Jay Shetty PodcastThis is How to Use Spirituality To Help You with Confidence and Self-Doubt!
CHAPTERS
Prayer as a doorway to hard-to-reach emotions (and why Jahnavi’s music heals)
Jay introduces Jahnavi Harrison as a longtime friend and devotional musician whose work uses mantra and sacred sound to calm, heal, and ground listeners. They frame prayer and music as practices that help people access feelings that are otherwise difficult to express.
- •Jahnavi describes prayer as a way to access deep sentiments through state, posture, and ritual
- •Jay shares their 20-year friendship rooted in service and spiritual community
- •Jahnavi reflects on the collective nature of success (including her Grammy nomination)
- •Music is positioned as healing rather than entertainment alone
A childhood image that shaped her: nature, awe, and “tree nerd” curiosity
Jahnavi shares a defining early memory of walking through yellow flower fields near her home outside London. The conversation connects her creative sensitivity to a lifelong relationship with nature that continues in the Bay Area.
- •Early memory: being engulfed by yellow rapeseed/mustard flowers in local fields
- •Nature as a consistent source of inspiration and grounding
- •Current nature connection in Northern California (redwoods, coast)
- •Curiosity about trees as a personal passion
“Truth seekers” as parents: service, presence, and leaving the script
Jay and Jahnavi discuss how her parents’ commitment to seeking truth and serving community influenced her values. Jahnavi highlights their attentiveness to people and models of presence that feel harder to maintain in a social-media world.
- •Parents’ spiritual journeys: courage to depart from inherited traditions
- •Service-based living as a family value
- •Their deep presence: remembering names, stopping to genuinely connect
- •Tension between modern hyper-connectivity and real attention
Where her love for music began: playful tapes, family singing, and introversion
Jahnavi recalls making cassette recordings as a child, improvising songs and stories without inhibition. She credits growing up surrounded by singing, while noting she never imagined becoming a professional singer due to her introverted nature.
- •Early creativity: Casio keyboard, drum beats, made-up songs and stories
- •Family culture of singing; father known for his voice
- •Shyness and introversion delayed any “I want to be a singer” identity
- •Listening back now reveals how early the musical impulse was present
Devotional mantra music vs. popular music: repetition, purification, and intention
Jahnavi explains what mantra is and why repetition is central to its effect. She distinguishes devotional music through both content (sacred names/phrases) and intention (prayer, inner connection), and Jay shares his immediate emotional resonance with chanting.
- •Mantra defined as sacred words/phrases often referencing the Divine
- •Repetition as purification/clarification of heart and mind (washing-machine analogy)
- •Core differentiator: intention—music as prayer and spiritual connection
- •Jay describes early exposure as familiar, celebratory, and deeply moving
Growing up with an unconventional education—and the shock of “regular school”
Jahnavi describes her early schooling at the temple: national curriculum plus Sanskrit verses, scripture, and weekly chanting. Transitioning to mainstream school brought cultural isolation, teasing, and a sense of splitting into different selves depending on environment.
- •Temple school: small classes, arts, scripture study, weekly temple chanting
- •Mainstream school culture shock: name, vegetarianism, limited pop-culture exposure
- •Bullying and hyper-self-consciousness: wanting to “disappear” to avoid attention
- •Identity split symbolized by the school uniform: “I have to become someone else”
Anxiety, belonging, and slowly building confidence through agency
Jahnavi shares how prolonged anxiety affected her health and schooling choices, including cycles of homeschooling and returning to school. She began integrating by taking more ownership of her education, experimenting with unconventional A-level routes, and discovering that being different could be a strength.
- •Anxiety symptoms and coping behaviors (not eating at school, headaches, stomach issues)
- •Back-and-forth between conventional school and homeschooling
- •Confidence grew when she gained agency over how/where she studied
- •Evening classes and accelerated A-levels; university felt more open-minded
Parents doing their best—and why she didn’t “rebel” (at least then)
They discuss the pressure parents face when a child struggles, and Jahnavi reflects on how hard those years were for her family. She explains why she didn’t feel a teenage urge to leave spirituality—her parents’ openness and her father’s philosophical breadth created room for questions—while acknowledging that doubts can come later.
