Speaker 1: Hey, everyone, Welcome back to On Purpose, the number one
Speaker 1: health podcast in the world. Thanks to each and every
Speaker 1: one of you that come back every week to listen, learn,
Speaker 1: and grow. Now this episode is a conversation with Alex Lieberman,
Speaker 1: who's a co founder of Morning Brew and on his
Speaker 1: podcast Impostors. I think we got into some really interesting
Speaker 1: topics that I don't always get to dive in. I
Speaker 1: got to open up about my entrepreneurship journey. I got
Speaker 1: to talk more about social media and business. You're also
Speaker 1: going to hear my insights on when I feel anxiety
Speaker 1: and when I feel like an impostor. So to me,
Speaker 1: this is a really deep dive into my mindset from
Speaker 1: the perspective of an interviewee, and I think you're really
Speaker 1: going to enjoy this episode, especially if you've been listening
Speaker 1: along every Friday hearing my insights. So don't skip this one.
Speaker 1: Don't miss this one. You're gonna love it. Thank you
Speaker 1: for lending me your ears, whether you're walking, running at
Speaker 1: the gym, walking your dog, cooking, whatever you're up to.
Speaker 1: Thank you for listening to On Purpose. When I finally
Speaker 1: got a job after rejections, and I met people and
Speaker 1: they were twenty one and I was twenty six. Now,
Speaker 1: by the time I stied my first job, I was
Speaker 1: twenty six years old. I realized that I had actually
Speaker 1: had the greatest advantage, which was I had massive self lands.
Speaker 1: I knew what my strengths were, I knew what my
Speaker 1: weaknesses were, I knew what I had to offer, and
Speaker 1: I knew what I wanted to do. And I was
Speaker 1: just like, I just took the biggest risk, potentially one
Speaker 1: of the biggest career risks in life, by becoming a monk.
Speaker 1: I should be scared of anything anywhere. Welcome to Impostors,
Speaker 1: the show where I have revealing conversations with world class execs, athletes,
Speaker 1: and entertainers about their personal challenges and how overcoming those
Speaker 1: challenges I shaped their careers and lives for the better.
Speaker 1: And I hope that it helps you along your personal journey.
Speaker 1: I'm your host, Alex Lieberman, co founder and executive chairman
Speaker 1: of Morning Brew. Before we get started, make sure to
Speaker 1: subscribe and click the bell so you get notified every
Speaker 1: time Morning Brew drop new video. Let's dive in. My
Speaker 1: guest today is Jay Chetty. Jay is the host of
Speaker 1: the podcast On Purpose and the author of the New
Speaker 1: York Times best selling book Think Like a Monk. For
Speaker 1: the past several years, Jay has been working hard to,
Speaker 1: as he puts it, make wisdom go viral, which he
Speaker 1: does by sharing insights with his millions of followers on
Speaker 1: Facebook and Instagram, and with his over seven billion views
Speaker 1: on YouTube. Jay's wisdom has been lauded by powerhouses like
Speaker 1: Oprah and Ellen, and has been named on Forbes's thirty
Speaker 1: Under thirty list. But Jay's Patt's success has been anything
Speaker 1: but linear, as we'll discuss in our interview. In fact,
Speaker 1: to get to where he is today, Jay had to
Speaker 1: take some incredibly hard and unconventional career risks and overcome
Speaker 1: massive amounts of imposter syndrome. Jay Chetty, thank you so
Speaker 1: much for joining impostors. I want to say thank you
Speaker 1: to you. I mean, We've been working towards this for
Speaker 1: a long time, so I'm so grateful for all your
Speaker 1: love online. I love connecting with someone over Twitter. I
Speaker 1: think that's what we connected over. Yea, we connect over
Speaker 1: Twitter at first, then a few times on Instagram, a
Speaker 1: few times over email. But it's just interesting the world
Speaker 1: we live in where I have so many friends that
Speaker 1: I've never actually met in life, but I feel a
Speaker 1: closeness to them in so many ways. Yeah, definitely, I
Speaker 1: feel that WM towards you too, and I'm glad that
Speaker 1: we're finally meeting in person that thank you for the opportunity. Absolutely. So,
Speaker 1: I don't know how else to say it other than
Speaker 1: it feels like you've had seven careers in your life.
Speaker 1: It feels like you have just experienced so many different things,
Speaker 1: and people I think today know you as someone who's
Speaker 1: making wisdom go viral, as a podcast host, is someone
Speaker 1: who's written a book, does all these things, but You've
Speaker 1: had so many other experiences in your life that have
Speaker 1: kind of informed where you are now. And so I
Speaker 1: would love for you to take me from the beginning.
Speaker 1: What was childhood like for a young Jay Chetty. So
Speaker 1: I did this interesting activity recently where I sat down
Speaker 1: and I realized I'd been working for around twenty years now,
Speaker 1: and how old are you? Thirty four okay, and so
Speaker 1: around twenty twenty two years, and I just I was like, Wow,
Speaker 1: that's that's an interesting number. And I sat down and
Speaker 1: I wrote down every job I'd ever have. I have
Speaker 1: in my notes section on my phone. But I think
Speaker 1: I can say it from my memory, let me go
Speaker 1: through it. I don't know the number, but so it
Speaker 1: was newspaper boy, like paper delivery dude. Worked in a
Speaker 1: grocery store stacking shelves. Then worked in retail selling like
Speaker 1: women's clothes, denim, that kind of stuff. Then was a tutor.
Speaker 1: I coached students at college to make extra money in
Speaker 1: younger years in things like economics and psychology and philosophy
Speaker 1: and things like that. And then I lived as a
Speaker 1: monk for three years. Then I worked as a digital
Speaker 1: strategy and innovation consultant at Accentia. Then I was a
Speaker 1: senior host and producer at Huffington Post. Then I started
Speaker 1: my entrepreneurial journey, which now has led to books, podcasting, media,
Speaker 1: everything else. So at least eight, which I think is
Speaker 1: such an important thing to call out because I think
Speaker 1: people will look at you today and be like, God,
Speaker 1: this guy he has it all. He's in his mid thirties,
Speaker 1: super wise, he's built a massive audience. You know, he
Speaker 1: has all these different lines of business, Like clearly he
Speaker 1: has it all figured out. And I think just by
Speaker 1: you lying out these whatever it is, nine ten jobs
Speaker 1: that you've had, it has been anything but all in
Speaker 1: your path to get there. And I'm sure from your
Speaker 1: perspective it's like you don't have it all figure out
Speaker 1: at all. You're just working not at all, not at
Speaker 1: all end uh And yeah, it's just fun looking back
Speaker 1: that way, yeah, and trying to piece it out. But sorry,
Speaker 1: I'll answer your question. I just thought that was interesting
Speaker 1: and I recommend everyone does that activity. I think we
Speaker 1: often also think about our careers is when I graduate
Speaker 1: from college and like, but that's that's not your career,
Speaker 1: Like your career starts whenever you choose for it to start.
Speaker 1: The question about my childhood or where the first job?
