4 Essential Trust-Building Practices to Strengthen Relationships & Why You Shouldn't Let External Validation Control Your Life

Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hey everyone, I'm so excited because we're going to be
adding a really special offering onto the back of my
solo episodes on Fridays. The Daily Jay is a daily
series on Calm and it's meant to inspire you while
outlining tools and techniques to live a more mindful, stress
free life. We dive into a range of topics and
the best part is each episode is only seven minutes long,

(00:22):
so you can incorporate it into your schedule no matter
how busy you are. As a dedicated part of the
on Purpose community, I wanted to do something special for
you this year, so I'll be playing a handpicked Daily
Jay during each of my Friday podcasts. This week, we're
talking about your relationships and how to create the most
meaningful connections with the people that matter to you. Of course,

(00:45):
if you want to listen to The Daily Jay every day,
you can go subscribe to Calm. So go to calm
dot com forward slash j for forty percent off your
membership Today.

Speaker 2 (01:02):
Jay Shess you welcome to How to Fail.

Speaker 1 (01:04):
Oh, thank you so much for having me And that
was a wonderful introduction. Thank you so much.

Speaker 2 (01:08):
It's an honor to be in your presence.

Speaker 1 (01:09):
No, I'm so grateful to be in yours. This is
so wonderful, and I'm really excited to have this conversation. Hehito.

Speaker 2 (01:15):
I wanted to end on that quote because it's so interesting.
I feel that we live in a culture which often
it lies happiness with success, and that can be very
confusing when you're growing up in that culture, because you
think you want one thing and then you might get
it and you realize it actually hasn't made you feel content.
Do you feel that you've got both yourself today? Do

(01:35):
you feel happy and successful?

Speaker 1 (01:37):
If I'm honest, I feel at this stage in my
life I can say that I'm genuinely on the path
of both. I say on the path because I don't
think any of them are ever a place that you
arrive or finish or complete. It's not like a level
in a game where you say, okay, well I've made
it now and there's nothing else to do. But definitely

(01:59):
I've pusedsued both paths very intentionally and consciously, and I
think that's what I was trying to get across when
I said that statement originally. Whereas this idea that I
think a lot of people by confusing the two lose
out on both often. So just as we sometimes think
of success as happiness, we also think of just happiness

(02:21):
as success, and both of untrue. And so I feel
at this point in my life I intentionally pursue them,
but for different reasons. I think that intentionally pursuing joy
and presence and connection creates happiness in my life. And
if I wasn't to pursue that, my external pursuits wouldn't
give me that, I wouldn't just one day find those things.

(02:44):
And similarly, I love the idea of how much I
grow and learn by trying to do more things in
the external world. The idea of building a podcast or
writing a book, or building a company, and having a
team of individuals who I learn from every day and
growth from every day. That to me creates a growth

(03:05):
in the form of success. And so I'm fascinated by
both those parts, and I'm on both those parts even now.

Speaker 2 (03:12):
Do you think you're competitive?

Speaker 1 (03:14):
Absolutely, yeah, definitely, I'm definitely competitive. I'd say that I
constantly focus on how I can do better than myself
rather than how I can do better than others, And
so I'm competitive with myself in am I improving my process?
Am I improving my understanding and analysis? Am I improving

(03:35):
how I perform? Because I think that the outward form
of competition, which is largely based on comparison, just makes
your worst version of yourself, or it makes your worst
version of someone else, And that's not the kind of
competition I'm interested in. So I'm honestly every day trying
to be better than myself. And I think that that

(03:55):
creates a really healthy relationship with being competitive, rather than
living in a world of comparison based competitiveness, which I
think is really unhealthy and can really hurt you.

Speaker 2 (04:07):
Yes, and I've fallen into that trap. It's something I
strive against every day to try not to be comparatively competitive.
And one of the things that I have found very
helpful is the idea that being successful is actually about
being the fullest, the most version of you, that that's
our purpose on this earth. What for you? I know

(04:29):
your podcast is called on Purpose, which is such a
great name. Does your purpose shift day to day or
do you have one consistent purpose for your life?

Speaker 1 (04:38):
I have one underlying purpose that has been developed over many,
many years. So it's not that I one day arrived
in it because I was journaling and I was just
doing a quiz and I ended up with it. And
I always try and loosely help people recognize that purpose
isn't this thing that you have to figure out in
your head and then you live it. It's something that
you collect over time. You collect skills, you collect experiences,

(05:02):
you collect feelings, you collect emotions, and then when you
curate them together, it creates a purpose. If I look
at my purpose today, I collected public speaking and drama
school training from age eleven to age eighteen. I collected
business experience during my time at Cast Business School. I
collected the years of experience I had as a monk.
I collected years of digital social media experience from extension.

