This Works Like Magic! - If You FEEL LOST In Life, Watch This To FIND YOURSELF! | Joe Dispenza

Joe Dispenza 0:00 If you can't feel gratitude or if you can't feel love, I just wanna know what you've been practicing feeling every day.

Jay Shetty 0:05 Mm.

Joe Dispenza 0:05 'Cause that feeling that you're practicing is what you're f- always feeling. Now let's practice feeling something else. In the beginning-

Jay Shetty 0:12 [laughs]

Joe Dispenza 0:12 ... it's not gonna be easy.

Jay Shetty 0:13 One of the ways that we find our audience struggles is deducing the energy of the people around you, and the energy that you attract into your life-

Joe Dispenza 0:21 Mm-hmm

Jay Shetty 0:21 ... and the people that you keep. Often, it... Like you said, there are people coming to your seminars that are dragging their partners.

Joe Dispenza 0:27 Yeah.

Jay Shetty 0:27 And they have to drag their partners there because their partners are not understanding it initially.

Joe Dispenza 0:33 Mm-hmm.

Jay Shetty 0:33 Where is that a- Is there a method for people to start deducing the energy of people they meet and connect with to be aware if they're on the same frequency or on the same path?

Joe Dispenza 0:44 Ah, ah. Well, well, I don't, I don't know if there's a machine that does that.

Jay Shetty 0:48 [laughs]

Joe Dispenza 0:49 But once again, like, I think that if we share the same experiences-

Jay Shetty 0:55 Mm-hmm

Joe Dispenza 0:55 ... 'cause we like the same things, we share the same emotions.

Jay Shetty 0:59 Mm-hmm.

Joe Dispenza 1:00 And if we share the same experiences, we share the same emotions, I can relate to you, so we can exchange ideas and information.

Jay Shetty 1:07 Yep.

Joe Dispenza 1:07 And if we share the same energy, energy is information.

Jay Shetty 1:11 Mm-hmm.

Joe Dispenza 1:11 So many people, as an example, they use each other to reaffirm their, their dependency on suffering. So I suffer more than you, then you say, I... You, I suffer m- you suffer more than me. We, we have this thing and we just complain with each other. Well, that's the same resonance, the same frequency, and there's a match, right?

Jay Shetty 1:29 Mm-hmm.

Joe Dispenza 1:29 Uh, but it goes to the same means if you, if you're, if you're someone who's has a, a, g- uh, accountability partner that, that you sh- exchange ideas like this with-

Jay Shetty 1:37 Yeah

Joe Dispenza 1:37 ... and it's a different frequency and different energy. So when energy comes together and it's constructive, something comes out of it. Yeah, you feel it, right? It's, and then you feel an elevation. If there's dissonance, then your, your sensing meter is how you feel about that person, many times in your gut or in your heart or wherever, and there's deconst- there's, uh, uh, des- destructive interference, and there's no energy involved. So I think that's just a practice. But really-

Jay Shetty 2:04 Mm-hmm

Joe Dispenza 2:04 ... the ultimate mastery is to be able to be in such resonance, such coherence, that when you walk in the room that you raise everybody's energy.

Jay Shetty 2:15 Mm-hmm.

Joe Dispenza 2:15 And you don't let your energy drop because of any circumstance or any condition, and that would be greater than your environment, right?

Jay Shetty 2:21 Mm.

Joe Dispenza 2:21 And that's, that's the model, uh, that we use. So imagine 1,500 people in an event where everybody's getting super coherent, and the interference that's going on in the room-

Jay Shetty 2:33 Yeah

Joe Dispenza 2:33 ... is creating these high amplitudes. Now we've measured that in the room, and the energy in the room is off the chart many times. There's, I mean, there's energy for healing in there. There's energy for all kinds of things that can happen. So we brought it to life with our awareness. And so the more elevated the emotion, love, gratitude, freedom, bliss, ecstasy, the higher the frequency.

Jay Shetty 2:56 Mm.

Joe Dispenza 2:56 So but it turns out you can have a collective group of people with a lot of energy and be incoherent, and it creates entropy.

Jay Shetty 3:04 Yeah.

Joe Dispenza 3:05 You could have a smaller group of people that are highly coherent and put out a very big signal.

Jay Shetty 3:09 Mm-hmm.

Joe Dispenza 3:10 So when we see a collective really get coherent, wow, the energy in the room opens up doors of possibilities that I would, I would never expect. I mean, I, I don't, I don't h- know how to explain some of the phenomenological things that happen.

Jay Shetty 3:25 Of course.

Joe Dispenza 3:26 But that's, that's... Everybody's divine. Like, everybody's, everybody's in that state. They're, they're in that elevated state. So I think our, I think our, our truth meter-

Jay Shetty 3:35 Mm-hmm

Joe Dispenza 3:36 ... is really whether we feel lifted, uh, or we feel like, uh, we've been robbed.

Jay Shetty 3:41 Yeah.

Joe Dispenza 3:41 Yeah.

Jay Shetty 3:41 Yeah, and often, often our feeling of feeling lifted is based on everything we've just talked about, is based on a void, based on a unhealed trauma, based on a gap or a part of ourselves that we haven't yet broken a belief. And so often feeling lifted is not feeling lifted in the way you're saying.

Joe Dispenza 4:03 Right.

Jay Shetty 4:03 It's feeling lifted in the just, the external superficial sense, again.

Joe Dispenza 4:07 Right, reaffirm, reaffirming the emotion you need.

Jay Shetty 4:09 Just as, just as you said earlier at the beginning that an external event could make you feel sad.

Joe Dispenza 4:14 Right.

Jay Shetty 4:15 The external event is making you feel good.

Joe Dispenza 4:17 Right. Right.

Jay Shetty 4:17 But it's still external, right?

Joe Dispenza 4:19 Exactly.

Jay Shetty 4:19 Like the opposite one.

Joe Dispenza 4:20 Right, so but, so, so then-

Jay Shetty 4:21 Yeah

Joe Dispenza 4:21 ... that means then when things are good, you feel good.

Jay Shetty 4:23 Yeah.

Joe Dispenza 4:24 When things are bad, you feel bad. So there's dramatic contrast and polarity, and this is the realm of polarity, right? So how do you find the middle path? Well, the heart is the middle path. It's a union of polarity. It's a union of opposites. It's, it's oneness, it's wholeness, and this is where we have to begin to create from. All of this down here is all humanity. This is all our animal nature. We get up in here, things change, right?

Jay Shetty 4:46 Mm-hmm.

Joe Dispenza 4:46 You get r- you go from selfish to selfless, and something else happens. So it's really funny, too, because when [smacks lips] a lot of people come, they say, "I, I, I don't know. I'm having difficulty opening my heart."

Jay Shetty 4:56 Mm.

Joe Dispenza 4:57 Uh, I'm, you know, "I'm practicing, but I'm not feeling anything yet." And, and then it comes time to do our healings on other people, and the moment you, it's no longer about you, and all of a sudden something happens. [laughs] Well, of course, that's what the heart is about, right? So, so it comes in ways that, uh, we, we least expect at times.

Jay Shetty 5:13 Yeah. I love that you've incorporated that element of people having that experience. And, and often most people can't open their heart to others because they haven't even opened their heart to themselves.

Joe Dispenza 5:21 Yeah, of course.

Jay Shetty 5:21 Right? Like they, they haven't been through that process of-

Joe Dispenza 5:24 Yeah. Sitting long enough-

Jay Shetty 5:26 Yeah

Joe Dispenza 5:26 ... to let the heart... I mean, I always say to people, "Let, uh, uh, wh- when was the last time you sat with your heart and just worked with it?"

Jay Shetty 5:33 Mm. Mm.

Joe Dispenza 5:33 Like, so that it's not contracted and afraid and protected.

Jay Shetty 5:37 Mm-hmm.

Joe Dispenza 5:37 It takes practice to, to do that. And, and so we, we, we work with people in letting them h- uh, we give them numerous opportunities-

Jay Shetty 5:47 Mm

Joe Dispenza 5:47 ... to practice this over and over and over again. And sooner or later, petal by petal, it starts to bloom, and all of a sudden there's an authentic smile on their face. And once energy meet, meets the heart, it goes right to the brain. We have- We did this study where we hooked up an electrocardiogram to an electroencephalogram, and an electroencephalogram is a brain mapping machine. So we measure 19 or 26 different compartments, and we're looking to see all different kind of activity in the brain. But we measured the heart along with it, and when the heart starts beating coherently in, in a sense of order, like a, like taking a big sheet, Jay, and going like that. The heart sends a wave right up to the brain, and the brain goes into these beautiful states of alpha. The heart is telling the brain it's safe to create again. It's safe to imagine. It's safe to dream of a new future. And there's the stroke volume of the heart in order, and then you see these two or three seconds of beautiful coherent alpha. The brain is in, it's, it's in that creative state. Then there's a pause, and it happens again, and y- it's, it's, it's beauty. It's a, it's a symphony. If you don't have that mechanism, you can have all the intention in the world, but there's no carrier wave. I mean, and people, when they make energy, uh, reach their heart, there's an external field that's created. It's, it's, it's magnetic. It's, it's, it's measurable. Mm-hmm. And that energy is frequency, and if that frequency is coherent, it can carry the intent or thought on a coherent brain of that future. The energy of suffering cannot carry the thought of health or wealth. [laughs] It's not consistent with it. It carries a different set of thoughts.

Joe Dispenza 7:33 So then the training then is getting people into those heart states because once they start trading that fear or that pain or that frustration or trying or whatever, forcing, you know, control for gratitude, and they just let all that go. And I say to them, "Listen, if you can't feel gratitude or if you can't feel love, I just want to know what you've been practicing feeling every day." Mm-hmm. "Because that feeling that you're practicing is what you're always feeling. Now let's practice feeling something else." In the beginning- Mm-hmm ... it's not gonna be easy, but you gotta keep following the formula, keep doing it, keep doing it, keep doing it. Well, when they start feeling gratitude, it's very interesting because the emotional signature of gratitude is that something wonderful just happened to you. Something favorable is happening to you, right? So you've just received something or you're receiving something, and you say thank you. So gratitude is the ultimate state of receiving emotionally. Mm-hmm. So when you move into a state of gratitude and you open your heart, you will accept, believe, and surrender to the thoughts equal to that emotional state, and you'll program your autonomic nervous system into a different destiny. You could say, "I'm healthy, I'm healthy, I'm healthy, I'm wealthy, I'm wealthy, I'm wealthy, I'm wealthy, I'm free, I'm free, I'm free," and your body is conditioned into misery, and it's saying, "No, you're not." No, you're not. And that thought stops right at the brain stem. Mm-hmm. It never makes it to the body because the body [laughs] is on a different program. So then well, and the person starts trading that, and they start opening their heart. Well, their immune system gets stronger by 50%. 50% in three days they start making immunoglobulins, their body's natural defense against viruses and bacterias. 50%, not a little bit, a lot. That's, that's one study. And so trading that, telling the body it's in the, in the environment where it already happened. Mm-hmm. And so that's when the miracles start happening. That's when people say, "I'm not doing anything." Well, of course you're not. Yeah. [laughs] You don't have to. Yeah.

Joe Dispenza 9:35 So then last point about this, because it's so important that people understand that most people are creating matter to matter. So the more you live by the hormones of stress, the more altered you are inside of you. The rush of those adre- adrenal chemicals n- narrows your focus. The senses are heightened, and we become materialists, and now all of our attention is on our bodies, on our environment, and on time, and now we're lost in the VR machine of three-dimensional reality. Everything appears as separate. So I'm here, and you're there, and there's space and time between us. And then there's me here, and there's my dreams. I place them way out there in the future. Why do I place them out there? Because I'm estimating how much I have to work to get that house, to get that car, how much I have to save, how much overtime I have to work, what things do I have to do. How do I have to cheat, rob, steal, lie? Whatever I have to do to get it, right? That's matter trying to change matter. And so when it doesn't happen, we feel more separation. We try harder. We force. We pray. We control, all that stuff. So then creating from the field instead of from matter means that you have to take all of your attention off your body. Mm. All of your attention off all the people in your life. All of your attention off all the objects and things, all the places, and even time itself. Mm-hmm. And become nobody, no one, no thing, nowhere, and no time. And if you're not any of those things, what are you? Mm-hmm. You're consciousness. Mm. And now you are liberated from the rules of three-dimensional reality where everything takes time and energy to get what you want. Now, when we create from the field instead of from matter, because it's not matter that's emitting the field. It's actually the field that's creating matter. Mm-hmm. Change the field, you change matter, right? Now, this is not something you just take one bite of and you get. Yeah. It's something you gotta really practice. So then by doing this properly with a coherent brain and a coherent heart, you got a Wi-Fi signal, and if you're creating from the field instead of from matter, you no longer have to go anywhere to get what you want. If you were connected to that invisible field of energy called the unified field, the quantum field, which connects everything physical and material, and you're aware of it and you're connected to it, you're connected to source. Why would you... If you were source, why would you go get anything? You draw it to you. So the thought, coherent brain, is the intent. It's the electrical charge. The elevator, the motion, the heart, has a magnetic signature. It's the magnetic charge. The thought sending the signal out, it's a directive. The feeling's drawing the event back. Create that combination, and now you're gonna collapse space and time, and you're gonna draw those synchronicities to you. Now, I'm here in this lifetime. I'm clear that I wanna master that. Mm. I wanna get good at that- [laughs] ... 'cause I don't wanna... I did the other stuff. Yeah. You can get successful the other way, but you're too tired. Yeah. It takes too much energy. I would rather synchronize my energy to synchronicities in my life and be mystified- Yeah ... by wow, this stuff really works. And every synchronicity that happens that catches you off guard and brings you joy and awe and wonder, you're gonna use that energy to create the next one, and it gets weird. I mean, I've had some crazy synchronicities in the last three days. I'm laughing while I'm driving, going, "Oh my God, this life is so incredibly mysterious. What a amazing ride this is." Mm. That's a different perspective when it's, when you're not synchronizing. Well, you ask the person, "Was it worth it? You showed up every day. Was it worth it?" Absolutely. Mm. So when it starts happening, and you start seeing those, you see feedback in your world, you're gonna pay attention to what you did- [laughs] ... and you're gonna do it again, and you're gonna be like, "Okay, I've done this, I've done this, and I've this."

Joe Dispenza 13:14 People who heal themselves have very little difficulty healing someone else. Yeah. It's just the next step. Mm-hmm. And then with COVID and we couldn't do the healings in our events, we had students just get together and say, "If we're in the quantum, okay, and everything's connected, do I really need to be there? I just need a target. Give me the face. Give me the coordinate." [laughs] Love transcends space and time. Yeah. Okay? Give me that coordinate. I'll love that person into life. Mm. And these people do it, and, uh, we have, we have reputable universities now that are studying this phenomena. That's amazing. And they're saying, they're telling me these are universities that have some of the most advanced laboratories. This is... I'm talking the Nobel Prize researchers. They wanna change the conversation in medicine. And then today I got a video of somebody being healed remotely, and she's laying there. Her cancer went from really bad to nothing, and she videotapes herself when the group works on her. She is laying there, and her body is moving all over that floor. It's twisting and turn- there's energy manipulating that body. She- they're changing the pattern in the field. They don't need... The, the body is the illusion. The tumor's the illusion. That's the hologram. Change the pattern in the field, you change the projection in three-dimensional reality. Our person who's healed themselves and been in a circle where they've healed someone else- Wow ... well, how... And then when you do that, what's next? Yeah. I don't know. You won't know until you have that experience. Yeah. And I've sat in on the groups where they get together on the Zooms, and five people that they've healed tell their story. You know, a mother whose daughter's unresponsive with a, with a, with an injury or a handicap from birth, who's now looking at her brothers, who's trying to talk, who's smiling- Yeah ... who's present. The mother's telling the story. There's 40 people on the Zoom. We're all crying. N- not crying for any other reason, but the species is helping. The living organism called the human being is healing one another. They're informing one another, taking care of one. Something innate is w- awakening us. We're, we're s- we're crying. The experience of that produces an emotion that's different than any other emotion you could ever feel. That's a new experience. Do you think that that person who goes to heal the next person is going to have a problem opening their heart after that? They know what the payoff is. Mm. And so they don't contract, oh my God, that person has a, in a coma. You know, how many people have come out of comas because of this healing group? They, they, they're spot on. They can hit a target, and they lay their energy over that field, and another one over it, and another one over, and all of a sudden you get these complex coherent patterns, and it's creating a change in matter. And, and they, they figured it out. And we have universities that are, we're collecting all the data, and they're crunching all the algorithms. We know that it works really well for anxiety. It works really well for insomnia, for neurological disorders, Parkinson's disease, inflammation. We're, we're capturing that pain. Huge changes in pain. And they're, they're on the other side of the planet. It's kind of... And we're synchronizing. We're measuring heart rate variability, and we're sending electrodes and sensors to the people that are being healed, and we're seeing if there's a correlation between the coherence of the group that's doing and the, and the coherence of the person who's having the experience. And we're measuring DNA before the healing and three days of healing. We measure the DNA after. Why? Because evidence is the loudest voice. We, we, you see that, it's the four-minute mile. That you can't go back- Mm ... to being the same person. I scratch my head sometimes when I'm standing on the stage, and there's someone speaking to the audience who has had a very serious health condition, and they don't look like a vegan, and they don't look gluten-free, and they don't look young, and they don't look buffed, and they don't look like they're in shape. They just look like a normal person that- Mm-hmm ... has struggled- Mm-hmm ... with a health condition, and they're telling the truth. Mm-hmm. They, the, you are witnessing the truth. Mm-hmm. You- they are the example of truth. In other words, they have the scans. They have the blood test. It's gone. Mm. And I'm looking out in the audience, Jay, and everybody is leaning in. Nobody is moving. They are l- they are in awe of the four-minute mile right in front of them. Mm. Somebody broke through. Somebody pierced that veil. Somebody broke out of that level of consciousness. Mm-hmm. And that story is filled with truth. Not, not my words. Yeah. It's their words. They just showed up every day for themselves. They just kept showing up and believing in it, and they became it, right? Mm. You ask that person, "Where's the disease?" They'll tell you, "It's in the old person. I'm somebody..." It's, there's, "I'm not the same." It doesn't, can't be there. [laughs] The person in the audience who's relating to that person with the same rare genetic disorder, the same lupus, the same cancer- Don't you know that their belief is gonna change right in front of them? And instead of taking two years to do it, they do it in three months.

Jay Shetty 18:23 Hmm.

Joe Dispenza 18:23 Why? Because soon as the four-minute mile was broken-

Jay Shetty 18:26 Yeah

Joe Dispenza 18:26 ... the next one that broke it was two weeks later, and there's been-

Jay Shetty 18:28 Yeah

Joe Dispenza 18:28 ... 1,400 people have done it. I mean, it's not a thing anymore, right?

Jay Shetty 18:32 Mm-hmm.

Joe Dispenza 18:32 So to me, that's ... We have such compelling evidence in science with brain scans. You can make your brain work better. You can make your heart work better. You can make your immune system work better. You can make your cells go from really sick to really healthy. We've got great evidence. You can become immune to serious viruses. You can become immune to bacteria. We've got the measurements. You can lengthen your life. We have great evidence, and the people aren't monks. They're not, they're not nuns. They're not religious scholars. They're just common people. And then we have testimony of people who are the example of truth. They are, they are the example of truth. I would rather have dinner with those people than anybody, anybody else. They're, they, they know something, right?

Jay Shetty 19:14 Mm-hmm.

Joe Dispenza 19:14 So evidence then becomes the loudest voice, right? And, and that's what I think what people are looking for right now. The truth is so lost in sensationalism, and the truth is so lost in emotional agreement.

Jay Shetty 19:27 Mm-hmm.

Joe Dispenza 19:27 And so people who wanna feel fear, they program themselves and accept, believe, and surrender that. People who wanna be hate- ha- be hateful, it's all there. It's all there, and it's a, it's a matrix to find the way out, right? And, and, and I think, I think there's a door. I just, I just think that we have to trust the innate information that, that comes from within us.

Jay Shetty 19:49 Absolutely f- fascinating, and I can't wait to actually experience an event in, in reality with you.

Joe Dispenza 19:54 I'm gonna invite you one more time, and then I'm gonna-

Jay Shetty 19:55 Yeah, yeah

Joe Dispenza 19:56 ... send somebody over here in a car to pick you up and take you there.

Jay Shetty 19:57 Well, well, I think last time we wanted to do it, and then the pandemic hit-

Joe Dispenza 20:00 [laughs]

Jay Shetty 20:00 ... so, you know, from, from last time. But, uh, no, I would, I would love to. I can't wait to experience that and to experience it personally, not just to watch others, but to actually go through it myself, too. But with all of that said, and y- seeing these breakthroughs, seeing these breakthrough in patterns, you having transcendental experiences, what do you believe in this present state of ignorance, as you said,

Jay Shetty 20:22 what do you believe is the purpose of life overall?

Joe Dispenza 20:25 To figure out the purpose of life.

Jay Shetty 20:27 Okay.

Joe Dispenza 20:27 No, I mean, I mean, I, I really think it's ... I think the mathematics, uh, that I've looked at says there's infinite experiences to have. You will never know the end.

Jay Shetty 20:39 Mm-hmm.