Speaker 1: Again you your childhood, Yeah, I'd say that I was
Speaker 1: born and raised in a family where obedience discipline were
Speaker 1: top priority. Performing well at school was really in pordant
Speaker 1: to my parents, and so despite me going to a
Speaker 1: fairly rough school where education wasn't a priority of my peers,
Speaker 1: my parents were emphasizing homework, after schoolwork, extracurriculus. I was
Speaker 1: being trained from the age of eight to get into
Speaker 1: a grammar school, which is a school you have to
Speaker 1: take an exam for that gives you a private level
Speaker 1: education without having to pay for it. My parents didn't
Speaker 1: have the money to send me a private school, but
Speaker 1: they wanted me to work hard in order to do that,
Speaker 1: and so I felt like I lived a very disciplined
Speaker 1: life that obviously, when you're a kid, there's moments where
Speaker 1: you accepted normality and then there's times when you're like, oh,
Speaker 1: I just want to hang out. And now I look
Speaker 1: back and feel really grateful that my parents made me
Speaker 1: do that, because I think it gave me a certain
Speaker 1: way of working that I wouldn't have developed otherwise. And
Speaker 1: I was pretty much a teacher's pet up until about
Speaker 1: age fourteen, and then age fourteen was when I went
Speaker 1: off the rails side through rebel, started getting involved in
Speaker 1: the wrong groups, wrong circles, getting involved in activities that
Speaker 1: I wouldn't recommend to anyone, everything from experimenting with drugs,
Speaker 1: through the violence, through to you know, just nefarious, stupid
Speaker 1: activities and stuff that I think most kids do. But
Speaker 1: I think we just got into it really young, Like
Speaker 1: fourteen was a bit young for that. And then by
Speaker 1: the time I was eighteen, I was kind of done
Speaker 1: and I've kind of exhausted all of the craziness. And
Speaker 1: it was actually my dad who started handing me biographies
Speaker 1: and autobiographies. So my dad was worried that I didn't
Speaker 1: like reading, and so was my mom. I really hated
Speaker 1: reading fictions. I hated reading fictions, so I don't think
Speaker 1: I read a book until I was fourteen. My dad
Speaker 1: started to give me biographies and autobiographies, and I read
Speaker 1: Malcolm X, I read Mike Luther King. I also read
Speaker 1: David Beckham and Dwaine the Rock Johnson because I was
Speaker 1: a big wrestling in soccer fan growing up, and so
Speaker 1: I was reading these really diverse biographies and autobiographies and
Speaker 1: I was thinking, Wow, these people have all done something
Speaker 1: phenomenal with their life. And that's where I started to
Speaker 1: get fascinated by development and personal growth without knowing what
Speaker 1: that was. So two questions. One is when you were
Speaker 1: going through kind of this phase after fourteen, of being
Speaker 1: more rebellious, of just experimenting, what was it inside of
Speaker 1: you that was driving you to do this? And do
Speaker 1: you think at that point in your life you had
Speaker 1: a sense of who you were, what you wanted to be. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: there was a certain self awareness at the time that
Speaker 1: I could hear as a little voice in my head
Speaker 1: of my heart that was like, you don't want to
Speaker 1: do that, You're not good at that, do this, and
Speaker 1: it was actually healthy. So my parents wanted me to
Speaker 1: do medicine or science or you know, law or engineering,
Speaker 1: and for me, those things scared me. I was like,
Speaker 1: I'm not really interested in those things. And I could
Speaker 1: have that voice inside of me that was like, do art,
Speaker 1: do philosophy, do economics, do design? Like those are the
Speaker 1: things I gravitated towards. And it was almost like I
Speaker 1: started to listen to that voice and I started to
Speaker 1: not ignore that voice because it was so strong, and
Speaker 1: I almost had this rejection towards anything else that wasn't that.
Speaker 1: At the same time, I think there was a me
Speaker 1: being naive. There was a bit of wanting to fit in.
Speaker 1: There was wanting validation, wanting to be cool, wanting to
Speaker 1: be liked, and then that part of me was seeking
Speaker 1: the wrong activities or the bad circles. So it's like
Speaker 1: this weird juxtaposition of your self awareness, which is guiding
Speaker 1: you in the right direction, but then your low self esteem,
Speaker 1: which is guiding you in the wrong direction. And so
Speaker 1: you've got these two things pulling on you and you
Speaker 1: obviously don't know this as a sixteen year old. I
Speaker 1: can only say this in hindsight, but at the time,
Speaker 1: I just thought, yeah, I fit in here. I'm trying
Speaker 1: to look cool here. I think people will like me
Speaker 1: if I'm this way. And then it's like, but wait
Speaker 1: a minute. I don't want to be forced to do
Speaker 1: things I don't care about. So that's I was grappling
Speaker 1: with that. Absolutely I'm interested. You know, as we move
Speaker 1: forward in your life, you ended up going to school
Speaker 1: to university thinking you were going to work in whether
Speaker 1: it's financial services or consulting, and then kind of by happenstance,
Speaker 1: you were introduced to the work of monks and ultimately decided,
Speaker 1: after you know, three summers visiting the ashram, to become
Speaker 1: a monk for three years. How hard was that decision
Speaker 1: when you just had talked about during your rebellious years,
Speaker 1: at least a part of you was driven by kind
Speaker 1: of the need for validation. I would say it wasn't
Speaker 1: actially a popular decision to become a monk, Like, it
Speaker 1: wasn't something that was familiar to other people. So how
Speaker 1: were you able to kind of withstand called the pressure
Speaker 1: from others to do what was expected of you, Yeah,
Speaker 1: I think we're always living two lives. One is the
Speaker 1: life you want and the other is the life you
Speaker 1: think others one you to live, and we get stuck
Speaker 1: in between those two lives, and often we feel like
Speaker 1: we're living too far off the edge of what other
Speaker 1: people want us to live, and often we feel like
Speaker 1: we're living too close to the version we want to live.
Speaker 1: And that dance is really fascinating as life goes on.
Speaker 1: And what I found at the time was I was
Speaker 1: being drawn closer and closer and closer to my own values,
Speaker 1: and I was being drawn closer and closer and closer
Speaker 1: to what was important to me. So at that time,
Speaker 1: if you asked me what I thought I was going
Speaker 1: to be, I would have said something like, I'm going
Speaker 1: to be a rapper, right. I love spoken word, I
Speaker 1: love writing lyrics. I loved music. I played the drum kid,
Speaker 1: I played the piano growing up. I can't play anything anymore.
Speaker 1: And I was highly into music, and I was like,
Speaker 1: I want a career in music. That's what I probably
Speaker 1: would have said. And then as time moved on, I
Speaker 1: would have moved away to being Okay, let's be more realistic. Jay,
Speaker 1: you can't do that. That's not real for an Indian
Speaker 1: kid growing up in London. Let's be more realistic. And
Speaker 1: I was like, well, maybe I want to be an
Speaker 1: art designer or an art manager at a magazine because
Speaker 1: I loved art, love design. And then it's like, oh no, no, Jay,
Speaker 1: be more realistic. That's not really a career path because
Speaker 1: everyone and your everyone who you're surrounded by is doing
Speaker 1: far more serious and real careers than that. Okay, let's
Speaker 1: go and get a business degree. Right. It's like you
Speaker 1: literally go from this is the truth of what I
Speaker 1: want to let me water it down a bit, and
Speaker 1: then to let me completely water it down. So I
Speaker 1: remember telling my art teacher, who I was really good
Speaker 1: friends with that at college, telling him I'm turning down
Speaker 1: my offers to go to like art school, which is
Speaker 1: what I thought I wanted to do, to go and
Speaker 1: do a management science degree, you know, at Cass Business School.
