when we come back, Jay gets into why he decided to leave the ashram and how he navigated feeling behind professionally from his peers to ultimately finding success. This episode of Imposters is sponsored by Sakara. Feeling great starts with what's on your plate, which is why Sakara has simplified healthy, balanced dining. Sakara is a wellness company anchored in food as medicine on a mission to nourish your body through the power of plants. Their plant-rich meals, snacks, and supplements are designed to reduce bloat, ease digestion, and boost energy, all while being absolutely delicious. And to make healthy eating even easier, Sakara delivers everything right to your door, ready to enjoy. Right now, Sakara is offering listeners 20% off their first order. Simply go to sakara.com/imposters or enter code imposters on any checkout page. That's Sakara, S-A-K-A-R-A, .com/imposters. So let's talk about you spent three, three years on the ashram. You decided to ultimately leave. Why did you leave?

Alex Lieberman 20:53 Um, and what was the response when you left?

Jay Shetty 20:57 Yeah, so lots of reasons why I left. Uh, I was really experimenting with my health. I was experimenting with longer meditations, longer fasting. I was really pushing the limits of how far meditation could go to replace sleep, how far meditation could go to replace physical energy. And I, and I really took my body to lengths that broke my body practically, and that wasn't a fun feeling at all. Uh, ended up in the hospital. You know, I talk about this in the book, of course. I was in bed for, like, 14 hours a day for plenty of time. It, it was, it was really tough, and it was all my own doing. It was all my own experimentation. That was part of it, but really what was... That was what was happening outside.

Alex Lieberman 21:37 Yeah.

Jay Shetty 21:37 And what was happening inside was, as you are practicing being a monk, you get more self-awareness and you get more introspection, and I started to realize that my desires were not aligned with the desires of long-term monks. So I would sit and talk to monks who'd been there for 10, 20, 30 years, and I'd listen to them and I'd be like, "Do I wanna live like that?" And the answer was no.

Alex Lieberman 21:58 What were their desires versus your desires?

Jay Shetty 22:00 Well, their desires were complete surrender, complete service, no personal creativity or personal expression. And for me, I was like, "But I wanna share what I'm learning in this way, and I can see the link between this scripture and this movie, and this song lyric reminds me of this verse in The Vedas." Like, to me, I was like, yeah, I'm a kid growing up in London who loves music, loves movies, loves life, and I'm seeing all the correlations and connections and I'm saying, "I wanna make those connections for people because then maybe people can live these ideas in their life." And so I always had that, where I wanted to make wisdom more practical, accessible, and relevant, because I saw its power and I, and I felt called to do that. And it was as much a realization that I wanted to do that as I wasn't a monk, and that's hard because, you know, you feel married for three years, literally, and then you feel like you're getting a divorce.

Alex Lieberman 22:52 Yeah.

Jay Shetty 22:52 And that's actually how it felt for me. I felt like I was divorcing the love of my life. It felt like a breakup. And it was really tough leaving because it almost felt like I went back to all that noise where everyone was right. "You're not gonna get a job. How are you gonna fit in now? You've lost all your friends." And now you've gone back to a world where your friends are, like, 25, 26 years old. They're, you know, in relationships. They're potentially buying their first home or, like, you know, moving into a fancy apartment, or they're now promoted to their next position. They're doing well for themselves,

Jay Shetty 23:30 and you're thinking, "Oh, I am behind." And so that's how I felt when I got back. I'm behind, I'm lost, and I didn't think I made a bad decision, I just, I was like, "How do I catch up now?"

Alex Lieberman 23:39 A- and so how did you catch up? How did you work yourself out of, I would say, a very rational thought of, "I've almost been stuck in time. Everything's accelerated. How do I accelerate?"

Jay Shetty 23:48 Yeah, I didn't know who the Prime Minister of England was. I didn't know who won the World Cup. Like, I didn't know. I had no idea, and so I was truly behind. I spent nine months when I left... Well, the first month, I always talk about the first month was my worst month, where all I did was eat chocolate, listen to music, catch up on all the TV. I remember watching every episode of How I Met Your Mother. I went and found a list on IMDb called Movies to Watch Before You Die, and I watched every movie on that list. Like, I literally went into full, like-

Alex Lieberman 24:16 Yeah

Jay Shetty 24:16 ... lazy-

Alex Lieberman 24:18 Yeah, the pendulum just swung in the exact opposite direction

Jay Shetty 24:19 ... totally the opposite way. Yeah, the opposite.