Joe Dispenza 20:39 So then if y- you study any religion, I d- I mean, I've looked at a lot of them.

Jay Shetty 20:44 Mm-hmm.

Joe Dispenza 20:45 This concept of eternity-

Jay Shetty 20:46 Mm-hmm

Joe Dispenza 20:47 ... that the soul is gonna be around for eternity.

Jay Shetty 20:49 Mm-hmm.

Joe Dispenza 20:50 That's a long time.

Jay Shetty 20:51 Mm-hmm.

Joe Dispenza 20:52 And that means you gotta be okay with you [laughs]

Jay Shetty 20:55 [laughs]

Joe Dispenza 20:55 ... for a very long time.

Jay Shetty 20:57 Yeah.

Joe Dispenza 20:57 So I think it's, I think it's the creation of more experiences, and I think to, to f- I think we came from source, from singularity, from oneness. Uh, and we have descended down into density, uh, fooled by our senses into separation.

Jay Shetty 21:16 Mm-hmm.

Joe Dispenza 21:16 And every single being has a spark of oneness of the divine within them, and we got so separate that we now have our own free will to answer the question, is there more?

Jay Shetty 21:28 Mm-hmm.

Joe Dispenza 21:28 'Cause if you're oneness, it gets kind of boring after a while. Like, is there anything else? Well, the moment you ask if there's anything else, you're no longer oneness. You're something other than oneness, right?

Jay Shetty 21:36 Mm-hmm.

Joe Dispenza 21:36 And you're a, a, a, a, a different consciousness, separate from oneness. So I think then we live life, and then when we can predict the feeling of everything that can happen in our life, and it gets boring, and we're not impressed by anyone or anything, we ask the same question. Is there more? And that's when the soul goes, "All right. Well, it's been how many lifetimes you've been doing this? Okay." There's an awakening, and the, and we ask that question, and then all of a sudden we start getting information and books and stuff and meet people, and it gets exciting. And, and it's the ... It's, it's wh- how the universe works. And so we climb out of this, and I just think there's so many incredible experiences that are left in the unknown, uh, that we get to have. And, and then of course, when, when the journey's over and you evolve to that point, uh, then you take that wisdom and you, and you say, "Here's what I learned, and it was scary down there."

Jay Shetty 22:31 [laughs]

Joe Dispenza 22:31 And it was like, "Boy, I tell a great story." And then you hang out there and you go, "Is there anything else besides all-" And then here we go again. It just never ends. [laughs] I don't know. That's my theory.

Jay Shetty 22:41 That's a great answer.

Joe Dispenza 22:42 [laughs]

Jay Shetty 22:42 I loved it. I, I resonate deeply with many parts of that answer. I think it's a, it's a really beautifully put way of thinking about it and bringing in that, like I said at the beginning, bringing in that spiritual, that science, and the experience of, of what it would actually look like to live for eternity. So it's a beautiful, beautiful answer. Dr. Joe, we end every episode with the final five. These are the fast five questions where the answers have to be one word to one sentence maximum.

Joe Dispenza 23:10 Okay.

Jay Shetty 23:10 So this is, uh-

Joe Dispenza 23:12 I don't remember this from last time, so this is good. [laughs]

Jay Shetty 23:14 Yeah, and I'll probably break my rule with you because you give phenomenal answers.

Joe Dispenza 23:18 No, I'll give, I'll, I'll do my best.

Jay Shetty 23:19 So I'll try my best as well.

Joe Dispenza 23:20 [laughs] Me too.

Jay Shetty 23:21 Uh, I'll try my best as well. Okay, so J- Dr. Joe, these are your final five. Uh, the first question is what is the best advice you've ever received?

Joe Dispenza 23:30 Uh, to show up for yourself.

Jay Shetty 23:31 Hmm. What's the worst advice you've ever received?

Joe Dispenza 23:35 Uh, believe what people tell you.

Jay Shetty 23:38 What's something that you've said in the past that you were confident about it then, but now upon reflection, you're like, "Oh, actually I'd have changed my mind about that"?

Joe Dispenza 23:46 Oh, that it takes a long time to create reality.

Jay Shetty 23:49 Okay, I'm gonna ask you to expand on that 'cause I like that answer. I, I wanna know more. That's fascinating.

Joe Dispenza 23:54 Well, um, I think just like anything else, uh, you learn how to snowboard.

Jay Shetty 23:58 Mm-hmm.

Joe Dispenza 23:58 You go through that learning curve. You learn how to ride a bike. You go through that learning curve. Uh, that, that, I used to think that creation was hard.

Jay Shetty 24:06 Hmm.

Joe Dispenza 24:07 I just thought it took a lot of energy, and it took a lot of sacrifice.

Jay Shetty 24:10 Hmm.

Joe Dispenza 24:11 And you had to work for it. And-

Jay Shetty 24:12 Great answer

Joe Dispenza 24:13 ... and, uh, God, I mean, even my definition of surrender-

Jay Shetty 24:16 Hmm

Joe Dispenza 24:17 ... today is very different than it was just three months ago because I'm always doing it.

Jay Shetty 24:21 Hmm.

Joe Dispenza 24:22 And so- I think that it doesn't have to be that way.

Jay Shetty 24:27 Yeah.

Joe Dispenza 24:27 I just think that it could be any way you want, and that-

Jay Shetty 24:29 Love that

Joe Dispenza 24:30 ... and I'm working on that, the changing that belief.

Jay Shetty 24:32 Love that. Beautiful answer, thank you for sharing that.

Joe Dispenza 24:35 Yeah.

Jay Shetty 24:35 Uh, question number four, uh, what's one thing that you think people value but you don't?

Joe Dispenza 24:41 Oh, other people's opinions.

Jay Shetty 24:43 [laughs]

Joe Dispenza 24:43 If I really cared what people thought, I would've stopped this a long time ago.

Jay Shetty 24:48 Yeah.

Joe Dispenza 24:48 Now it's so great because I have so many-

Jay Shetty 24:51 They care and-

Joe Dispenza 24:51 ... researchers and physicians-

Jay Shetty 24:52 Yeah

Joe Dispenza 24:52 ... and everybody, and they're just-

Jay Shetty 24:53 I'm very glad you didn't stop.

Joe Dispenza 24:54 Thank you.

Jay Shetty 24:55 And, and we are very happy you didn't stop. I think it's deeply meaningful work, and the more time we spend together and the more time I hear where you want to take people and where you want p- what you want people to experience is just beautiful. So-

Joe Dispenza 25:07 Thanks

Jay Shetty 25:08 ... so thank you for what you're doing.

Joe Dispenza 25:09 Thanks.

Jay Shetty 25:09 Uh, fifth and final question, if you could create one law that everyone in the world had to follow, what would it be?

Joe Dispenza 25:17 Take care of one another.

Jay Shetty 25:19 Nice and simple.

Joe Dispenza 25:20 Yeah.

Jay Shetty 25:20 It's beautiful.

Jay Shetty 25:21 Why do you think anonymity is so important for all of us in our life to experience? Why is it such a fascinating experience?

Speaker 25:28 Because, uh, when you, uh, uh, go past your ego identity-

Jay Shetty 25:34 Mm

Speaker 25:35 ... there's a bigger identity that is, uh, so huge it's incomprehensible. It can't even be described, and there's a freedom and a joy that comes from that. And, uh, I had had glimpses of that-

Jay Shetty 25:51 Mm

Speaker 25:51 ... but this period of intense stillness... And by the way, since then I've kept a week of silence, uh, every year. Sometimes-

Jay Shetty 26:00 Wow

Speaker 26:00 ... I do more. And, uh, that week of silence, usually in September I do every year-

Jay Shetty 26:06 Yeah

Speaker 26:06 ... just to go back to the taste of timeless being-

Jay Shetty 26:10 Yeah

Speaker 26:11 ... instead of, you know, our ego identity, which we keep polishing every day now, especially these days with social media and books and promotions and you name it.

Jay Shetty 26:21 Mm. What's something that people can do daily to access that experience? Because like you said, our days are just busy with work and family and commitments and events. What's something people can do daily that helps them access their true identity, their self, going beyond the ego and the mind and the body?

Speaker 26:39 I think the basic of it is to still the mind as much as possible and just become a silent witness, um, to that which is happening on the screen of your consciousness.

Jay Shetty 26:55 Mm-hmm.

Speaker 26:56 So if you, um, close your eyes and take a few deep breaths, and then, um, you know, I usually start with a little reflection. Who am I? Who wants to know the answer? What is it that wants to know the answers to the question, "Who am I?" Uh, what is my purpose? Uh, what do I want for me and the world? What am I grateful for? That's how I start.

Jay Shetty 27:23 Mm.

Speaker 27:23 Then I go into a little bit of breathing and then mantra meditation, and then what I do is I witness, uh, what's happening on the screen of my consciousness, just, uh, becoming aware. And sooner or later you realize that what's happening on the screen of consciousness is not who you are.

Jay Shetty 27:42 Mm-hmm.

Speaker 27:42 You're the one who's watching that. And then what's happening on the screen of your consciousness ultimately leads to deep insights about mind and body and the physical world, which actually doesn't really exist. But we can get into that when we talk about meta human. But I think if people just ask these four questions every day-

Jay Shetty 28:03 Mm-hmm

Speaker 28:03 ... before they start their day, even without a prolonged meditation, uh, process, "Who am I? What do I want? What's my purpose? What am I grateful for?" Suddenly the windows to the bigger reality starts, start to open.

Jay Shetty 28:17 Absolutely. This is such a beautiful point that Deepak's making right now for everyone listening and watching, is just such a simple way of starting to transcend the noise and the clutter that we feel every morning when we wake up and the first thing we do is look at our phones. All you have to do is just switch that habit for asking yourself these questions, and all-

Speaker 28:35 And you don't need to know the answers because, you know, there are no fixed answers. These answers keep changing. All you have to do is live the questions, and then life keeps moving you into answers that you need at that moment in your life.

Jay Shetty 28:49 Absolutely.

Speaker 28:49 And it all happens spontaneously, synchronistically speaking.

Jay Shetty 28:52 Such a great point, because these answers are revealed-

Speaker 28:54 Yeah

Jay Shetty 28:54 ... and received.

Speaker 28:55 Yes.

Jay Shetty 28:55 They're not, they're not found, you know?

Speaker 28:56 And they're pertinent for that moment in your life-

Jay Shetty 28:59 Yes

Speaker 28:59 ... not necessarily the answers.

Jay Shetty 29:02 I love that. I think that's such a good point, because so often we put this pressure when we ask a question that we must find the answer now. It's like the education system has-

Speaker 29:10 Yeah

Jay Shetty 29:10 ... drilled us into believing that you have the right or wrong answer within moments.

Speaker 29:13 You know, what was that, uh, poet who said, uh, "Live the questions and life will move you to the answers"-

Jay Shetty 29:19 Yeah

Speaker 29:20 ... "when you need them. Because if you got them right now, you may not be even prepared for them"

Jay Shetty 29:25 Wow. Yeah, that's a good point. I know life has done that to me a lot of times.

Speaker 29:29 That's it, yeah.

Jay Shetty 29:29 Yeah, when you ask questions and you think you want the answer now-

Speaker 29:33 Mm-hmm

Jay Shetty 29:33 ... but then when you actually receive it, you realize, yes, I wasn't prepared.

Speaker 29:36 That's right.

Jay Shetty 29:37 Absolutely. Wow, what a profound, what a profound way of thinking about it. I love that. That's, that's made a huge shift in my mind.

Speaker 29:42 Thank you.

Jay Shetty 29:43 Not even to want to answer the questions now.

Speaker 29:45 No.

Jay Shetty 29:45 Just ask them and let your day reveal it to you.

Speaker 29:47 And let them go.

Jay Shetty 29:48 Yeah, let them go.

Speaker 29:48 They come in the form of insight, intuition-

Jay Shetty 29:51 Oh, that's awesome

Speaker 29:51 ... inspiration, creative, um, uh, creativity, but most importantly, they come in the form of, uh, meaningful coincidences-

Jay Shetty 30:02 Yeah

Speaker 30:02 ... or what Carl Jung called synchronicity or what religious people say grace.

Jay Shetty 30:07 Yes.

Speaker 30:07 That's it.

Jay Shetty 30:08 Yeah, yeah, meaningful coincidences.

Speaker 30:09 That's it.

Jay Shetty 30:10 Absolutely. Yeah, how beautifully said. I love that. So this is what I love about your journey, Deepak, is just that at every point it seems that you've been a seeker for more. Like, you've continually gone in the direction of more learning, more growth-

Speaker 30:26 Mm

Jay Shetty 30:26 ... never settling. How have you seen-

Jay Shetty 30:29 The medical industry shift, how have you seen other things around you shift with time? Because you've really gone all the way. Do you think that we are seeing shifts in the medical world?

Speaker 30:38 Yeah, we are seeing shifts. When I started, I felt like a loner.

Jay Shetty 30:42 Yeah, I can imagine.

Speaker 30:43 Um, but now integrated medicine is part of every institution-

Jay Shetty 30:47 Amazing

Speaker 30:47 ... even including academia. And, uh, in the last 15, 20 years, our foundation has done a lot of research, so, uh, we made it pretty mainstream right now. So to summarize very shortly what has taken 30 years to learn, or more, 40 years to learn, is that only 5% of disease related gene mutations are fully penetrant. So let me explain this-

Jay Shetty 31:17 Yeah, please

Speaker 31:17 ... for those, uh, yeah, for a lay audience. So a genetic, [clears throat] a genetic mutation is a, is a mistake. It's an error in the gene. Genes are stretches of DNA that code for proteins. So DNA is, um, stands for deoxyribonucleic acid, and there are four of these, uh, named after alphabets, adenine, guanine, cytosine, thymine, ATCG. So ATCG are the four letters of life. In English, we have 26 letters. In most languages, human languages, we have more than 20 letters. But the language of life, DNA, has only four letters, ATCG, and these spell out words that we call genes, and the body is a story spelled out by those genes. So when people say, "First there was the word, word was made into flesh," in a way, it's very literal actually when you start to look at the biological mechanism. Now, once in a while, or more than once in a while, there are genetic mistakes. So you might think of them, again, we're speaking metaphorically, um, but a spelling mistake. So instead of the word being spelled correctly, maybe one of the letters, ATCG, is missing, or it's in the wrong place, or it's upside down, or you have redundant two letters instead of one. That mistake, genetic variation, is called a mutation. Now, only 5% of these genetic mutations that are associated with disease, cancer, heart disease, um, arthritis, strokes, um, you name it, autoimmune diseases, Alzheimer's, only 5% actually guarantee the disease, which means if you have one of those mutations, you're going to get the disease. Like Angelina Jolie had a gene called the BRCA gene, which predicts breast cancer 100%, so she had a mastectomy to prevent the cancer, rightly so. For those 5%, there are new technologies that are being developed right now, and CRISPR is one of them, which means you can cut and paste a gene the way you would an email. So you would take the defective gene, you'd read the barcode with a molecular scissors, you delete it, and then you'll insert the right gene. It's not happening right now, but it'll happen in the near future. But what people don't understand is that's 5% of illness.

Jay Shetty 33:55 Wow.

Speaker 33:55 The rest, even the genetic mistakes that are associated with disease, depends on how you live your life.

Jay Shetty 34:02 Wow.

Speaker 34:02 And very simple things like sleep, meditation and stress management, movement, yoga and pranayama. Now, yoga and pranayama goes way beyond exercise because with yoga and pranayama, there's a particular nerve in the body called the vagus nerve. It's the 10th nerve. And the word vagus is a Latin word, but it's re- related to the English word vagabond. So this nerve comes from the midbrain. It influences your facial expressions, so you can now do micro expressions and see if a person is happy or not. It influences the, um, eye movements. It influences the tone of your voice. Are you threatened? Are you stressed? Are you friendly? Are you happy? It influences your heart rate activity. Then it pierces the diaphragm, and it influences the activity of every other branch of the vagus nerve that goes to all the organs in the body. So when I discovered this through yoga teachers and masters, I realized that the yoga asanas, you know we say yoga asana, and people usually translate that into as postures.

Jay Shetty 35:13 Mm-hmm.

Speaker 35:14 But actually, the word asana means seat, as you know, seat of awareness, seat of consciousness. So each yoga asana is a particular seat of co- consciousness that stimulates a particular nerve that is going to-

Jay Shetty 35:28 Wow

Speaker 35:29 ... a organ in your body, and the only reason for that nerve is self-regulation or healing or homeostasis. So when I discovered that, I became fanatic about yoga.

Jay Shetty 35:39 [laughs]

Speaker 35:40 I haven't mi- missed yoga now for as long as I can remember.

Jay Shetty 35:44 That's amazing.

Speaker 35:45 Not one day.

Jay Shetty 35:46 Wow.

Speaker 35:46 Okay? Not one day of yoga or meditation or, um, or pranayama.

Jay Shetty 35:52 Yeah.

Speaker 35:52 So it was a long time. So when you put together y- you know, yoga, movement, sleep, stress management, healthy relationships and emotions like love, compassion, joy, equanimity, uh, food that doesn't kill your microbiome, which is the 2 million extra genes in our body which are not human. So you only have 25,000 human genes, but you have 2 million bacterial genes in your body. This is called the microbial microbiome. It is much, it's as important as the human genome. So you can change the activity of your microbial genes just by changing your diet. So if you go, um, not even vegan, but if you go maximum diversity on plant-based foods- And foods that are not contaminated with antibiotics or hormones or, uh, insecticides, um, you can change your genetic activity-

Jay Shetty 36:48 Wow

Speaker 36:49 ... and the population of your genes in less than six weeks, and which means then you're reinventing your body because your body is spelt out by your genes.

Jay Shetty 36:57 Mm.

Speaker 36:57 So this got me going strongly into how do we-

Jay Shetty 37:01 Wow

Speaker 37:01 ... reinvent our bodies by resurrecting our souls and going past our minds, and that's what I'm obsessed with now.

Jay Shetty 37:10 Wow, I love that. I'm so glad you're obsessed with it because the fact that we are so responsible for our own wellbeing is huge in the sense of belief that there are ways in which we can rewrite that story or rewire-

Speaker 37:23 You can rewrite the genetic structure of your body. You can't change the human genes-

Jay Shetty 37:29 Sure

Speaker 37:29 ... by the way, because you got them from your parents, but you can change their activity. So-

Jay Shetty 37:33 Right

Speaker 37:34 ... here's one of our researchers, um, we put one, uh, we put people through a one-week retreat where they not only learnt mantra meditation, but they also practiced the Yoga Sutras of Patanjali from the chapter-

Jay Shetty 37:48 Yes, yes

Speaker 37:48 ... on the siddhis, particularly transcending the senses. In one week, literally, and this is published now in major peer-reviewed jour- journals. If people wanna check them out, go to choprafoundation.org, and you'll see all the research. And the research was in collaboration with scientists from Harvard, from UCSF, from Duke, from Scripps, of course, Chopra Foundation, Mount Sinai in New York. And what did we find? We found that in one week of this practice of meditation and the Yoga Sutras of Patanjali, all the genes that are responsible for healing and self-regulation, they went up some 17-fold over baseline. These are human genes, and the genes that cause disease or inflammation went down drastically. The enzyme, there's an enzyme in our body called telomerase. It influences the length of telomeres, which are like little buttons at the end of your chromosomes. The, the level of the enzyme went up 40% in one week, which means people are reversing their biological age at a genetic level.

Jay Shetty 38:56 Wow.

Speaker 38:56 Okay, now, how far does this go? We don't know because-

Jay Shetty 38:59 And that was just one week

Speaker 39:00 ... it's just one week, and, you know, the people who are in samadhi for weeks at a time, those traditions are not that prevalent. You know, there's a technique in Ayurveda called Kaya Kalpa-

Jay Shetty 39:12 Mm

Speaker 39:12 ... where you go into a retreat where it is totally dark, where you have no communication with the world, where you transcend, where you eat minimal, um, maximum diversity of plant-based foods, and within six months, you come back a younger person biologically, physiologically. You know, I'm 72 now.

Jay Shetty 39:37 I know. You're looking great.

Speaker 39:38 Um, I'm, I-

Jay Shetty 39:39 Yeah

Speaker 39:39 ... you know, I'm not, uh, focused on aging anymore-

Jay Shetty 39:42 Yeah, I've, I've-

Speaker 39:43 ... because I think that's a mistake

Jay Shetty 39:44 For anyone who s- uh, follows Deepak on social media, Instagram or Facebook, if you don't already, I highly recommend it, but I've never seen you miss a day of yoga or meditation.

Speaker 39:53 I don't. I don't.

Jay Shetty 39:54 I see you every time, and you inspire me so much because I just think, like, if you're able, at your current body's age, to be able to do the things you are with your body and how healthy you are and how healthy your body and mind are, I mean, we have no excuses. Like-

Speaker 40:07 There's biological age, which is the exact biomarkers.

Jay Shetty 40:11 Mm.

Speaker 40:11 So what's blood pressure, bone density, body temperature regulation, fat content, cholesterol, vision, hearing, skin thickness, wrinkles, hormones? That's biological age.

Jay Shetty 40:24 Mm.

Speaker 40:24 Then there's chronological age, when you were born, what your birth certificate says.

Jay Shetty 40:29 Yes, yes.

Speaker 40:30 Then there's psychological age. How do you feel?