(05:26):
Then today, when you look at what I live, it's
like a beautiful mocktail of all of those things. And
so I think purpose is collected. But my underlying purpose
is to dedicate my life to helping other people find theirs,
and I do that by making wisdom and ideas and
habits more accessible, relevant and practical. That's my goal. To

(05:50):
make education spread as fast as entertainment, and if we
can make enlightening educational ideas in an innovative way. Then
people will absorb it and consume it like entertainment and
it will actually improve their lives. A lot of entertainment
is escape, but I want to create entertainment that elevates
our minds, and I really believe it can be done,

(06:12):
and so that's my purpose. So those are the areas
of my life that I'm dedicated to and that fuel
me and wake me every morning. And that's been how
I felt for probably the majority of the last ten
years now or ten years plus. But the way the
vehicle changes, so the format changes. So originally I was
doing that through doing events in the city of London

(06:35):
when I lived here, and maybe two people would show
up or maybe five people would shop, and I was
living my purpose because I was making wisdom accessible, relevant
and practical, and I was trying to make it innovative.
So I was still living my purpose then. And then
when I first started creating my videos, that was four
minute videos. Then we launched a podcast and the podcasts

(06:57):
was one to two hours. Then I wrote my first book,
second book, So the medium and the format changes, but
the vision and the purpose behind each one was exactly
the same, and the purpose satisfied me because the purpose
was never attached to a number or scale, or to
followers or likes or sales, because it started when none

(07:17):
of that existed for me. And so the purpose is
something that will fuel you. I think Albert Einstein has
this beautiful thought where he says, if you want to
be happy, don't tie it to a person, tie it
to a goal. And I changed that to or add
to it to by saying, don't tie it to a person,
tie it to a purpose. And that purpose is something
that can fuel you forever, regardless of the external result.

Speaker 2 (07:41):
You must get an enormous amount of offers that come
your way. So do you have a shortcut? Do you
have a way of checking in with your instincts and
being like, does this align with my purpose? That's an
easy now or an easy yes?

Speaker 1 (07:50):
Yes? Absolutely So. I have a three step method. It's
called ESM Energy Strategy Money. It's very very simple, and
I do this all the time with any opportunity that come.
The first thing I ask myself is is this energetically
aligned with my purpose? What I mean by that is
when I'm in this person's presence or this brand or
company's presence, when I connect with them, I see how

(08:11):
they speak about themselves. Is it aligned with improving people's lives?
Are they building this product? Are they creating this opportunity
because they genuinely believe they want to improve the lives
of others? Do they want to make people happier, healthier,
and more healed? So that's the energy point. Now, if
I don't feel that airlines on that level, we don't
go through to the next point. So that's door number one.

(08:34):
It's stages. That's door number one. So if you made
it through door number one, door number two is strategy. Okay,
someone can have really good intentions and really good energy,
but do they have this strategy to know how to
actually implement this? Do they actually know how to develop
this idea further? Because someone can be really wonderfully intentioned,

(08:55):
but that doesn't mean that it's going to work, and
that doesn't mean that they're going to be able to
get there. And obviously we're talking about this from a
professional point of view. This is not about I don't
do this with people. We're talking about professional opportunities. The
next is strategy, and then the final one is money.
Is the money aligned with what they're saying energetically and
strategically does it make business and financial sense. And I

(09:16):
think that those three doors have always helped me in
any decision making because they allow you to really focus
on what's most important to you, which is the energy,
but then making sure that the strategy of money is
backed up by that as well.

Speaker 2 (09:30):
So interesting because I have a rule of three I
love it, which is passion, pay, prestige.

Speaker 3 (09:34):
Oh, very curious, very close like your words. Yeah, I
love an alliteration.

Speaker 1 (09:41):
Energy strategy. Money has just always been that way. I
guess they all end and why but yes, that's true.

Speaker 2 (09:48):
Let's get onto your brilliant book, which is Eight Rules
of Love, and it is so everything that you have
just spoken about. It makes wisdom so accessible and relevant.
And I told you before we started recording, I wish
that i'd this in my twenties. It would have saved
me a lot of trouble. Having said that, I'm now
married for the second time to a wonderful but thank

(10:08):
you to a wonderful person. But the road to get
there was strewn with failure and taught me a lot.
And that's why I wish i'd read your book because
it's so profoundly wise about so many things I want
to ask you back.

Speaker 1 (10:21):
I'd love to add that, first of all, thank you
for sharing that with your own experience, and second of all,
congratulations on believing that love was possible and you still
had the full permission to love again and you were
lovable and you could find it, which is incredible. And
also i'd add that I'm not ever concerned that someone
may have failures in love, because, like you said and

(10:43):
me included, I've made a lot of mistakes in love
early on in my life, which is what led to
this book as well. But it makes you appreciate what
you have so much more now, and that gratitude that
I have for my wife, I'm sure you feel that way.
That gratitude you have, it actually makes this even better.
And so if any one's out there and they've been
through a lot of pain, or they've been treated really horribly,

(11:03):
or they've had the worst experiences and had their heart broken.
I'm not saying it's easy. I'm not saying it's okay.
I'm not saying you deserve that at all. I'm just
saying that when you do find it, you will have
this deep appreciation and gratitude in a way that you
could never have had it if you didn't have those experiences.
And so I just want to point out that no
one should ever feel discouraged that if they've failed or

(11:26):
lost love too many times that that's a bad thing.

Speaker 2 (11:29):
I could not agree more. That's so beautifully put tell
us about breakups, because that is one of the things
that really affects listeners to this podcast and massively affected
me when I was going through them, because there is
no grief quite like heartbreak. It's such a specific and
individual thing, and you have some great advice for it.
And one of the things that I found most beautiful

(11:51):
in this book is that idea that you might be
broken up with, but you're not broken. Your soul is unbreakable.
Can you tell us a bit more about.

