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Jay Shetty PodcastWill Smith's LIFE ADVICE On Manifesting Success Will CHANGE YOUR LIFE | Jay Shetty
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CHAPTERS
- 0:00 – 5:20
A Friendship Built on Study and Service
Jay Shetty welcomes Will Smith and they reflect on the past year of traveling and studying together. Will describes falling in love with the Bhagavad Gita and a brotherhood of service, and Jay recalls first meeting him at Willow's birthday.
- •Will has studied with Jay for about ten months, working out in the "soul gym"
- •Will fell in love with the Bhagavad Gita, and the study includes his family and their teacher Radhanath Swami
- •Jay recalls meeting Will at Willow's Willoween birthday party
- •Jay praises Will's ability to be present and kind with everyone he meets
- 5:20 – 12:18
From Defense Mechanism to Loving Kindness
Will explains that growing up with violence made him hypersensitive to emotions, and that this later became a capacity to care for people. He and Jay discuss why revenge destroys the person seeking it and why loving kindness is the only answer.
- •Will's emotional sensitivity began as a defense against his father's violence
- •The urge for revenge is natural, but seeking it hurts you more
- •Will says the only answer is loving kindness, and his grandmother was his example
- •Jay cites the idea that people who need the most love ask for it in the most unloving ways
- 12:18 – 17:38
The Military Mindset vs. Real Happiness
Will describes choosing between winning and being nice, and how his military-minded drive for success left his family miserable. His kids pushed him to see that people care about how they feel. Jay adds that we all think we are balanced on the middle path.
- •Will says he equated winning with happiness while his family was miserable
- •His father's military mindset treated every task as a mission
- •Will says he found a balance between achievement and loving kindness
- •Jay says we all feel we are on the middle path while everyone else is lost
- 17:38 – 20:46
The Poisonous Edge of Extreme Discipline
Will argues that athletes' extreme mindset can teach something, but that it carries a poisonous edge and a brutal reckoning. He says discipline is still needed, but he found a more comfortable and productive space.
- •Society worships the extreme athlete mindset, as in the Michael Jordan example
- •Most people cannot sustain that level of discipline, which can be destructive
- •Will says you can have a lot of stuff and still be miserable on that edge
- •He says discipline is still needed
- 20:46 – 25:12
Grandmother's Lesson: Triangle of Discipline, Education and Love
Jay notes that Will's growth is a long process planted by his grandmother. Will describes his father, mother and grandmother as a triangle of discipline, education, and love and God, and tells the story of the letter his grandmother wrote in his rap book.
- •Will pictures his father as discipline, his mother as education, and his grandmother as love and God
- •His grandmother lived in loving service, bringing homeless people home to wash them
- •At 12 he found a letter from her in his rap book urging him to use his words to uplift people
- •Because of it, he never used profanity in his music
- 25:12 – 32:16
The Hard Work Behind the Charisma
Jay describes seeing the science and systematic craft behind Will's work on set. Will credits his father's military structure with teaching him to break goals into tasks, and explains how he and his team studied the top ten movies' patterns.
- •Jay saw that Will's craft is strategic and systematic, built over decades
- •Will's father treated even dishwashing as a mission with military precision
- •Will credits that upbringing with the gift of breaking goals into smaller pieces
- •He studied the top ten movies and found they were special-effects films with creatures and a love story
- 32:16 – 35:42
There Is No Such Thing as a Bad Experience
Jay notes that superheroes get their powers from bad things, and Will agrees that it is hard to say this to someone in the middle of trauma. Will says that in his experience there are only experiences you don't like, and that painful events like his parents' separation produced positive things.
- •Superheroes get their powers from something bad happening to them
- •Will says this shouldn't be said to someone in the throes of trauma
- •He says there are experiences you don't like, but none that are purely bad
- •He says that after his parents separated at 12 he contemplated suicide, and the pain cultivated a devotion to his family
- 35:42 – 42:09
Saying Goodbye: Lessons from His Father's Death
Will explains why the weeks before his father's death were formative. Having had a warning, he said everything he wanted to say and made every hello and goodbye count. Jay shares a Mahabharata story about the most amazing thing in the world.
- •Doctors gave his father six weeks, but he lived about four months
- •Will had read books on death and grief while filming Collateral Beauty
- •He learned never to greet or part from someone casually
- •Jay suggests writing a letter to someone who has passed, and shares the Mahabharata teaching about complacency
- 42:09 – 51:51
Studying a World Religion Every Year
Jay asks about Will's practice of studying a spiritual tradition each year. Will explains it became a bonding practice with Jada in the first decade of their marriage, that they are skeptical of organized religion, and that the core of every tradition is how you treat your neighbor.