Jay Shetty 40:32 Yes.

Speaker 40:32 And then there's spiritual age, which is timeless-

Jay Shetty 40:34 Yes

Speaker 40:35 ... which has no age whatsoever.

Jay Shetty 40:36 Absolutely.

Speaker 40:37 So, you know, we have to make these distinctions and see which of these we're talking about.

Jay Shetty 40:42 100%, 100%. When you said at the end there that you're not thinking about aging anymore, what did you mean by that when you said that?

Speaker 40:49 It's now, um, something I talk about, uh, in my new book-

Jay Shetty 40:55 Yeah

Speaker 40:55 ... Metahuman, that, uh, what we call body, mind, and world and aging and birth and death are actually human constructs. They're not real. Now, uh, we can go into that to the extent that you want.

Jay Shetty 41:14 Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Speaker 41:15 I can try and explain-

Jay Shetty 41:15 Should we dive into the book for a bit?

Speaker 41:16 We can.

Jay Shetty 41:17 Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 41:17 If you want.

Jay Shetty 41:17 Let's do that if that's what you wanna do. Let's... Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Speaker 41:19 If you want, yeah.

Jay Shetty 41:20 Yeah, no, no, I'd love to. I've, I've got so many questions on the book that, that we'd put together for you, so I'm happy to do that. So in one of the things, this is what I was looking at, the... You start the book by prompting two questions, right? In moments where you feel very happy, do you watch yourself being happy? And when you're angry, is someone, is some part of you free of anger, right? Why did you start with these two questions?

Speaker 41:42 So in all the spiritual traditions, um, not necessarily just the Eastern traditions, they speak of two worlds, the immanent and the transcendent. So the immanent is this world that we're in right now, this spacetime, causality, New York City, the hotel we're in. And then the transcendent world is the world of infinite being or consciousness. At all times, we're in both these worlds without knowing, but once you become aware, even slightly, that the awareness of a thought is not a thought, right? If you're able to observe a thought, then you, the observer, is not that thought, right?

Jay Shetty 42:32 Mm-hmm, mm-hmm.

Speaker 42:32 Similarly, the observer of the emotion or which is the awareness of an emotion is not the emotion.

Jay Shetty 42:38 Agreed.

Speaker 42:39 Or a perception or a color. You know, right now we are perceiving through our five senses, and what we are perceiving is colors, forms, uh, shapes, sounds, sensations in our body, maybe emotions and thoughts, and maybe images.

Jay Shetty 43:02 Mm.

Speaker 43:02 That's the raw material of experience. That's all there is. Okay? The words body, mind, and world are human constructs based on the interpretation of these raw sensations.

Jay Shetty 43:17 Mm.

Speaker 43:17 So once you start to become a witness of experience, you realize that you are intrinsically free of the experience unless you identify with it.

Jay Shetty 43:29 Mm-hmm.

Speaker 43:29 Unless you say, "That's me."

Jay Shetty 43:31 Yes.

Speaker 43:31 It's not you, it's an experience you're having, right?

Jay Shetty 43:34 Absolutely.

Speaker 43:34 So once you bind yourself to the experience, which we call the karmic web-

Jay Shetty 43:40 Mm

Speaker 43:40 ... of existence, then you are in that circle of karma, memory, desire. Uh, you are constantly seeking validation. You're afraid of people who criticize you. You're flattered by people who flatter you. You feel beneath someone or superior to someone. It's the melodrama of our daily existence.

Jay Shetty 44:05 Yes.

Speaker 44:05 So when you can observe what's happening in the realm of experience, and instead of reacting to it, you observe the reaction to react even for a second. Instead of reacting to the experience, you observe the reaction to react, you suddenly realize that your range of options or choices right this moment is actually infinite.

Jay Shetty 44:31 Mm.

Speaker 44:33 And you don't have to be a bundle-

Jay Shetty 44:34 Wow

Speaker 44:34 ... of conditioned reflexes and nerves that's constantly being triggered by people and circumstances into predictable outcomes. So you become a mu- um, you become... You're at the mercy of every stranger on the street.

Jay Shetty 44:47 Yeah.

Speaker 44:47 So I think it's very important to know that, yes, I'm having this experience, but I'm intrinsically free of this experience. So that's how the book starts.

Jay Shetty 44:56 Yeah, and I absolutely love that because it's an analogy I usually use to share that experience is, like, when we're in a car and someone hits the car, we say, "Oh, someone hit me."

Speaker 45:05 Yes.

Jay Shetty 45:05 But actually, they didn't hit you. They hit the car.

Speaker 45:07 Yeah.

Jay Shetty 45:08 And you're identifying as the car as yourself.

Speaker 45:11 Yes. Now, how about if they hit your body?

Jay Shetty 45:13 Yeah.

Speaker 45:13 You know, and, and your body perishes, right?

Jay Shetty 45:17 Yes.

Speaker 45:17 So that's the argument people have against the argument that, uh, spiritual people have-

Jay Shetty 45:27 Mm

Speaker 45:27 ... which is you're not your body, you're not your mind.

Jay Shetty 45:30 Mm.

Speaker 45:30 So but, you know, you remember that famous, uh, dialogue between Samuel Johnson and, um, and whoever that idealist was, and he said, you know, "The world is a projection of consciousness." And I think it was Samuel Johnson who hit his leg on a piece of stone and said, "I refute you thus"-

Jay Shetty 45:51 Mm

Speaker 45:51 ... saying that, you know, you get hit by a bus-

Jay Shetty 45:54 Mm

Speaker 45:54 ... you're gonna, you're gonna break your bones-

Jay Shetty 45:57 Sure

Speaker 45:58 ... and you might die.

Jay Shetty 45:58 Sure.

Speaker 45:59 So, uh, why do you say that the physical world is an illusion? Now, if you want, we can address that.

Jay Shetty 46:05 Yeah, let's address that, yeah.

Speaker 46:06 Let's address that.

Jay Shetty 46:07 Absolutely. Yeah.

Speaker 46:07 So, you know, this is... Of course, I take people through the book very slowly.

Jay Shetty 46:12 Of course.

Speaker 46:13 But if you asked a regular person on the street, "What is this?"

Jay Shetty 46:18 Mm-hmm.

Speaker 46:19 They'd say, "It's a microphone."

Jay Shetty 46:20 Mm-hmm.

Speaker 46:21 If you ask them, "What's this?" You'd say, "This is a watch."

Jay Shetty 46:25 Mm-hmm.

Speaker 46:25 "What's this?" "This is my hand." "What's this?" "This is my body." Now, if you really start to look at this very carefully, before you call anything by its name, microphone, hand, body, um, watch, before you use that, those words, it's an experience.

Jay Shetty 46:50 Mm-hmm.

Speaker 46:51 And the experience is actually not a physical experience. Color, form, and shape are not physical experiences. If I asked you, "Where in the physical world is the color red located?" You would say, uh, nowhere.

Jay Shetty 47:07 Yeah.

Speaker 47:07 In fact, there's no color red-

Jay Shetty 47:08 Or everywhere

Speaker 47:08 ... in the physical world. What's coming to your eyes are electromagnetic vibrations which have no color.

Jay Shetty 47:13 Mm.

Speaker 47:14 What's happening in your eyes, there's no color. And if I asked you to imagine a beautiful run s- red sunset, you have a picture in your consciousness, but there's no picture in your brain.

Jay Shetty 47:26 Mm.

Speaker 47:26 There's no picture in your eyes. And actually, the sunset is not... If you're imagining it, it's not in the physical world.

Jay Shetty 47:33 Mm.

Speaker 47:34 Now, what you don't realize is when you're looking at a real sunset, all you're experiencing is color.

Jay Shetty 47:40 Mm.

Speaker 47:41 The rest is a story. Okay, that's a sunset. This is a body. Okay, colors, shapes, textures, sensations, smells, images, emotions, and thoughts have no location in the physical world.

Jay Shetty 47:58 Mm.

Speaker 47:58 And yet out of this raw material, we create the idea of a physical world. So in Sanskrit, that's called Jagat Mithya, the world appearance-

Jay Shetty 48:09 Mm

Speaker 48:09 ... on the screen of your consciousness, and your body is part of that world appearance because people, you know, they say, "Where are you?" People say, "I'm here," but there's no one inside there.

Jay Shetty 48:18 Mm.

Speaker 48:18 Okay? Because this is also an experience in consciousness. The mind is an experience in consciousness. Moreover, it's a shifting experience in consciousness. No... You know, a thought is un- ungraspable. It's ephemeral. It's evanescent. You can't catch it.

Jay Shetty 48:34 Transient, yeah.

Speaker 48:34 Okay? You can't catch a perception. I look here, I look there. These are two snapshots of perception, and they're evanescent.

Jay Shetty 48:42 Mm.

Speaker 48:42 I look at my body, and by the time I look at it again, it's a different body because it's recycling so fast-

Jay Shetty 48:47 Mm

Speaker 48:47 ... at the level of atoms and molecules and information and energy. So the fact that we call this a body, it's actually a changing experience of sensations, images, feelings, and thoughts that is a modified form of your own self.

Jay Shetty 49:03 Mm.

Speaker 49:04 And it's changing. It's ungraspable. Same thing with the mind, it's ungraspable. Same thing which we will call with the world, it's a changing experience of shifting what we call qualia in the, in the spiritual literature now, in the consciousness literature, there's this word qualia-

Jay Shetty 49:21 Mm

Speaker 49:21 ... instead of quantum. A quantum is a unit of measurement, but a qualia is a unit of experience. So if I tell you, "Think of your wife right now," and you see an image, that's a qualia.

Jay Shetty 49:32 Mm.

Speaker 49:33 Now feel the emotion connected with that, that's a qualia.

Jay Shetty 49:36 Mm.

Speaker 49:36 Now think of what you want to do with her this evening, go out for dinner or a movie, that's a qualia. So qualia are units of experience. When we string them together, we create the construct of mind, body, and world.

Jay Shetty 49:52 Mm.

Speaker 49:53 And once we create that construct, then we're stuck with constructs like birth and death, and karma, and memory, and desire, and all the things which make a very fascinating human experience, but it's not reality. [laughs]

Jay Shetty 50:06 Mm.

Speaker 50:06 It's, it, we are already in a virtual reality, okay? So today with, uh, VR and immersive augmented experiences and dreamscapes, it is becoming clear that the world that you and I are inhabiting right now is a collective human dreamscape, and as body minds, we are fictional characters in that dreamscape, and it's an illusion that we can upgrade or we can downgrade.

Jay Shetty 50:36 Mm-hmm.

Speaker 50:36 Uh, you know, we can create heaven out of it or hell, but it's still not fundamental reality. And now with the new technologies, this is becoming very clear.

Jay Shetty 50:45 Mm.

Speaker 50:46 Once you realize that the world is a construct, yes, the construct has been evolving through mythology, through religion, through economics, through history, through society, through culture, but it's still a construct.

Jay Shetty 51:02 Mm.

Speaker 51:02 And what these great seers, these great, uh, rishis were able to do is they were able to deconstruct it. Once you deconstruct it, what are you left with? You know, when you l- left, you've heard that expression, Neti, Neti, Neti, I'm not the mind, I'm not the body, I'm not the intellect, I'm, I'm the observer. What are you left with? Once you deconstruct everything, what you're left with is formless, infinite, dynamic field of infinite possibilities, infinite creativity, infinite love, and the source of intention. So that's what yoga originally was and should be.

Jay Shetty 51:48 Mm.

Speaker 51:48 Yoga means union, union with the self, which is also the self of the universe. And this is where, you know, I got totally seduced that human suffering, as the Vedanta says, comes from not knowing true reality, fundamental reality, confusing perceptual reality with fundamental reality, grasping and clinging that which you cannot grasp or cling, the fear of impermanence, the construct of the ego, and the fear of death. These are all the same thing, not knowing what is real and what is a projection. And even the projection can be changed.

Jay Shetty 52:28 Absolutely. Wow. W- what a class in, what a master class in, in, in reality and illusion. How does then one function within the world, but then still understand? Because I think the challenge people have on a day-to-day basis, as you've probably heard for decades, is this, well, if it, if, if what I'm experiencing is not complete reality, then where do I go from there? Like, what do I do?

Speaker 52:51 Well, we all go to the-

Jay Shetty 52:52 Do I get married? Do I fall in love?

Speaker 52:53 Yes.

Jay Shetty 52:53 Do I not? Do I work?

Speaker 52:54 So we go to the movies ev- you know, I used to go to a lot of movies.

Jay Shetty 52:58 Yeah.

Speaker 52:58 I don't that much [laughs] anymore because what we call everyday reality is a more interesting movie-

Jay Shetty 53:04 Sure

Speaker 53:04 ... than most movies-

Jay Shetty 53:06 Yeah

Speaker 53:06 ... don't have the imagination to capture the, what is happening in what we call everyday reality. So we're in it. We might as well enjoy it-

Jay Shetty 53:16 Mm-hmm

Speaker 53:16 ... and upgrade it.

Jay Shetty 53:18 Mm.

Speaker 53:18 And that's what the expression is, to be in the world and not of it.

Jay Shetty 53:22 Of this world, yeah.

Speaker 53:24 Okay? Or we are spiritual beings having a human experience, or non-local beings having a local experience, timeless, but in time. Once you understand that, and once you also get into the habit of self-reflection, self-inquiry, o- observing perceptual experiences without necessarily judging them, so I'm right now having the experience of colors and forms and tastes and smells and sounds, I don't necessarily have to qualify this experience, and transcendence, where, you know, you go to that place where there is no mantra and no thought and just deep stillness, then the shift starts to occur that you're not identifying with your body, mind, or experiences of the world, and yet you're enjoying them-

Jay Shetty 54:15 Mm-hmm

Speaker 54:15 ... or not enjoying them, and now you wanna do something to shift. And since you're in the world, you know, about, um, 25 years ago, I wrote this book, how to make that practical. And I don't know how, but, um, basically I came up with the idea of the seven spiritual laws of success.

Jay Shetty 54:36 Mm-hmm.

Speaker 54:36 The law of pure potentiality, the law of giving and receiving, karma, intention, desire, um, least effort, um, and detachment, and dharma. Those seven principles guided me into a new idea of what success is. Uh, the progressive realization of worthy goals, the ability to love, have compassion, but most importantly, to identify with your creative center instead of the projection that's coming from that center, because most of the time our experience of

Jay Shetty 55:14 ... is coming from identifying with a projection-

Speaker 55:17 Yeah

Jay Shetty 55:17 ... that has been created by the conditioned or ego mind. Now, the ego mind is not gonna disappear, uh, as long as you're in this body, or actually you're not in the body, the body's in you, but whatever. So it's not going to disappear, but if you keep it in the background and you're aware of it-

Speaker 55:34 Mm

Jay Shetty 55:34 ... and you ask yourself, what am I motivated by? And I have these little tricks in my mind, pursue excellence, ignore success, and then everything happens. Synchronicity, meaningful coincidences, the state of grace, effortless being, spontaneous fulfillment of desire. These are little things over the years that I've gleaned as my little catchphrases to remind myself-

Speaker 55:59 Yes, of reality

Jay Shetty 56:01 ... that I must live a life that is based on love.

Speaker 56:05 Mm.

Jay Shetty 56:05 And if it's not based on love at the highest level, you know, as the Vedantas say, love should radiate from you like light from a bonfire.

Speaker 56:15 Yeah.

Jay Shetty 56:15 Not focused on anyone and not denied to anyone. It's just the light of the sun.

Speaker 56:21 I really think that entertainment and education should go hand in hand. Like, it-

Jay Shetty 56:25 Fully.

Speaker 56:26 I, I don't under- I'm like, why do we have, like, billions of billions of dollars going into entertainment, and yet we can't add, like, 20% of that into, like-

Jay Shetty 56:34 Absolutely

Speaker 56:34 ... just put education within the entertainment?

Jay Shetty 56:36 Yes.

Speaker 56:36 'Cause, like, it should be fun. It should be exciting. Like, it's, like I said in the beginning, like, it's what we're here to do, is learn [laughs] and, like, create. Learn, create. Learn, create.

Jay Shetty 56:44 [laughs]

Speaker 56:44 It's just, like, this circle. And so it's, like, I don't know, finding how to re- reignite their passions is, uh, for themselves. Like, fall in love with themselves and then reignite the passion is really, really powerful to me. And then by helping these girls, like, I know that when they're, they become moms, they're, they're gonna understand not to give away their identity. 'Cause one of the things that I see in moms, like, so much of the time is they just, like, they just become Mom. And I, and I'm like, no, you're still this girl before you were a mom, and you're still... And I, and I, I think one of the things that I wish, that I wish, or I wish for all of this to help is to make sure that these girls continue on with who they are, and then it's, like, who they are, and then they're all of the subcategories, all of the characters that they play go below that.

Jay Shetty 57:37 Mm-hmm.

Speaker 57:37 Um, 'cause I've seen it too much in marriages. Like, the-

Jay Shetty 57:40 Yeah

Speaker 57:41 ... the, the female just loses her identity and then becomes resentful.

Jay Shetty 57:44 Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Speaker 57:44 It's what happened in my family. I've seen it way too many times with the people around me. I'm just like, how can, how can we heal this? And this is, like, actually an ongoing conversation in my head, so it's just like-

Jay Shetty 57:54 Yeah, no, I'm really glad you brought that up.

Speaker 57:56 Yeah.

Jay Shetty 57:56 I've, I'm, I'm working on my second book right now, and I talk a lot about how, you know, in a partnership, in any relationship, the goal is to always help each other find each other's purpose.

Speaker 58:07 Exactly.

Jay Shetty 58:07 Because if you're not doing that, like, when I think about me and my wife, when I met my wife, I was quite clear about what I wanted to do, and she had loads of talents and skills, but didn't quite know what she was going to do with them.

Speaker 58:19 Mm.

Jay Shetty 58:19 And over the last five years of us being married, she's really come into her own, and she's really growing and flourishing and thriving, and it's been beautiful to watch. But I fully agree with you that it's, you can't think that, oh, no, but your purpose is just to do this, or your purpose is just to look out, look after the home, or your purpose, even as a, whoever the role is, doesn't matter what gender you are, but the idea of, oh, your purpose is just to make money for the house.

Speaker 58:44 Mm-hmm.

Jay Shetty 58:44 Like, that's not a purpose.

Speaker 58:46 No.

Jay Shetty 58:46 Like, we all have so much more to do.

Speaker 58:48 Exactly.

Jay Shetty 58:48 So I love that you brought that up.

Speaker 58:49 It's, it's exciting.

Jay Shetty 58:50 Because you get lost in your role.

Speaker 58:51 Yeah, you, you, you get lost in your roles. That's, like, a real thing.

Jay Shetty 58:55 Yeah.

Speaker 58:55 And that's what I'm learning from acting as well. I was like, "Don't get lost in your roles." Like, don't do that. Like [laughs]

Jay Shetty 58:59 I've, I've heard people do method acting that have actually lost relationships in the real world because of that.

Speaker 59:05 Yeah. Mm-hmm.

Jay Shetty 59:06 And so-

Speaker 59:07 Yeah

Jay Shetty 59:07 ... when I hear that, I'm like, wow.

Speaker 59:08 Mm. Exact- Well, it's a, it's a great example of what we do in real life as well.

Jay Shetty 59:13 Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 59:14 Um, because I do think, like, at some point with, like, a long-term relationship or friendship, whatever it is, it's like you choose-

Jay Shetty 59:22 Mm-hmm

Speaker 59:22 ... to have them come with you.

Jay Shetty 59:24 Mm-hmm.

Speaker 59:24 And if you're not choosing that, then the relationship didn't work, not because it was like you didn't bring them along, or they didn't, or you didn't see where they were going and wanted to come with them. It is, as much as, like, we love the butterflies and we love all that, this is a team partnership.

Jay Shetty 59:39 Yes.

Speaker 59:39 Like, if you go, we go.

Jay Shetty 59:41 Yes. [laughs]

Speaker 59:41 You know?

Jay Shetty 59:42 Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 59:42 We go. And so-

Jay Shetty 59:43 And, and you can't be someone's purpose.

Speaker 59:46 No.

Jay Shetty 59:46 Like, don't try and make it like-

Speaker 59:48 No

Jay Shetty 59:48 ... "No, I am your purpose. Like, what I do is your purpose, and my purpose is the same as yours."

Speaker 59:52 It doesn't work.

Jay Shetty 59:53 It doesn't work like that.

Speaker 59:54 No.

Jay Shetty 59:54 Like, you can't project your purpose onto another person and expect them to just want to live for that, right?

Speaker 1:00:01 Exactly.

Jay Shetty 1:00:02 Yeah.

Speaker 1:00:02 Exactly. And this is all of these things I've been learning recently, like in the last couple of years, especially with, like, going through, like, so many public relationships and having that be... Oh, God, public relationships are terrifying.

Jay Shetty 1:00:17 Yeah.

Speaker 1:00:17 Oh my God, after... I was like, "I'm good" [laughs] after, after my last public relationship, I was like, "I'm good. I'm so good. I'm gonna just be me in my own little world." No one gets know.

Jay Shetty 1:00:29 [laughs]

Speaker 1:00:29 Um, because not only are you creating roles in the relationship, but now you have the public-

Jay Shetty 1:00:37 Mm-hmm

Speaker 1:00:38 ... creating characters of the people that you are.

