Speaker 1: Hey, everyone, Welcome back to our 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,
Speaker 1: learn and grow. Now. I know that a lot of
Speaker 1: you love and respect deep at Chopra, and this conversation
Speaker 1: that you're about to hear is one of the first
Speaker 1: ones I ever had with him. He's always been someone
Speaker 1: that I think has presented wisdom in a really fascinating
Speaker 1: and interesting way, and the questions he asked me in
Speaker 1: this conversation are truly unique. I think you're going to
Speaker 1: hear a lot of new perspectives and ideas from me,
Speaker 1: and I am so grateful that you made time to
Speaker 1: listen to this episode. So thank you for being here.
Speaker 1: And I hope you've been loving it. I mean, we
Speaker 1: have been spoiled in the past few weeks, everyone from
Speaker 1: doctor Gabel Mattey to doctor Daniel aman Selena Gomez, Kendall Jenner,
Speaker 1: Alex Cooper. I hope you've gone back and listen to
Speaker 1: those episodes. If you haven't, do that right after this one.
Speaker 1: Tell me a little bit about your background growing up. Absolutely. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So I was born and raised in London as a
Speaker 1: normal Indian kid, the highest values of success were work
Speaker 1: hard at school, get good grades. Life is all about performance.
Speaker 1: My parents were wonderful, very supportive, and more liberal than
Speaker 1: I think a lot of Indian parents, but still it
Speaker 1: was always about how well you did at school. And
Speaker 1: that kind of lasted for me until I was fourteen
Speaker 1: when I started to rebel. And I think I started
Speaker 1: to rebel because I saw that despite myself doing well
Speaker 1: at school, I was still bullied for being overweight and
Speaker 1: obese at the time. I was still a victim of
Speaker 1: racism at the time in the area I grew up
Speaker 1: in London, but a lot of that was I was
Speaker 1: still experiencing these things and I was thinking, well, getting
Speaker 1: good grades in school obviously is not solving life for me.
Speaker 1: And that took me to the other extreme of rebelling.
Speaker 1: So I got involved in petty violence crime. I got
Speaker 1: involved with experimenting with drugs. I just started going totally
Speaker 1: the opposite way, just as a desire to experiment and
Speaker 1: test because I wasn't feeling satisfied and happy with the
Speaker 1: life that had been paved for me. Well, that's very interesting.
Speaker 1: I never knew that part of your Yeah, yeah, I
Speaker 1: completely went off the rails, and that was my way
Speaker 1: of trying to look for something more meaningful. I was
Speaker 1: always seeking a thrill in life. I wanted to feel
Speaker 1: deeply passionate about something. And you know, one of my
Speaker 1: favorite thoughts is for Martin Luther King, where he said
Speaker 1: that if you have nothing to die for, then you
Speaker 1: have nothing to live for. And for me, I was
Speaker 1: looking for that, but I was looking for it in
Speaker 1: all the wrong places. Tell me about that period with
Speaker 1: the drugs and the violence and all that. You know,
Speaker 1: at the time, it was that tough ego facade that
Speaker 1: I had, so I would portray myself as being very tough.
Speaker 1: I was doing all these things, and I would have
Speaker 1: this ego, but inside I was actually really scared. I
Speaker 1: was actually really insecure. I was worried sometimes about going
Speaker 1: to parties or events because of who I'd run into
Speaker 1: any time I was experimenting with anything. I wasn't actually
Speaker 1: as confident as I'd make out to be. But I
Speaker 1: remember at that time, you would just put on this
Speaker 1: face to appear as if you had it all going right.
Speaker 1: How many years did that phase last. I'd say lasted
Speaker 1: for four years, from fourteen to eighteen. Then what happened. Well,
Speaker 1: what happened was that when I was around sixteen, I
Speaker 1: lost two of my best friends. So one of them
Speaker 1: died due to gang violence and one of them died
Speaker 1: in a car accident. Like I look back, and I
Speaker 1: was like, you know, all of us that were involved
Speaker 1: in all these things, we could all go back home
Speaker 1: and our mums would cook us dinner. Right. It wasn't
Speaker 1: like we actually had to be part of gangs. It
Speaker 1: just became a part of culture, which I think is
Speaker 1: very interesting. So for me, that was one of the
Speaker 1: biggest challenges. And when I lost two of my friends,
Speaker 1: that made one as a result of correct correct because
Speaker 1: of life crime, and one because of a car accident.
Speaker 1: And when I lost both of them, that really made
Speaker 1: me reflect because to me, they were good people. They
Speaker 1: were people who were very kind and loving, and I
Speaker 1: lost both of them at an early age, and that
Speaker 1: really made me start to question what's life all about?