Alex Lieberman 24:20 Yeah.

Jay Shetty 24:20 I wasn't waking up early, none of that And then I was like, "Okay, this is not sustainable." So for those, that time I started going, I started dressing up, going to my local library, turning up reading books. I was reading scriptural books, monk books again, and then reading business books to try and figure out what I'd missed out on in life. I was dressing up as if I was going to work. But if you asked me what helped me catch up, it was when I started work, when I finally got a job after 40 rejections. When I finally got a job, and I met people, and they were 21 and I was 26 now, by the time I started my first job, I was 26 years old. And I realized that I actually had the greatest

Jay Shetty 25:00 advantage, which was I had massive self-awareness. I knew what my strengths were, I knew what my s- what my weaknesses were, I knew what I had to offer, and I knew what I wanted to do. And I was just like, "I just took the biggest risk, potentially one of the biggest career risks in life by becoming a monk. I shouldn't be scared of anything anymore."

Alex Lieberman 25:19 Yeah.

Jay Shetty 25:20 Like, that was the scariest decision that I made at a time when things were more vulnerable. I shouldn't be scared of anything. And so I became fearless, and so that fearlessness led to me making big, scary decisions in a big, scary organization, which paid off because I now wasn't ready to follow what everyone else was being told to do. And everyone else who was 21, who was still following the rules from college and university, they felt, "All right, we need to follow the rules. That's what we're being told to do." And my thing was, "Well, no, I'm not gonna follow that rule because I think I'll do a better job this way." And thankfully, that paid off. Now, I had people in the company, senior people, some of them were my biggest champions, who I love and I'm so grateful to, and some of them were massively intimidated even though they probably made 20X what I made at the time. But they were intimidated, and they were trying to control and trying to manipulate. So it was tough living that, but I'm really grateful that I did.

Alex Lieberman 26:14 And so if I remember correctly, you were both working within Accenture, but then you were asked at some point to give, uh, a talk on mindfulness to 1,000 people within the company, and then you started traveling around the company, right?

Jay Shetty 26:26 Yeah, so this credit goes to a lady named Gilly Bryant. She's left Accenture now. But she was the head of all the new hires in London, so about 1,000 of us. And she noticed that on my, like,

Jay Shetty 26:40 fun fact about me, I'd said that I lived as a monk, and I meditated, and that I used to teach meditation. And at the time, Accenture was taking, and they are, taking mental health very seriously. And so she reached out to me, and she said, "Jay, we have this big event coming up at Twickenham Rugby Stadium. Would you mind talking about social media," which is what I was doing at work, "and talk about mindfulness and meditation on stage, and potentially even lead a meditation?" Now, at the time, I had no brand, no social media, no one knew my name. I was asked to come on the stage in between Will Greenwood, who is a Rugby World Cup winner with the England national team, and the CEO of the company in the UK. So I'm already having massive imposter syndrome because I'm going, "This guy won a World Cup for the country. This person's the CEO of the company. Like, what am I gonna say?" And these were 1,000 people who are my peers, who have no respect for me, and there's no authority here. And that is a beautiful position to be in because you start realizing that you, you're not living off of influence, so you're not living off of a position. You live off of who you are and how you hold yourself. And so I went up on stage. I was nervous till the point I went on, and I led a meditation. And the feedback I got was they'd never seen a group of 1,000 people hold silence for that long. And it was a really, like, reassuring, comforting feeling. Like, it wasn't like, "Yes, we did it." It was more like, "Wow, this stuff works in the real world. People care." And so yes, then I got invited across the company to teach mindfulness and meditation, uh, set up Mindfulness Mondays, mindfulness meditations before meetings. Uh, I got really involved in the co- I was so grateful to Accenture for championing a personal skill set in a big professional organization with 500,000 people.

Alex Lieberman 28:26 It's interesting because it sounds like something that helped your imposter syndrome in that moment was kind of the internal validation you had after you saw this entire group of people sit in silence. You were told that this was the longest they'd ever sat in silence. Like, it, it was reassuring to you that the work that you were doing could be really meaningful. I'm also sure that this wasn't the only time you've experienced imposter syndrome in your life, and given the name of the show, uh, given so many people experience this, I, I'm interested how you think about navigating imposter syndrome. And I'll even say from my perspective right now, like, I feel massive imposter syndrome hosting a podcast with you as a guest, where I'm just like, "How, how do I host a podcast talking about vulnerability and challenges in people's lives and being a sounding board for them when the seat a- the person in the seat across from me is someone who literally spent three years as a monk and has done so much more work to truly understand people? How do I do it?" And so I can just imagine how many people experience imposter syndrome in their life.