Speaker 1: And you know, he was joking around, it's like, you're
Speaker 1: such a sellout, Like I was like, I am, I'm
Speaker 1: a sellout. That's terrible. And that's kind of where round
Speaker 1: it up. And it's really fascinating that I went there
Speaker 1: because I was like, this is the safe thing to do,
Speaker 1: and then I do the least safe thing in the
Speaker 1: world by becoming a monk. And so it's really fascinating
Speaker 1: how I went on that end of the spectrum and
Speaker 1: then I want to go back. So I think what
Speaker 1: happened is there's only so long you can stay away
Speaker 1: from your true calling. And you can push it down,
Speaker 1: you can ignore it, you can suppress it as much
Speaker 1: as you like, but it's going to keep showing up
Speaker 1: in really uncomfortable ways, and it will start quiet, but
Speaker 1: it will get louder. And for me, it got really
Speaker 1: loud at twenty one when I thought to myself, which
Speaker 1: life do I want to live? Do I want to
Speaker 1: live a life of chasing success or do I want
Speaker 1: to live a life of service? And I would say
Speaker 1: that that decision at twenty one became easy because of
Speaker 1: the three years of experience before. And I think people
Speaker 1: look at that it's like, that's a big change, But
Speaker 1: that big change was easy because there were lots of
Speaker 1: small experiences that led up to it. And so every summer,
Speaker 1: like you rightly said, I'd go to live with the monks,
Speaker 1: and that many experiment every summer made me confident that
Speaker 1: if I did this long term that I would enjoy it,
Speaker 1: and I think people think, oh, no, you just change
Speaker 1: your life. It's like, no, I didn't, so and you're right.
Speaker 1: I'm glad you raised this because a lot of people
Speaker 1: say to me today, they're like, Jay, you really like
Speaker 1: use this monk thing as part of your story. And
Speaker 1: I'm like, trust me, becoming a monk is not a story.
Speaker 1: Like when you're twenty one, becoming a monk was the
Speaker 1: least cool thing I could possibly to my friends. And
Speaker 1: this is honest, Just my guy friends thought I was gay,
Speaker 1: Like literally, that's the response I got. That's how far
Speaker 1: behind things were, like you're gay, right, Like that's I'm like,
Speaker 1: how is this? Like how is that even connected to?
Speaker 1: But that's what they thought. Girls didn't want to talk
Speaker 1: to me anymore because they thought they weren't allowed to
Speaker 1: talk to me. And what was happening in my path
Speaker 1: And then my family thought that I'd wasted my parents
Speaker 1: investment in me and my education. Yeah, and so everyone's saying,
Speaker 1: you've committed career suicide. You're never going to get a
Speaker 1: job again, and you're ruining your parents' life, and it's
Speaker 1: just so interesting again just thinking about your own development
Speaker 1: and your own awareness that you were able to get
Speaker 1: to a place where despite all of that, you know
Speaker 1: people saying, oh, you must be gay, or you can't
Speaker 1: see women, Oh it's career suicide, that somehow you had
Speaker 1: gotten to this point in your life where you felt
Speaker 1: enough connection to your values or what you deem to
Speaker 1: be your calling that you were willing to do that.
Speaker 1: Because I would say that is very difficult at any
Speaker 1: stage of life, but it's exceptionally difficult as a twenty
Speaker 1: one year old when there is so much social pressure. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and I give all the credit to my monk mentors
Speaker 1: and teachers and guides, because it's not I didn't have
Speaker 1: that resilience, but they'd given me an experience of something,
Speaker 1: and I believe that that experience was more powerful than
Speaker 1: my feelings or what I was hearing. And that's why
Speaker 1: I think we try and make decisions in our head. Now,
Speaker 1: we try and figure everything out in our head, and
Speaker 1: we're like, if I can figure this out in my mind,
Speaker 1: then I'll figure out in life. And it's like, no,
Speaker 1: go and have a real life experience. Go and do
Speaker 1: the thing for a short amount of time, and then
Speaker 1: you'll know what to do, And so I think you
Speaker 1: can only spend that much time in your head figuring
Speaker 1: out personality tests and conversations and questions and reflecting and introspecting,
Speaker 1: and after a while, she's got to go do the thing.
Speaker 1: And if I never went and spent those summers living
Speaker 1: as a monk, I would never have wanted to be one,
Speaker 1: because I would know what it feels like. Totally interested
Speaker 1: for you to talk in a second about when you
Speaker 1: went to become a monk, the work you did, and
Speaker 1: how you knew that you enjoyed that work, because what
Speaker 1: I've even realized, right after selling a business in the
Speaker 1: last few years and thinking about what's next, I always
Speaker 1: will intellectualize. How do I know if I am enjoying
Speaker 1: the things that I'm doing? Do I love this work?
Speaker 1: Am I passionate about it? And the issue is the
Speaker 1: more that I overthink am I passionate about this thing?
Speaker 1: The less I feel passionate about it because I'm intellectualizing
Speaker 1: the experience. So tell me, you know, what was it
Speaker 1: like to be on the ashram for three years? And
Speaker 1: how did you know at least some part of that
Speaker 1: work was truly what you're calling was, Yeah, so there's
Speaker 1: two parts to any work we do. There's the process
Speaker 1: and there's the result. And loving the work you do
Speaker 1: means you love the process and you accept the result.
Speaker 1: Whereas the way we've been trained in modern society is
Speaker 1: all that matters is the result. If the result is good,
Speaker 1: then you must love your job. If you see someone
Speaker 1: win an oscar, they must love their job. If you
Speaker 1: see someone make lots of money and sell their company,
Speaker 1: they must be happy. So we define someone's happiness based
Speaker 1: on how the result is, whereas all ancient wisdom would
Speaker 1: suggest is happiness is based on how much you enjoy
Speaker 1: the process. And the process is as enjoyable as you
Speaker 1: believe it's aligned with your values and what you care about.
Speaker 1: And so at the time, my goal of becoming a
Speaker 1: monk was simple. I wanted to learn to master my mind,
Speaker 1: my ego, my envy, my jealousy, my comparison, and my illusion.
Speaker 1: And I wanted to serve. I wanted to improve the
Speaker 1: lives of other people. I wanted my life to make
Speaker 1: a difference in other people's lives. So I knew that
Speaker 1: as long as I was doing work in those two areas,
Speaker 1: no matter what activity you do you'd be happy. And
Speaker 1: I think that's another challenge we do. We get locked
Speaker 1: up in the activity. Do I like being an interviewer?