Speaker 1: Because if these are good people, they're beautiful people, and
Speaker 1: I've lost them, I'm spending my life in this field
Speaker 1: which doesn't seem to be getting me anywhere. And that
Speaker 1: really made me start to pause and reflect on how
Speaker 1: I was using my time because all of a sudden,
Speaker 1: time became very valuable. I started to recognize how little
Speaker 1: time we could have if it was used unwisely. So
Speaker 1: would happened after that? So at that time, you know,
Speaker 1: you're a curious sixteen year old, And maybe people who
Speaker 1: are listening right now can feel like a curious twenty
Speaker 1: six year old or thirty six year old. It doesn't
Speaker 1: matter what age you are. For me, I was a
Speaker 1: curious sixteen year old, but I was still doing everything
Speaker 1: every sixteen year old. Does you know you just carry on?
Speaker 1: You think deeply, but you act UNDEPLI that yeah, exactly right,
Speaker 1: like you? You think deeply, And I think a lot
Speaker 1: of us have this challenge today where we our mind
Speaker 1: wants to think higher, but we're still acting on our
Speaker 1: lower nature, and so we see that contradiction. So I
Speaker 1: was a walking, talking contradiction. I would think deeply, think highly,
Speaker 1: but live lowly and be completely a servant to my
Speaker 1: mind and my lower nature. And then I met a
Speaker 1: monk when I was eighteen. So every week I would
Speaker 1: be at university and we would have different speakers, influencers, celebrities, authors,
Speaker 1: CEOs come and speak, and I didn't want to go
Speaker 1: because I was just like, what am I going to
Speaker 1: learn from a monk? You know, what does a monk
Speaker 1: even have? And so I literally said to my friends,
Speaker 1: who are getting into spirituality at that time, who told
Speaker 1: me to come, they said, no, you have to come,
Speaker 1: and I said, okay, I'm only coming if we go
Speaker 1: to a bar. And that was literally my land. I
Speaker 1: was like, I'm only coming if we go to a
Speaker 1: bar afterwards, and that's how that's how degraded I was.
Speaker 1: And they were like, okay, great, so they confirmed, and
Speaker 1: so I went and I went in there with zero expectations,
Speaker 1: and I was completely mesmerized. I'd never heard someone who
Speaker 1: spoke with such eloquence, who spoke with such grace, who
Speaker 1: really had an aura of contentment around them. I mean,
Speaker 1: you have this too. The first time I met you,
Speaker 1: you have that too, And I think when you meet
Speaker 1: someone like that, For me, it was really interesting because
Speaker 1: at that time, I'd met people who were rich, I'd
Speaker 1: met people who are famous, I'd met people who were
Speaker 1: stunningly attractive, But I don't think i'd ever met anyone
Speaker 1: who was satisfied or content or happy or at equanimity exactly.
Speaker 1: I don't think i'd met someone yet at eighteen who
Speaker 1: had that Which tradition was you from? So he's from
Speaker 1: the Vedic tradition. Yeah, from the Vedic tradition, the Vedic
Speaker 1: Hindu tradition. And for me, it was just you know
Speaker 1: when you meet someone and you just inspired them and
Speaker 1: you want to learn everything about them. So I just
Speaker 1: went up to him and I said, look, I love
Speaker 1: what you stand for. And he was standing for service,
Speaker 1: he was standing for helping humanity. And I said, I
Speaker 1: want to have more of you in my life. I
Speaker 1: just feel like I want to experience more of this.
Speaker 1: And so he said to me, you now need to
Speaker 1: spend your summer holidays or summer vacations as you say here.
Speaker 1: He said, you need to spend all of them with
Speaker 1: me in India. And so I started spending every one
Speaker 1: of my summer holidays vacations in India before that. Did
Speaker 1: you go to the bar that night? Did we did?
Speaker 1: We did go to the bar that night? Yes? No, no,
Speaker 1: no, no no, the monkey doesn't drink. We did go to
Speaker 1: the bar that night. I stack to my promises. I'm
Speaker 1: very committed. I spent the whole night thinking about what
Speaker 1: I'd just heard and the biggest thing that stayed with
Speaker 1: me was he spoke about sacrifice, like giving up your
Speaker 1: own needs to serve others and going out of your
Speaker 1: way to make a difference in the life of others,
Speaker 1: and that really resonated with me at eighteen. It almost
Speaker 1: gave me that thing to die for that made me
Speaker 1: want to live. So then you did actually have a
Speaker 1: stint as a monkey yourself. So every summer holidays, I
Speaker 1: spent half of my summer living with him as a monk,
Speaker 1: as a trainee monk, just visiting, and then I spent
Speaker 1: the other half of that summer working internships in the
Speaker 1: city of London. So I would literally go from steakhouses, bars,
Speaker 1: cars and the world of finance in London in the
Speaker 1: City of London to then going off and trying to
Speaker 1: emulate the life of a monk. And then when I
Speaker 1: graduated twenty two, I went and lived as an official
Speaker 1: monk for three years. So there was a lot, there
Speaker 1: were a lot of month breaks every year, and during
Speaker 1: that time I was just going back and forth. So
Speaker 1: I meet a lot of people today, and I'm sure
Speaker 1: you do in your whole fast few decades that you've
Speaker 1: been serving people through your knowledge I'm sure you've met
Speaker 1: so many people who say, you know, I'm stuck between
Speaker 1: the two worlds, and I'm kind of I can't shake
Speaker 1: it off. I've done that. I literally did that for
Speaker 1: four years where I lived two polar opposite worlds in
Speaker 1: one sense. The phrase to be in the world and
Speaker 1: not of it exactly exactly, and I didn't know that then.