Jay Shetty 29:25 Well, first of all, that's very kind of you, and, and I don't think of it that way at all. I think every question you've asked me has been so heartfelt, has been so sincere, so genuine. Uh, you know, everything that you've shared with me today. Even before today, I already knew I was gonna love you before today, like, 'cause all the interactions we had on Twitter, and you, you think like, "How, how can you

Jay Shetty 29:45 do that on Twitter?" But you can when you're as genuine and sincere as you are. So I was excited to be here. I'm, I'm grateful to be here, honestly. Uh, I would say that I don't think you ever stop feeling imposter syndrome if you're growing. If you're growing, if you're learning, you will always feel imposter syndrome because what imposter syndrome really is, is a sign that you still have a skill to learn or an experience to have. So I still feel it on a daily, weekly, monthly, yearly basis, and I don't ever want to stop feeling it because it shows me that I need to grow and I m- need to learn. I connected to a beautiful book called Flow And Flow talks about how to experience a state of flow which musicians experience, which artists experience, which singers experience, is when your challenge meets your skills. But what most of us experience on a daily basis is our challenge is above our skills, which means we get scared, we get threatened, we get confused, we feel lost. Or what we experience is the opposite, where your skills are above your challenge. Then you feel bored, you feel tired, you feel lethargic, you feel complacent. So really what imposter syndrome is saying is that your skills are not as high as your challenge, but you can fill that gap if you truly, deeply want to. You can make that leap if you want to. And so now when I feel a sense of imposter syndrome, I ask myself, "What skill is being highlighted to me that I don't have?" It's not a feeling, it's not an emotion, it's a skill. Like I'll give an example. If I'm sitting around a table of people that I feel are more qualified than me in a certain area, let's say I'm sitting with a group of people and they're all amazingly deep into real estate, right? That's, that's their thing. I'm gonna feel like an imposter because I'm not that deep into real estate. And then I have to ask myself, "So what skill do I now have?" Okay, real estate investing. Do I want that skill, or am I happy being in this space, for example. And so the question isn't not only what skill don't you have, what do you want that skill, because often you can get pursuing a skill just to impress people.

Alex Lieberman 32:06 Totally.

Jay Shetty 32:06 And so I think that's what I would encourage people to do with imposter syndrome, is take it away from this feeling of like, "I'm not good enough, I'm not smart enough, I'm not this enough." Yeah, you're not smart enough. Figure out what you need to get smart at, right? And that's how I see it. I'm like, "Okay, I'm not, I, I'm not qualified to this. Do I wanna be qualified?"

Alex Lieberman 32:23 Totally. I think in, in a lot of ways what you're doing is you're putting control back in the hands of the person themselves.

Jay Shetty 32:29 Yeah.

Alex Lieberman 32:29 Right? So it's all about reframing it as this is actually a great thing because you're pushing yourself into an area of discomfort where you now have the choice of there's a gap between your skill and the challenge that you're facing, and you have that choice of if you wanna close that gap. And by the way, you can make the choice not to close that gap if you don't wanna do it.

Jay Shetty 32:47 Exactly. Exactly. So when I first started my career and I was mainly known for creating video content which were like four minutes, we then built the podcast. I felt like an imposter when I launched the podcast. Now we've done the podcast for three years and it's very natural, and then when we launched the book, it was like that was scary, and then now we're doing a book again. That doesn't feel scary. So every time you make a new leap, you'll feel imposter syndrome, but that's great-

Alex Lieberman 33:10 Totally

Jay Shetty 33:11 ... because that means you're growing. That means you're trying something new. I would never feel imposter syndrome if I never tried anything new, and that means I would live a boring, same life, and I don't want that.

Alex Lieberman 33:21 Yeah. Thinking about your experience within Accenture, um, it feels like this combination of just

Alex Lieberman 33:30 amazing kind of, uh, harnessing of an opportunity you were given to use the experience you had in the ashram to spread kind of what you learned throughout the company, while also kind of being on the forefront of social media. You know, while you say you were a little bit late to it because you didn't have a Facebook until whatever age, you still were early now in retrospect within what's happened with social. When you reflect on kind of almost like these two amazing kind of skills you were able to build up that informed where you are in your career now, how much do you think about your own experience as skill and, uh, hard work and grit, and how much do you think of it as luck? And, and how do you think about that relationship broadly in career?