Speaker 1 (11:59):
That, Yeah, definitely. So first of all, I want to
say that if anyone's had their heart broken or has
gone through a breakup that was painful because of what
someone said or how they treated you, the truth is
that it will always hurt because when you look at
the science behind heartbreak, it says that we feel the
same chemical shift as when someone's trying to detox from cocaine.

(12:23):
And so if you think about that, It's like being
addicted to a drug that was fueling you and filling
you up that wasn't good for you, but it was
still an addiction. And now that it's been removed from
your physical or even emotional presence, you now literally have
this feeling of what's craving for another human, just as

(12:44):
you crave back for cocaine. And so the fact that
it hurts is real and true, and we should validate that.
You shouldn't feel bad that it hurts, or that you're
a weak person, or that you're someone who doesn't have
a backbone, or if anyone says to you like, oh,
just get over it. The fact that you can't get
over it is a very real emotion. We shouldn't just
shun it or push it aside. And then to answer

(13:07):
your question, I think what we often find is that
we believe that someone's love for us is what makes
us lovable. So we believe that if someone values us,
then we're valuable, if someone likes us, then we're likable,
and so all of our self belief, self value, and

(13:30):
self esteem is based on someone else's view towards us.
So then when that person leaves, we feel broken because
they just took what we so deeply needed. And I
approach this from a very spiritual point of view in
the book, which is what you just mentioned now, and

(13:51):
I have reference often the Bug with Geta, which is
the book that I deeply studied during my time as
a monk, and the book is over five thousand years old.
It's originally in Sanskrit. There are some English translations which
are beautiful to read and understand. And that book talks
about how consciousness, or our first self as I like

(14:11):
to call it, we have so many selves, but our
first self is unbreakable. It's insoluble, it's unburnable. And the
idea that there's this part of you that existed before
this person, during this person, and after this person will
always be there. There is a you before every relationship,

(14:32):
during every relationship, and there will continue to be one
of you after every relationship. And yes, this doesn't solve
the heartbreak, but it's something you should know inherently and deeply.

Speaker 2 (14:44):
That's very moving that because you can apply it so
many things, you can also apply it to grief, that
there will still be a soul as you're experiencing this horror,
you will get through it and you will still exist.
I think that's a very meaningful thing for people to
hear talk to us about trust and the expectation we

(15:04):
have that love should be quite unquote magic, and so
we sort of scatter all of our trust tokens immediately.

Speaker 1 (15:11):
Yes, I love the language of trust tokens. That's that's
really that's that's really great. I love that. Trust fascinates
me because I consider myself to be someone who always
wants to trust others, who generally has positive feelings towards others,
and I want to like others and be liked and
do good things with them. And I think that's most
of us. Most of us feel like we want to

(15:31):
trust others. But I think what I found throughout life
was just how trust was something that shouldn't just be
given away. It should be something that's earned, both by
ourselves and by others. I should feel I have to
earn my trust with you because we have a new relationship,
and the other person should feel they have to earn

(15:51):
my trust back. But what often happens is that the
halo effect creates this idea where we just give trust away.
Someone's attractive, we believe they're trustworthy if someone's smart, we
believe they're organized. If someone's well spoken, we believe they're kind.
So what we start doing is we start ascribing qualities

(16:14):
of trust to qualities we perceive. And that's where it
starts to go wrong. Because that person hasn't shown you that,
you just assume that they have that quality because they
have another quality, or they went to a good school,
they must be really reliable, they must come from a
good family. We start giving them all of these trust tokens,

(16:35):
as you said, without actually letting them earn it. So
in my first book, Think like a Monk, I broke
down the four levels of trust. The first level is
zero trust when I meet someone new, and when you
meet someone new, as painful as it sounds, please start
at zero trust. Often we think of trust as binary.
We often think I either trust you I don't trust you.

(16:57):
I actually have four levels. The first is zero trust
when I meet someone, they're starting there. The second level
of trust is transactional trust. This is when I say
to you, especially in the dating world, I'll be there
at nine pm. Does that person sharp at nine pm?
I'll call you the first thing in the morning. Did
they call first thing in the morning, now, of course,
there may be a couple of times this doesn't happen.

(17:18):
That's forgivable. But do we have a level of transactional
trust with them or not? Oh yeah, I'll make sure
I send that email to you. Oh yeah, definitely, I'll
be there at twelve on the dot. These are the
moments where we get to see transactional trust. And often,
if we like the way someone looks, or we believe
that they might be an amazing partner, even if they
completely don't follow transactional trust, we'll give them that that

(17:41):
benefit of the doubt because there's something else we find
attractive and fascinating about them. The third level of trust
is what I call reciprocal trust. This means you've ever
had really good experiences of the first two, and now
you do nice things for each other without counting. You're
not checking every time a transaction's made, you're not having
to watch whether it happens or not. You've gained that

(18:02):
level of trust where we do nice things for each
other but no one's counting. And the fourth level, and
the highest level of trust, is unconditional trust. And I
call that god like trust or parent like trust, which
you're not necessarily going to have immediately with anyone, and
that's something that could take years to develop. And it's
a divine level of trust where I trust you with

(18:23):
my whole life. But after what we do is we
start there with people and then we fall back down.
And basically, the higher level of trust you give to someone,
the more levels you have to fall. So if you
gave someone unconditional trust just after three months, then you're
going to end up at zero after three months, which
means you just topple down four levels, and that's what hurts.