Speaker 1: I was still learning that. And so when then when
Speaker 1: I got to go and live as a monk for
Speaker 1: three years, that really gave me that experience. So what
Speaker 1: did you oh so much? One of the best things
Speaker 1: I learned, which I think is just really practical, is discipline.
Speaker 1: And I think discipline is so I'd love to hear
Speaker 1: your thoughts on this, but I think discipline is so
Speaker 1: underestimated today. I think we talk a lot about creativity
Speaker 1: and spontaneity, and I love all that. I'm very creative,
Speaker 1: I'm very spontaneous. But I think discipline is just so underestimated.
Speaker 1: I think anyone in any field, in any practice, whether
Speaker 1: it's finance or business or singing or art, discipline is
Speaker 1: such a key trait. So the discipline to wake up
Speaker 1: at the same time every day, at four am, every
Speaker 1: single day, the discipline to sit and meditate for multiple
Speaker 1: hours a day, the discipline to do something even when
Speaker 1: you don't feel the benefit, the discipline to do something
Speaker 1: even when you don't have taste for it yet, but
Speaker 1: to recognize that with patience and practice, that taste will come,
Speaker 1: and that meaning and fulfillment will come. That discipline is
Speaker 1: just so powerful, And disciplines is a hard thing to
Speaker 1: talk about because it's not attractive or sexy, So you
Speaker 1: tell someone to do something with discipline, they'll just be like, oh,
Speaker 1: that doesn't sound inspirational. But it's like, that's such a
Speaker 1: core part of life transformation in my opinion anyways, discipline.
Speaker 1: So I learned discipline. I didn't wake up discipline. I
Speaker 1: used to always try get off school if I could,
Speaker 1: and all the rest of it. So to be able
Speaker 1: to take that on at twenty two in my life,
Speaker 1: to really value discipline and to break the mental limits
Speaker 1: of what I believe discipline was. I never believed I
Speaker 1: could wake up at four am. But then when you
Speaker 1: have people who are doing it around you, when you
Speaker 1: build up a practice, everything becomes possible, which is which
Speaker 1: is quite fascinating. When you start breaking your limits. Now
Speaker 1: as you start to reflect. When people go into meditation,
Speaker 1: and if they're honest with themselves, there's a lot of
Speaker 1: inner demons that wake up too. The shadows accompany the
Speaker 1: light that comes. Yes. I made a video called why
Speaker 1: Meditation made Me a Bad Person, and it was exactly
Speaker 1: a line with this, So I talk about how you
Speaker 1: know when you see people meditate today, it's like everyone
Speaker 1: looks really serene and tranquil and wearing yoga pants and
Speaker 1: these beautiful sunsets, and it's like, well, when you start meditating,
Speaker 1: it wasn't like that for me. A beautiful analogy that's
Speaker 1: given in the very literatures is of cleansing a mirror
Speaker 1: of the mind. So a mirror that's not been cleansed,
Speaker 1: or an attic or a loft that's not been cleansed
Speaker 1: for years and decades and lifetimes is covered in dust.
Speaker 1: So when one first starts to clean it through the
Speaker 1: mechanism of meditation, the first thing that happens is the
Speaker 1: dust comes in your face, and that dust is those
Speaker 1: inner demons. Your ego. You start noticing it more. Your pride,
Speaker 1: you start noticing it more. You're lost, your anger, you're greed,
Speaker 1: you're envy, all of these demons. You start to notice them,
Speaker 1: all the things you don't want other people to find
Speaker 1: out exactly, all the things that have just been sitting
Speaker 1: there and you haven't focused on and you don't want
Speaker 1: people to know you have them exactly, and you start
Speaker 1: seeing them more so. First, when I started meditating, I
Speaker 1: was like, oh my god, I'm such a bad person.
Speaker 1: And really, the way I broke through that was recognizing
Speaker 1: that again, I am not those things. They are not me.