Jay Shetty 34:14 I would say that, and I'm gonna be honest, because I think that's the only way to do it, I would say that my greatest skill is knowing that I can learn something if I want to, and that if I apply myself to it and I really deeply care about it, that I will find a way to get really good at it. And I don't think you can separate that-

Alex Lieberman 34:39 Mm-hmm

Jay Shetty 34:39 ... from impact, because impact means... There's a beautiful quote by Bruce Lee where he said that, "I'm not scared of the person that has practiced 10,000 kicks one time each. I'm scared of the person who's practiced one kick 10,000 times."

Alex Lieberman 34:59 Love that.

Jay Shetty 35:00 And that's the switch that we have to make, is that are we willing to practice this one kick, this one move 10,000 times or whatever it may be, and that to me is the difference maker. So I would say that there's a lot of strategy because now it all makes sense. Like social media, meditation, oh, that fits. It didn't make sense when I was collecting those skills. And so as Steve Jobs says, you can only connect the dots, uh, looking backwards. You can't moving forwards. To me, when I was collecting it, I was just like, "I love people, and I love connecting with lots of people, so social media would be useful maybe." That's literally all I had as a thought.

Alex Lieberman 35:36 Totally.

Jay Shetty 35:36 It wasn't like, "Oh, I'm gonna learn this, then I'm gonna learn this, and then we're gonna..." It wasn't that-

Alex Lieberman 35:40 Yeah

Jay Shetty 35:40 ... thought through. And at the same time when I became a monk, it wasn't like, "Oh, one day I'm gonna write a book about being..." It wasn't that. It was, "Hey, I think this is what my calling is." So it was a naive, innocent following of what I'm being called to do at the time, then matched with what do we do with this now that we have it as a skill, and taking a risk based on that. So I would say it's, it's... I don't know what you call that, whether it's discipline, uh-

Alex Lieberman 36:06 Yeah. It feel, it feels like the combination of like intuition and action-

Jay Shetty 36:10 Yeah

Alex Lieberman 36:10 ... when an opportunity presents itself.

Jay Shetty 36:11 That's good. Yeah, that's better than what I was about to say, so I'll take that. [laughs]

Alex Lieberman 36:14 [laughs]

Jay Shetty 36:14 Intuition, action. Yeah, I just came up with this. Intuition, action. Uh, and, and I would add a massive sense of being open to risk-

Alex Lieberman 36:23 Yeah

Jay Shetty 36:23 ... again, again and again. And, and then I would say it's brilliant mentorship and guidance. So I give all the credit to the people I met. If I didn't meet really cr- ... critical people at different times, and I didn't form a relationship with them, and they didn't invest in me, and I didn't invest in them, that was everything, like for me especially. So that you could say was luck.

Alex Lieberman 36:46 Yeah.

Jay Shetty 36:46 That was the luck. The luck was that these people came into my life and we clicked at really specific times, and that was the luck.

Alex Lieberman 36:55 Well, and I would say the skill there was, you know, my, my intuition is that when you were building these relationships, it wasn't doing so in a way where you were getting something out of it. You were getting into these relationships because you love the pe- the people that they were, and you wanted to just be closer to them.

Jay Shetty 37:11 I'm still friends with every one of those people.

Alex Lieberman 37:13 Yeah.

Jay Shetty 37:13 Yeah, like deeply.

Alex Lieberman 37:14 Yeah.

Jay Shetty 37:14 Like, I message them all the time, and they're still involved in my life in so many ways. And I, I... All the credit goes to them. I'd say any career success I have, I'd, I'd give it to them because it's not that they told me what to do or how to do it, or invested money, or... It wasn't those kind of things. It was people who just changed the way you thought-

Alex Lieberman 37:34 Yep

Jay Shetty 37:34 ... by planting simple seeds and planting simple ideas at different times in my life. So yeah, I would say there's a mix of luck, strategy, intuition, action. But ultimately, I think it comes down to three things: passion, strengths, and service. That's ultimately what it comes down to. It's the passion to learn anything and everything, developing an actual skill in the subject matter you wanna do, and then wanting to serve through it, which is where the fulfillment comes from. And so to me, I'd narrow it down to those three things.