- •Will and Jada picked a tradition each year and read the holy books cover to cover
- •Will says their competitiveness over finishing books added fun to the study
- •He says organizations can jump ahead of spirituality
- •He says the Golden Rule is at the core of the teachings, and asking how you'd want to be treated would prevent problems
- 51:51 – 56:27
A Daily Practice: Cleaning the Mirror and Farming vs. Hunting
Will says that after hours of study, a phone call could pull his mind back into old patterns within 45 seconds, so the practice is daily. Jay uses garden, mirror, and tree analogies, and Will offers the idea of hunting versus farming.
- •Will says remembering to be nice to people is a moment-to-moment practice
- •Jay compares the work to weeding a garden and to cleaning a dusty mirror
- •Jay says our disconnection from nature has made us want everything instantly
- •Will frames the issue as hunting versus farming
- 56:27 – 58:54
Commitment and Teaching as Learning
Jay recalls being struck when Will offered two hours a day for study. That commitment pushed Jay back into deeper reading of his own. Will recounts Radhanath Swami's response that Jay would get to teach what he needed to learn.
- •Will offered two hours a day, which showed Jay how serious he was
- •Jay spent Christmas reading and meditating four to eight hours a day
- •Answering someone's questions makes you read and reflect more deeply
- •Radhanath Swami said Jay would get to teach the things he needs to learn
- 58:54 – 1:04:52
Ignorance, Delusion and the Poison You Bring to the Party
Will says the central focus of his life has been a successful love relationship, which led him to see a shared root in all human difficulty. He says the problem is ignorance and delusion on both sides, and that you can only purify your own. He adds that acting trains him in this.
- •Will wanted marriage and family from a young age after seeing his parents' marriage deteriorate
- •He says all human conflict centers on a lack of understanding of the other's perspective
- •In any difficulty, he says you brought poison to the party, and should purify your own
- •He says acting teaches him to uproot beliefs and feel what opposes his own truth
- 1:04:52 – 1:13:40
Meeting Nelson Mandela and Spiritual Self-Worth
Jay shows a clip of Will speaking about Nelson Mandela. Will recalls Mandela offering to teach him and his feeling of unworthiness, and says the question was how to smile in a chaotic world. Jay calls this spiritual self-worth, as distinct from material self-worth.
- •Mandela told Will to understand the hope created by his work
- •Mandela invited Will every year to spend time with him, and Will felt unworthy
- •Will says the question Mandela wanted to teach was how to smile in this world
- •Jay distinguishes humility from low self-esteem and calls it spiritual self-worth
- 1:13:40 – 1:24:41
Arjun, Perplexing Situations and Letting Go of Outcomes
Will explains why the story of Arjun resonates, describing life as a perpetual perplexing situation where you do your divine duty. He and Jay discuss not measuring your worth by others' reactions or by outcomes, and Will uses the image of the broken mirror.
- •Will summarizes Arjun's situation: a family battle with God driving his chariot
- •Will says "let go and let God" means do your divine duty, not do nothing
- •Outcomes aren't connected to the quality of your behavior
- •Looking to others for self-esteem is like looking into a broken mirror
- 1:24:41 – 1:30:20
Life Is School: Growth in the Gaps
Jay describes Will reading spiritual books in his trailer between scenes. Will says life is school, and that suffering points to where you are ignorant. Jay adds that we think we are in a candy shop but are in a classroom, and Will calls it the poisoned honey scenario.
- •Will read spiritual texts between takes on set
- •Jay says listeners are doing the same by committing to growth in their gaps
- •Will says that you wouldn't call something a problem if you fully understood it
- •Life is for education rather than enjoyment, and the pursuit of enjoyment is poisoned honey
- 1:30:20 – 1:33:18
The Genie and the Sacred Clown
Jay asks how Will brings these ideas into his work. Will says playing the Genie let him combine fun with imparting wisdom, and he connects this to the sacred clown, an image he wrote down years ago.
- •Will wrote down the concept of the sacred clown five or six years ago
- •Playing the Genie felt like being at home
- •He wants to sing, dance and play while sneaking ideas in under the joy
- •He calls the joy a conduit for the ideas
- 1:33:18 – 1:41:48
Fast Five Questions
Jay asks Will five quick questions. Will answers on advice, on Julius Erving and Muhammad Ali, on the lesson of the past year, and on a law he would create.
- •Best advice: his grandmother told him to be nice to everyone on the way up because you may pass them again on the way down
- •Worst advice: knock somebody out on a date so she sees your strength
- •Lessons from Dr. J's dignity and Ali's seemingly arrogant humility and submission to God
- •Ignorance and evil are twins, but ignorance can be educated and is more prevalent
- •His law: you must repeat back what you heard before responding
- 1:41:48 – 1:43:46
The Broken Calculator
Prompted by the broken mirror, Will shares the analogy of the broken calculator, in which a stuck number such as a seven distorts everything. He says getting our stuck number unstuck is a critical part of interacting with others.
- •The ego can be a broken calculator with a stuck key
- •Trauma can make every interaction come out with the same result
- •We add our stuck number to everything others say
- •Jay asks listeners which number they keep adding to the equation