Speaker 1: I am not envious. I'm pure consciousness. Envyous something that
Speaker 1: I've taken on as a garment that needs to be
Speaker 1: taken off. A lot of people say, I don't have
Speaker 1: time to meditate, to have all this work to do.
Speaker 1: I have to take care of the kids, my job,
Speaker 1: I have all this stress. Aren't those the people who
Speaker 1: need it most? Yeah, we all need it most. I
Speaker 1: feel like we'll excuses are always going to be there.
Speaker 1: This is why I say to people that I think
Speaker 1: it's good that we start five minutes a day, ten
Speaker 1: minutes a day, But if you can take a day,
Speaker 1: take half a day, whatever's practical for you. If you
Speaker 1: can take a week or a weekend, go on a
Speaker 1: retreat and have a real deep experience of how powerful
Speaker 1: meditation can be. When you have a deeply profound experience,
Speaker 1: you want to do five minutes every day even if
Speaker 1: you don't have time. Right, we all make time for
Speaker 1: the things that we're in love with or that we
Speaker 1: really really need in our lives, and we also forget
Speaker 1: that it's the pause that helps everything else. And I
Speaker 1: think we think, and I know, you've got your daily
Speaker 1: every day, which I think is so beautiful, and it's
Speaker 1: like we forget that, Wait a minute, if you don't
Speaker 1: breathe properly, none of this is going to last for
Speaker 1: very long. Then you left after three years? Yes, what
Speaker 1: was going on in your mind? Yeah, so this one's
Speaker 1: easier to answer. In hindsight, it wasn't as easier to
Speaker 1: answer then At that time I was conflicted. The first
Speaker 1: thing meditation does is that it gives you a really
Speaker 1: raw mirror reflection of who you are to yourself. And
Speaker 1: for me, at least for my psychophysical nature, my meditation
Speaker 1: was giving me the self awareness that I wasn't a monk,
Speaker 1: that I enjoyed rebellion. I enjoyed my independence, and monk
Speaker 1: life isn't about rebellion and independence. In one sense, it's
Speaker 1: it's a lot about surrender exactly. One of my teachers
Speaker 1: said to me. He said that he felt it was
Speaker 1: my time to leave so that I could share what
Speaker 1: I'd learned. And when I actually left at that time,
Speaker 1: it was really heartbreaking because I was still conflicted whether
Speaker 1: I was doing the right thing or not. So I
Speaker 1: always describe it was like a divorce. I really felt
Speaker 1: like I got divorced from the love of my life
Speaker 1: after three years, because I'd given up my corporate jobs,
Speaker 1: I'd given up a girlfriend I was dating, I'd given
Speaker 1: up my family, I'd given up everything to make this step,
Speaker 1: and now I was going back into a world that
Speaker 1: now was judging me as well, because when I left,
Speaker 1: my extended Indian family was like, You're really going to
Speaker 1: become a monk after all that education, after working so hard,
Speaker 1: all your family's doctors and lawyers where they relieved. When
Speaker 1: I came back, they were like, you failed at being
Speaker 1: a monk, like really like they were like they were
Speaker 1: more mortified. They were just like what they sent you back,
Speaker 1: it weren't good enough to be a monk. So it
Speaker 1: was actually harder to come back to some time, did
Speaker 1: you re enter into I re entered into moving back
Speaker 1: in my parents physically and mentally feeling like, wow, this
Speaker 1: is going to be really challenging because now I have
Speaker 1: to think about normal stuff, like maybe I have to
Speaker 1: think about a career, maybe I have to think about money,
Speaker 1: maybe I have to think about paying rent, and then
Speaker 1: all of these, you know, all of these thoughts start
Speaker 1: bringing up. So I started every day. I would wake
Speaker 1: up at the same time every day, and I would
Speaker 1: meditate every day, and I was trying to stick to
Speaker 1: as much as I could. And there were a few
Speaker 1: months in between where I did the opposite. Like I
Speaker 1: remember the day I left being among, the first thing
Speaker 1: I did was buy lots of chocolate. The second thing
Speaker 1: I did was go and catch up on every single
Speaker 1: movie and TV show i'd missed out one. And so
Speaker 1: I completely went the opposite way. And I think that's
Speaker 1: very natural that when you've been in one extreme, you
Speaker 1: can fall back into your old habits very quickly. And
Speaker 1: I think some of us feel this after holidays or retreats,
Speaker 1: or you go on a meditation retreat with deep back
Speaker 1: and you go really deep for two days and three days,
Speaker 1: and then you come back and then after a couple
Speaker 1: of months then I started to kind of come back
Speaker 1: in the middle. So, other than discipline, you learned, of course,
Speaker 1: reflective self inquiry, right, absolutely, yeah, absolutely, the bigger questions
Speaker 1: of existence one hundred percent. And this is what I
Speaker 1: talk about that I think today we're we're so enamored
Speaker 1: with circumstantial solutions, but what we're trying to do is
Speaker 1: solve our existential challenges with circumstantial volutions. So my point being, existentially,
Speaker 1: we don't feel connected to ourselves existentially, we don't feel
Speaker 1: like we're serving. Existentially, we don't know our purpose, and
Speaker 1: we try and solve that with the bottle of wine.