Alex Lieberman 38:04 So something you talk about, um, in your journey as being one of the more stressful points, uh, in your life is post-Accenture, you had decided that you wanted to kind of create these videos. You ended up creating them, I believe, in London at a time and day where there's no streets on the road, so it was perfect moment. Um, you try to pitch all these media executives on being able to do it. Ultimately, you were given an opportunity with Huffington Post. Um, and the videos absolutely crushed it, uh, upon publishing. I think, uh, the first, uh, week, like the first video did a million views, then it was a million in 24 hours. But then you talk about at a point in the journey of Huffington Post where you were working there, it was going great, but you were within four months of not having

Alex Lieberman 38:50 money to live. Talk about just that period in your life and how you worked through it.

Jay Shetty 38:54 Yeah, and, and even getting-- Or, or everything you just described is just such a tough time because I was getting m- I got married, changed job three times, moved country all in the same year, and that was that year that you just described. And so that was a fully intense year.

Alex Lieberman 39:10 What year was that?

Jay Shetty 39:11 That was 2016.

Alex Lieberman 39:12 Okay.

Jay Shetty 39:12 Yeah, 2016. And this time that you're talking about was coming up to 2017 when my, my, uh, work at Huffington Post ended. Uh, Arianna Huffington had led to start Thrive Global, who's-- she's still a dear friend and, and mentor and wonderful human being. But my work there was ending. She'd left, she'd moved on. My position kind of wasn't there anymore. And I was four months away from being broke and 30 days away from my visa to America being taken away because it was attached to my work visa. And so not only did I have to figure out how to sort my visa out, I had to figure out how to pay for more than rent and groceries beyond four months. And I always used to have my mentor, Thomas Power, one of them, would always say to me, "You only discover your potential when you're in pain." He'd always keep repeating that. And I'd be like, "Nah, I'm proactive." Like, "Nah, you're-- Whatever. Like I'm, I'm one of the hardest working people. Ah, whatever." And then I was put into pain. Like that was real pain. And I thought, "Okay, I'm gonna discover my potential in the pain. Okay, I'm gonna discover my potential in the pain." The next day after learning that I only had four months left in the bank for rent and groceries, I got up and I emailed, DM'd, tweeted, and messaged every person that I'd ever met and said, "I will edit videos, I will record videos, I will film videos. I will do anything you possibly need me to do at this time." Me and Paul, who's sitting right there, we were doing corporate videos for other clients. Paul, do you remember that office we went in? We did all those question videos.

Alex Lieberman 40:41 Yeah.

Jay Shetty 40:41 And so me and Paul went into this corporate company. I'm producing corporate training videos.

Alex Lieberman 40:46 Mm-hmm.

Jay Shetty 40:47 That's not what I wanna do. That's not my-

Alex Lieberman 40:49 Yeah

Jay Shetty 40:49 ... passion. That's not my life. But it was what I needed to do to survive.

Alex Lieberman 40:52 You didn't have an option.

Jay Shetty 40:53 I didn't have an option. So that year, the year when I thought I was gonna struggle to survive, I made more money in that year than in my whole career combined up until that point because I was so stressed that I wasn't gonna be able to pay my bills. But that's-- Because I was living under that pressure and that fear, it catapulted me and incentivized me to another level, and all of a sudden I'd broken my own ceiling and I was like, "Oh, I had no idea what I was capable of until that happened." And so I just kept stretching every single

Jay Shetty 41:24 year. And so for the past five years, we've just been stretching the capacity every single year. And it blows my mind because I would never have believed any of it was possible, and it's only been possible because that pain forced me into a accelerated period that I never imagined I'd would've got into if I didn't end up in that pain.

Alex Lieberman 41:41 So one last question I have for you is, how do you deal with the difficulties of having the brand that you have today? And I mean that in two ways. In one way, when people say Jay has commercialized mindful- mindfulness and is making a lot of money off of mindfulness, something that generally the focus isn't on material things. And the, the second is for your own work, for your own self, how do you continue to have the mind that you want to have while working with, let's say, platforms that are built for serving external validation that is addictive?

Jay Shetty 42:20 Yeah. So I can honestly say that my intention from the beginning has always been to purify myself and help serve the world. I've always wanted to solve the inner conflict and the inner pain and the inner challenges, and then help other people do that. On that path, I realized that in order to scale, accelerate, and truly provide this message to as many people as possible for free, you had to figure out how that lived as a business. Because what I do every day requires, we have 50 people across the world doing different things right now, and I need each and every one of them to have the impact that we have. And without each and every one of those team members that play such an important and vital role, I wouldn't be able to do this. And what I got fascinated by is I grew up with the belief that money was the root of all evil. I grew up with that. I also grew up with the belief that people who had money did dodgy things to get there, 'cause that's the environment and the family I grew up in. I had to rewire my whole relationship with money. And when I lived as a monk, we were trained to recognize that everything in the world was simply energy, and that energy can either be used for good or used for bad. So all I can say is that I'm honestly trying to give the resources I have to be used to serve and support not only myself and my family, but to serve and support tens of people right now on my team that are, I believe, are living their purpose and feel very purposeful and meaningful coming to the workplace, and then the millions and billions of people that are being impacted. And we've always made a commitment. If you look at our video content, it's, it's always been free. Um, our, our podcast

Jay Shetty 44:20 has ads, but the podcast is free.