Jay Shetty 1:00:40 Mm-hmm.

Speaker 1:00:40 So it's like you're fighting, like you're, it's like you're having conversations with, like, four different versions of the person you're dating-

Jay Shetty 1:00:47 Yeah

Speaker 1:00:47 ... and you're like, "Oh my God," like so-

Jay Shetty 1:00:48 And half of them aren't even real.

Speaker 1:00:50 I know. [laughs]

Jay Shetty 1:00:50 Yeah. [laughs]

Speaker 1:00:51 I was like, it's like a foggy mirror.

Jay Shetty 1:00:53 Yeah.

Speaker 1:00:53 You're just like, "Hello?" Um, so that's been really interesting. And then I always feel that relationships are the best reflection as to where you are, right? 'Cause they're just like-

Jay Shetty 1:01:03 Mm-hmm

Speaker 1:01:03 ... I'm just your walking reflection right now.

Jay Shetty 1:01:05 Mm-hmm.

Speaker 1:01:05 That's why we're in this together, right? So I, I always get excited when I... Because I'm starting to just meet s- so many amazing people, and I think that's, like, what I've been learning as well, is just like- There's no, there's no villain anymore

Jay Shetty 1:01:18 Mm-hmm

Speaker 1:01:18 It's like we can stay together or we can leave in good faith, in good heart. And like it's just, it's not... You know in high school you're just like, "They broke my heart."

Jay Shetty 1:01:27 [laughs]

Speaker 1:01:28 "What?" Um, now it's just like, "All good." Like you, you did me a service by leaving because you were being disservice to me and you for staying-

Jay Shetty 1:01:38 Yeah

Speaker 1:01:38 ... 'cause you didn't feel. So it's like at the end of the day it's all perfect. Like what can I... It's all perfect.

Jay Shetty 1:01:43 Yeah

Speaker 1:01:43 And then trusting that. Like oof-

Jay Shetty 1:01:45 What helps you trust and accept that when most of our minds hold on to the, "But it could have been like this," or it sh- Because I feel that's what it is, right? It's always this battle between imagination and reality.

Speaker 1:01:55 [laughs]

Jay Shetty 1:01:56 And a lot of us prefer our imagination-

Speaker 1:01:59 Yeah

Jay Shetty 1:01:59 ... but then we have to-

Speaker 1:02:00 Prefer my [laughs]

Jay Shetty 1:02:00 [laughs] Yeah. And then we have to deal with reality. And I, oh, I've read something. Actually, I want to read this to you-

Speaker 1:02:05 Yeah, yeah

Jay Shetty 1:02:05 ... because I think you'll like it. All right, let me find it. Let me find it. I have to read it to you because I don't want to mess it up. You know, it's, it's, you know when you like try-

Speaker 1:02:12 Yeah, you mess it up

Jay Shetty 1:02:12 ... and say something and you mess it up?

Speaker 1:02:13 Yeah.

Jay Shetty 1:02:13 So this is by Johann Wolfgang, and he said, "Few people have the imagination for reality."

Speaker 1:02:20 Ooh.

Jay Shetty 1:02:22 And I read that and it literally j- like it really-

Speaker 1:02:26 Wow

Jay Shetty 1:02:26 ... That's like-

Speaker 1:02:27 Wow

Jay Shetty 1:02:27 ... there's something, there's... It packs a punch, right? I was like-

Speaker 1:02:29 That's good

Jay Shetty 1:02:29 ... "Few people have the imagination for reality," and I was thinking-

Speaker 1:02:34 Wow

Jay Shetty 1:02:34 ... wow. Like I think my imagination's good, but if I had a really good imagination, I'd be able to accept and trust my reality.

Speaker 1:02:41 Well, you're kind of like, "I'm a great storyteller," and the universe is like, [laughs] "Sit down."

Jay Shetty 1:02:46 [laughs]

Speaker 1:02:47 "Sit down. You can tell it later once it's over. You can say it's yours, but it was mine." Like that's like-

Jay Shetty 1:02:52 [laughs]

Speaker 1:02:52 ... fully like what I experience-

Jay Shetty 1:02:53 That's beautiful

Speaker 1:02:54 ... all the time

Jay Shetty 1:02:54 I love that

Speaker 1:02:54 You know? It's like, "Sit down."

Jay Shetty 1:02:56 [laughs]

Speaker 1:02:56 Like, "You, you, you write it while I create." Like you know what I mean?

Jay Shetty 1:02:59 Yeah. Yeah.

Speaker 1:02:59 Like you remember it, you tell the story. It's, it's ours, you know, but it's mine.

Jay Shetty 1:03:02 Yeah.

Speaker 1:03:02 But it's ours.

Jay Shetty 1:03:03 You write, I'll edit.

Speaker 1:03:04 Yeah.

Jay Shetty 1:03:04 Yeah.

Speaker 1:03:04 And so like that's kind of the relationship that I always see. And per your question earlier, imagination and reality, it's... I always at this point with heartbreaks, they're... I don't see it as heartbreak anymore, I see it as growing pains.

Jay Shetty 1:03:20 Mm.

Speaker 1:03:21 And that's sometimes even worse 'cause you're just like, "I was ha- I was good."

Jay Shetty 1:03:24 [laughs]

Speaker 1:03:24 "I was good with just this. Like I didn't, I didn't, I don't wanna grow. Like I'm good. Like I'm tired."

Jay Shetty 1:03:29 [laughs]

Speaker 1:03:30 "I just wanna like watch Netflix and chill. Like I don't wanna evolve anymore," even though I like just got here in retrospect.

Jay Shetty 1:03:36 [laughs]

Speaker 1:03:36 But like, uh, it's still. And so if I look at it as growing pains-

Jay Shetty 1:03:40 Mm

Speaker 1:03:41 ... and then, you know, as... 'Cause we're all artists. We're all artists. And so what I'll do now, and it's actually so intoxicating, is I'll create, I'll write poetry, I'll write music based off of the experience. I mean, we know all of the biggest artists in the world are like, "Let me tell you about my heartbreak."

Jay Shetty 1:03:59 Mm-hmm.

Speaker 1:03:59 And then they get f- they blow up because of that, and I'm just like, "That's in all of us."

Jay Shetty 1:04:05 Mm-hmm.

Speaker 1:04:05 And so every single time that I have a new experience of heartbreak or it just not working out or whatever it is, I'm like, "There is sh- there is gold in this pain. There's gold in this pain-"

Jay Shetty 1:04:14 [laughs]

Speaker 1:04:14 "... and I cannot wait to get it out."

Jay Shetty 1:04:16 Yeah.

Speaker 1:04:16 I'm just like, "Woo."

Jay Shetty 1:04:17 [laughs]

Speaker 1:04:18 So I get ex- I get this weird, like I get heartbroken, then I get really excited. So and it goes back and forth. It's almost, um... And I always, I always tell people, I'm like, "When someone leaves your life, it's okay to feel like you're grieving a death."

Jay Shetty 1:04:32 Mm-hmm.

Speaker 1:04:32 Because the character that they played in your life is not there anymore.

Jay Shetty 1:04:35 Mm-hmm.

Speaker 1:04:35 And so you are grieving someone that's no longer there. Like you are... Like when I get broken up with with someone I truly love and I'm crying and I'm in that space, it is very similar pain to when I lost my mom. And so like I always reach out. When a- any time, like my girlfriend comes to me and she's like crying, sobbing, I'm just like, "This shit is valid. Don't worry. Like feel it. Like feel it because you lost a character that you thought was in this season, but it's not. And like you thought he was gonna be your season finale. He's not, but it's all good. There's a season 60, there's season 40. Like, you know, there's so many seasons in your life." So it's just coming back to, oh, so if h- if he wasn't meant to be here, then what I attracted was m- more parts of myself. M- I became more me because he came into my life, and that is the biggest blessing I could have ever asked for. Like I am a product of everyone that I've dated, and I've, and I've found, I've fallen in love with them. And then those parts that I fall in love with, I've like b- I c-

Jay Shetty 1:05:38 Mm-hmm

Speaker 1:05:38 ... I like, I took them for myself.

Jay Shetty 1:05:39 Mm-hmm.

Speaker 1:05:40 And so I almost, I'm getting to the point now where I don't grieve it anymore because I'm like, "Well, the person that I was in love with, I became."

Jay Shetty 1:05:48 Mm-hmm.

Speaker 1:05:48 And so that's so interesting how it never-

Jay Shetty 1:05:51 Even if that person wasn't them.

Speaker 1:05:52 No, and I'm-

Jay Shetty 1:05:52 The parts that you thought you fell in love with

Speaker 1:05:54 ... like how powerful it is. Like relationships always fascinate me because I've always been a relationship girl, and seeing how much people grow after relationships, it's like-

Jay Shetty 1:06:05 [laughs]

Speaker 1:06:06 ... I mean, you guys have ever seen like, "Don't break a girl's heart." Do you know what I mean?

Jay Shetty 1:06:09 [laughs]

Speaker 1:06:09 Like it hap- I just, I just watched my sister do this and I'm just like, " [gasps] Ooh."

Jay Shetty 1:06:14 [laughs]

Speaker 1:06:14 "She's gonna be so good after this. Like I'm so excited."

Jay Shetty 1:06:17 [laughs]

Speaker 1:06:17 Like I get so excited for her 'cause like-

Jay Shetty 1:06:19 [laughs]

Speaker 1:06:19 ... I just like, I love it. [laughs]

Jay Shetty 1:06:21 Oh.

Speaker 1:06:21 Upgrade. Like-

Jay Shetty 1:06:22 Yeah

Speaker 1:06:22 ... you g- girls get hotter. Like it's just like it's such a vibe. I, I get, I get so excited 'cause we need... It's almost like, um, the fire.

Jay Shetty 1:06:30 Mm-hmm.

Speaker 1:06:30 It's like it, it breaks your heart open so you can light fire, and I'm just like, "Yes." Like, "Let's go." So it sucks. It always sucks. Um, but once again, like back to that same belief that I had, like the more he pulls you back, it's like a slingshot.

Jay Shetty 1:06:42 Mm-hmm.

Speaker 1:06:42 He just like launch you forward. So I just, a- at the beginning of 2020, I was just like, [inhales] "Oh, this is painful."

Jay Shetty 1:06:49 [laughs]

Speaker 1:06:50 "This is painful. I wonder what's gonna happen." And now it's like I can honestly say I've helped more people than I ever would have ima- imagined.

Jay Shetty 1:06:58 Wow.

Speaker 1:06:58 And I'm also like playing with this belief, and like I think all companies should, is like can we just like stop this idea that like a company or a brand living forever is success? Because it just, it's not.

Jay Shetty 1:07:12 Mm-hmm.

Speaker 1:07:12 Like it's not sustainable. Things evolves. And so I always tell myself, I'm like, "Whether this company stays, whether it does, that's not the point."

Jay Shetty 1:07:18 Mm.

Speaker 1:07:18 "That was never the point." The point is, is I've helped, I would say over now like 10,000 girls.

Jay Shetty 1:07:23 Mm-hmm.

Speaker 1:07:24 Truly, like actually helped them, like speaking to them, talking to them one-on-one, and that I will carry with me, they will carry with them. Like- That's good enough

Jay Shetty 1:07:34 Mm-hmm

Speaker 1:07:35 So it's like, it's almost like this is good enough. It's okay.

Jay Shetty 1:07:37 Absolutely.

Speaker 1:07:37 It doesn't have to last forever. None of these things have to last forever. I feel like we're so in, in companies in general, even though this is a community, but like companies, it's like we're so thirsty to just be the monopoly. And I'm like, "No."

Jay Shetty 1:07:49 Yeah.

Speaker 1:07:49 "What, what is this world gonna look like if we're all trying to be monopolies? We can't."

Jay Shetty 1:07:52 Yeah.

Speaker 1:07:53 Like, d- are you good? Are you safe? Do you have a roof over your head and you can host people? Like, you're good.

Jay Shetty 1:07:58 Yeah.

Speaker 1:07:59 You're good. Like, let's... Now how can we return the fav- and d- and do more? And it's like, so I- I- that's kind of where I'm at with We're Warriors is like it will continue and it's gonna be amazing, but the impact is already there.

Jay Shetty 1:08:12 Mm-hmm.

Speaker 1:08:12 And I'm so honored to like do, have that impact-

Jay Shetty 1:08:15 Yeah

Speaker 1:08:15 ... on them, you know?

Jay Shetty 1:08:16 Yeah.

Speaker 1:08:16 It's just 'cause it's so real.

Jay Shetty 1:08:17 No, you sh- I'm so glad that you're owning that-

Speaker 1:08:20 Yeah. Oh my goodness

Jay Shetty 1:08:20 ... and accepting that because I, I couldn't agree with you more. I think we're fascinated with longevity and lasting till the end, and even in relationships you stretch it out far longer than it needs to be-

Speaker 1:08:31 Yeah

Jay Shetty 1:08:31 ... just because we think end means failure.

Speaker 1:08:33 Failure, exactly.

Jay Shetty 1:08:34 And, and you're so spot on that the impact, the end is insignificant really. It's, it's all about what's happening right now-

Speaker 1:08:41 Right now

Jay Shetty 1:08:41 ... in this place right today.

Speaker 1:08:44 Yeah.

Jay Shetty 1:08:44 And, and-

Speaker 1:08:44 We forget. I'm like, "It's right here, fam."

Jay Shetty 1:08:46 Yeah. [laughs] If you're making an impact-

Speaker 1:08:47 It's all right here. Yeah

Jay Shetty 1:08:48 ... yeah, if you're making an impact on all of these women today, and they're impacting each other, and you're empowering them to also become their own experts-

Speaker 1:08:57 Their own, yeah

Jay Shetty 1:08:57 ... and discover their skills, I mean-

Speaker 1:08:58 Their own warriors

Jay Shetty 1:08:58 ... that's beautiful. Yeah.

Speaker 1:08:59 Yeah, exactly.

Jay Shetty 1:09:00 And I'm so glad that you made that point because I think our, our obsession with making something last is-

Speaker 1:09:09 It's unhealthy

Jay Shetty 1:09:09 ... everyth- yeah, it's unhealthy.

Speaker 1:09:11 Yeah.

Jay Shetty 1:09:11 It's unhealthy.

Speaker 1:09:12 It's unhealthy.

Jay Shetty 1:09:12 And you're only 24.

Speaker 1:09:14 Yeah.

Jay Shetty 1:09:14 Right?

Speaker 1:09:14 I know. Yeah.

Jay Shetty 1:09:15 Yeah. Which is amazing.

Speaker 1:09:16 Yeah. [laughs]

Jay Shetty 1:09:16 Like, that's, that's, that's the insane part here. I feel like I'm speaking to the oldest soul in the world, and then I have to remind myself, and it's-

Speaker 1:09:25 Thank you.

Jay Shetty 1:09:25 That's, that's such a wonderful thing because, you know, you're carrying your mother's energy in such a special way.

Speaker 1:09:31 It's her.

Jay Shetty 1:09:31 Yeah.

Speaker 1:09:31 It's her.

Jay Shetty 1:09:31 No, it comes through. It's like-

Speaker 1:09:33 Yeah

Jay Shetty 1:09:33 ... it's, it's so clear-

Speaker 1:09:35 Yeah

Jay Shetty 1:09:36 ... that, that, you know, which is-

Speaker 1:09:37 And it's cool too 'cause, like, for anyone who's lost someone, y'all have a speed dial up there. Like, you guys can just like... I literally am like, "Mom," and she's r- I f- she's right there. And so I'm like, you have the strongest connection to the other side-

Jay Shetty 1:09:54 Mm-hmm

Speaker 1:09:54 ... or whatever you believe. It's really truly whatever you believe 'cause I'm pretty sure all of this is made up. I mean, we're just, like, I'm sitting on an idea right now, which trips me out sometimes. I don't know. Like, it's weird. Um, but it's like we have such a deep connection to the other side because we have that person on the other side. And so I utilize that as much as I can.

Jay Shetty 1:10:12 Mm-hmm.

Speaker 1:10:12 And whenever I forget, um, I just like, I'm like, "How can I remember? How can I remember?" I think that's where I am right now. I just, I, I will, um... It's always the environment too. So like I'll choose incense, I'll make lights, candles, and I'll just sit down and I'll remember. Like, whether that's just sitting in silence, it's helping me remember, but, or just writing until something else comes out, that's what, it- or talking to a friend about it. Like, I, I think I'm at, and I think we're all at that point where it's not, it's not so much you're uni- learning something new, it's almost you're just remembering what was already there-

Jay Shetty 1:10:47 Mm-hmm

Speaker 1:10:47 ... on top of everything else-

Jay Shetty 1:10:48 Mm-hmm

Speaker 1:10:48 ... per what my sister said about the onions and just unraveling it. And so, um, it's constantly coming back to that. But like I still, you know, I still suffer. Like, we all suffer.

Jay Shetty 1:10:57 [laughs]

Speaker 1:10:57 Like, it's all good. It's all good. It's all good.

Jay Shetty 1:11:00 Definitely.

Speaker 1:11:00 Yeah.

Jay Shetty 1:11:00 How, how have you got through that? You know, you talked about this earlier, and I think you've experienced this. Like, you've... And, and I love what you said because we were, we were connecting on this beforehand, and I, I sometimes feel the same way because I thought I was going to be a monk, and that's literally what I built up. So before that I had so many passions, but my parenting was ignore the passion, do the safe thing.

Speaker 1:11:24 Mm-hmm.

Jay Shetty 1:11:25 And so my passions were music, my passions were spoken word, and my passion was philosophy.

Speaker 1:11:30 Do you still write spoken word?

Jay Shetty 1:11:31 I do. I do. Yeah.

Speaker 1:11:32 [laughs] I wanna hear some.

Jay Shetty 1:11:33 It's, it's such a passion for me, and I feel like a lot of my videos and a lot of my content is still wordplay and, and has so much... I still use this spoken word in a different way today.

Speaker 1:11:43 Exactly.

Jay Shetty 1:11:44 And so that's so much a part of my life. But it was like, do the safe thing, and so I was studying business and I thought I'd be an investment banker or a consultant or whatever, any of that stuff. And then I became a monk. That became my dream. And-

Speaker 1:11:56 You're like, "Mom, Dad." [laughs]

Jay Shetty 1:11:57 Yeah, literally. Like, from all of that to that. But even letting go of that, I would say I'm most myself in what I do today.

Speaker 1:12:05 Yeah.

Jay Shetty 1:12:05 And being a monk was part of that, but it's not all of me.

Speaker 1:12:08 Mm-hmm.

Jay Shetty 1:12:09 And being in media, which is-

Speaker 1:12:10 It's all about

Jay Shetty 1:12:10 ... what I am now, is not all of me.

Speaker 1:12:12 Yeah.

Jay Shetty 1:12:12 It's a part of me. And then being in the world of business was a part of me. It's not all of me. And I think you are so right that we limit ourselves. We feel society limiting us, and we feel we have to choose to be one thing.

Speaker 1:12:26 Mm-hmm.

Jay Shetty 1:12:26 And I think that the fact that you're 24 years old and you've allowed yourself to continue to do this and you still do today-

Speaker 1:12:32 So, so crucial

Jay Shetty 1:12:32 ... I think that's so wonderful because I think a lot of people stay stuck until, again, hold-

Speaker 1:12:38 I know

Jay Shetty 1:12:38 ... wanting to make something last.

Speaker 1:12:39 It breaks my heart. Yeah, wanting to make something last. And, like, every single thing, and I, and I will say this with absolute certainty, like every single thing that any of you guys have been doing-

Jay Shetty 1:12:49 Mm-hmm

Speaker 1:12:49 ... that you feel like was the thing and then it's not, it is serving-

Jay Shetty 1:12:53 Yes

Speaker 1:12:54 ... what your thing is. Like, ballet, I spent literally 20, almost 20 years, every day, four, five, six hours a day, I would be on point, and my feet still hurt, you know? [laughs]

Jay Shetty 1:13:04 Yeah.

Speaker 1:13:04 Like, it's just like, but because of that, it's translated into storytelling. I know how to use my body.

Jay Shetty 1:13:10 Mm-hmm.

Speaker 1:13:10 My work ethic is insane. I understand, I know how to take direction. There is s- I know how to feel when I move. Like, it has literally serviced me in everything I've done. And so it's just, it's almost just like being okay with-

Jay Shetty 1:13:23 Mm-hmm

Speaker 1:13:23 ... letting it go, but then you don't actually let it go. It's always there.

Jay Shetty 1:13:27 Mm-hmm.

Speaker 1:13:27 That's the thing. It's like it's always there serving you.

Jay Shetty 1:13:30 Yeah.

Speaker 1:13:30 Um, and so that's, th- this is how I feel with pretty much everything I do. My mom said Another thing my mom said is, like, she goes, um, "Just be passionately curious."

Jay Shetty 1:13:39 Mm-hmm.

Speaker 1:13:39 Because put so much pressure on us, so my mom would always just be like, "Just be curious."

Jay Shetty 1:13:44 Mm-hmm.

Speaker 1:13:44 Like, just, like, follow your curiosities, and if, if it doesn't lead you anywhere, just be like, "Oh, that was interesting," and then go over here. And so that's, that's what I do. And, like, given I, I do ... I still, of course, have big dreams, but, like, I let my curiosity take me.