Speaker 1: We try and solve that with a late night out
Speaker 1: with friends, and again we feel that same thing every week.
Speaker 1: So circumstantial solutions don't solve the existential problem. So for me,
Speaker 1: this reflective self inquiry that you're speaking about was me
Speaker 1: really asking myself, what is my life about? What is
Speaker 1: the purpose of my life? What do I want to
Speaker 1: do with this incredible time and human form that I've
Speaker 1: been given, this unique blessing of being a human with
Speaker 1: a human mind and human consciousness. It's such a gift
Speaker 1: and such a blessing, how can I make the most
Speaker 1: of it? And so I used to spend every day,
Speaker 1: after meditating for two hours a day, I would go
Speaker 1: and sit in a library and just read, and I
Speaker 1: would read and study everything I could to try and
Speaker 1: find more answers and the particularly the commonalities between what
Speaker 1: I'd studied in Vedic texts and what I was seeing
Speaker 1: in modern knowledge. Share some insights, yeah, absolutely, great question.
Speaker 1: I think one of the biggest insights I saw was
Speaker 1: that all ancient texts tell us that we're not the
Speaker 1: mind and we're not the body, and all of our
Speaker 1: problems come from our belief that we're the mind and
Speaker 1: we're the body, which are transient, femoral, ungraspable movements and consciousness.
Speaker 1: Exactly exactly what you explain, far more articulate and beautifully
Speaker 1: than I ever will. So I'm going to leave that
Speaker 1: to you. But that's the truth that we are completely
Speaker 1: in the belief that we are this mind and body.
Speaker 1: The mind and body are an experience. Exactly, you're the
Speaker 1: one who's having the experience, right Exactly. We are simply witnessing,
Speaker 1: we're observing, we're within that where the energy that sees
Speaker 1: through the eyes through the years and functions through the
Speaker 1: mind and body. And so for me, one of the
Speaker 1: first things was, how can I remind myself of that
Speaker 1: on a daily basis now that I'm in a world
Speaker 1: where I'm back believing that I'm the mind and body.
Speaker 1: When I was a monk, you forget you're the mind
Speaker 1: and body. We didn't even look in the mirror to
Speaker 1: leave for three years, because you're removing that aspect of yourself.
Speaker 1: And so I started to put up like a small
Speaker 1: sticky note next to where I brush my teeth every
Speaker 1: morning saying, remember you're not your mind and not your body.
Speaker 1: So every morning and I'd be brushing my teeth, I'd
Speaker 1: look at that, and that would help me and remind
Speaker 1: me that I wasn't. So how did that lead to
Speaker 1: you know, pure now well known in the world as
Speaker 1: an expert on success a purpose driven life. But tell
Speaker 1: me a little bit about your initial kind of foray
Speaker 1: into the world of business and the world of commerce
Speaker 1: and the world that in a sense, everybody wants that right,
Speaker 1: everybody wants success in one way or another. So one
Speaker 1: of the first things that happened when I came back
Speaker 1: is a lot of my friends now worked at large
Speaker 1: corporate companies and they'd been working for a number of years,
Speaker 1: three to five years, and they were all experiencing stress
Speaker 1: and burnout. So they heard that I'd come back and
Speaker 1: they reached out to me and said, Jay, you're a monk.