Speaker 1: Do I like being a writer? Do I like being
Speaker 1: a podcaster? And if you ask me, I'm like, I
Speaker 1: would use any tool possible to master my mind and
Speaker 1: improve the lives of other people. I'm not attached to
Speaker 1: what medium or furum. I only use social media because
Speaker 1: it was the last option. It was the last thing
Speaker 1: I wanted to use, but there was no other option
Speaker 1: that I had because no one else would give me
Speaker 1: a chance. So I'm not attached the medium or the role.
Speaker 1: It's like, you're focused on what do you want to
Speaker 1: bring to the world and what intention are you bringing in?
Speaker 1: So to me, it's about figuring out what you're truly
Speaker 1: trying to create for yourself. And so during my time
Speaker 1: as a monk, I was waking up at four am.
Speaker 1: We were meditating for four to eight hours a day.
Speaker 1: You're sleeping on the floor, you don't have a bed,
Speaker 1: All your possessions fit inside a gym locker and you
Speaker 1: do that every day. Do I enjoy that? No? Am
Speaker 1: I passionate about that? No? But I believe it's going
Speaker 1: to help me master my mind. Okay, I'm in I
Speaker 1: can do that. Right. Every day we were out in
Speaker 1: the sun. It's one hundred and ten fahrenheit, right, it's hot.
Speaker 1: You're out there laying bricks, out there doing agricultural work
Speaker 1: on the farm. Do I enjoy that? No? Do I
Speaker 1: really love that? No? But do I believe that that
Speaker 1: it positively improves the lives of other people that we're serving? Yes,
Speaker 1: okay it fits. And so I enjoyed the process because
Speaker 1: I trust the process is giving me what I need.
Speaker 1: But I don't have to enjoy that direct activity, right,
Speaker 1: because that's pleasure. Well, I feel like that's such an
Speaker 1: important nuance, right, because you talk about enjoying the process,
Speaker 1: and if someone here's what you're saying, like, No, I
Speaker 1: didn't enjoy laying bricks, I didn't enjoy agriculture, they'd be like,
Speaker 1: but isn't that the process? And I think the distinction
Speaker 1: you make is their activities that sit within this process.
Speaker 1: It's not necessarily about enjoying those, It's about how do
Speaker 1: these serve ultimately what you're trying to accomplish, the values
Speaker 1: you're trying to live out correct and that, Yeah, I
Speaker 1: love that you're making that distinction, and maybe I can
Speaker 1: articulate it better. I didn't love the activity, but I
Speaker 1: loved what was happening to my intention while I did
Speaker 1: the activity. Yeah, and that's what you're falling in love with.
Speaker 1: And I get that that's a really like meta theorial idea.
Speaker 1: But it's like you are looking at that going I
Speaker 1: do this because I know what's being built right now
Speaker 1: while I do this. That's loving the process. I think
Speaker 1: what Jay is saying here is so important. If you
Speaker 1: have a clear sense of your own values and you're
Speaker 1: able to see how the work that you do serves
Speaker 1: those values, it can feel easier to embrace this sometimes
Speaker 1: mundane or tedious or completely unenjoyable aspects of your job.
Speaker 1: Sometimes taking a second to step back and remind yourself
Speaker 1: of your intentions and why you're doing the job that
Speaker 1: you're doing can have a really powerful effect on your
Speaker 1: willingness to push through the worst aspects of it. We're
Speaker 1: going to take a quick break here, but when we
Speaker 1: come back, Jay gets into why he decided to leave
Speaker 1: the ashram and how he navigated feeling behind professionally from
Speaker 1: his peers to ultimately finding success. This episode of Imposters
Speaker 1: is sponsored by Sakara. Feeling great starts with what's on
Speaker 1: your plate, which is why Sakara has simplified healthy, balanced dining.
Speaker 1: Sakara is a wellness company anchored in food as medicine
Speaker 1: on a mission to nourish your body through the power
Speaker 1: of plants. Their plant rich meals, snacks, and supplements are
Speaker 1: designed to reduce bloat, ease digestion, and boost energy, all
Speaker 1: while being absolutely delicious and to make healthy eating even easier.
Speaker 1: Sakara delivers everything right to your door, ready to enjoy
Speaker 1: right now. Sakara is offering listeners twenty percent off their
Speaker 1: first order. Simply go to Sakara dot com slash imposters
Speaker 1: or enter code impostors on any checkout page that's Sakara
Speaker 1: s A k A r A dot com slash imposters.
Speaker 1: So let's talk about you spent three three years on
Speaker 1: the ashrum, you decided to ultimately leave. Why did you
Speaker 1: leave and what was the response when you left? Yeah,
Speaker 1: so lots of reasons why I left. I was really
Speaker 1: experimenting with my health. I was experimenting with longer meditations,
Speaker 1: longer fasting. I was really pushing the limits of how
Speaker 1: far meditation could go to replace sleep, how far meditation
Speaker 1: could go to replace physical energy? And I really took
Speaker 1: my body to lens that broke my body practically, and
Speaker 1: that wasn't a fun feeling at all. Ended up in
Speaker 1: the hospital, you know. I talked about this in the book.
Speaker 1: Of Course. I was in bed for like fourteen hours
Speaker 1: a day for plenty of time. It was it was
Speaker 1: really tough, and it was all my own doing. It
Speaker 1: was all my own experimentation. That was part of it.
Speaker 1: But really that was what was happening outside, yeah, And
Speaker 1: what was happening inside was as you are practicing being
Speaker 1: a monk, you get more self awareness and you get
Speaker 1: more introspection. And I started to realize that my desires
Speaker 1: were not aligned with the desires of long term monks.
Speaker 1: So I would sit and talk to monks who'd been
Speaker 1: there for ten, twenty thirty years, and I'd listened to
Speaker 1: them and I'd be like, do I want to live
Speaker 1: like that? And the answer was no, what were their
Speaker 1: desires versus your? Their desires were complete surrender, complete service,
Speaker 1: no personal creativity or personal expression. And for me, I
Speaker 1: was like, but I want to share what I'm learning
Speaker 1: in this way and I can see the link between
Speaker 1: this scripture and this movie, and this song lyric reminds
Speaker 1: me of this verse and the Vaders. Like to me,
Speaker 1: I was like, I'm a kid growing up in London
Speaker 1: who loves music, loves movies, loves life, and I'm seeing
Speaker 1: all the correlations and connections and I'm saying I want
Speaker 1: to make those connections for people because there maybe people
Speaker 1: can live these ideas in their life. And so I
Speaker 1: always had that where I wanted to make wisdom more practical,
Speaker 1: accessible and relevant because I saw its power and I
Speaker 1: felt cool to do that. And it was as much
Speaker 1: a realization that I wanted to do that as I
Speaker 1: wasn't a monk. And that's hard because you know, you
Speaker 1: feel married for three years literally and then you feel
Speaker 1: like you're getting a divorce. And that's actually how it
Speaker 1: felt for me. I felt like I was divorcing the
Speaker 1: love of my life. It felt like a breakup. And
Speaker 1: it was really tough leaving because it almost felt like
Speaker 1: I went back to all that noise where everyone was right,
Speaker 1: you're not going to get a job, how are you
Speaker 1: going to fit in? Now you've lost all your friends
Speaker 1: and now you've gone back to a world where your
Speaker 1: friends are like twenty five, twenty six years old. They're
Speaker 1: you know, in relationships, they're potentially buying their first home
Speaker 1: or like you know, moving into a fancy apartment, or
Speaker 1: they're now promoted to their next position. They're doing well
Speaker 1: for themselves and you're thinking, oh, I am behind. And
Speaker 1: so that's how I felt when I got back. I'm behind,
Speaker 1: I'm lost. And I didn't think I made a bad decision.