Jay Shetty 1:13:58 Mm-hmm.

Speaker 1:13:58 Like, and I don't ... The, the big dream is not the goal. It's, like, the little moments that get up to it.

Jay Shetty 1:14:05 Yeah.

Speaker 1:14:05 Right? Right? So, like, when I'm, when I'm having a director meeting and I'm, like, talking to them about a role or whatever it is, it's like my intention in that call is to make the director feel good, not to get the part.

Jay Shetty 1:14:16 Mm-hmm.

Speaker 1:14:16 And so just, like, having those little indirect of, like, the curiosity-

Jay Shetty 1:14:19 Wow, that's such a huge thing you just dropped

Speaker 1:14:21 ... and just like-

Jay Shetty 1:14:21 Yeah

Speaker 1:14:21 ... you have to.

Jay Shetty 1:14:21 That's a huge thing.

Speaker 1:14:23 You have to. It's who you are. It's who all of us are. It's like if you can stop going, "Well, this is my goal," to, like, my intent- I think intentions are actually-

Jay Shetty 1:14:31 Mm-hmm

Speaker 1:14:32 ... the most underrated, most powerful things I've ever-

Jay Shetty 1:14:34 Mm-hmm.

Speaker 1:14:34 Like, I still learn about how cr- we have an intention 24/7 with every sing- every thing, single thing we do. We just, like, sometimes we're aware of it, sometimes we're not.

Jay Shetty 1:14:42 Mm-hmm.

Speaker 1:14:43 And so when you can put an attention, an intention on something before you do it, it's, it's crazy how powerful it is. So it's like I always make sure, because at the end of the day, and this is kind of what we're all looking for, I think even more so than the diploma, than the thing, and than the degree, is someone that we connect to.

Jay Shetty 1:15:01 Mm-hmm.

Speaker 1:15:02 Someone that we feel close to, someone that we almost feel like we've already met before. Like, that essence comes from the intention of making that person feel connected.

Jay Shetty 1:15:12 Mm-hmm.

Speaker 1:15:12 Not from, "I hope I'm right for this. I'm hope I'm this." And so, like, I, whenever I hire for my company, that's my intention.

Jay Shetty 1:15:19 Mm-hmm.

Speaker 1:15:19 I was like, I don't really, I don't care where you went to college. [laughs]

Jay Shetty 1:15:22 Yeah, yeah, of course.

Speaker 1:15:22 Like why would I care? [laughs]

Jay Shetty 1:15:23 Of course, yeah.

Speaker 1:15:23 Why would I care? Like, I care about who you are.

Jay Shetty 1:15:25 Mm-hmm.

Speaker 1:15:26 Like, what, like, what's your vi- like, what's your intention? Like-

Jay Shetty 1:15:28 Mm-hmm

Speaker 1:15:29 ... w- how ... Are you gonna be fun to work with? Like, are we gonna ... 'Cause ideally I want you to be in this for the long run, and so, uh, do I wanna be talking to you for the next five to 10 years? Like, what does that look like? And so having that perspective of when it comes to jobs, when it comes to meetings, anything ever is, like, the human connection should go first no matter what. No matter how bad you want it, like, the human connection is first. Um, that's actually been the best, like, magic trick my mom taught me.

Jay Shetty 1:15:57 [laughs]

Speaker 1:15:58 'Cause it's like it, it always, it always-

Jay Shetty 1:16:00 Yeah

Speaker 1:16:00 ... provides what I need and then what the other person needs. So for instance, I was, like, very excited for this role that I almost got a couple weeks ago. I was very excited. I won't say any names. And he was so sweet, and we were talking. We were having such a good time, and I really understood the character, and it was really great. But then, you know, because I don't, I'm not very experienced in the space, he was like, "We're gonna choose someone else." And I was like, "That's completely fine." But then I was sitting in meditation, and I had this urge to write him an email, and I didn't, I didn't know why because my goal wasn't necessarily to get the part. I just almost felt like the, the connection of me and him wasn't finished. And so I just sent him a thank you, and I was like, "Thank you so much for speaking, giving me your time, like, learning about me-

Jay Shetty 1:16:43 Mm-hmm

Speaker 1:16:43 ... because who I am matters because you need to get to know if I fit the char..." Like, all of these things, and because of that, it almost solidified our relationship and that, but that wasn't my intention.

Jay Shetty 1:16:51 Yes, yes.

Speaker 1:16:51 My intention was just like, "This isn't over. I don't know why-

Jay Shetty 1:16:54 Yeah

Speaker 1:16:54 ... and I'm just gonna sit down and see." So, like, listening to, almost like letting it overpower whether or not the-

Jay Shetty 1:17:00 Mm-hmm

Speaker 1:17:00 ... w- what happened, it's like if you don't feel like it's finished, like, go in there with the intention that you wanna just solidify the mirror-

Jay Shetty 1:17:12 Mm-hmm

Speaker 1:17:12 ... that you guys are reflecting towards each other-

Jay Shetty 1:17:13 Mm-hmm

Speaker 1:17:13 ... as opposed to, like, the opportunity that's kind of on the sidelines.

Jay Shetty 1:17:16 Yeah.

Speaker 1:17:17 Um, so that's been a huge tool. Huge t- it's, like, actually, like, the, probably the reason I'm here to be honest.

Jay Shetty 1:17:22 [laughs]

Speaker 1:17:23 So shout out tool. [laughs]

Jay Shetty 1:17:26 [laughs] Shout out tool, did you say? [laughs] I love that. Today I've discovered how funny you are-

Speaker 1:17:31 Oh, yay

Jay Shetty 1:17:31 ... which is great, which is really awesome. Which is really awesome. So I, I love that. We're gonna have so many memes made out of this interview for you to-

Speaker 1:17:39 Oh, no.

Jay Shetty 1:17:39 [laughs]

Speaker 1:17:40 Yay.

Jay Shetty 1:17:40 There's gonna be so many great ones.

Speaker 1:17:42 Oh, no.

Jay Shetty 1:17:42 Uh, Alexis, is there something that I haven't asked you about that's, like, on your mind and you're like, "I have to share this. I wanna share, I wanna say this," uh, before we go into the final five? But I wanna know if there's anything that you're feeling intuitively as you are in-

Speaker 1:17:54 Just thank you so much. Like, actually thank you so ... I'm gonna teary-eyed just, like, saying it, but thank you. I feel like, I don't know, it was weird, like, once I finally solidified this podcast with you, there, something, like, clicked inside of me and I was like, [gasps] "Like, I am becoming the person I wanna be." And, like, I ... And so just, like, thank you for showing that to me 'cause it really, I, I'm not ... Yeah, just thank you. I have no, I just, like, words don't, they don't, they're not it right now, [laughs] so but thank you. Yeah.

Jay Shetty 1:18:24 [laughs]

Speaker 1:18:25 So just that's it. That's all I have to say. [laughs]

Jay Shetty 1:18:27 I love that.

Speaker 1:18:28 Yeah.

Jay Shetty 1:18:28 I love that. That means the world to me and, and I'm, and I'm hoping that that synergy and synchronicity continues and, you know, this is the beginning of a great friendship. So that's, that's, that's my hope. I, I, I really believe that. Honestly, the podcast for me has either been a place where I had a lot of relationships offline that people didn't know the types of conversations we were having, and so the podcast was a great way of me sharing, "Hey, I'm really good friends with the person. This is what we talk about-

Speaker 1:18:57 Yeah

Jay Shetty 1:18:58 ... and I want everyone to hear it." And then it's also been the opposite, where it's been like, "Here's someone I'm really interested to get to know-

Speaker 1:19:03 Mm

Jay Shetty 1:19:04 ... and I wanted to start a friendship."

Speaker 1:19:06 And then it's, like, perfect.

Jay Shetty 1:19:07 And so it's ... Yeah. And so the, the podcast for me has been so much more than ... And it's what you're saying about a community more than a company or a brand. Like, the podcast for me is not a show. Like, that's-

Speaker 1:19:17 It, no

Jay Shetty 1:19:17 ... that's not the point of it. Like, it's, it's a, it's a way I can get to know humans that I'm interested in or I find interesting and help people learn about them. So actually I should be thanking you-

Speaker 1:19:30 Mm. Mm

Jay Shetty 1:19:30 ... because, you know, I think sitting down with you today has just completely blown my mind and opened up my mind to just so many possibilities as to how someone- Who's navigated so many stressful situations, and I think the closer you get to it, the more you realize how hard it is. So when I was a young kid, and I grew up in London, I knew no one in the entertainment industry. I was not in LA or Hollywood. Everyone in my area was, you know, not going off to work in anything to do with the world I'm in now.

Speaker 1:20:01 Yeah.

Jay Shetty 1:20:02 And because of that, you look at people and you go, "Oh, well, life must be easy for you. You guys have money. You guys have fame. Uh, you guys are attractive. You, you m- life... Why are you complaining?"

Speaker 1:20:12 Mm-hmm.

Jay Shetty 1:20:12 Right? And as I've got closer to the industry, closer to people that I coach, that I work with, clients of mine, I've only just had more compassion-

Speaker 1:20:21 Mm

Jay Shetty 1:20:22 ... for everyone.

Speaker 1:20:23 Mm-hmm.

Jay Shetty 1:20:24 Uh, both the people that are like me, sitting back there judging, and then both the people who are in the situation because they realize we're all just feeling some type of pain. And the more we can rise to that point without judgment, the better it's gonna be for us because-

Speaker 1:20:39 We can evolve together

Jay Shetty 1:20:39 ... yeah, if we expect anyone who's successful to be always happy, then what we're saying is when I become successful, I have to always be happy.

Speaker 1:20:47 Mm-hmm. It puts the pressure-

Jay Shetty 1:20:48 And that pressure is just-

Speaker 1:20:49 Right back on us. It's interesting-

Jay Shetty 1:20:50 Yeah

Speaker 1:20:50 ... how that works. And it's almost like, um, yeah, anything that we direct outwards is an exact manifestation of what's gonna happen inside of us. And so we have to be so careful with our words. Like, I don't... Why do you think they call it spelling?

Jay Shetty 1:21:04 [laughs]

Speaker 1:21:05 Spells. Like, I'm like-

Jay Shetty 1:21:07 Wow. That's-

Speaker 1:21:08 It trips me out sometimes

Jay Shetty 1:21:08 ... that's good. I've not heard that before. I like that. That's good.

Speaker 1:21:11 It's, the words are... Like, I am, oh my God.

Jay Shetty 1:21:14 Mm-hmm, mm-hmm.

Speaker 1:21:15 When I hear girls say, like, "I am ugly," or, "I am..." I'm just like, [gasps] "No. Ab- mm. No. Like, you can... No. I, I refuse to let you say that about yourself 'cause you would never say that about your daughter. You would never say that about your friend." And so it's, it truly is, like, having these honest conversations with anyone at any level has been eye-opening to me, and that's one of the reasons why I've always loved the podcast so much 'cause I got to actually just see the person-

Jay Shetty 1:21:43 Mm-hmm

Speaker 1:21:43 ... and not the characters that I see them play-

Jay Shetty 1:21:46 Mm-hmm

Speaker 1:21:46 ... in life. Um, so that's really, it's really inspiring. And then also knowing that pain happens on any lev- like, pain is pain, you know?

Jay Shetty 1:21:56 Mm-hmm, mm-hmm.

Speaker 1:21:56 Like, me losing someone from a breakup is just as painful as me losing my mom to death, and I was like, "That was a weird... That was weird." I was like, [gasps]

Jay Shetty 1:22:04 And you almost feel guilty-

Speaker 1:22:05 Wow, yeah

Jay Shetty 1:22:05 ... or, like, you feel like, "Can I feel that? Do I allow myself to?"

Speaker 1:22:08 So it's like, yeah, validating on any level because that's actually what connects us as well. And, and, and then I almost feel like until we, um, we have... The goal right now is to, to connect at every level of being human. And then from there, I mean, I, I'm pretty sure, like, an evolution would happen, which would be really cool.

Jay Shetty 1:22:27 [laughs]

Speaker 1:22:27 That'd be really cool. I'd be like, "Whoa."

Jay Shetty 1:22:28 [laughs]

Speaker 1:22:29 Can you imagine if we had everyone at the same time be like, "Love"? [laughs]

Jay Shetty 1:22:32 Yeah. Can you imagine?

Speaker 1:22:34 That's like, that would be crazy.

Jay Shetty 1:22:35 Yeah.

Speaker 1:22:35 I've heard, I'm sure you've, like, heard of those stories where, like, um, they have, like, monks praying at same, at the-

Jay Shetty 1:22:41 Mm-hmm, mm-hmm

Speaker 1:22:41 ... all at the same time, like 3,000 monks or whatever, and, like, the crime rates goes down in the city. I've-

Jay Shetty 1:22:45 Mm-hmm

Speaker 1:22:45 ... I've definitely heard s- I've seen studies-

Jay Shetty 1:22:47 Yeah

Speaker 1:22:47 ... on that before.

Jay Shetty 1:22:48 Yeah, same.

Speaker 1:22:48 Um, but just those kinds of scenarios would be like... I, I think that's the i- that, that's what, that's what my work w- would ideally, my, like, heart work, I guess, is what it's there for is-

Jay Shetty 1:23:01 Mm

Speaker 1:23:01 ... to, like, have just mom- more moments of, like, just people being in absolute, like, love. And even when I can facilitate, like we were talking about hosting and how, like, it's like-

Jay Shetty 1:23:09 Yeah

Speaker 1:23:09 ... why have the big house if you're not putting everyone in it, like, hosting it? [laughs] Like, why do I have a balcony? I'm not gonna do anything on it. Like, I'm gonna have all my friends, like, there and, like, host people, and, like, why do I have more than one bedroom? So I can let my friends be there, and, like, just hosting and having that environment where, like, we come together and bring, like, real connection. It is so... It's, it's helping the planet so much more than we know.

Jay Shetty 1:23:31 I've got two more questions for you before we go into the final five because-

Speaker 1:23:34 Okay

Jay Shetty 1:23:34 ... I've, I've just, there's so many things I could talk to you about. Uh, the first question I wanted to ask you was around your passion for acting now.

Speaker 1:23:40 Uh-huh.

Jay Shetty 1:23:40 So, you know, what right now is making you so passionately curious about acting? What is it about roles? What is it about your development as an artist that connects you so much to acting?

Speaker 1:23:55 Uh, it's, it's almost like proving to myself how many different p- person or identities I can be. I think it's like, we almost... I, I feel even though I seem outgoing, I'm actually quite terrified all the time.

Jay Shetty 1:24:09 [laughs]

Speaker 1:24:10 Um, and I would say I'm, like, an ambivert, like, an in between.

Jay Shetty 1:24:12 Mm-hmm.

Speaker 1:24:13 But when it comes to acting, I don't have a choice.

Jay Shetty 1:24:17 Mm-hmm.

Speaker 1:24:18 Like, I have to show up as this person.

Jay Shetty 1:24:21 Mm-hmm.

Speaker 1:24:21 If I'm nervou- like, it doesn't matter. And, like, once I'm not thinking about lines, once I'm, like, in that state where I just, like, have it memorized to the heart and I can just be there, um, it's, it's similar to flow state. I'm sure you've written-

Jay Shetty 1:24:32 I love flow state

Speaker 1:24:32 ... you've read all. I love flow state. It was, oof.

Jay Shetty 1:24:34 Yeah, I love flow state.

Speaker 1:24:35 Flow state is the goal-

Jay Shetty 1:24:36 Yes

Speaker 1:24:36 ... for everything always. [laughs]

Jay Shetty 1:24:38 [laughs]

Speaker 1:24:39 So it puts me in flow state, basically.

Jay Shetty 1:24:40 Mm-hmm.

Speaker 1:24:41 I don't... There's no time.

Jay Shetty 1:24:42 Mm-hmm.

Speaker 1:24:43 I don't remember. I'm not thinking about myself. I'm not thinking about my body. I'm not think- there's n- it's just, I'm just here.

Jay Shetty 1:24:49 Mm-hmm.

Speaker 1:24:49 And, like, similar, similar to the way, like, when you surf, like, you're on a wave. It's like, it's those, like, 30 seconds of just, like, I blacked out. I wasn't even there. I blacked out.

Jay Shetty 1:24:57 Now, and you're saying that you can actually surf, so you've actually had-

Speaker 1:24:59 [laughs]

Jay Shetty 1:25:00 ... that experience, right? [laughs] Like, most people use that analogy-

Speaker 1:25:03 Yeah

Jay Shetty 1:25:03 ... but we've never surfed, so, but you actually surf.

Speaker 1:25:06 Okay, which is like, wait, anything. Yeah, yeah. Just, like, any, like-

Jay Shetty 1:25:08 But you can actually surf.

Speaker 1:25:09 Yeah.

Jay Shetty 1:25:09 Yeah.

Speaker 1:25:09 I can surf decently.

Jay Shetty 1:25:10 Yeah.

Speaker 1:25:10 Not good enough to the point where I'm like that guy in the surf being like, "Why'd you catch my wave, bro?"

Jay Shetty 1:25:16 Right.

Speaker 1:25:16 I'm like, but just those moments, like, I think I'm, right n- I'm just searching for those moments in my life. Like, I'm just like, "When am I, am I gonna forget time here? Am I gonna forget time here?"

Jay Shetty 1:25:25 Mm, mm.

Speaker 1:25:25 And so acting is just one of those things that I've seen is such a powerful... And also, it's, it's best because I c- I get to lose track of time with another person.

Jay Shetty 1:25:35 Mm-hmm.

Speaker 1:25:35 And I feel like, like, connection is so strong for me. And so it's like, I remember, oh my God, this was such a cool moment. On my first set, um, it was an older actor. He's been around for a long time. I'm sure you know him. I don't remember his name, but he was very, very kind. And we had a scene together where he was kind of just, like, um, like, getting in my face about something. Um, basically saying that I, like, wasn't worthy or wha- I don't know, and I was just like, "I got this, I got this. [laughs] I got this scene. Don't worry, guys."

Jay Shetty 1:25:59 [laughs]

Speaker 1:26:00 Um, and he was, like, getting in my face, and I just remember a moment where, like, we, like, lost... I just... It was... I just wasn't there and he wasn't there, and it was just a pure moment, and I wasn't acting and I was actually feeling everything.

Jay Shetty 1:26:11 Mm.

Speaker 1:26:11 And then afterwards he comes to me and he looked at me at, at Crafty's, [laughs] the little, uh-

Jay Shetty 1:26:16 Yeah

Speaker 1:26:17 ... snack area. He was like, "You get it." He was like, "You get it, don't you?" I was like, "Yeah." And he was like, "Keep doing it, kid. Like, keep doing it. It's, it's amazing."

Jay Shetty 1:26:25 Oh, that's awesome.

Speaker 1:26:25 And he was like, "You get it." And he was like, there... He, he almost... It was almost as if he, like, said, like, "You're closer to source-

Jay Shetty 1:26:33 Mm-hmm

Speaker 1:26:33 ... in those moments."

Jay Shetty 1:26:34 Mm-hmm.

Speaker 1:26:34 Like, and so he looked at me like, "You get it."

Jay Shetty 1:26:37 Mm-hmm.

Speaker 1:26:37 And I just flipped out-

Jay Shetty 1:26:39 [laughs]

Speaker 1:26:39 ... after 'cause I was eating banana being like, "I get it."

Jay Shetty 1:26:41 I get it. [laughs]

Speaker 1:26:42 "I get it. I get it. I get it." And so after that I was like, okay, this is, like, what I'm meant to do-

Jay Shetty 1:26:48 Mm

Speaker 1:26:48 ... now, for now-

Jay Shetty 1:26:49 Mm-hmm

Speaker 1:26:49 ... I guess. And, like, we'll see where that goes. Um, but yeah, I, I just, once again, like, the intention, the paths change, but the intention stays the same.

Jay Shetty 1:26:59 Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Speaker 1:27:00 So I think that's what keeps me-

Jay Shetty 1:27:01 I... That, again, love that. I just love that.

Speaker 1:27:03 Yeah.

Jay Shetty 1:27:03 I couldn't agree more.

Speaker 1:27:04 Yeah.

Jay Shetty 1:27:05 I think that's been the challenge for so many people. We try and keep our path the same and then-

Speaker 1:27:10 But we don't know our intention

Jay Shetty 1:27:11 ... yeah, we don't know our intention.

Speaker 1:27:11 We don't know our intention. [laughs]

Jay Shetty 1:27:12 Yeah.

Speaker 1:27:13 Yeah.

Jay Shetty 1:27:13 But, but keeping your intention the same-

Speaker 1:27:15 Yeah

Jay Shetty 1:27:15 ... and the path changing, oh, I can so relate to that.

Speaker 1:27:17 Yeah.

Jay Shetty 1:27:17 That's-

Speaker 1:27:17 So back to those notes-

Jay Shetty 1:27:18 Yeah

Speaker 1:27:18 ... like, any intentions that you guys have, like, any of it, just write it down, so at least you just know.

Jay Shetty 1:27:24 Yeah.

Speaker 1:27:25 You just know. 'Cause I forget my intentions all the time.

Jay Shetty 1:27:26 Of course, yeah.

Speaker 1:27:28 Um-

Jay Shetty 1:27:28 You have to repeat them daily.