Speaker 1: Right this is twenty thirteen. They were like, you're a
Speaker 1: monk cri. I said yes, and they said, well, you
Speaker 1: must have learned something about like mindfulness and meditation. These
Speaker 1: words were just kind of coming up into the mainstream
Speaker 1: world at that time. And I said, yeah, I learned
Speaker 1: how to meditate, and I learned these principles of leadership
Speaker 1: and these values and how to work from a deeper
Speaker 1: place and intention setting. And they said, well, do you
Speaker 1: mind coming in and speaking at our companies? And so
Speaker 1: I started to get invited into corporates and a lot
Speaker 1: of the executives then would ask me to coach them
Speaker 1: one on one. So this was almost like a natural
Speaker 1: default coaching world that was created in my life out
Speaker 1: of demand rather than me. But the monk could actually
Speaker 1: helped you exactly. I would not be where I'm at
Speaker 1: today without living as a monk. And I laugh about
Speaker 1: that now because so many people when I was about
Speaker 1: to become a monk. Said yeah, you realize no one
Speaker 1: will ever hire you ever again, who wants to have
Speaker 1: a monk on their resume? Right? Like? What job do
Speaker 1: you get with that? And so I was speaking at
Speaker 1: these companies, I was coaching executives, I was working one
Speaker 1: on one with incredible people in England mainly, and then
Speaker 1: I went through again this reflective self inquiry. I said,
Speaker 1: I'm serving a certain type of person right now. But
Speaker 1: having lived in India and wanting to serve absolutely everyone,
Speaker 1: and having lived in England and seeing that not everyone
Speaker 1: has access to money, and not everyone has access to
Speaker 1: invest and not everyone has access to coaches, I was like,
Speaker 1: how do we scale this to every person in the world? Like,
Speaker 1: how do we really touch every person who has a phone,
Speaker 1: every child, every young person? How do you just spread
Speaker 1: this everywhere? Right? Like how do we get it out
Speaker 1: of the corporate boardrooms and beyond? And so one of
Speaker 1: the reflections I had at that time was maybe this
Speaker 1: is going to happen through video and content. And so
Speaker 1: what I did was I had a video series idea
Speaker 1: before I ever made a video, and I pitched it
Speaker 1: to every single major media company in England and I
Speaker 1: was rejected by forty media companies for my video idea
Speaker 1: because I had no background in medio communications. And so
Speaker 1: I went and chased some well known executives and directors
Speaker 1: in the media space in London. One of them I
Speaker 1: called up, who was a family friends family member, and
Speaker 1: I said, hey, I would love to have a break
Speaker 1: into the media. Here's my video idea. And he said
Speaker 1: to me, said how old are you? I said twenty
Speaker 1: eight and he said, you realize everyone who wants this
Speaker 1: job is twenty one years old. And I said, yeah,
Speaker 1: that's fine, I'll work as hard as them. And he said,
Speaker 1: aren't you getting married this year? I said yeah, I'm
Speaker 1: getting married this year. And he said, well, dude, you
Speaker 1: make more money right now. Don't worry about it, just
Speaker 1: you know, just forget about it. Just start a blog.
Speaker 1: And so then I chased another TV broadcaster, very well
Speaker 1: known in London. I chased him while he was riding
Speaker 1: his bike around in London. I saw him, I literally
Speaker 1: chased after me. It was polite enough to stop and
Speaker 1: I said, hey, I want to come and shadow you.
Speaker 1: I want to learn from you. I worked for free.
Speaker 1: I don't want anything. I just need to learn how
Speaker 1: to make content that helps people. And he gave me
Speaker 1: his card and he said, go and get a master's
Speaker 1: and come back in a year. And I thought, God,
Speaker 1: I I don't know if I can go and get
Speaker 1: a master's. And then I applied to four masters programs
Speaker 1: in London. I was rejected from all of them because
Speaker 1: I didn't have the background for it. And so then
Speaker 1: I was really feeling like I was running out of ideas.
Speaker 1: And I had this video series idea for mindfulness and wellness,
Speaker 1: and I was thinking, how do I do this? And
Speaker 1: so I ended up at an ethnic minority TV training
Speaker 1: day run by the BBC. And I'm at this TV
Speaker 1: training day. I walk in and everyone's brown in the
Speaker 1: room and I'm like, oh, you're a brown unbrown, We're
Speaker 1: all brown. Like it's just like literally, it's just six
Speaker 1: ethnic minority yeah. Literally. And so then we're all trained
Speaker 1: that day and they were like, Jay, you're great, you
Speaker 1: can present you you know, you understand how to how
Speaker 1: to work with etc. They were very encouraging. I said, Okay,
Speaker 1: where's my job in the media, and they said, well,
Speaker 1: there are no jobs in the media, and so I said, okay,
Speaker 1: what do I do? And they said, we'll start a
Speaker 1: YouTube channel, And at that time I had the biggest
Speaker 1: mentor block in my mind that you know, starting a
Speaker 1: YouTube channel only works for Justin Bieber Right, It's like
Speaker 1: a one in a million, one in a billion chance
Speaker 1: that YouTube could do anything for you. One thing that
Speaker 1: I love now is Thomas Edison said that when you
Speaker 1: believe you've exhausted all options, remember this you haven't. And
Speaker 1: that's really become a big montra in my life because
Speaker 1: every time I've tried to take a traditional route to something,
Speaker 1: it's never worked, and I've always exhausted all options. And
Speaker 1: at that time, the only option I had left was
Speaker 1: to start a channel. I started my own video channel,
Speaker 1: put up my first video, launched it and it did
Speaker 1: about a thousand views in twenty four hours, which wasn't great,
Speaker 1: and it wasn't bad. It was okay. And then within
Speaker 1: three months someone showed my video to Arianna Huffington at Davos,
Speaker 1: and so I got a call from Arianna Huffington and
Speaker 1: she said, I love your content. We'd love to test
Speaker 1: it out on the Huffington Post channel. And so then
Speaker 1: they posted four of my videos which I made for them,
Speaker 1: produced in London. I sent to them, they posted in
Speaker 1: the US and those four videos did one hundred million
Speaker 1: views in mid twenty sixteen. I didn't expect that they
Speaker 1: were totally mind blown because they didn't expect that. And
Speaker 1: then I moved to New York in twenty sixteen, which
Speaker 1: is when we met, and I took a big risk
Speaker 1: in twenty seventeen March where I left that role, which
Speaker 1: was an incredible company to be a part of. But
Speaker 1: I really felt that I had to grow what I
Speaker 1: believed in and spread it further. I started investing in
Speaker 1: my own video channel. I'm just blessed and very grateful
Speaker 1: to everyone who's ever watch, liked, or shared a video.