(18:44):
Whereas when you say, okay, they were at one and
I expected one, or I thought they would be at
one but I got zero, then it's not going to
hurt as much. And so it's a really tactical, practical
way of measuring trust.

Speaker 2 (18:56):
Super clever. And I think that there's a misapprehension that
people BELI leave that sort of attitude is somehow unromantic.

Speaker 1 (19:03):
Absolutely, I think everything I'm sharing sounds really unsexy, unromantic, unmagical,
But it's all designed to save you from pain. It's
all designed to save you and protect you from setting
yourself up for a failure. Often we say, oh, that
person misled me. And I'm not saying there aren't people
that mislead you, but often we mislead ourselves by giving

(19:24):
away trust without anyone earning it. I mean, I looked
at it again. I'm looking at research. So I'm not
basing this on my opinion. I'm not basing this on
my personal experience. I'm basing on research. Studies showed that
around sixty to seventy percent of people feel too pressured
to say I love you or hear the words I
love you in the first month. Now that's challenging because

(19:45):
sure we all want to fall in love, but I
promise you there's no one who can truly stand by
that statement after one month. Men say I love you
within one month, and women say I love you within
three months. Then studies go on to say that it
takes forty hours to can cosider someone a casual friend,
one hundred hours to consider someone a good friend, and
two hundred hours to consider someone a great friend. So

(20:08):
if you need two hundred hours to consider someone a
great friend, you can't have done that in one month.
It's just not realistic. If you saw someone once a week,
even if you saw someone once a day for two hours,
only sixty hours in a month, so we're almost giving
away really high levels of love for very low levels
of time.

Speaker 2 (20:26):
So interesting. So I had an expectation when I met
my now husband. We met online, we met on Hinge,
and I was thirty nine at the time, and because
I had grown up on a diet of nineteen eighties
rom coms. We're coming on to that, don't you worry.
But I I was in love with the idea of
love as it had been portrayed on screen in fiction.

(20:50):
And it took him six months to say that you
loved me, and I thought, gosh, it's taking ages. It's
taking ages. And I refused to say it first, ridiculous paraclay.
And I always remember when he said it, he said,
I've taken this long because when I say it, it's
a commitment. And I felt so safe then that he
had said it within those parameters, and it was so

(21:13):
beautiful and so romantic, precisely because we've gone through those stages.
And you write in the book about how we mean
different things when we say I love you, and we
have to check in with each other what that actually
quantifies when we say that statement.

Speaker 1 (21:28):
Yes, so I have a rule in the book. One
of my favorite rules is define love before you say
it or feel it, because so many of us our
definition of love is based on someone else's experience. It
could be movies, could be, media, could be our parents,
could be a family friend that we saw. Love is

(21:49):
such a interesting word because someone could say I love
you and it means I want to spend my life
with you, and someone else could say I love you
and it means I want to spend a night with you,
and everything in between that spectrum, and so the challenges
when we hear the words I love you, we hear

(22:09):
our own definition when it came out of someone else's mouth,
and obviously we want to say it back so badly
we don't stop and go, oh, wait a minute, can
you explain what that means? What do you mean by that?
What you would never do that? And I don't recommend
anyone should. But before you hear it and before you
say it, make sure you've understood what love means to
that person. What does a relationship mean to that person?

(22:30):
The fact that your now husband said to you to me,
it means a commitment that's so beautiful that you knew that,
which meant when he said it, hopefully he felt he
could live up to that commitment. Now, if someone else
to them, love just means I feel attracted to you,
I'm really into you, I really like you, And they
say I love you. You may take it to be Oh,

(22:50):
that means they're committed, but that's in your head. That's
not what they've said. And I think there's so many
definitions in between. So I'm not saying you have to
go up to your person you're dating and say what
does love mean to you on your first date? But
I think you have to decipher and understand as time
goes on. How does this person view relationships? Are they
scared of commitment? Do they have a history of that

(23:11):
as a challenge, these are all things that we have
to discover because otherwise we set ourselves up to believe
that everyone wants the same love we want, and they don't.
Not everyone does, And that's okay too.

Speaker 2 (23:22):
Now. I know you watch Selling Sunset.

Speaker 1 (23:24):
Yeah, that's my guilty pleasure.

Speaker 2 (23:27):
I wonder if you've ever watched Love Island.

Speaker 1 (23:29):
I have, so my wife's watched Love Island, and I've
watched her watching Love Island. But I've watched maybe bits
and pieces, but not something I've watched myself yet.

Speaker 2 (23:37):
I only ask because I watch Love Island, I love
reality TV, and they say I love you very very quickly,
and so that I was interested, But in a way
that sets up a false expectation of love in the
same manner as romantic comedy is that we love to
watch what's your favorite romantic comedy of all times? Oh?

Speaker 1 (23:53):
As a good one? So I really do appreciate he's
just not that into you. It's it's really good. It
shows a lot of how we perceive things, how we
make challenges. Like all the characters in that movie are
really far more realistic than most wrong cooms, and I
think the scenarios are far more realistic, where you assume
someone likes you because they message, or you kind of

(24:15):
push someone away because you're talking about the wrong things.
I think that movie's probably got the best examples in it.