Speaker 1: I just I was like, how do I catch up now?
Speaker 1: And so how did you catch up? How did you
Speaker 1: work yourself out of I would say a very rational
Speaker 1: thought of I've almost been stuck in time. Everything's accelerated.
Speaker 1: How do I accelerate? Yeah? I didn't know who the
Speaker 1: Prime Minister of England was. I didn't know who won
Speaker 1: the World Cup, like I didn't know. I had no idea,
Speaker 1: and so I was truly behind. I spent nine months
Speaker 1: when I left. Well, the first month I was talking
Speaker 1: about the first month was my worst month, where all
Speaker 1: I did was each chocolate, listen to music, catch up
Speaker 1: on all the TV. I remember watching every episode of
Speaker 1: How I Met Your Mother. I went and found a
Speaker 1: list on IMDb called Movies to Watch Before You Die,
Speaker 1: and I watched every movie on that list, like I
Speaker 1: literally went into full like lazy, yeah, the pendulum, just say.
Speaker 1: I wasn't waking up early, none of that. And then
Speaker 1: I was like, Okay, this is not sustainable. So for
Speaker 1: those that time, I started going. I started dressing up,
Speaker 1: going to my local library, turning up reading books. I
Speaker 1: was reading scriptural books, monk books again, and then reading
Speaker 1: business books to try and figure out what I had
Speaker 1: missed out on in life. I was dressing up as
Speaker 1: if I was going to work. But if you asked
Speaker 1: me what helped me catch up, it was when I
Speaker 1: started working, when I finally got a job after forty rejections,
Speaker 1: When I finally got a job and I met people
Speaker 1: and they were twenty one and I was twenty six. Now,
Speaker 1: by the time I started my first job, I was
Speaker 1: twenty six years old, and I realized that I actually
Speaker 1: had the greatest advantage, which was I had mass of
Speaker 1: self awareness. I knew what my strengths were, I knew
Speaker 1: what my weaknesses were, I knew what I had to offer,
Speaker 1: and I knew what I wanted to do. And I
Speaker 1: was just like, I just took the biggest risk potentially
Speaker 1: one of the biggest career risks in life by becoming
Speaker 1: a monk. I shouldn't be scared of anything anymore. Like
Speaker 1: that was the scariest decision that I made at a
Speaker 1: time when things were more vulnerable. I shouldn't be scared
Speaker 1: of anything, and so I became fearless, and so that
Speaker 1: fearlessness led to me making big scary decisions in a
Speaker 1: big scary organization, which paid off because I now wasn't
Speaker 1: ready to follow what everyone else was being told to do.
Speaker 1: And everyone else who was twenty one who was still
Speaker 1: following the rules from college and university, they felt, or
Speaker 1: if we need to follow the rules, that's what we're
Speaker 1: being told to do. And my thing was, well, no,
Speaker 1: I'm not going to follow that rule because I think
Speaker 1: I'll do a better job this way. And thankfully that
Speaker 1: paid off. Now I had people in the company, senior people,
Speaker 1: some of them were my biggest champions, who I love
Speaker 1: and I'm so grateful to, and some of them were
Speaker 1: massively intimidated, even though they probably made twenty x what
Speaker 1: I made at the time, but they were intimidated, and
Speaker 1: they were trying to control and trying to manipulate, so
Speaker 1: it was tough living that, but I'm really grateful that
Speaker 1: I did. And so, if I remember correctly, you were
Speaker 1: both working within Accenture, but then you were asked at
Speaker 1: some point to give a talk on mindfulness to a
Speaker 1: thousand people within the company. Then he started traveling around
Speaker 1: the company, right, Yeah, So this credit goes to a
Speaker 1: lady named Jilly Bryant. She's left Extension now, but she
Speaker 1: was the head of all the new Hires in London,
Speaker 1: so about a thousand of us. And she noticed that
Speaker 1: on my fun fact about me, I'd said that I
Speaker 1: lived as a monk and I meditated and that I
Speaker 1: used to teach meditation and at the time Accenture was
Speaker 1: taking and they are taking mental health very seriously. And
Speaker 1: so she reached out to me and she said, Jay,
Speaker 1: we have this big event coming up Betwicken and Rugby Stadium.
Speaker 1: Would you mind talking about social media, which is what
Speaker 1: I was doing at work, and talk about mindfulness and
Speaker 1: meditation on stage and potentially even leader meditation. Now, at
Speaker 1: the time, I had no brand, no social media, no
Speaker 1: one knew my name. I was asked to come on
Speaker 1: the stage in between Well Greenwood, who was a Rugby
Speaker 1: World Cup winner with the England national team and the
Speaker 1: CEO of the company in the UK. So I'm already
Speaker 1: having massive imposter syndrome because I'm going this guy won
Speaker 1: a World Cup for the country. This person's the CEO
Speaker 1: of the company, Like, what am I going to say?
Speaker 1: And these are a thousand people who are my peers,
Speaker 1: who have no respect for me, and there's no authority here.
Speaker 1: And that is a beautiful position to be in because
Speaker 1: you start realizing that you're not living off of influence,
Speaker 1: so you're not living off of a position. You live
Speaker 1: off of who you are and how you hold yourself.
Speaker 1: And so I went up on stage. I was nervous
Speaker 1: till the point I went on and I led a meditation,
Speaker 1: and the feedback I got was they'd never seen a
Speaker 1: group of a thousand people hold silence for that long.
Speaker 1: And it was a really like reassuring, comforting feeling like
Speaker 1: it wasn't like yes, we did it, it it was more like, Wow,
Speaker 1: this stuff works in the real world. People care, and
Speaker 1: so yes. Then I got invited across the company to
Speaker 1: teach mindfulness and meditation, set up mindfulness mondays, mindfulness meditations
Speaker 1: before meetings. I got really involved in the I was
Speaker 1: so grateful to Accentia for championing a personal skill set
Speaker 1: in a big professional organization with five hundred thousand people.