- •Jahnavi empathizes with her parents’ confusion and care during her school struggles
- •Parents offered spiritual support, but integration was difficult in the moment
- •No early rebellion: open dialogue at home, space for theological/philosophical questions
- •Recognition that crisis of faith can arrive later and more than once
From curiosity to craft: violin, kirtan, touring, and choosing the uncertain path
Music shifted toward professional life through participation, not a grand plan. Jahnavi’s violin became her initial “voice” in kirtan, leading to joining a mantra music group and touring—ultimately prompting her to abandon a predictable magazine-editor job and commit to the creative path despite doubt.
- •Violin lessons began around age 10; playing privately due to shyness/bullying
- •Kirtan improvisation revealed a unique contribution and a place to develop skill
- •A touring opportunity arrived near graduation and expanded globally
- •She turned down a stable editor job, choosing faith and creative vocation amid uncertainty
Experiencing the Divine through sound—and helping others feel free to sing
Jahnavi says music and sacred sound offer a unique access point to divinity because they require only presence and the human voice. She describes how group singing transforms insecurity into connection and freedom, and offers alternatives like “internal singing” for those who feel self-conscious.
- •Divinity through sound: subtle, accessible, voice-based practice
- •Early kirtan memories and festivals created joy, endurance, and spiritual pull
- •Common fear: singing out loud; transformation comes through togetherness
- •Permission to participate softly—or internally—reduces pressure and builds safety
When music becomes refuge: comfort in transitions, grief, and meaningful moments
Jahnavi shares what listeners tell her: her music is used for peace, shelter, and prayer in pivotal life moments. Jay underscores the ineffable quality of sacred sound—how it can move people beyond language and explanation.
- •Listeners use her music during exams, illness, death, weddings, mornings/nights
- •Music as a “shelter” that helps people enter prayerful states
- •Impact feels bigger than the artist—she sees herself as a channel/vessel
- •Sound’s emotional transmission works even without understanding the language
Blending tradition with personal prayer: originals, vulnerability, and safe spiritual space
Jahnavi explains her recent move to weave original English songs into concerts, especially for audiences new to mantra practice. She discusses the balance between being a vessel (traditional kirtan) and offering personal vulnerability, and shares how she aims to create inclusive spaces for spiritual exploration without imposition.
- •Different contexts: traditional kirtan sessions vs. auditorium-style concerts
- •Original songs in English create an accessible bridge and add vulnerability
- •Tension: kirtan as “not about you” vs. value of personal reflection
- •Audience feedback: her events feel spiritually safe without judgment or coercion
Misconceptions about spiritual people: perfection, certainty, and having no doubts
They challenge the pedestal effect and the belief that spiritual people are beyond struggle. Jahnavi notes that public spiritual roles can amplify projection, while Jay explains how the myth of perfection discourages people from pursuing spirituality at all.
- •Misconception: spiritual people don’t doubt, desire, err, or struggle
- •Projection/pedestal dynamics: associating the facilitator with the experience
- •Spiritual growth is incremental and messy, not a single “enlightenment day”
- •Perfection myths can create shame and push seekers away from practice
Crisis of faith and the return through spontaneous prayer (and a deeper stillness)
Jahnavi describes losing faith as disorientation—like the lines disappearing from a coloring book—and how a tiny openness allowed faith to seep back in. She found renewal through more personal, spontaneous prayer in her spoken language, and distinguishes meditation’s stillness from prayer’s relational focus.
- •Crisis of faith felt like darkness and loss of internal support
- •Faith returned gradually: “light through a pinhole” requiring openness
- •Shift toward spontaneous, personal prayer in English (less ritual, more intimacy)
- •Meditation offers stillness; prayer adds direction/relationship—“what am I meditating on?”
Service as the compass when lost + Final Five (advice, intuition, opinions, and God)
Jahnavi shares her guiding question—“Am I being of service?”—as an antidote to feeling lost, and reflects on the spiritual identity of “servant of the servant.” In the Final Five, she emphasizes courage, ignoring “what will people think,” trusting intuition, and talking to God more as a world-changing practice.
- •Service mindset as protective: shifts focus from rumination to giving
- •“Das Anudas” (servant of the servant) reframes identity as contribution
- •Final Five highlights: “Don’t be afraid”; avoid opinion-driven living; trust intuition
- •Proposed universal law: talk to God more; intention differentiates prayer from self-talk