Speaker 2 (24:20):
Before we get onto your failures. I know you've got
an issue with the Notebook.

Speaker 1 (24:24):
I talked about that recently only because I had an
ex girl friend that made me once the Notebook a
million times. But I think I really sat because of it. No, no, no,
I enjoyed it at the time. But I think I
really sat and analyzed it because of that. I mean,
you mostly don't watch movies again and again and again,
but I must have watched that movie like at least
ten times during that relationship, and I sat down to

(24:45):
analyze it because I felt it had so much power culturally.
Notebook is such a big movie. And by the way,
just to point out, I love Ryan Gosling and Rachel
mccaddam's in actors. They're phenomenal actors. The movie is great.
I think it was just the writing of the story.
And again, I don't think it was wrong. It's just
how people did confess their love. And there are so

(25:05):
many scenes in that movie. But one of the scenes
is he's like chasing her on the street and she
looks uncomfortable because of it. He's like running around her, walking,
moving really fast, and you look at it and go, wow,
he's so smooth, he's so into her wish you know,
because he's a good looking guy and well spoken. And
he says to her, he says, I'll be anything you want.
I can do it. Tell me what you want, I'll

(25:25):
be it. That's such an unhealthy misconception to say I'll
be anything you want, whatever you want, I'll be it.
Well most people a can't live up to that and
be if we want someone to become whatever we want,
then do we really love them or do we love
an idea. The second ones that I really have a
struggle with is she's on the ferris wheel like the
London I I guess, but the old school ones, and

(25:47):
he's hanging off of it literally like by his arms,
and he says, if you don't go on a date
with me, I'll let go. And it's like, can you
imagine someone threatening to take their own life? Like that's
really like quite a toxic, unhealthy idea to put someone
under that pressure. She goes, yes, yes, I will, just
don't let go, and it's like that's uncomfortable for her too.
She's been put in that. And I think so many

(26:08):
movies over time have built this idea of the damsel
in distress and the savior and the knight in shining armor.
The woman has to wait for her prince. That whole
idea naturally has made so many people think, one day,
my prince will come and save me, even if you
don't think about it in those words. And I want
you to be very careful. I'm I'm not saying you
sit there and wait for a prince, but there's a

(26:28):
part of you that believes that someone will come and
save you. And if you have to be saved, that
means you're the one who is saved, which means you're broken,
which means you need to be fixed. And so it
perpetuates all these ideas of I'm broken, I'm unlovable until
I'm loved, I'm unlikable until I'm liked, I'm not valuable
until I'm valued.

Speaker 2 (26:48):
You do talk a lot about unlearning, which I think
is such a powerful word, because we do, all of
us have that task of unlearning what society has conditioned
us to believe, what our families of origin might have
conditioned us to believe, and working out who we are
and what we are for ourselves. And I see failure
very much as part of that. So, actually, what is failure.

(27:10):
Failure is when life doesn't go according to plan? Whose
plan is it?

Speaker 1 (27:13):
Is it?

Speaker 2 (27:13):
Actually yours?

Speaker 1 (27:14):
Yes? Yes?

Speaker 2 (27:15):
And I wonder I'm going to ask you about your
failures now, but just broadly speaking, how do you feel
about the concepts of failure?

Speaker 1 (27:23):
Can I rewind a little because I wanted to comment
on what you just said, because it sparked the thought
for me something really interesting that I came across. So,
when we think about these milestones that society places I
studying hard, getting a good degree, getting a good job,
getting married, having kids, often we go through those without

(27:43):
even questioning whether that choice is something we actually want.
So it's like, oh, of course you have to get married.
Of course you have to have kids. That's what happens
after marriage. Of course, of course, of course, of course.
And I think often people ask or feel, I'm running
out of time. Oh my gosh, I'm so late to
getting married. I'm so late to having kids, And especially women,
of course have that pressure because of their body clock,

(28:04):
et cetera. So that pressures even felt more by women.
And when I look at that strongly and deeply, I
often encourage people stop asking the question is this the
right time, because timelines are based on society's definition mostly,
and instead ask do I understand how this decision will

(28:25):
change my life? And the second question is do I
like how it will change my life? So if you
think about getting married, it's not about whether you should
get married or not. It's not about whether it's the
right time or not. It's do I understand how getting
married to this person is going to change my life?
Do I like how that will change in my life?
That's when you know, and the problem is we're thinking, well,
do I need to get married? It's the wrong question.