Speaker 1: It's interesting because it sounds like something that helped your
Speaker 1: imposter syndrome in that moment was kind of the internal
Speaker 1: validation you had after you saw this entire group of
Speaker 1: people sit in silence. You're told that this as long
Speaker 1: as they'd ever sat in silence, like it was reassuring
Speaker 1: to you that the work that you were doing could
Speaker 1: be really meaningful. I'm also sure that this wasn't the
Speaker 1: only time you've experienced imposter syndrome in your life, and
Speaker 1: given the name of the show, given so many people experiences,
Speaker 1: I'm interested how you think about navigating imposter syndrome. And
Speaker 1: I'll even say, from my perspective right now, like I
Speaker 1: feel massive imposter syndrome hosting a podcast you as a guest,
Speaker 1: where I'm just like, how do I host a podcast
Speaker 1: talking about vulnerability and challenges in people's lives and being
Speaker 1: a sounding board for them when the seat The person
Speaker 1: in the seat across from me is someone who literally
Speaker 1: spent three years as a monk and has done so
Speaker 1: much more work to truly understand people how do I
Speaker 1: do it? And so I can just imagine how many
Speaker 1: people experience in post SyncE room in their life. Well,
Speaker 1: first of all, that's very kind of you, and I
Speaker 1: don't think of it that way at all. I think
Speaker 1: every question you've asked me has been so heartfelt, has
Speaker 1: been so sincere, so genuine. You know everything that you've
Speaker 1: shared with me today, even before today, I already knew
Speaker 1: I was going to love you before today, like because
Speaker 1: all the interactions we had on Twitter and you you think, like,
Speaker 1: how can you do that on Twitter? But you can
Speaker 1: when you're as genuine and sincere as you are. So
Speaker 1: I was excited to be here. I'm grateful to be here. Honestly,
Speaker 1: I would say that I don't think you ever stopped
Speaker 1: feeling imposter syndrome. If you're growing, if you're growing, if
Speaker 1: you'll learn learning, you will always feel imposter syndrome because
Speaker 1: what imposter syndrome really is is a sign that you
Speaker 1: still have a skill to learn or an experience to have.
Speaker 1: So I still feel it on a daily, weekly, monthly,
Speaker 1: yearly basis, and I don't ever want to stop feeling
Speaker 1: it because it shows me that I need to grow.
Speaker 1: And I need to learn. I connected to a beautiful
Speaker 1: book called Flow, and Flow talks about how to experience
Speaker 1: a state of flow. Which musicians experience, which artists experience,
Speaker 1: which singers experience, is when your challenge meets your skills.
Speaker 1: But what most of us experience on a daily basis
Speaker 1: is our challenge is above our skills, which means we
Speaker 1: get scared, we get threatened, we get confused, we feel lost.
Speaker 1: All what we experience is the opposite, where your skills
Speaker 1: are above your challenge. Then you foreboard, you feel tired,
Speaker 1: you're lethargic, you feel complacent. So really, what imposter syndrome
Speaker 1: is saying is that your skills are not as high
Speaker 1: as your challenge. But you can fill that gap if
Speaker 1: you truly deeply want to. You can make that leap
Speaker 1: if you want to. And so, now when I feel
Speaker 1: a sense of imposter syndrome, I ask myself what skill
Speaker 1: is being highlighted to me that I don't have. It's
Speaker 1: not a feeling, it's not an emotion, it's a skill.
Speaker 1: Like I'll give an example. If I'm sitting around a
Speaker 1: table of people that I feel are more qualified than
Speaker 1: me in a certain area. Let's say I'm sitting with
Speaker 1: a group of people and they're all amazingly deep into
Speaker 1: real estate, right, that's their thing. I'm going to feel
Speaker 1: like an impostive because I'm not that deep into real estate.
Speaker 1: And then I have to ask myself, so, what skill
Speaker 1: do I now have? Okay, real estate investing? Do I
Speaker 1: want that skill? Or am I happy being in this space?
Speaker 1: For example? And so the question isn't not only what
Speaker 1: skill don't you have? What do you want that skill?
Speaker 1: Because often you can get pursuing a skill just impress
Speaker 1: people totally. And so I think that's what I would
Speaker 1: encourage people to do with imposter syndrome is take it
Speaker 1: away from this feeling of I'm not good enough, I'm
Speaker 1: not smart enough, I'm not this enough. Yeah, you're not
Speaker 1: smart enough. Figure out what you need to get smart at, right,
Speaker 1: And that's how I see. I'm like, Okay, I'm I'm
Speaker 1: not qualified to this? Do I want to be qualified? Totally?
Speaker 1: I think in a lot of ways, what you're doing
Speaker 1: is you're putting control back in the hands of the
Speaker 1: person yourselves, right. So it's all about reframing it as
Speaker 1: this is actually a great thing, because you're pushing yourself
Speaker 1: into an area of discomfort where you now have the choice.
Speaker 1: There's a gap between your skill and the challenge that
Speaker 1: you're facing, and you have that choice of if you
Speaker 1: want to close that gap, and by the way, you
Speaker 1: can make the choice not to close that gap if
Speaker 1: you don't want to do it exactly exactly. So, when
Speaker 1: I first started my career and I was mainly known
Speaker 1: for creating video content which were like four minutes. We
Speaker 1: then built the podcast. I felt like an imposter when
Speaker 1: I launched the podcast. Now we've done the podcast for
Speaker 1: three years and it's very natural. And then and we
Speaker 1: launched the book, it was like that was scary, And
Speaker 1: then now we're doing a bookie and that doesn't feel scary.
Speaker 1: So every time you make a new leap, you'll feel
Speaker 1: imposter syndrome. But that's great because that means you're growing.
Speaker 1: That means you're trying something new. I would never feel
Speaker 1: imposter syndrome if I never tried anything new, and that
Speaker 1: means I would live a boring same life and I
Speaker 1: don't want that. Yeah, thinking about your experience within Accenture,
Speaker 1: it feels like this combination of just amazing kind of
Speaker 1: harnessing of an opportunity you were given to use the
Speaker 1: experience you had in the Ashram to spread kind of
Speaker 1: what you learned throughout the company will also kind of
Speaker 1: being on the forefront of social media. You know, while
Speaker 1: you say you were a little bit late to it
Speaker 1: because you didn't have a Facebook until whatever age, you
Speaker 1: still were early. Now, in retrospect within what's happened with
Speaker 1: social when you reflect on kind of almost like these
Speaker 1: two amazing kind of skills you were able to build
Speaker 1: up that informed where you are in your career now,
Speaker 1: how much do you think about your own experience as
Speaker 1: skill and hard work and grit and how much do
Speaker 1: you think of it as luck? And how do you
Speaker 1: think about that relationship broadly in career? I would say that,
Speaker 1: and I'm going to be honest because I think that's
Speaker 1: the only way to do it. I would say that
Speaker 1: my greatest skill is knowing that I can learn something
Speaker 1: if I want to, and that if I apply myself
Speaker 1: to it and I really deeply care about it, that
Speaker 1: I will find a way to get really good at it.
Speaker 1: And I don't think you can separate that from impact,
Speaker 1: because impact means there's a beautiful quote by Bruce Lee
Speaker 1: where he said that I'm not scared of the person
Speaker 1: that has practiced ten thousand kicks one time each. I'm
Speaker 1: scared of the person who's practiced one kick ten thousand times.