Speaker 1: And my real focus with all of these videos is
Speaker 1: how do we make wisdom go viral? How do we
Speaker 1: take all of these knowledge and insights that have not
Speaker 1: been consumed by a lot of people, and how do
Speaker 1: we spread them all over the world to give everyone access.
Speaker 1: People listening to you right now probably be saying to themselves,
Speaker 1: how can I be like Jay? How can I be
Speaker 1: like Jay Shtty? What advice would you give them? How
Speaker 1: would you define success and purpose and the connection between
Speaker 1: those two. Sure so for me, Happiness and success are
Speaker 1: two different things. Happiness is how you feel about yourself
Speaker 1: when you're by yourself. That, to me is happiness is
Speaker 1: how you understand yourself without a reflection or mirror of
Speaker 1: how anyone is viewing you. To me, success is our
Speaker 1: external achievements, whether that's monetary, whether it's awards, whether it's status.
Speaker 1: Success doesn't make you happy and happiness doesn't guarantee success.
Speaker 1: One is deeply internal and an inward journey, and one
Speaker 1: is an outward journey. And I think commonly we confuse
Speaker 1: both of them as one of the others. So we
Speaker 1: think if we get an award, will be happy, and
Speaker 1: everyone who's won an Oscar Award or an Emmy award
Speaker 1: will tell you that doesn't work. Or we have the
Speaker 1: other option where it's like, oh, yeah, if I become
Speaker 1: really happy, then I'll naturally be successful and attract awards, money,
Speaker 1: and well, then that's not true either. And so for me,
Speaker 1: my monk life taught me how to be happy. It
Speaker 1: gave me the deeper connection with myself. It helped me
Speaker 1: declutter the noise. It helped me stop living with reference
Speaker 1: to wanting to be anyone or anything apart from deeply
Speaker 1: being myself and deeply connected with my consciousness. So for me,
Speaker 1: that gave me access to all happiness. What I had
Speaker 1: to do was I to infuse that into my search
Speaker 1: for spreading this in a successful way. So my first
Speaker 1: thing is refining intentions. I every day will refine my
Speaker 1: intentions as if it's a seed that I'm planting every
Speaker 1: single day. And I feel that every day we are
Speaker 1: challenged with working for lower intentions I money, fame, power,
Speaker 1: and control, whereas to me, higher intentions are love, compassion, empathy, service, connection, community,
Speaker 1: and unity. Those to me are higher powers to work for.