(28:47):
So anyway, I just wanted to interject there and add that, Yeah,
I just wanted to help give people a practical talter
to use for decision making. How do I feel about failure?
I've gone silent because I want to give a very thoughtful,
reflected answer, because I don't think there's anyone who could

(29:09):
truly say they enjoy failure or they like failure. I
think that would be a very bold statement with some
fiction attached to it. But I would say that I've
just learned that it is unavoidable, so I'm no longer
surprised by it, and I'd say that if it happens
to me, I no longer see it as a sign

(29:32):
of my inadequacy. I see it as an opportunity to grow,
an opportunity to pivot, or potentially a chance to say
maybe this isn't my path, and so I no longer
see it as a reflection of my worth, my self esteem.
But I also know it's always going to happen no

(29:54):
matter how hard I try, or no matter how perfectly
I execute something. It's always a part stability. And I
think we live in a world where we think, well,
it's not even a possibility, or we can avoid it.
And now I've learned, and I remember studying and this
is this is something I wish they taught in school,
and I really hope that we find a way to

(30:14):
teach it more. In school, we learn history of a
country or a nation, but we don't deeply study the
history of human beings, of actual people. And I got
really lucky because I got so into autobiographies and biographies
when I was in my teens. So I'd read Malcolm
X Martin, Luther King all the way through to David

(30:36):
Beckham and Dwaine the Rock Johnson by the time I
was around eighteen years old. And I loved the spectrum
of those individuals because they've all inspired me in different ways,
and you can learn so much from anyone's story. And
then many years later, I read Steve Jobs's biography by
Walter Isaacson, who I've had the pleasure of interviewing Walter Isaacson,

(30:56):
and when I saw Steve Jobs's life and to think
that he was kicked out of his own company only
to go and build Pixar in the meantime, to then
go back to that same company to lead it again
to further glory. When I look at the people I
look up to and i'm inspired by, they've all constantly
failed and faced rejection. And that's what convinces me that
if I'm failing, it's absolutely normal. But if you never

(31:18):
study those lives, and you never studied those stories, all
you ever see is, oh, yeah, Steve Jobs was really smart,
he was really successful. He was worth like one hundred
million dollars by the time he was thirty or whatever
it is. But it's like, that's really not the story.
And so what you're doing with your podcast is really
beautiful and wonderful because and I know we are going
to talk about failures. As you said, I think that's

(31:40):
a really healthy way to think about people's stories. I
think we look at what people did right, yes, but
we don't look at where things went wrong exactly.

Speaker 2 (31:47):
We look at their cvs. Your first failure is about
when you were seven or eight years old tell us
what happened.

Speaker 1 (31:55):
Yeah, so this failure is probably the and I really
tried to think what was the earliest failure I had,
because I think our failures as children often affect us
much worse, and we often, obviously at that age, do
not have the ability to process and say this is
part of my path. Like obviously I did not have
that perspective. So, yeah, I was around seven or eight
years old in primary school in London, and we used

(32:19):
to have something my school did that was beautiful, as
we would celebrate every culture and so there would always
be a celebration of everyone's religious holidays and all of
this kind of stuff in primary school, which I really appreciated.
I think it was a great education in that sense.
So this one was an assembly where I was going
to have to sing something in my mother tongue, and

(32:41):
I was going to have to not only read, but
sing in a language that not many people in my
school recognized. And I was dressed in traditional Indian clothing.
Now I was overweight as a kid, and the clothes
didn't quite fit right. I didn't necessarily look good in them,
but my mother was hope that I was representing my

(33:01):
culture and it would be a really proud moment, and
I went out onto the stage at school. They're around
I don't know, four hundred people in the assembly hall,
and everyone pretty much started laughing or giggling or from
the moment I walked out because I just didn't look
like I fit in that day, and I look different
to how I usually looked. I then started to sing.

(33:23):
I've never had a good singing voice. I don't sing
till this day. I won't even do karaoke. I have
a terrible voice. I then start to sing, and everyone
just is in stitches, like completely laughing, because not only
am I singing, I'm singing in language they don't recognize.
All the kids start laughing, even some of the teachers
were laughing. And then I forget the words because now

(33:46):
I'm distracted by everyone else's laugh and you know, pointing
and whatever else they're doing that. I look down at
my piece of paper that I'm holding to try and
remember the lines, and I can no longer read the
lines because my tears smudged the words, and so now
I've forgotten the words and I can't read them, and
I know I'm crying, and now everyone's laughing even more

(34:06):
because I'm crying, and so my teacher now walks on
stage to comfort me. She puts her arm around me
and walks me off stage. And now everyone's laughing even
more because I've had to be comforted off stage. This
was my first ever experience of public performance or public speaking.
I felt like such a failure that day because for
the rest of the day people were pointing, laughing. I

(34:27):
felt like I'd let my mom down because I hadn't
represented my culture properly. I felt like I'd let my
teachers down because they trusted me to go on stage.
I felt like I'd let my friends down because obviously
I was the laughing stock of the school. I'd forgotten
the words, and I felt like a failure that day
because in all sense of the word, it was a failure.

Speaker 2 (34:48):
Shay. I actually I find stories like that so heartbreaking.
The powerlessness of being a child and wanting to make
your parents and your culture proud. The fact that you
don't do karaoke to the saying is that because is
that because of it?

Speaker 1 (35:05):
I don't know. I'm just I have done karaoke like
I would never do a solo Carrioklet's say that's okay.
I know, I'm just I'm being honest in the sense
that I've never felt I've had a good singing voice.
I definitely don't have a good singing voice. I'm very
okay with that. I have no no trauma attached to
having a good singing voice. Others i'd be a singer, no,
I think. More so, it was at that time this
feeling of just I don't know if I ever want

(35:27):
to go back on stage ever again. You know, that
kind of feeling of I don't think I'll ever ever
step back in front of a group of people again.
And usually when I tell that story, not between me
and you, but if I share it on stage, usually
people are laughing in the audience too, and so it's
really nice to have your compassionate empathy for it. It
was my mind with my inner child, definitely. Mean.