Speaker 1: And that's this which that we have to make, is
Speaker 1: that are we willing to practice this one kick, this
Speaker 1: one move ten thousand times, or whatever it may be,
Speaker 1: And that, to me is the difference maker. So I
Speaker 1: would say that there's a lot of strategy because now
Speaker 1: it all makes sense, like social media, meditation, Oh that fits.
Speaker 1: It didn't make sense when I was collecting those skills,
Speaker 1: and so, as Steve Job says, you can only connect
Speaker 1: the dots looking backwards, you can't moving forwards. To me,
Speaker 1: when I was collecting it, I was just like, I
Speaker 1: love people and I love connecting with lots of people,
Speaker 1: so social media would be useful. Maybe that's literally all
Speaker 1: I had is at all. It wasn't like, oh, I'm
Speaker 1: going to learn this, then I'm going to learn this,
Speaker 1: and then we're gonna it wasn't that thought through. And
Speaker 1: at the same time, when I became a monk, it
Speaker 1: wasn't like, oh, one day I'm going to write a
Speaker 1: book about being It wasn't that it was Hey, I
Speaker 1: think this is what my calling is. So it was
Speaker 1: a naive, innocent following of what I'm being called to
Speaker 1: do at the time. Then matched with what do we
Speaker 1: do with this now that we have with as a
Speaker 1: skill and taking a risk based on that. So I
Speaker 1: would say it's it's I don't know what you call that,
Speaker 1: whether it's discipline. Yeah, it feels like the combination of
Speaker 1: like intuition and action when the opportunity. That's better than
Speaker 1: what I was about to say, So I'd take that
Speaker 1: intuition action. Yeah, I just came up with this intuition accident.
Speaker 1: And I would add a massive sense of being open
Speaker 1: to risk again again and again, and and then I
Speaker 1: would say it's brilliant mentorship and guidance. So I give
Speaker 1: all the credit to the people I met. If I
Speaker 1: didn't meet really critical people at different times and I
Speaker 1: didn't form a relationship with them and they didn't invest
Speaker 1: in me and I didn't invest in them, that was
Speaker 1: everything like for me, especially, so that you could say
Speaker 1: was luck. That was the luck. The luck was that
Speaker 1: these people came into my life and we clicked at
Speaker 1: really specific times, and that was the luck. Well, I
Speaker 1: would say the skill there was. You know, my intuition
Speaker 1: is that when you were building these relationships, it wasn't
Speaker 1: doing so in a way where you were getting something
Speaker 1: out of it. You were getting into these relationships because
Speaker 1: you love the people that they were and you are
Speaker 1: to just be closer to them. I'm still friends with
Speaker 1: every one of those people, yeah, like deeply messages them
Speaker 1: all the time, and they're still involved in my life
Speaker 1: in so many ways, and I all the credit goes
Speaker 1: to them. I'd say any careers socise, I'd give it
Speaker 1: to them because it's not that they told me what
Speaker 1: to do or how to do it, or invested money.
Speaker 1: It wasn't those kind of things. It was people who
Speaker 1: just change the way you thought by planting simple seeds
Speaker 1: and planting simple ideas at different times in my life.
Speaker 1: So yeah, I would say there's a mix of luck, strategy, intuition, action,
Speaker 1: But ultimately I think it comes down to three things. Passion, strengths,
Speaker 1: and service. That's ultimately what it comes down to. It's
Speaker 1: the passion to learn anything and everything, developing an actual
Speaker 1: skill in the subject matter you want to do, and
Speaker 1: then wanting to serve through it, which is where the
Speaker 1: fulfillment comes from and so to me, I'd narrow it
Speaker 1: down to those three things. So something you talk about
Speaker 1: in your journey as being one of the more stressful
Speaker 1: points in your life is post accenture. You had decided
Speaker 1: that you wanted to kind of create these videos. You
Speaker 1: ended up creating them. I believe in London at a
Speaker 1: time and day where there's no streets on the road.
Speaker 1: So it was perfect moment you try to pitch all
Speaker 1: these media executives, I'm being able to do it. Ultimately,
Speaker 1: you were given an opportunity with Huffington Post and the
Speaker 1: videos absolutely crushed it upon publishing. I think the first week,
Speaker 1: like the first video did a million views, then it
Speaker 1: was a million and twenty four hours. But then you
Speaker 1: talk about it a point in the journey of Huffington
Speaker 1: Post where you were working there. It was growing great,
Speaker 1: but you were within four months of not having money
Speaker 1: to live. Talk about just that period in your life
Speaker 1: and how you worked through it. Yeah, and even getting
Speaker 1: everything you just described is just such a tough time
Speaker 1: because I was getting I got married, changed job three times,
Speaker 1: moved country all in the same year. And that was
Speaker 1: that year that you just described, And so that was
Speaker 1: a fully intense year. What year was that? That was
Speaker 1: twenty sixteen, Yeah, twenty sixteen, And this time that you're
Speaker 1: talking about was coming up to twenty seventeen when my
Speaker 1: work at huffing a Post ended. Arianna Huffington had led
Speaker 1: to start Thrive Global, who's She's still a dear friend
Speaker 1: and mentor and wonderful human being, but my work there
Speaker 1: was ending. She'd left, she'd moved on. My position kind
Speaker 1: of wasn't there anymore. And I was four months away
Speaker 1: from being broke and thirty days away from my visa
Speaker 1: to America being taken away because it was attached to
Speaker 1: my work visa, and so not only did I have
Speaker 1: to figure out how to sort my visa out, I
Speaker 1: had to figure out how to pay for more than
Speaker 1: renting groceries beyond four months. And I always used to
Speaker 1: have my mentor, Thomas Power, one of them, would always
Speaker 1: say to me, you only discover your potential when you're
Speaker 1: in pain. He'd always keep repeating that, and I'd be like, nah,
Speaker 1: I'm proactive, like a you're whatever, Like I'm one of
Speaker 1: the hardest working people out whatever, And then I was
Speaker 1: put into pain, like that was real pain, And I
Speaker 1: thought Okay, I'm going to discover my potential in the pain. Okay,
Speaker 1: I'm going to discover my potential in the pain. The
Speaker 1: next year, after learning that I only had four months
Speaker 1: left in the bank for rent and groceries, I got
Speaker 1: up and I emailed, DM tweeted, and messaged every person
Speaker 1: that I had ever met, and said, I will edit videos,
Speaker 1: I will record videos, I will film videos. I will
Speaker 1: do anything you possibly need me to do. At this time,
Speaker 1: me and Paul, who's sitting right there, we were doing
Speaker 1: corporate videos for other clients. Paul, do you remember that
Speaker 1: office we went in? We did all these question videos,
Speaker 1: and so me and Paul went into this corporate company.
Speaker 1: I'm producing corporate training videos. That's not what I want
Speaker 1: to do. That's not my passion, that's not my life,
Speaker 1: but it was what I needed to do to survive.
Speaker 1: You didn't have an option. I didn't have an option.
Speaker 1: So that year, the year when I thought I was
Speaker 1: going to struggle to survive, I made more money in
Speaker 1: that year then in my whole career. REA combined up
Speaker 1: until that point because I was so stressed that I
Speaker 1: wasn't going to be able to pay my bills. But
Speaker 1: that's because I was living under that pressure and that fear.