Speaker 1:27:29 Daily

Jay Shetty 1:27:29 I repeat them daily in my prayer, in my affirmation-

Speaker 1:27:32 Yeah, exactly

Jay Shetty 1:27:32 ... at the beginning and end of the day. I have to.

Speaker 1:27:34 Exactly.

Jay Shetty 1:27:35 Yeah.

Speaker 1:27:35 Exactly. And then from there it almost like... I, I... And this is, this may be a weird belief, but I've been seeing this a lot in my life. All of the best things in my life I didn't work for.

Jay Shetty 1:27:43 Mm-hmm.

Speaker 1:27:44 And I keep seeing that as a pattern, and I'm like, hmm, maybe God, maybe God doesn't want us to struggle.

Jay Shetty 1:27:49 Yeah.

Speaker 1:27:50 Like, the way, like... It, it's... 'Cause everything that I've struggled for wasn't meant for me.

Jay Shetty 1:27:55 Mm.

Speaker 1:27:55 So that's been really interesting of almost being like, you take the reins.

Jay Shetty 1:27:59 Mm.

Speaker 1:27:59 Like, you take the reins. I'll create the intention, but you create the story, and, like, I'll trust the path. And, like, whatever that is, like, let's go. Like-

Jay Shetty 1:28:06 Yeah

Speaker 1:28:06 ... let's make it fun, right?

Jay Shetty 1:28:07 Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Speaker 1:28:07 'Cause, like, I j- I do feel like the more you can give to God, to, like, if he, if he gives you, like, a ball, a red ball, for instance-

Jay Shetty 1:28:15 [laughs]

Speaker 1:28:15 [laughs] Like, like, if you have fun and you're playing with it, he's gonna be like, "Oh, he's, she's playing with it. I'll give her something else." Like, I'll... And it's just like, it's almost like entertain- Like, show him or show-

Jay Shetty 1:28:25 Mm

Speaker 1:28:25 ... the universe that, like, you're so stoked-

Jay Shetty 1:28:28 Mm-hmm

Speaker 1:28:28 ... of what it gave you-

Jay Shetty 1:28:29 Mm

Speaker 1:28:29 ... that it wants to give you more.

Jay Shetty 1:28:31 Mm.

Speaker 1:28:31 Like, you almost... You know, and, like, you have... I have a puppy. Her name's Angel.

Jay Shetty 1:28:34 Aw.

Speaker 1:28:34 And whenever I give her a treat she's so stoked that I gave her a treat that I'm like, "I gotta give you another one."

Jay Shetty 1:28:39 [laughs]

Speaker 1:28:40 And so, like, I almost feel like that's... And then when I walk my dog, and she, like, is not leash-trained yet, so she'll just be like, like choking-

Jay Shetty 1:28:46 Yeah

Speaker 1:28:46 ... herself out trying to, like, go everywhere, and I'm just like, "Is this what I look like?" [laughs]

Jay Shetty 1:28:50 [laughs] Wow.

Speaker 1:28:50 Is this what I look like? Oh, no.

Jay Shetty 1:28:52 Wow.

Speaker 1:28:52 I learn so much from dogs. Also-

Jay Shetty 1:28:54 Wow

Speaker 1:28:54 ... when a dog... My dog is obsessed with a ball, one ball in particular. It's gross. I can't believe she still has it. I'm just like, oh my God. Um, so obsessed with this ball, and I'm like, that is amazing. And literally her only goal with this ball is to give it back to me so that I can throw it so she can ta- catch it so I can give it back to her and she... There's, there's no point to this-

Jay Shetty 1:29:14 Mm-hmm

Speaker 1:29:14 ... whatsoever. And so it showed me, I was like, do it just for the act.

Jay Shetty 1:29:18 Mm-hmm.

Speaker 1:29:18 Like, don't do it for, like, the, the idea, the goal, or the dream.

Jay Shetty 1:29:22 Mm-hmm.

Speaker 1:29:22 Just, just do it.

Jay Shetty 1:29:23 Yeah.

Speaker 1:29:23 And so, like, whenever I play ball with her I practice that.

Jay Shetty 1:29:25 [laughs]

Speaker 1:29:25 I'm like, I'm acting just 'cause it's fun, 'cause I just do it, or I'm creating this company 'cause it's fun and I just-

Jay Shetty 1:29:30 Mm

Speaker 1:29:30 ... this is just what I do. Like-

Jay Shetty 1:29:31 Mm-hmm

Speaker 1:29:31 ... I just, it's just fun. And, like, 'cause every single time I've gotten caught up in, like, the huge image of things is, like, when I've lost sight-

Jay Shetty 1:29:39 Yeah

Speaker 1:29:39 ... of my heart's path. And I'm just like, ugh.

Jay Shetty 1:29:42 Yeah.

Speaker 1:29:42 So.

Jay Shetty 1:29:43 Yeah.

Speaker 1:29:43 But the greatness is within that path, like, for sure. But it's never, like, the same path as you would see, 'cause it's literally just you playing with a ball-

Jay Shetty 1:29:50 [laughs]

Speaker 1:29:50 ... and you're just like, "What's the point, God?"

Jay Shetty 1:29:52 Yeah.

Speaker 1:29:52 And he's like, "Just wait. Like, just keep doing it for fun." [laughs]

Jay Shetty 1:29:54 Yeah. Yeah.

Speaker 1:29:55 So, like-

Jay Shetty 1:29:55 Keep doing it for fun

Speaker 1:29:56 ... just keep doing it for fun.

Jay Shetty 1:29:57 Yeah.

Speaker 1:29:57 And so I almost... And, like, now that I'm 24 I'm, I'm in this adult life and I'm just like, do I need to get serious now? [laughs]

Jay Shetty 1:30:04 [laughs]

Speaker 1:30:04 You know? Like, it's weird.

Jay Shetty 1:30:05 Don't. Don't do it.

Speaker 1:30:06 I don't want to. [laughs]

Jay Shetty 1:30:06 It's a trap.

Speaker 1:30:07 It's a trap.

Jay Shetty 1:30:08 Yeah.

Speaker 1:30:08 And so... But it's so strong. You've... I feel it heavy on me now.

Jay Shetty 1:30:12 Yeah.

Speaker 1:30:12 I'm like, I need a schedule, I need to wake up at this time. And God's like, "No, you're not lazy if you sleep in. That's a belief. Let's get rid of that."

Jay Shetty 1:30:19 Mm-hmm.

Speaker 1:30:19 Like, no, you're not. Like, did you... No. It's just, literally I am now taking off layers that I just got. I'm like, whoa, what is this? What is... And now that I'm coming into my mid-20s I'm just like, what... Is this not supposed to be fun anymore?

Jay Shetty 1:30:35 Mm-hmm.

Speaker 1:30:35 Because, like, that's what I've heard, and that's what I, like, see a lot of the times.

Jay Shetty 1:30:38 Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 1:30:39 But I just refuse because it's so inspiring to meet... I have a few friends that are, like, I would say, like, in their s- 50s or 16s, and they're like children.

Jay Shetty 1:30:48 Having the best time of their life. Yes.

Speaker 1:30:49 So, having the best time of their life, and everything works out for them.

Jay Shetty 1:30:51 Yeah.

Speaker 1:30:51 Everything works out for them.

Jay Shetty 1:30:52 Yeah.

Speaker 1:30:52 And I'm just like, that is... If I'm gonna tell a story I'd rather it be like that.

Jay Shetty 1:30:58 Yeah.

Speaker 1:30:58 You know?

Jay Shetty 1:30:58 I've added play back into my life so much. Like, play is, like, one of my number one values-

Speaker 1:31:04 That's why I got a dog

Jay Shetty 1:31:05 ... in life, yeah.

Speaker 1:31:05 You're going to the park.

Jay Shetty 1:31:06 Yes.

Speaker 1:31:07 Not for the dog, for you, but you're going to the park for the dog.

Jay Shetty 1:31:08 Yeah.

Speaker 1:31:09 You know?

Jay Shetty 1:31:09 I just want more play in my life.

Speaker 1:31:10 Yeah.

Jay Shetty 1:31:10 And there was a, there was a beautiful quote by Richard Branson where he said that, you know, you don't stop playing because you get old, you get old because you stop playing.

Speaker 1:31:18 Aw.

Jay Shetty 1:31:18 And, and I love that because it's, it's been so big for me.

Speaker 1:31:21 Wow.

Jay Shetty 1:31:22 I'm at a place in my life where I'm like, I j- play is a huge value. And it sounds insane, and people don't get it. I just got back from Miami. I was there for two weeks, and we were on a really busy schedule. We were working from, like, 8:00 AM to 9:00 PM-

Speaker 1:31:34 Oh my God

Jay Shetty 1:31:34 ... every single day. But at 9:00 PM every day we'd go and play paddle tennis from 9:00 to 11:00.

Speaker 1:31:40 Yes.

Jay Shetty 1:31:40 And I felt like a kid every night where I was just waiting to be out on the paddle court.

Speaker 1:31:44 [laughs]

Jay Shetty 1:31:44 And I was just, like, dying to... Have you ever played paddle tennis? Okay, it's amazing.

Speaker 1:31:48 [laughs]

Jay Shetty 1:31:48 It's, it's... I, I am the biggest advocate of this sport.

Speaker 1:31:51 Paddle tennis. [laughs]

Jay Shetty 1:31:51 I've introduced many. It, but, but play is just such a big value for me now.

Speaker 1:31:56 It's... Yeah.

Jay Shetty 1:31:56 And even when I'm with friends I'm like, "What can we do that's playful?"

Speaker 1:31:58 That's playful.

Jay Shetty 1:31:59 Like, we've been-

Speaker 1:32:00 Archery

Jay Shetty 1:32:00 ... I've been doing crazy things with friends like archery and, like-

Speaker 1:32:03 So sick

Jay Shetty 1:32:03 ... painting lessons and whatever it is-

Speaker 1:32:05 Yeah

Jay Shetty 1:32:05 ... because I just wanna play.

Speaker 1:32:06 You just wanna play. And it-

Jay Shetty 1:32:07 Yeah

Speaker 1:32:07 ... it, it, it's It's where we create new passions.

Jay Shetty 1:32:10 Yes.

Speaker 1:32:10 Play is where we create new passions.

Jay Shetty 1:32:12 Oh, I like that.

Speaker 1:32:12 So also boredom. I, I always am like, "Boredom is so valuable," especially now with our phones.

Jay Shetty 1:32:17 Mm-hmm.

Speaker 1:32:18 And, like, a- all of this instant gratification, and we've heard a million times, and it's all known now. But, like, for real though, like, I can't even drive without being like-

Jay Shetty 1:32:25 [laughs]

Speaker 1:32:26 ... "Don't text and drive, but look at all these billboards."

Jay Shetty 1:32:28 Yeah.

Speaker 1:32:29 You know, it's weird. I'm just like, they're telling... And it's just all of this is t- trying... Everything is trying to get your attention. Everything is trying to get your attention, like, to the T.

Jay Shetty 1:32:38 Mm-hmm.

Speaker 1:32:38 And so I'm like, "Okay, how do I work against this?" And it's only gonna get probably more intense, I would assume so. Um, so that's like... Literally, I'll say it again, that's why I got a dog. That's, like-

Jay Shetty 1:32:50 [laughs]

Speaker 1:32:50 ... fully why I got a dog.

Jay Shetty 1:32:51 [laughs]

Speaker 1:32:52 'Cause I was like, "I need something that's..." I'm gonna get bad news on the phone and I'm like, " [inhales] Okay, bye." And then the dog's just like...

Jay Shetty 1:32:58 [laughs]

Speaker 1:32:59 You know? Okay, here. So you know how, like, in any, like, Disney, like, movie-

Jay Shetty 1:33:03 Yeah

Speaker 1:33:03 ... like, Pixar, whatever, there's always a sidekick.

Jay Shetty 1:33:06 Yes.

Speaker 1:33:07 Tangled, the chameleon. Like, there's a bunny in The Abominable Snowman.

Jay Shetty 1:33:10 Yeah.

Speaker 1:33:10 There is always, like, this really funny comical relief-

Jay Shetty 1:33:13 Olaf in Frozen.

Speaker 1:33:15 Olaf.

Jay Shetty 1:33:15 Yeah.

Speaker 1:33:16 Spirit animal. Um-

Jay Shetty 1:33:18 Yeah.

Speaker 1:33:18 I was like, "I need to... I want a sidekick."

Jay Shetty 1:33:21 [laughs]

Speaker 1:33:21 Like, I want that idiot that's just, like, running and hitting a wall while I'm trying to, like, do business. Like, I can... We need that.

Jay Shetty 1:33:27 That's so cool.

Speaker 1:33:28 Like, we need that. Yeah, so, like, movies are so powerful in the way that they, like, kind of, they give us characters-

Jay Shetty 1:33:33 Mm-hmm, mm-hmm

Speaker 1:33:33 ... to, like, replicate. And so I've almost, like, whenever I watch a movie I'm just like, "I like that character. Like, that character's really cool."

Jay Shetty 1:33:38 Mm-hmm.

Speaker 1:33:38 Like, one of the shows that I actually, like, loved growing up with was Entourage. [laughs]

Jay Shetty 1:33:43 Yeah. Okay, I've got a funny story to tell you about Entourage.

Speaker 1:33:45 Oh, my God.

Jay Shetty 1:33:46 So I was a monk when Entourage was famous, so I never watched it, so I didn't know what it was. So my wife just made me watch Entourage. So we literally just finished it. It's one of the best shows ever.

Speaker 1:33:55 It's so good.

Jay Shetty 1:33:55 It's amazing, yeah.

Speaker 1:33:56 Yo, they're just vibing.

Jay Shetty 1:33:57 I would watch it a- I c- I would watch it again.

Speaker 1:33:59 [laughs]

Jay Shetty 1:33:59 I loved it. I literally just watched it this year, so.

Speaker 1:34:02 Exactly. And so it's like you have, like, the characters around you that are just like-

Jay Shetty 1:34:05 Yeah

Speaker 1:34:05 ... they're, they're so needed-

Jay Shetty 1:34:07 Yeah

Speaker 1:34:07 ... and you don't know why, but they're so needed. Like, they're so important to the story.

Jay Shetty 1:34:11 Yeah.

Speaker 1:34:11 And that's how I look at all of my friends. I'm like, "You guys are so..." Like, j- creating your, your, your, your show, like, is like-

Jay Shetty 1:34:18 Yeah

Speaker 1:34:18 ... and in a healthy way, of course.

Jay Shetty 1:34:20 Yeah.

Speaker 1:34:20 Because but it's taught me a lot. Like, as much as Hollywood is very, um, toxic and, and, and dangerous in ways, but it's also a great way to get to understand how you want your life show to go.

Jay Shetty 1:34:32 Mm-hmm.

Speaker 1:34:32 Like, it's just like I can find parts of myself in different... Like, uh, have you watched Dave yet?

Jay Shetty 1:34:39 No.

Speaker 1:34:40 With Dax. Yeah.

Jay Shetty 1:34:40 Oh, no, no, I have watched D- I watched the first season, not the second yet.

Speaker 1:34:42 Geta?

Jay Shetty 1:34:42 Yeah.

Speaker 1:34:43 I need a Geta-

Jay Shetty 1:34:43 Yes

Speaker 1:34:43 ... in my life.

Jay Shetty 1:34:43 Yeah. [laughs]

Speaker 1:34:44 Like, he's so funny. I was just like, he's-

Jay Shetty 1:34:46 Yeah

Speaker 1:34:46 ... he's just like, he's there, always making jokes, always there, always holding it together, always holding strong. Like, you need that per- and sometimes it's you that's that person.

Jay Shetty 1:34:54 Mm-hmm.

Speaker 1:34:54 But I always... That really helps me just, like, understand the, the, the thing I'm doing.

Jay Shetty 1:34:58 Yeah.

Speaker 1:34:58 So.

Jay Shetty 1:34:59 It sounds like everyone needs to revisit their childhood or remember and, and write a memoir. Even if it's not a memoir that gets published and goes out to the world, it almost feels like reflecting's really important. What, what helped you? Were you speaking to friends from back then, or were you speaking to your... You know, who, who are you connecting with to, to reignite some of those memories?

Speaker 1:35:20 Oh, everyone in the memories. [laughs] You know?

Jay Shetty 1:35:23 Yeah.

Speaker 1:35:23 I called my mom, my brother, um, my cousins who I grew up with, friends from the time. I corroborated the stories, because memory's a weird thing, you know? I remember it a certain way, somebody else remembers it a certain way.

Jay Shetty 1:35:35 [laughs]

Speaker 1:35:36 And there was this one story I remember. I was kicked out of MoMA for touching a painting when I was 15, 16 or something.

Jay Shetty 1:35:43 [laughs]

Speaker 1:35:44 And I remember that day being wonderful, 'cause we went to the Statue of Liberty after and, like, you know, um, we, we got hot dogs and we were walking around New York City. And I remember it being like, "Oh, I touched, you know, a painting. That's so cool that I touched..." I think it was The Starry Night. And [laughs] -

Jay Shetty 1:36:05 [laughs]

Speaker 1:36:05 ... my cousins who were with me remember the day completely differently. They were tortured, embarrassed. My cousin who's an art student, she was like, "You got me kicked out of MoMA." And, like, I was like, "Wow, I didn't remember that at all." [laughs]

Jay Shetty 1:36:20 [laughs] Well, was... [laughs] That's brilliant. Was that your, was that your rebellious side or was that a mistake?

Speaker 1:36:28 Neither.

Jay Shetty 1:36:28 Or was it cur-

Speaker 1:36:29 I was just curious. [laughs]

Jay Shetty 1:36:30 Curious, yeah. [laughs]

Speaker 1:36:31 I just, I feel like rules sometimes... And trust me, I mean, I'm in a public profession, I have to follow them. But, um, you know, sometimes we conform to rules that just sort of stop our ability to grow. And-

Jay Shetty 1:36:48 Yeah

Speaker 1:36:48 ... unless it's, like, hurting someone or something, which by touching Starry Night I probably was hurting the painting. [laughs]

Jay Shetty 1:36:56 [laughs]

Speaker 1:36:56 Um, but at that time I didn't know. Um, but, but-

Jay Shetty 1:36:59 Well, the value of the paint- the value of the painting just went up. [laughs]

Speaker 1:37:02 [laughs]

Jay Shetty 1:37:02 It just went up.

Speaker 1:37:05 But, you know, like, o- otherwise I think, like, you've gotta sometimes, you have to push the envelope.

Jay Shetty 1:37:10 Yeah.

Speaker 1:37:10 There's been too many generations that have been defined by what people think, you know, we can achieve or, you know, limitations that have been imposed because of people not being able to think or dream big enough. Um, and I think it's every generation's responsibility to show the endless possibilities to the next.

Jay Shetty 1:37:31 Yeah, you've definitely done that. I mean, you're, you're constantly breaking rules in, in your career and your journey, starting from touching that painting at MoMA all the way through today. But te- was that, was that an energy and a mindset that you believe you had at that young age, or is that something you think you gradually developed? Where did that confidence come from? Because when I hear you say it today, it comes with confidence, obviously, it comes with having done it. And I think there are a lot of people out there who may feel that way, but they then also feel insecure that, are they the right person to do that? Do they have permission to do that? There's, there's something that then still holds them back. What was it for you that allowed you to go all the way?

Speaker 1:38:14 Well, two things. Um, my parents for sure. I grew up in an environment where I was not shamed for my ideas.

Jay Shetty 1:38:21 Mm.

Speaker 1:38:21 Um, at 12 years old, I told my parents I wanted to live in America with my aunt and, you know, my parents were like, "Bye, peace," you know?

Jay Shetty 1:38:27 [laughs]

Speaker 1:38:27 It was fine. We had a logical pro and con conversation. I was raised sort of to have opinions even if-

Jay Shetty 1:38:34 Mm

Speaker 1:38:34 ... the room was hostile. Um, so I think that really gave me a sense of self, and I think it's really important in parenting for us to treat our children like they're developing their own minds, because that's so important for them to have a sense of self and feel like, you know, they're not robots, that they're actually thinking and they have a say in their decisions. It really l- lends for adults being able to have a sense of confidence. And second, to really understand and accept that confidence is not something you always need. You don't, you know? So put it in a backpack. It's okay. Give it a break. Let it be in your purse. Let it be in your wallet. Let it chill for a second. Feel insecure. Feel, like, scared. Feel afraid. Feel vulnerable. Um, but when you need the confidence and you walk into that room, you'll have it, 'cause you didn't-

Jay Shetty 1:39:27 Mm

Speaker 1:39:27 ... keep using it. You didn't need to constantly have a, you know, cover of or, um, sort of like a uniform of confidence. You don't have to always show confidence. You don't have to exude confidence. You never, you don't. You just have to pull it out when you need it. And then when it's in the reserve, it's so much more powerful because you're allowing yourself to be all the things. I feel insecure. I'm terrified that this book is coming out.

Jay Shetty 1:39:51 [laughs]

Speaker 1:39:52 It's the first time I've ever written, and I've never been so personal in my whole life.

Jay Shetty 1:39:57 Yeah.

Speaker 1:39:57 I've been a public person for 20 years. Never scratched beneath the surface. I've gotten away with sharing whatever I wanted to share about my life and not more, you know?