Speaker 2 (35:47):
Was there an element of not fitting in that you
were fearful of at that time?

Speaker 1 (35:51):
Definitely. I think that I was one of the few
Indian people in my primary school, and so people already
didn't know Indian people. I was already bullied for having
smelly foods sometimes in school or things like that. Because
I'm thirty five now. Yeah, I'm thirty five right now.
So there was that, there was not being open to
obviously Hindu dress and Indian clothing, and then of course

(36:12):
me being overweight on top of all of that, and
so there was you know, I can understand it too.
I think it's really interesting. You know, kids are fascinating
because they're adorable and beautiful, and at the same time,
so many of us do things as kids that we
would never do as adults, and so it's always interesting.
But I have a lot of empathy and compassion, even
just for all the kids in the room, because it
was just new to them. What did they know. They
didn't they weren't educated in it, they didn't understand. As kids,

(36:33):
you never get told to encourage others or support others.
You may say, be friends with that person, But I
don't think we teach our kids to be encouraging and
supportive and accepting. I don't think you hear about those
words as a kid, at least I didn't, even even
though my parents loved me. I don't think I heard
those words and said, oh, when you see another kid
do something difficult, encourage them. I don't think I was
ever told that by anyone by my teachers either. So

(36:55):
I also have a lot of compassion and empathy for
the fact that you have to train these ideas to
teach people these things they're not I think we assume
that everyone should just be nice to each other, but
why would they if they've never heard that.

Speaker 2 (37:08):
I'm not saying that this incident in and of itself
had this effect, but do you think you ended up
feeling unlovable at a time in your life.

Speaker 1 (37:17):
I think that there's another experience that happened a few
years after that made me feel not unlovable. I've never
felt unlovable because my mom's love has pierced through every
pressure layer or whatever else exists. I think my mom
has loved me so deeply that I feel so safe

(37:38):
in a deep sense that I don't think I've ever
thought myself to be unlovable. But I have thought myself
to be unlikable or unwanted or unattractive, And I think
those are very different things, and I think we often
mesh them all into one, but they're not. And so
I remember at ten eleven years old, end of primary school.

(37:59):
All of the boys in school had their first crush
around that age, and we all had the same first
crush at school. There was this one girl at school
that everyone had a crush on, and no one told
her because we were all scared. We didn't want her
to know. You know, ten years old, what do you know?
And I walked in late to school one day. I
think had a doctor's appointment. I was running late or
something like that. And I walked in and everyone was

(38:21):
again pointing and laughing at me, and I was like,
oh gosh, what's going on. And then one of my
friends sent me a note and I opened up the
note and it said she knows. I was like, she
knows what? And then I realized that everyone in the school,
the girls and the boys, have all told this girl
that I'm into her and that I'm the only person
in the class that has a crush on her. And

(38:41):
then for the rest of the day in the playground,
all these girls stood behind the goal. I was only
a goalkeep. I was only allowed to be a goalkeeper
because I wasn't very athletic growing up. And all the
girls stood behind the goal and they kept shouting out,
she's out of your league. I can't believe you thought
you could be with her. You're so fat, you know,
all these words. And I think that was more that
feeling of unlike or I'm unattractive, or I'm not attractive

(39:03):
to the opposite sex, etc. And all of that. And
I think when in my teens, when I became more
athletic and I played sport and I felt like I
became more cool in my teens, I think that's where
I really sought validation from the opposite sex, where I
really wanted the women I dated to really believe that
I was a good guy and I was amazing and
I was attracted. And I think my teens I spent

(39:24):
a lot of time trying to understand I wanted to
be liked and validated. I didn't even want to be loved.
And I think a lot of us accept the currency
of validation and attention as love will take attention and validation,
and will even believe that it's love. But it isn't
attention and validation isn't love. It's a form of liking

(39:45):
and attraction. Love is far more deeper. Love is full
of care, it's full of character, it's full of commitment,
it's full of support. And so I think I in
my teens was looking more for attention and validation than
I was for love, even those under the guise of love.

Speaker 2 (40:02):
How do you see fame fitting in with what you've
just said there, because I think the reason that many
people seek fame and then the reason why it's harmful
for them is because they are yearning that validation and
mistaking it for love. And actually it's pretty hollow, I understand.
But you are globally famous, you have celebrity best friends,

(40:25):
you are highly successful, extremely handsome. I suppose what I'm
asking is how do you protect yourself against being drawn
in by that?

Speaker 1 (40:36):
So I think I got really fortunate because the monk
experience is a master class in detachment. And I'm not
saying that I have complete detachment or that I am
immune to any of the things you just mentioned, but
I believe I have a master class training in how
to deal with it. So it's not credit to me
or who I am. It's credit to this very special

(40:58):
experience I had. And so what was really interesting is
when I went to the monastery, Initially I sought the
validation of the monks. Yes, because we're always seeking validation, right,
We start by seeking validation of our parents, then our teachers,
then people were attracted to We literally keep just projecting
our desire for validation onto different people. So I even

(41:19):
ran and projected on the monks. The interesting thing was
the monks were the first people not to validate it
back or to reject it. Right, So, when you are
attracted to someone and you want them to validate you,
they either validate you or they reject you. The monks
don't validate you, and they don't reject you. They train
you and how to deal with that. They teach you
and how to validate yourself. And so during my time
as a monk, I started to learn that the deepest