Alex Lieberman 44:22 Totally.

Jay Shetty 44:23 Um, we have-- And we're very selective over who we work with and who we partner with. And then, you know, my recent, uh, partnership with Calm, where I've taken on the role of chief purpose officer, the annual subscription is like $42 a year-

Alex Lieberman 44:39 Yeah

Jay Shetty 44:39 ... for the whole year. And so my goal has always been, having lived as a monk where you do things for free all the time, it's like my goal has always been that. My goal was to accelerate the impact and give access. And ultimately I'd say if anyone who does have that perception of what I'm doing, they're fully entitled to that. I'm so okay with that. I'll take it all day. Uh, I have nothing to debate on. I, I appreciate you for how you think about the world, and so I let people have their opinions, and, and I have my intentions, and I hold onto those. Second part of your question was, how do I do that for myself?

Alex Lieberman 45:13 Yeah.

Jay Shetty 45:14 I just got back from spending about two weeks in India, and I was back at the ashram that I lived at. And I go back there every single year. I didn't get to go back the two years of the pandemic. But every single year since I left, and now my wife and I go back every year, and we'll be there for like two weeks to potentially a month, and we'll just, I'll live like a monk again. And I love being back in that environment because they don't care-

Alex Lieberman 45:40 Yeah

Jay Shetty 45:40 ... uh, what I'm doing, uh, what's been achieved, what hasn't been done, what the numbers are. They, they just don't care. And so I'm constantly around people who demand more of me than what the world does. And so one of my teachers, I remember him saying to me, he asked me for an update, so I was telling him what I was doing, and he said something that has always stayed with me, and it really like, it was, it hit me, and it almost scared me because it was so much harder. He said, "Jay, for all these things that you're doing, I have no expectations for this in your life." He said, "My only expectation is that I simply demand the purity of your heart, because that's all I want." And that's way harder.

Alex Lieberman 46:21 That is, that is, that is a monk mic drop right there.

Jay Shetty 46:22 That, that was a monk mic-- My, my monk teachers are to me, and that's way harder.

Alex Lieberman 46:29 Yeah.

Jay Shetty 46:29 Everything else is way easier. And so that's kind of what keeps me on track, is I'm constantly surrounded by people who don't live in this environment, who don't value these things, who don't care about them, who, who aren't, who, who loved me before, during, and will love me after. You know, and, and even my wife, I think my wife gets a lot of credit for that. My wife doesn't care. Um, you know, she, she just, that's not her life, and it's not who she is. And being married to someone that way, I used to be upset at my wife for not loving me for what I've achieved, and then I realized she actually loves me for who I am, and I felt really stupid.

Alex Lieberman 47:05 Yeah.

Jay Shetty 47:05 And, and I realized that that was so much more special, to have someone who's been with me through being broke, through moving country, through having lost it all, to having it all, to being in between, and I'd take that history with her any day over someone praising me for what I've done.

Alex Lieberman 47:23 Jay Shetty, thank you so much for joining Imposters.

Jay Shetty 47:26 Hey, thanks for having me, man.

Alex Lieberman 47:26 This has been awesome.

Jay Shetty 47:26 Thank you so much. I'm so grateful to you, and I really enjoyed my time with you, and I'm excited to connect a lot more.

Alex Lieberman 47:31 Absolutely.

Jay Shetty 47:31 So yeah. Take care.

Alex Lieberman 47:32 Thanks so much.

Jay Shetty 47:32 Thank you.

Alex Lieberman 47:32 Appreciate you.

Jay Shetty 47:33 Thank you. [upbeat music]

Alex Lieberman 47:36 Thank you guys so much for watching this episode. I hope you enjoyed, and I'd love to hear from you. Share in the comments your favorite part of this episode, and also what guest you would love to see on Imposters moving forward. And finally, like and subscribe so you get content from this show every single week. I'll see you guys next time.