Speaker 1: And so for me, every day I'm literally refining my intention,
Speaker 1: taking out the weeds of desire for ego and pride
Speaker 1: and fame and trying to replant the seeds of doing
Speaker 1: this for love, compassion, and empathy. That to me is
Speaker 1: the core of a happy life, first of all, because
Speaker 1: without that, you end up building something that you may
Speaker 1: not even want to build, and you then look back
Speaker 1: down from your tower and go, wow, I wasted a
Speaker 1: lot of time building a tower I didn't really want
Speaker 1: to be on the top of. And so for me,
Speaker 1: that's step one. The second step for me is recognize
Speaker 1: that you have genius, you have unique potential. We're on
Speaker 1: infinite potential right now. You have unique potential inside of you,
Speaker 1: and it's your role to uncover that. You don't need
Speaker 1: to be me, you don't need to be deep actor,
Speaker 1: you don't need to be anywhere. You need to be you,
Speaker 1: and you have that genius, then it's about strategy, and
Speaker 1: I do think strategy is important when you're building a business,
Speaker 1: when you're building an institution, when you're building a company,
Speaker 1: and I think the most effective leaders. There's a beautiful
Speaker 1: statement by Martin Luther King again where he said that
Speaker 1: those who love peace need to learn to organize themselves
Speaker 1: as well as those who love war. And to me,
Speaker 1: that's been such a driving force in my life that
Speaker 1: if we truly love peace and love, we have to
Speaker 1: be really organized, we have to be really effective, we
Speaker 1: have to be productive because that's what people need. So
Speaker 1: for me, becoming strategic about your endeavors is important if
Speaker 1: you want success. Success won't come from just having good
Speaker 1: intentions and being a nice person. You have to become
Speaker 1: strategic and deeply focus on your strengths in that space
Speaker 1: so you know all the wisdom traditions tell us seek
Speaker 1: the highest first, and everything else comes right. And in short,
Speaker 1: the formulas pursue excellence, ignore success, and it comes. I
Speaker 1: couldn't agree more. I couldn't agree more. And I think
Speaker 1: that's the problem that we get attached to the result,
Speaker 1: not the process. So I love waking up every day
Speaker 1: and making content, writing, making videos, speaking, being on a
Speaker 1: podcast with you. I love this. I'm not looking towards
Speaker 1: an external form of success. I'm in love with the process,
Speaker 1: in love with excellence. A little while ago, you use
Speaker 1: the word self awareness. I think that's the best definition
Speaker 1: of spirituality one can have. The self is what spirit is. Right,
Speaker 1: But our world right now is sacrifice the self for
Speaker 1: their selfies. Yes, which is again going back to the
Speaker 1: wisdom traditions. You sacrifice your soul for your ego. Yes.
Speaker 1: And that's the downfall, so well said, and that's the
Speaker 1: biggest challenge today, that we are completely captive of our
Speaker 1: mind and bodies rather than living beyond them. The mind
Speaker 1: body is the selfie, correct, correct? Exactly, that's what a
Speaker 1: selfie is, right, exactly, That's exactly it. You know, there's
Speaker 1: again I'm going back to young people who are inspired
Speaker 1: by you who are looking at their life ahead, give
Speaker 1: them a few tips right now. Yeah. Absolutely. One of
Speaker 1: the first things I'd say is genuinely take time to
Speaker 1: be with people who are growing yourself, not your mind
Speaker 1: and body, like be around those people, whether it's listening
Speaker 1: to deep back, whether it's reading specific books, whether it's
Speaker 1: going on retreats, whether it's have those experiences in your
Speaker 1: life that they're helping you go beyond your mind and
Speaker 1: body and right now. If that doesn't make sense, what
Speaker 1: I mean by that is go to places where you
Speaker 1: forget to think about how you look, who you are,
Speaker 1: and what your status is like. That's a very practical
Speaker 1: way of doing it. Go somewhere no one knows you,
Speaker 1: Go somewhere where you get to explore yourself beyond the
Speaker 1: self you think you are right now. When I started,
Speaker 1: I never thought this would happen. The strategy for social
Speaker 1: media is deeply serving your audience. It still starts with service.
Speaker 1: It's like, do you really understand people's needs, dreams and worries?
Speaker 1: Do you really understand what people are challenged by? And
Speaker 1: do you really want to make a difference in their life?
Speaker 1: If you do, your content will naturally get views and
Speaker 1: likes and shares, And if you don't take the time
Speaker 1: to care for your audience by understanding them, then your
Speaker 1: content won't. So if you're just trying to get likes, views,
Speaker 1: and shares, yes, you may get one viral video and
Speaker 1: you may get one little hits and it may make
Speaker 1: you feel better, but when you're taking time so I'm
Speaker 1: deeply having conversations with the audience I create for. I
Speaker 1: spend so much time in personal meetings with people who
Speaker 1: are aged between eighteen to thirty five because that's the
Speaker 1: majority of my audience. Just talking to people to learn
Speaker 1: about what their challenges are, what can be helped with them.
Speaker 1: I've been coaching people for the last ten years of
Speaker 1: my life younger than me and just observing their challenges
Speaker 1: and helping them. When it made no money, when I
Speaker 1: was a monk, I and told so many people when
Speaker 1: it made no money and got no views. So I've
Speaker 1: done this for the last thirteen years of my life,
Speaker 1: when it made zero money, when it had zero views
Speaker 1: and had zero followers. If you don't know who you are,
Speaker 1: you don't know the world. If you don't know yourself,
Speaker 1: you can't actually relate to anybody else. Peace can only
Speaker 1: be created by those who are peaceful, just like love
Speaker 1: can only be shown by those who have experienced love.
Speaker 1: So this is a very important work that you're doing,
Speaker 1: and I must congratulate you for doing this at such
Speaker 1: an early stage in your life and being such an
Speaker 1: inspiration to so many millions of people, now billions, I
Speaker 1: would say, and I have to thank you for doing
Speaker 1: this because you're really doing it so effectively,