Speaker 1: It catapulted me and incentivized me to another level, and
Speaker 1: all of a sudden, I'd broken my own ceiling and
Speaker 1: I was like, oh, I had no idea what I
Speaker 1: was capable of until that happened. And so I just
Speaker 1: kept stretching every single year. And so for the past
Speaker 1: five years, we've just been stretching the capacity every single year.
Speaker 1: And it blows my mind because I would never have
Speaker 1: believed any of it was possible. And it's only been
Speaker 1: possible because that pain forced me into an accelerated period
Speaker 1: that I never imagined I would have got into if
Speaker 1: I didn't end up in that pain. So one last
Speaker 1: question I have for you is how do you deal
Speaker 1: with the difficulties of having the brand that you have today?
Speaker 1: And I mean that in two ways. In one way,
Speaker 1: when people say Jay has commercialized mindful mindfulness and is
Speaker 1: making a lot of money off of mindfulness, something that
Speaker 1: generally the focus is in our material things, And the
Speaker 1: second is for your own work, for your own self,
Speaker 1: how do you continue to have the mind that you
Speaker 1: want to have while working with let's say, platforms that
Speaker 1: are built for serving external validation that is addictive. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so I can honestly say that my intention from the
Speaker 1: beginning has always been to purify myself and help serve
Speaker 1: the world. I've always wanted to solve the inner conflict
Speaker 1: and the inner pain and the inner challenges and then
Speaker 1: help other people do that. On that path, I realized
Speaker 1: that in order to scale, accelerate, and truly provide this
Speaker 1: message to as many people as possible for free, you
Speaker 1: had to figure out how that lived as a business.
Speaker 1: Because what I do every day require is we have
Speaker 1: fifty people across the world doing different things right now,
Speaker 1: and I need each and every one of them to
Speaker 1: have the impact that we have. And without each and
Speaker 1: every one of those team members that play such an
Speaker 1: important and vital role, I wouldn't be able to do this.
Speaker 1: And what I got fascinated by is I grew up
Speaker 1: with the belief that money was the root of all evil.
Speaker 1: I grew up with that. I also grew up with
Speaker 1: the belief that people who had money did dodgy things
Speaker 1: to get there. Because that's the environment and the family
Speaker 1: I grew up in. I had to rewire my whole
Speaker 1: relationship with money. And when I lived as a monk.
Speaker 1: We were trained to recognize that everything in the world
Speaker 1: was simply energy, and that energy can either be used
Speaker 1: for good or used for bad. So all I can
Speaker 1: say is that I'm honestly trying to give the resources
Speaker 1: I have to be used to serve and support not
Speaker 1: only myself and my family, but to serve and support
Speaker 1: tens of people right now on my team that I
Speaker 1: believe are living their purpose and feel very purposeful and
Speaker 1: meaningful coming to the workplace. And then the millions and
Speaker 1: billions of people that are being impacted. And we've always
Speaker 1: made a commitment. If you look at our video content,
Speaker 1: it's always been free. Our podcast has ads, but the
Speaker 1: podcast is free. We have and we're very selective over
Speaker 1: who we work with and who we partner with. And
Speaker 1: then you know my recent partnership with CARM where I've
Speaker 1: taken on the role of chief Purpose Officer. The annual
Speaker 1: subscription is like forty two dollars a year for the
Speaker 1: whole year. And so my goal has always been having
Speaker 1: lived as a monk where you do things for free
Speaker 1: all the time. It's like my goal has always been
Speaker 1: that my goal was to accelerate the impact and give
Speaker 1: access and Ultimately, I'd say if anyone who does have
Speaker 1: that perception of what I'm doing, they're fully entitled to that.
Speaker 1: I'm so okay with that. I'll take it all day.
Speaker 1: I have nothing to eight on. I appreciate you for
Speaker 1: how you think about the world, and so I let
Speaker 1: people have their opinions and I have my intentions and
Speaker 1: I hold on to those. Second part of your question
Speaker 1: was how do I do that for myself? I just
Speaker 1: got back from spending about two weeks in India, and
Speaker 1: I was back at the ushram that I lived at,
Speaker 1: and I go back there every single year. I didn't
Speaker 1: get to go back the two years of the pandemic,
Speaker 1: but every single years since I left, and now my
Speaker 1: wife and I go back every year and we'll be
Speaker 1: there for like two weeks to potentially a month, and
Speaker 1: we'll just live like a monk again. And I love
Speaker 1: being back in that environment because they don't care what
Speaker 1: I'm doing, what's been achieved, what hasn't been done, what
Speaker 1: the numbers are. They just don't care. And so I'm
Speaker 1: constantly around people who demand more of me than what
Speaker 1: the world does. And so one of my teachers, I
Speaker 1: remember him saying to me he asked me for an update.
Speaker 1: So I was telling him what I was doing, and
Speaker 1: he said something that has always stayed with me, and
Speaker 1: it really like it was. It hit me and it
Speaker 1: almost scared me because it was so much harder. He said, Jay,
Speaker 1: for all these things that you're doing, I have no
Speaker 1: expectations for this in your life, he said. My only
Speaker 1: expectation is that I simply demand the purity of your heart,
Speaker 1: because that's all I want. And that's why that's an
Speaker 1: travel that was among my my monk teaches her to me,
Speaker 1: and that's way harder. Everything else is way easier. And
Speaker 1: so that's kind of what keeps me on track is
Speaker 1: I'm constantly surrounded by people who don't live in this environment,
Speaker 1: who don't value these things, who don't care about them,
Speaker 1: who who aren't who who loved me before during and
Speaker 1: will love me after, you know, and and even my wife.
Speaker 1: I think my wife gets a lot of credit for that.
Speaker 1: My wife doesn't care um, you know, she she's just
Speaker 1: that's not her life and it's not who she is.
Speaker 1: And being married to someone that way. I used to
Speaker 1: be upset at my wife for not loving me for
Speaker 1: what I've achieved, and then I realized she actually loves
Speaker 1: me for who I am, and I felt really stupid,
Speaker 1: and I realized that that was so much more special
Speaker 1: to have someone who's been with me through being broke,
Speaker 1: through moving country, through having lost it all, to having
Speaker 1: it all, to being in between. And I'd take that
Speaker 1: history with any day over someone praising me for what
Speaker 1: I've done. J Chatty, thank you so much for joining Imposters.
Speaker 1: This has been awesome. Thank you so much. I'm so
Speaker 1: grateful to you, and I really enjoyed my time with you.
Speaker 1: I'm excited to connect a lot more. Absolutely. Yeah, thanks
Speaker 1: so much, thank you, appreciate you, thank you. Thank you
Speaker 1: guys so much for watching this episode. I hope you
Speaker 1: enjoyed and I'd love to hear from you sharing the comments,
Speaker 1: your favorite part of this episode and also what guests
Speaker 1: you would love to see on Imposters moving forward, And finally,
Speaker 1: like and subscribe so you get content from this show
Speaker 1: every single week. I'll see you guys next time.