Jay Shetty 1:40:07 Yeah.

Speaker 1:40:07 My story is, people think they know it, but they really don't. [laughs]

Jay Shetty 1:40:12 Yeah.

Speaker 1:40:12 And I've managed that for 20 years. But I think I, now on the other side of 35, was feeling a sense of confidence, um, and a sense of self in my capabilities, in what I bring to the table. It only took 20 years for me to get there, but I got there. Um, and I think all those insecurities that I address in my book don't scare me that much anymore, as they did at that time, as-

Jay Shetty 1:40:37 Yeah

Speaker 1:40:38 ... you know, they worried me, and I was like, "I don't wanna talk about it. Nobody needs to know about my life," and you know? But now I'm at a place where I'm just like, well, it's still on my terms and, um, you know, I'm hoping that people maybe get to know me a little bit more than a fashion meme or a headline or something like that. [laughs]

Jay Shetty 1:40:57 Yeah. I, I think that's what I love about it. From the few pages that I've, I've flicked through, I definitely see you allowing yourself. And that's, that's the power of a book, though. And so I r- I relate to that insecurity. My first book came out last September.

Speaker 1:41:10 I know.

Jay Shetty 1:41:11 And, and-

Speaker 1:41:11 We know your first book

Jay Shetty 1:41:13 ... I was so-

Speaker 1:41:14 I have it.

Jay Shetty 1:41:15 I was so... Oh, that's awesome. I'm so glad you have it. I was, I was so nervous. So I can, I know, I know what you mean by that, and especially for you at this stage in your career of, yours is a memoir. Mine had part stories. It wasn't a memoir. So I can only imagine, but I see you-

Speaker 1:41:30 Terrifying

Jay Shetty 1:41:30 ... doing that, and, and books are so powerful for that. And that's why I really hope everyone who's listening and watching right now, if you're enjoying this conversation, go and pick up the book, because I do think that media, the news, the, the short meme, the clip, it portrays such a limited view of, of someone like yourself. And-

Speaker 1:41:51 It's a superficial view, really.

Jay Shetty 1:41:53 Yes.

Speaker 1:41:54 And you... And it's okay. It's a choice also. I-

Jay Shetty 1:41:58 Yes

Speaker 1:41:58 ... I want to, for people to consume only a part of me, you know?

Jay Shetty 1:42:02 Yeah.

Speaker 1:42:02 I want to be able to preserve my humanity, my family, my life, my opinions. I may have chosen a public profession, but I'm not an elected official. I don't owe-

Jay Shetty 1:42:14 Yeah

Speaker 1:42:14 ... an explanation to anyone for the choices that I make, you know?

Jay Shetty 1:42:18 Mm.

Speaker 1:42:18 I'm here to create work. I'm, I'm doing a job just like everybody else. Mine happens to be in entertainment, and it happens to have a lot of cameras on my face. It's fine. You know, I made a, I made that deal with the devil. So I've, I've kind of made peace with the fact that I, I prefer it being from a distance. Um-

Jay Shetty 1:42:36 Mm

Speaker 1:42:36 ... but at the same time, I think now I've been a public person for more than half my life. It's my normal. And only now have I reached a point where I'm allowing the walls to sort of fall down and letting whoever wants to know me get to know me as the person that I am. Before that, I was very protective of who I was, 'cause maybe I was insecure about who I was, or I was, I still-

Jay Shetty 1:43:04 Mm

Speaker 1:43:04 ... didn't have a sense of self. I don't know. But I think-

Jay Shetty 1:43:06 Yeah

Speaker 1:43:06 ... in the journey of life, I've reached a place where, you know, I'm, I'm good with who I am. [laughs]

Jay Shetty 1:43:12 Yeah.

Speaker 1:43:12 So... [laughs]

Jay Shetty 1:43:13 What, what's... That's wonderful to hear, by the way, and, and, and I can feel it off your energy. What's the part of yourself in this book that you share that you think most people are going to be surprised by? Where you think that people may just be like, "What?" Like, and I'm sure there's many, but, but what's something that stands out?

Speaker 1:43:29 Um, [laughs] it's, th- there, there are a few, um, which I think people may be surprised by that I was vulnerable enough to discuss. Um, and, um, I think my, my failures, my struggles, rejections, um, sadnesses that, um, I've never really, people have never seen. I always wear a brave front. Most women in, like, you know, tough jobs have to-

Jay Shetty 1:44:02 Yeah

Speaker 1:44:02 ... always have, like, a little bit more of a stronger front, um, to be taken seriously. I built that very early, um, at 18, to be thrown into the limelight of this job. I mean- You know it. You've been in it for a long time. You know, it's, it's a crazy profession, the expectations, the pressure. Um, you know, to deliver under that scrutiny, um, to be artistic, to yet have a point of view, to be unique, not, you know, have your own trajectory because that's the only way it'll work. Um, you know, nobody wants me too's in the entertainment business. You want new kind of, you know, you, you have to always have a sense of evolution. So it was really, really scary in, in the beginning. And, um, I think everything just changes with time, and this was one of the good changes that came out of it for me.

Jay Shetty 1:44:52 Yeah, no, absolutely. And, and I'm hoping that... I, I wonder, do you think that's changing now if someone's coming into the e- entertainment industry today at 18, or do you think it hasn't changed? Where's your perception on that when you're guiding young artists or seeing people that you follow on social media or, you know, whatever it may be? Are, are you feeling it's changing? Has it improved or, or no?

Speaker 1:45:14 The pressure, you mean?

Jay Shetty 1:45:16 Uh, not the pressure, more the, like you were saying, like you, when you came into the industry, you had to put on a brave front. You had to wear that face. It was the only way to survive. Do you feel it's the same now for young talent as well?

Speaker 1:45:29 Um, I, I think, well, I was talking about definitely as a female in, in the entertainment business.

Jay Shetty 1:45:35 Yes, yes, as a female.

Speaker 1:45:35 Oh, as a female, okay.

Jay Shetty 1:45:36 Yes.

Speaker 1:45:36 Um, I think so. I think, um, you know, um, it, it's still hard when you're starting out for women to be taken seriously, for your ideas to be given the kind of credence that, um, a man's would as quickly probably, you know?

Jay Shetty 1:45:53 Mm-hmm.

Speaker 1:45:54 Um, especially in professions where you d- you know, normally you don't see women because, you know, women have never been pushed in that direction-

Jay Shetty 1:46:02 Mm

Speaker 1:46:02 ... or women have never wanted to go in that direction because it was never normalized for them, that their ambitions could go in that direction, business, politics, um, you know, to be heads of companies, um, engineering, like, you know, coding, um, policymaking, like stuff like that, lawyers. Women have just about in the last few generations been coming to the fore and, you know, are standing neck to neck with guys. But it's still a- an anomaly. It's still not as normal in terms of numbers. It's still not equal. So until that happens, I think it'll, will be hard for, um, you know, young girls to be taken, taken seriously when they come into professions that are predominantly male. Um-

Jay Shetty 1:46:45 Yeah

Speaker 1:46:45 ... but it's okay. Um, you know, women before us have fought the fight, and women after us will fight the fight. It'll just hopefully not be the same fight.

Jay Shetty 1:46:54 Mm.

Speaker 1:46:55 Hopefully our generation will not let our kids inherit our problems, you know? Um, as women, um, we are definitely working in that direction, but I think as the world needs to sit up and take notice that this demand is loud because it's a requirement. This demand is loud because that's what's right, and that is the reflection of the world. Women are 50% of it, and we should be reflected in, um, you know, every area. And basically feminism is that, right? Like, don't decide for me what I should be doing, when I should be doing it, and how I should be doing it.

Jay Shetty 1:47:35 Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 1:47:35 Just like men have had that freedom, give me that as well.

Jay Shetty 1:47:38 Yeah.

Speaker 1:47:39 So I guess it's that. [laughs]

Jay Shetty 1:47:41 It's a strong message.

Speaker 1:47:42 Sorry, we deviated completely.

Jay Shetty 1:47:43 No, no, no, you're not deviating at all. It's a strong message, and I stand by it. So it's, uh, it's a great message. And, and it, it's really interesting where male privilege is a really interesting thing to reflect on. I remember when I first started reflecting on it, it was a pro- even really a few years back, and I feel very much I was raised by my mom, and I have a younger sister, so I'm very close to the women in my life. But it, it started to strike me in a crazy way that I grew up having had certain dreams of becoming something that my sister couldn't have had. And, and that wasn't because of the way we were parented. It was because of what you saw. And, and when that really hit me and I stood and looked at that, and I often encourage a lot of my friends in that direction too, I'm like, "If you really think about," if they have a son and a daughter, I'm like, "if you really think about some of the options that don't seem available to your daughter that she may never consider a career," and I really think that that consideration is where the equality is. Like, the opportunity of even having that idea of I could do that-

Speaker 1:48:46 Exactly, the opportunity of, of having choice, I think.

Jay Shetty 1:48:50 Yes.

Speaker 1:48:50 You know, a lot of women-

Jay Shetty 1:48:52 Yeah

Speaker 1:48:52 ... we are so, I'm, I am extremely privileged that I was raised by a feminist. I'm married to a feminist. Um, I'm extremely privileged that my parents, which is why I brought up parenting, um, earlier.

Jay Shetty 1:49:05 Yeah.

Speaker 1:49:06 A big reason I have a sense of confidence and I c- I'm on this side, this side of the fight because, um, it's not as hard as it is on so many women around the world. I still had to fight. Of course I had to break down the doors, and I had to, you know, prove a point to be taken seriously. I was kicked out of movies and replaced and, you know, all the things. But I still had it so much easier. There are women around the world that don't have a say in their life, that are married off when, you know, other people decide that, people choose who they are married to, whether they can work or not, when they should have children, what kind of children they should have. And that doesn't mean giving up culture. That doesn't mean giving up tradition, you know? It just means creating opportunity. My father told me when I was very, very young, my mom since I was nine years old, "You will have financial independence before anything you do. It doesn't matter whose daughter you are. It doesn't matter, um, you know, who you're marrying, married to. You'll stand on your own feet." And there's such a power to that, um, to having, you know, to be raised by parents who put that in my head. So I was ambitious from 12 years old. I decided every year what I wanted to be, and it changed every year. [laughs]

Jay Shetty 1:50:19 I, I, I love hearing that, and I've... I- it reminded me of something you've said before when you were speaking about your father there, about how, uh, Nick, for you, shares this same admiration of your power and, and your ambition, and, and feels, you know, supportive and excited and enthusiastic about the way you carry yourself. Tell us a bit about how... I, I feel like that's such an important thing for both of anyone in a relationship to feel like their partner is inspired by their values, their beliefs, and their dreams. What has it felt like in the past where you feel like you haven't had that? And if someone who's listening or watching is feeling like, "Maybe I don't have that," how does... how, how do you think someone can navigate that or to ultimately attract the partner that, that does have that? What's that journey like? Because I think a lot of people feel like they're with someone who may not understand or get their dreams, especially when they're starting out.

Speaker 1:51:19 Then it's the wrong person for you, and if you have the, um... Especially if you're starting out, and, you know, you're testing the waters, and I think it's so crucial if you have a choice in your life to end up with someone who is not, like, enthused by your dreams, is at least interested in them-

Jay Shetty 1:51:42 Mm

Speaker 1:51:42 ... is at least excited about them or-

Jay Shetty 1:51:46 Mm

Speaker 1:51:46 ... you know, uh, is at least, um, encouraging. Like, that's, that's exciting. Um, because, you know, everyone's busy, and everyone has a thing in their lives. B- but to take, to make the effort to, um, to make the effort to make you feel like your dreams are as important as the other one is such a gift. And, um, I have been very blessed to have that.

Jay Shetty 1:52:11 You know, I find wherever you are in your relationship, obviously you and Nick lead extremely busy r- lives. Uh, you know, my wife and I lead busy lives, and I feel even if someone's not in the entertainment industry or the media industry, everyone feels like they live busy lives. What does support look like when two people are busy, driven, and ambitious? Because you obviously have it. You're speaking about it right now, and it's beautiful. What does that actually look like in a real practical sense? Obviously, the last six months or the last 12 months have been different. But in reality, what does that look like? Because I feel that maybe sometimes we have false expectations. Sometimes you want... You know, it's not natural that you can be at every show Nick does. It's not natural for him to be at every set you're doing. Same with me and my wife. Like, my wife can't be at every event I'm speaking at. I can't be at every, uh, interview or something she's doing. What does support look like? What does love look like in a very real, practical sense?

Speaker 1:53:08 I think when it comes to s- support specifically, I think giving the other person the space, um, to do what they're doing is very important without, you know, them feeling like, oh, my... Like, for example, I'm here in London for a year right now, and Nick is filming in LA. Um, and I can't travel. But before the holidays, he made sure he was here for two months to settle me in, you know, um, to make sure that the house was all set up and everything was sorted, and we were together for the holidays. That's because he was free, um, at the end of the month. And that support, um, you know, it, it doesn't have to be large. It doesn't have to be, uh, um, you know, a big expression of, I don't know, love and, or big gifts. It's not. It's, it's about giving space. It's about giving freedom. It's about appreciation. And I find this one thing really helpful. Um, I always think about when, you know, he's busy or he's having a crazy day, which I, he does for me as well, which is amazing, and everyone can follow this, and it's super easy.

Jay Shetty 1:54:18 [laughs]

Speaker 1:54:19 Um, is to think about, "How can I make that person's day easier?"

Jay Shetty 1:54:24 Mm.

Speaker 1:54:24 Just like... And that's such a lovely, loving thing. Just sometimes I'm, you know, back to back, especially when I was doing promo. I was doing, like, 20 interviews, and suddenly there'd be, like, a really nice cocktail that would come in in the evening, or suddenly there'd be a really nice, like, cup of coffee or, you know, something to eat for me that would come in, and it's just, like, so sweet to think about that. Or if I'm sitting outside, you know, he'll bring a blanket and put it. It's just being thoughtful and aware about-

Jay Shetty 1:54:52 Mm

Speaker 1:54:52 ... your person and, you know, that's the greatest form of love, is showing it without really asking for it.

Jay Shetty 1:55:00 Yeah, that's such a great piece of advice. I love that. To be... You, you said to be thoughtfully aware, and I think that's, that's so true. And, and the beautiful thing about everything you just said is that it's, it's free, it's cheap, it's small, it's simple as in it's, it's accessible to everyone.

Speaker 1:55:15 And it's the best gift.

Jay Shetty 1:55:16 Yeah, and it's the best gift.

Speaker 1:55:17 It's the best gift.

Jay Shetty 1:55:18 Yeah. When, when you feel like someone's in tune with you and, and your emotions and how you feel, how you might be tired or how you might be sleepy or how you might be cold, like, those small things when you feel someone's aware. And, and I love that piece of advice. I think it's something that everyone's definitely learned more about in the pandemic where, where we're exposed to each other. Tell, tell me a bit about the, the title Unfinished because I... Obviously, it leads to your determined, ambitious voice. But what other parts of your growth, uh, maybe internally, personally, do you feel you're unfinished on or working on?

Speaker 1:55:58 I mean, so much. I've just about, you know, I'm in my 30s, and this decade has been amazing because, um, I've just, you know, found my strengths, I think, as a woman. And, um, what I'm looking forward to going forward is I'm very nascent in my career in America right now. It's just been five years since I've started working here. I just about have done my first, you know, leading feature film. I've just about done my first dramatic part here. Um, I wanna be able to build, you know- The kind of career that I had the good fortune of building in another amazing industry, um, in India. I've done such a variety of roles there, worked with the best filmmakers, best actors. I want to be able to have that experience here so that I'm, I'm... Like, my artistic side now that I've started on this journey in this part of the world is piqued to, to be able to do that as well. As a producer, I want to be able to create, um, a lot more South Asian content in Hollywood. I just-

Jay Shetty 1:57:06 Mm

Speaker 1:57:07 ... I didn't see enough parts for myself. I didn't see enough of it on TV. And considering, um, how large the South Asian population is in, around the world, and how English-speaking we are, you know, English language entertainment should be reflecting that. So I want to be able to tell stories, um, in India as well and as here. Um, I want to build as an entrepreneur. It's something I didn't do, um, you know, up, up until now 'cause I was building my acting career so much. So, you know, founding my own brand, um, investing in tech. I find that really fascinating. Um, my philanthropy, I want to be able to set up my foundation really well. Um, my work with UNICEF. Um, I've just about moved into our new house, um, after almost 10 to 15 years of living in rentals or hotel rooms, you know? 'Cause I always just kept moving. I was so nomadic. Um, I'm looking forward to, you know, watching the trees grow in my garden. [laughs]

Jay Shetty 1:58:11 [laughs] I love that. Watch, watching trees grow is great. I love that.

Speaker 1:58:16 [laughs]

Jay Shetty 1:58:16 You're, you're... [laughs] That's brilliant. I, hearing you, hearing you say that, uh, I, I love hearing you talk about the South Asian storytelling. Like, obviously that, that relates very s- strongly to me and my roots growing up in London as well, where I think we have an incredibly strong South Asian community where you are right now, where I was born and raised. And I definitely felt this, yeah, lack of, lack of representation, lack of the ability to, to dream-

Speaker 1:58:46 Lack of opportunity

Jay Shetty 1:58:47 ... lack of opportunity to dream in a certain way. And, you know, my, my career has been totally random, but it's... And, and, you know, I'm doing something today that I would never have imagined even knowing it existed.

Speaker 1:58:58 But see, even that, you and I, two South Asians sitting [laughs] in these boxes and talking about the fact that the careers that we are thriving in, that we have worked so hard to make, was never in our minds, was never a possibility. But I would have never dreamed about it, 'cause it wasn't in my realm of dreaming. But that's not how it should be-

Jay Shetty 1:59:22 Mm-hmm

Speaker 1:59:22 ... considering the hu- we're one fifth of the world's popula- we're huge. We're everywhere, okay? And I think, and it, it shouldn't be so hard for me to, you know, come into an industry and say, "I want an opportunity," and for people to be like, "Oh, well, we're gonna have to create that now, won't we?" [laughs]

Jay Shetty 1:59:40 [laughs]

Speaker 1:59:41 Like, what? We've existed for a really long time. [laughs]

Jay Shetty 1:59:45 [laughs]

Speaker 1:59:45 You know? It's the irony of it is so amusing, but sad at the same time.

Jay Shetty 1:59:51 Yeah. No, that resonates very strongly with me because I didn't even know any careers existed. And, and, and I, when I say this, I, I don't say it lightly. I genuinely didn't believe careers existed out, uh, o- outside of medicine, uh, engineering, and business. Like, I didn't really know-

Speaker 2:00:11 Me neither

Jay Shetty 2:00:11 ... I didn't know that you could have a successful career in anything else. Uh, and it-

Speaker 2:00:17 Me neither. At 17-

Jay Shetty 2:00:18 Yeah

Speaker 2:00:18 ... when I was... It was a fluke why I got, got into the Miss India pageant, and that kind of kickstarted everything for me.

Jay Shetty 2:00:27 Mm.

Speaker 2:00:27 But I wanted to be an engineer, because those were the options-

Jay Shetty 2:00:30 Yeah

Speaker 2:00:31 ... doctor, engineer, and lawyer.

Jay Shetty 2:00:33 Yeah.

Speaker 2:00:33 And, you know, if you come from an academic family-

Jay Shetty 2:00:35 Or failure

Speaker 2:00:35 ... of, or failure. [laughs]

Jay Shetty 2:00:37 Yeah.

Speaker 2:00:37 Um, if you come from an academic family or... You know, our, our parents are immigrants. And our parents, like my parents even in India, were, you know, building their businesses for the first time. It wasn't inherited from them, so they also were surviving. And I think it's that survival instinct that sort of pushed them to put the aspirations that they knew best-

Jay Shetty 2:00:58 Mm

Speaker 2:00:58 ... you know, on their kids. Like-

Jay Shetty 2:01:00 Yeah

Speaker 2:01:00 ... th- this is the best job. You'll always make money. You will be stable.

Jay Shetty 2:01:04 Yes.

Speaker 2:01:04 You know? But also, the internet sort of changed our, um, I think our generation.

Jay Shetty 2:01:11 Of course.

Speaker 2:01:11 The, the fact that the internet made the world such a small place, which is another big reason why we should see so much more representation, is because we're catering to the whole world now.

Jay Shetty 2:01:21 [laughs]

Jay Shetty 2:01:22 What was different about your ability to break out? And, and I'm not saying, and I, you know, you're not an egotistic person. I'm not asking you to be egotistic. I'm asking you to share lessons. What was different in that you were able to break out and do something that now you're more aligned with who you want to be as the future moves on versus the people that don't make that step? What is the difference?

Speaker 2:01:44 I think it was abandoning any connection to practicality and really living in faith. You know, it really tested my faith. It, it, becau- the, the reason I was able to do it is because, and this is with Julie's help, was because I embraced the fact that it was a spiritual journey fundamentally. So yes, I left being a lawyer and I became this ultra-endurance athlete and author and podcaster, but it wasn't because when I was a lawyer I got out my whiteboard and created, uh, a wish list or, you know, basically tried to, you know, create this is my dream scenario for my life. I just started engaging in what I felt was more aligned with my unique blueprint.

Jay Shetty 2:02:25 Mm.

Speaker 2:02:25 And with that, I would start pulling on the threads that would appear every day, and I was tested. It was very difficult. We went through incredible financial dismantling. Like, I was tested in every regard you can imagine. Um, people saying I was crazy, all of it, right? Um, but by having faith and trusting In that sense of what was right for myself. And, and learning to, um, listen to and rely on that instinctual voice, uh, I think taught me a lot about who I am, and also about resolve. And ultimately, I think that's why I was able to see it through. So if you look on the internet, it kind of looks like it all happened like this, like overnight I just made this decision and became this other thing. This is, this was like... I mean, I've been doing this for, you know, 15 years at this point, and I got sober at 31. It really began when I went to rehab at age 31 and started to reconfigure my life based on spiritual principles, and here I am, 22, 23 years later, still learning, still growing, still making mistakes.

Jay Shetty 2:03:30 Mm.

Speaker 2:03:30 So it's very much not an overnight thing, and it's all a spiritual journey.

Jay Shetty 2:03:34 Mm. And what is your faith in at that time? Because it's almost like most people when they're in that transition, it's like you don't really have faith in yourself or you may not have faith in your skills. Like, is your faith in the belief that doing the right thing is the right thing either way, or is your faith in the fact that you have your wife who's supportive? Like, what is that faith in? Because I feel like that's the hardest thing for people, and I can only speak for myself, that I knew that my faith was in the guidance of my teachers-

Speaker 2:03:59 Mm-hmm

Jay Shetty 2:03:59 ... my faith was in the books that I'd read and the philosophy I believed in, and my faith was in... There's a beautiful, beautiful verse in a text called the Manu Smriti which says that if you protect your purpose, your purpose protects you.

Speaker 2:04:11 Right.

Jay Shetty 2:04:12 And that was what my faith was in, was that statement, and I was like, "I'm gonna test that statement to its limits."

Speaker 2:04:19 But that statement requires that you understand what your purpose is.

Jay Shetty 2:04:22 Correct. Yes, absolutely.

Speaker 2:04:23 And I very much did not know what my purpose was.

Jay Shetty 2:04:25 That's what I'm saying. So what was your faith in?

Speaker 2:04:26 So, well, first of all, I will say that I was on a, I was on a journey to discover what that purpose was.

Jay Shetty 2:04:33 Mm.

Speaker 2:04:33 And I had a fundamental belief that, that I did have a pur- that there is or was a purpose for me to discover.

Jay Shetty 2:04:39 Mm-hmm.

Speaker 2:04:40 And I used endurance training as a vehicle for that process of self-discovery, because there's something about being out on a trail for hours and hours and hours, or on an eight-hour bike ride. You're stripped of all artifice, and the kind of low-grade suffering that you experience forces you to confront yourself in a very honest way, right? And you meet yourself in a place that you're not used to, and there's a lack of, of artificiality and artifice in that place, where you can be really honest. Like, you're, you're, you're wrestling with your soul at the most profound level, I think, and, and that's what attracted me to this world. Um, and that's what helped me answer all of these questions, getting comfortable in that crucible. But if I had to say what is the philos- philosophical belief that kind of underpins that, I would say that we are here to grow and we are here to on a journey of greater self-actualization. And the closer we can approximate that place of self-actualization, the better position we are in to express our unique blueprint and purpose-

Jay Shetty 2:05:45 Mm

Speaker 2:05:45 ... in service to other human beings.

Jay Shetty 2:05:47 Mm.

Speaker 2:05:47 Right? And for me, it's been a process of trying to uncover what that is for me, and then ultimately bring greater expression to that for the betterment of other people.

Jay Shetty 2:05:56 What does it feel like right now that it is for you compared to when you first started on this path? Where's the evolution of that?

Speaker 2:06:04 Yeah. Well, it's interesting, because for a long time it was like, "Oh, you're the vegan ultra-endurance athlete guy." And it's like, yeah, I am, and I did those things. Um, but that's just one expression of who I am.

Jay Shetty 2:06:15 Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Speaker 2:06:16 And the podcast, you know, much like your show, has been about trying to continue that growth, and to understand that, that I was able to do those things in the endurance world, um, because I understood that we are all sitting on top of gigantic reservoirs of human potential that remain untapped. And I was able to tap into that aspect of myself in an athletic context and express that, but there are all these other areas of untapped potential in my life and in my friends', people that I meet, their, everybody's life, right? And I wanted to continue that growth curve and that learning process of, of tapping into those other areas, spiritually, mentally, emotionally, intellectually, um, socially. Every aspect of what it means to be as self-actualized as we possibly can.

Jay Shetty 2:07:03 And what do we do? That, you've, you've mentioned that a few times now. Like, you know, it's interesting that when you achieve something, your identity becomes crafted around it.

Speaker 2:07:11 Mm-hmm.

Jay Shetty 2:07:11 So it's almost like, "You're the healthy vegan dude," and you know, like you did-

Speaker 2:07:13 Right

Jay Shetty 2:07:14 ... like, and, and then, and I can see that there's a part of you that almost, there's a part of you that's like, "But that's not all of me, and, and I'm more than that."

Speaker 2:07:23 Yeah, I don't want to be defined by that marker.

Jay Shetty 2:07:25 Correct. So how do you process that? Because I think a lot of people struggle with that, whether it's their past failures or their past successes that start to define everything about who they attract in their life, who they spend time with, what opportunities-

Speaker 2:07:38 Mm

Jay Shetty 2:07:38 ... that come their way. I mean, I'll give you an example of something that's coming to my mind right now, is when, uh, when we had Kobe Bryant on the show, and Kobe started to talk about how, like... And this, this was huge for me. He was saying basically no one believed that he could make TV or movies or media, because he was a basketball player.

Speaker 2:07:56 Mm-hmm.

Jay Shetty 2:07:57 They're like, "What do you know about this space?" And so when he was trying to sell these shows, no one wanted to buy them, and that's why he had to build his own studio, and that's where he was building the studio for Dear Basketball and he was writing these novels and these books that were then being turned into movies and TV shows and podcasts. So he, even someone like him was totally being pigeonholed and defined.

Speaker 2:08:15 Right.

Jay Shetty 2:08:15 How do you process that for yourself, and how do you help other people process anyone who feels limited by their past failures, but also limited by their past successes?

Speaker 2:08:25 Well, a couple things.

Jay Shetty 2:08:26 Yeah.

Speaker 2:08:27 First of all, um, that identity or whatever it is that's looming out there is just a story.

Jay Shetty 2:08:33 Mm.

Speaker 2:08:34 It's only as powerful, uh, as, as you allow it to be.

Jay Shetty 2:08:37 Mm.

Speaker 2:08:37 Right? You always have- ... control over that narrative or how strongly you wanna be reminded of a certain identity, you can always recraft that. You only have control over your own behaviors and your own thoughts and your own interactions with other human beings. You can't control how other people perceive you.

Jay Shetty 2:08:54 Mm-hmm.

Speaker 2:08:54 That's none of your business. So if you're unhappy with the story that's being told about you, all you can do is act in contravention of that. You can't control how other people perceive that, but you can control the story you tell yourself about who you are. So it's about becoming, you know, you, you hear the adage of, like, be the, be the movie star in your own movie of, the movie of your life, right? And understand that at any given moment you, that these stories are just, they're drawn out of thin air. They're, they're, they're, they're, they're not, they're not real.

Jay Shetty 2:09:24 Mm-hmm.

Speaker 2:09:24 This is a projection that comes from a collective imagination. So change the story if you don't like it, and if you don't like the story that other people are telling about you, you can mute that and just do your own thing. So when I didn't, you know, when I didn't wanna be pigeonholed as the vegan, you know, athlete, I just started a podcast and started talking about other stuff, you know?

Jay Shetty 2:09:45 Yeah.

Speaker 2:09:45 And then seven years later, that's still a thing, but, you know, I'm known for other things now.

Jay Shetty 2:09:50 Yeah.

Speaker 2:09:51 People will fall into line, you know, with what, with the, you know, based upon your behavior and your actions.

Jay Shetty 2:09:56 Yeah. With your identity the way it is right now, what are you most excited to not be known for, but be acknowledged for what you're doing, like, for yourself? Not from other people, not for the external validation, but what are you most excited about doing for yourself?

Speaker 2:10:12 Just continuing to learn, you know? I just, I wanna be a lifelong learner, and I think that that growth curve, you know, always exists [laughs] and there's always people out there that you can, uh, that you can take valid information and tools from to improve your life.

Jay Shetty 2:10:26 Mm-hmm.

Speaker 2:10:26 So I don't spend a lot of time thinking about how I wanna be perceived.

Jay Shetty 2:10:30 No, of course.

Speaker 2:10:31 Um, but I think that, uh... And, and people ask me all, like, "Oh, what's the, what's the vision? Where do you see yourself in five..." It's like, I don't think about that. Like-

Jay Shetty 2:10:38 Mm

Speaker 2:10:38 ... I'm so fulfilled in doing what I'm doing right now and the fact that I get to, um, be on this personal growth trajectory by having amazing conversations with incredible human beings, and then you get to share that with other people and it impacts them. I mean, I don't know about you, but I can't think of anything more, um, you know, more gratifying-

Jay Shetty 2:10:57 Yeah

Speaker 2:10:57 ... any, any kind of career trajectory that would be more gratifying than that. So I'm very grateful.

Jay Shetty 2:11:01 What's the most interesting thing you learned recently, whether it's a skill or a technique or a fact or a stat or some research that blew your mind or some experience-

Speaker 2:11:08 Mm

Jay Shetty 2:11:08 ... that just really changed the way you were thinking about something?

Speaker 2:11:11 I'd probably go back to Kamal Ravikant.

Jay Shetty 2:11:13 Okay.

Speaker 2:11:13 Like, him, him and his simple practices of learning how to love himself. Like, he went, he walked me through these experiences where he really hit rock bottom emotionally in a very, in, in, in a couple different ways throughout his life, and how these very basic, simple, easy-to-apply practices have transformed how he sees the world and experiences the world-

Jay Shetty 2:11:34 Mm

Speaker 2:11:34 ... I think is really profound because of its sheer simplicity and power.

Jay Shetty 2:11:39 Do you think, based on that what you just said now, humans only change through pain?

Speaker 2:11:44 I get that a lot. I mean, pain is, pain is, is, is the best motivator for change, obviously, and I think the biggest changes that I've made in my life have really been forged through pain.

Jay Shetty 2:11:54 Does that mean-

Speaker 2:11:54 You know, I'm stubborn. Like, I don't want, I'm not gonna change until, you know, my whole world is falling on top of me and then, oh yeah, okay, I guess I need to modify that.

Jay Shetty 2:12:03 Yeah.

Speaker 2:12:03 Um, but it is amazing how human beings are wired that way because the possibility of change exists in every moment, right? And yet we seem incapable or, or challenged in our ability to leverage that unless we're being pressured by some external force to do so.

Jay Shetty 2:12:22 Yeah. If someone's listening or watching right now but is feeling like they're a safety, secure, stability motivated individual, they're like, "Oh, that's just too much risk for me," it's like even the spiritual faith, everything you guys are talking about, like, that's just, you know, to live in that uncertainty, to live with that much faith, to, to push to that degree, what, what are your advice for them? Like, what would you say to that kind of-

Speaker 2:12:47 Well, I would say that security is an illusion.

Jay Shetty 2:12:49 Mm-hmm.

Speaker 2:12:49 I think people that are focused on security have control issues. They think that they can control the world outside of themselves and their own behavior, and I think that is a, a, a vast illusion, um, that is an epidemic in our culture. I think in every moment we have this sense of I'm good, things are static, like, I can just stay in this place. And the truth is, with every breath, with every thought that we entertain, with every word that comes out of our mouth, we're either growing as an individual or we are regressing.

Jay Shetty 2:13:19 Mm.

Speaker 2:13:19 That's the truth, right? And there is no security. Everything is a risk. We're here for a very short period of time. So my call to action to everybody is don't wait until you find yourself in some existential crisis because you've been living your life based upon some, you know, social rule book that doesn't fit your own blueprint. Instead, embrace what is uniquely you and have the courage and the fortitude and the faith to try to bring expression to that. It may be scary, and it might contravene what your parents want for you, and it might seem risky, but ultimately I think the riskiest thing to do is to play it safe and live your life in accordance with, you know, somebody else's expectations of what you should do and be.

Jay Shetty 2:14:03 Mm.

Jay Shetty 2:14:03 How did you know that you'd found something about yourself that was uniquely you? Like, you've said that a few times now, uniquely you. How, how do you know when something is uniquely you? Because I feel like so many of us are either so influenced by everything that's happening, or we just-

Speaker 2:14:20 Mm

Jay Shetty 2:14:20 ... I feel like we've lost our ability to talk to ourselves and know that that's our voice.

Speaker 2:14:26 Yeah.

Jay Shetty 2:14:26 Right? Like, it's like most people when you hear a voice, they hear a voice in their head, they don't know if that's them or something else, and they can't tell the difference. So what are those indicators or signals where you're like, "Yeah, that, I'm getting closer even if I'm not there yet"?

Speaker 2:14:40 It's a really good question. Um, and I don't have, like, a simple, pithy answer-

Jay Shetty 2:14:45 Sure, sure, sure

Speaker 2:14:46 ... for that. I think it's, I think it's hard. You know, I think you're correct in that we're so distracted. You know, our phones are always in our hands. There's always a reason to not be present with ourselves, and the more detached we become, the more difficult it is to know what that internal voice is. So I think the process o- of, of, of trying to understand what is uniquely, you know, what is unique about Jay involves that looking inward process, right? It's about meditation and mindfulness and getting quiet, and trying to, you know, spend time, uh, contemplating, like, what was it that made you happy as a kid? Like, what did you like to do when you were left to your own devices that now you feel like you haven't done in a long time or would be foolish as an adult to spend time doing?

Jay Shetty 2:15:35 Mm.

Speaker 2:15:36 And maybe there's a lesson there for you to see, you know? I don't know.

Jay Shetty 2:15:39 Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 2:15:39 I can't answer that for you.

Jay Shetty 2:15:40 Yeah.

Speaker 2:15:41 But I know that those answers reside within all of us, and in order to heed them or get clarity, you really have to, you really have to have the discipline to, um, carve out that kind of quiet time, solitude with yourself.

Jay Shetty 2:15:55 Mm. What's the best advice you've received on solitude on the podcast? Is there anyone you remember that kind of you just felt-

Speaker 2:16:01 Mm

Jay Shetty 2:16:01 ... embodied solitude the best, or that kind of quiet, or that-

Speaker 2:16:04 Yeah

Jay Shetty 2:16:04 ... sort of-

Speaker 2:16:05 I mean, there's been a couple people. You know, of course you have, like, meditation masters like Sharon Salzberg, who-

Jay Shetty 2:16:10 Mm

Speaker 2:16:10 ... I think maybe the most profound, though, in, in, in the most grounded way was Yuval Noah Harari.

Jay Shetty 2:16:16 Yeah, yeah. Love him.

Speaker 2:16:17 Basically talking about how, like, clarity is a superpower.

Jay Shetty 2:16:20 Mm-hmm.

Speaker 2:16:20 And now because we're so distracted, distraction is our natural disposition, to just be clear and quiet, to have presence of mind, to have clarity about what you think about a particular thing, um, is a superpower, where that used to just be normal [laughs] right?

Jay Shetty 2:16:37 Yeah.

Speaker 2:16:37 Which kind of makes it easier to distinguish yourself because all you have to do is put the phone away, learn how to be quiet, learn how to connect with your internal voice, and that makes you much more capable than the person sitting next to you.

Jay Shetty 2:16:52 Mm. What was the conversation that surprised you the most? Was there anyone that not blew your mind, but just surprised you with a belief that may be something you held true, but when you spoke to them they, they changed your mind on it? Was there anyone like-

Speaker 2:17:04 Mm

Jay Shetty 2:17:04 ... that, that changed your mind on something that you thought was very concrete in your life or... I'm always fascinated-

Speaker 2:17:10 Yeah

Jay Shetty 2:17:10 ... by our beliefs and how they can shift. Like, I've always considered myself to be someone who... It's a, I felt like when I was spiritually immature, I felt like I had my beliefs and they were the answers-

Speaker 2:17:20 Right

Jay Shetty 2:17:20 ... and then nothing else was true.

Speaker 2:17:21 Yeah.

Jay Shetty 2:17:22 So what I believed was true, and anyone else's answers were completely false.

Speaker 2:17:25 Right.

Jay Shetty 2:17:25 And then as I started to grow more, you start to realize you know nothing.

Speaker 2:17:28 Mm-hmm.

Jay Shetty 2:17:29 And you're like, "Okay, I, I don't know anything now because I'm not really sure about any of these beliefs." And then you get to a point where it's like, "Well, I have some values and beliefs. They work for me, and now I'm willing to trade and upgrade based on what I'm exposed to-

Speaker 2:17:41 Yeah

Jay Shetty 2:17:41 ... because now I learn that I need to have a map or a guidebook or a rule book-

Speaker 2:17:46 Yeah

Jay Shetty 2:17:46 ... that works, because you need that for life.

Speaker 2:17:48 Yeah.

Jay Shetty 2:17:48 But then I hear someone say something, and I'm like, "Oh," like, that has just opened up my mind in a completely different way.

Speaker 2:17:56 I think, um, in addition to that, what happens when you're confronted with a truth that contravenes your-

Jay Shetty 2:18:04 Mm

Speaker 2:18:04 ... what, y- your worldview, the first thing that it does is it pushes that cognitive bias button. And you're like, "That can't be right because this is the way I see the world," right? So you feel the resistance coming up. So for you to say, "Oh, wow, I didn't think of it that way," and to embrace that difference of opinion or perspective I think is the healthiest thing to do. So for me, it's less about, "Oh, here's an example," and more about, um, trying to be in that place of, of empathy and compassion and openness, and to notice when I feel, like, my resistance creeping up.

Jay Shetty 2:18:39 Mm.

Speaker 2:18:39 Whether it's somebody who has a different, you know, nutritional or dietary perspective than I do, or somebody who, uh, you know, was able to get sober and maintain their sobriety w- you know, by way of a protocol that is at odds with, like, how I think it should be done.

Jay Shetty 2:18:55 Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Speaker 2:18:55 You know what I mean?

Jay Shetty 2:18:56 Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 2:18:56 And to just be like, the world's a big place. The human condition is, is multi-varied. Like, I don't have all the answers. And to be able to sit with somebody who's coming from a different perspective and try to find mutual ground and meet them where they're at with compassion and with empathy I think is, um, really powerful. Uh, it's something that I'm always endeavoring to do with whatever guest that I have on my show, and I think it's what's sorely lacking in our culture right now. And I think if there's anything that I'm trying to do with my show and the example that I set with how I conduct my conversations is to say, "Look, if we wanna move forward as a healthy culture, as a healthy society, we have to be able to meet each other in our differences with compassion, with understanding." That doesn't mean that we do it with unhealthy boundaries, but we have to be able to have mature conversations about our differences, because this polarization and the separation that we're seeing, and the unhealthy siloing of opinions I think is really, um, polluting and denigrating our ability to move forward as a, as a, as a healthy society, and is deeply concerning to me.

Jay Shetty 2:20:06 Yeah, I'm so with you on that. I think that's, that's a great answer because yeah, that, that lack of judgment and openness and just stopping yourself from, like you said, letting your, your controls creep in-

Speaker 2:20:20 Mm-hmm

Jay Shetty 2:20:21 ... that's probably the hardest thing.

Speaker 2:20:23 Right.

Jay Shetty 2:20:23 Because you've been on a train of thought or a school of thought since you were a kid, and it's built and built and built-

Speaker 2:20:29 Mm

Jay Shetty 2:20:29 ... and it's got you to somewhere, which is probably okay. And then all of a sudden comes, someone comes and just surprises you with a noti- What's been the best way you've found, apart from having conversation on the podcast, have you found that people are able to create that openness in their own lives? Is it more travel? Is it watching things that you wouldn't watch? Like, what, have you seen that? Like, how can we encourage that more for people to be okay with exposing themselves to opposing ideas-

Speaker 2:20:53 Yeah

Jay Shetty 2:20:53 ... without placing judgment on them?

Speaker 2:20:55 Yeah, it's tough. I mean, I think travel is a big one, right? Investing in experience.

Jay Shetty 2:21:00 Mm.

Speaker 2:21:00 Um, people who have, who have, you know, done that tend to have broader views and perspectives and, and more open-minded, are o- more open-minded about a variety of issues than people who just stay in one place and have their news feed.

Jay Shetty 2:21:14 Yeah.

Speaker 2:21:14 You know?

Jay Shetty 2:21:15 And even who they follow on their news feed-

Speaker 2:21:16 Yeah

Jay Shetty 2:21:16 ... because that, again, if it's diverse, you, you're again meeting diverse people there, too, right?

Speaker 2:21:23 Yeah.

Jay Shetty 2:21:24 Thank you so much for watching that video. If you enjoyed it, here's another one I think you'll love.

Speaker 2:21:30 Go in there. Go into the suffering. Go into the pain of your life and say, "Why did this suck for me so bad? Why am I afraid of all this stuff?"

Jay Shetty 2:21:38 Yeah.

Speaker 2:21:38 'Cause the only way you're gonna fix yourself is to go all the way back