(41:41):
form of validation was validating myself in becoming the person
who I wanted to be. If I was becoming the
person I wanted to be, that was the best validation.
And the only person who could tell me that was me.
And so I really got to a place during my
time in the monastery where I was very comfortable with
who I had become. I was very honest about my values.
I was okay with those, I was accepting of those,

(42:03):
and I didn't need someone else to agree or disagree
to make me feel better or worse about them. Not
that I finished it or mastered it. I'm saying it
felt real, that idea felt tangible to me. And I
actually remember around that time I organized a charity event
when I left, and I remember two very distinct experiences

(42:25):
where before my time in the monastery, if I was
leading a project and people were criticizing me, I took
that to heart. And I remember after the monastery, when
I organized this event, I got a lot of people
congratulating me, and it was really interesting because the same
people that criticized me were the same people that were
congratulating me. And I remember having a very deep, profound

(42:46):
moment in myself that day and saying to myself, I
can't let either dictate the course of my life, because
people change their mind at the drop of a hat,
and I can't let criticism or celebration dictate my values
to the course of my life. Again, this is something
that's tested every day. It's not something that I've made

(43:07):
peace with and I'm done and I've mastered it. It's
something I'm constantly doing. So i'd say that now because
I've been doing my purpose for so many years, like
I feel like I've been living the same purpose without success.
I live doing what I do today for ten years
before it ever became noticed. It's been noticed in the
last six to seven years, but I've been doing it
for ten years before that. So this has been like
a seventeen year journey. Doing something you love for ten

(43:30):
years and not being noticed for it by more than
ten twenty, maybe fifty people is a beautiful training ground
because you do it for the love of it, and
so today I still do it for the love of it,
because that's all I've ever known. I've done it for
so long when I wasn't successful, and then at the
same time, when you get tempted by fame and you
get tempted by pride and ego, which comes naturally to

(43:52):
any one of us who's in a human body and
has a human mind. It's really beautiful to be married
and be humbled by your wife in very beautiful ways,
not in judgmental or critical ways, but out of love.
And I feel that my wife has been an incredibly
grounding force because I think as I became more externally successful,

(44:13):
I metaphorically held up my achievements to my wife metaphorically,
not physically, and I said, love me for this. Look
what I just achieved. Love me for this. Look how
cool I am. Look how amazing I am. Love me
for this. Look at my best seller list. Love me
for this. Look how many views I got. Love me
for this? Look at how what my podcast is doing.
Love me for this. And every time I asked for

(44:34):
that from my wife, she didn't love me more for
that or less for that. She's only ever loved me
for who I am. And I think that if my
wife had loved me for what I achieved, I think
I would have started loving myself for my achievements. But
because my wife loves me for who I am, I
think I'm constantly reminded to love myself for who I

(44:54):
am because that's what she values, and that reminds me
of what to value in myself. And that's the beauty
of a good relationship, where what someone values in you
can actually be a beautiful thing. I also spend a
lot of time. Sorry, I know it's a long answer,
but there's just so much.

Speaker 2 (45:07):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (45:07):
I also spend a lot of time meditating on irrelevance
and insignificance. And I recognize the inevitability of everyone's irrelevance
and insignificance. At some point in their life. There is
no one in the world who has held the same
level of significance for their entire life and when they
finally die and leave the planet. So why would I

(45:29):
believe that that would be any different from me. There
will be a day when I will be absolutely irrelevant
and insignificant, and I've made peace with that now. If
I can make peace with that now, then I'll make
peace with it then. But if there's a part of
me that believes that I have to be significant forever
or relevant forever, then I'm going to feel a lot
of pain when that day comes. And my monk training
is to detach myself before the day comes, not to

(45:52):
wait for the moment when it inevitably will come, and
then deal with it. Then we'd often talk about how
you know, living is a monk, and this is a
very popular Zen teaching. It's not not my words, but
life is not about learning to live, it's learning how
to die, because you're preparing for the inevitable. And so
I take that to be well, sure, death is inevitable,
but there's lots of other things that are inevitable, and

(46:14):
preparing for those early on mentally and emotionally sets you
up for success. So I'm making peace with that now.
The friends that I have are genuine friends. I don't
spend time with them because they're famous, or even if
that's the context we met in. I have some really
beautiful relationships with people in the same way as I
would count my best friends from London that I've been
my friends for my whole life. Who other people I

(46:36):
still speak to the most. My videographer. I've known my
videographer since I was fourteen, so twenty years nearly. He's
been my videographer for seven years whenever I'm in London.
But I think it's a daily practice. I don't think
it's something you achieve. I think I have to think
about these things every day, and I have to constantly
detach and disconnect myself because it's so easy to get

(46:56):
swept up, and so I'm very vigilant of that. It's
something I'm very cautious of, and I think the day
I stopped becoming cautious will be the day that I
lose it.

Speaker 2 (47:05):
I really appreciate your honesty. Thank you. Let's get onto
your second failure, which is that when you left the monastery,
you reapplied for jobs in consulting and banking.

Speaker 1 (47:15):
Yes, and what happened. So leaving the monastery felt like
a failure because since I was eighteen years old, that
became my dream, and I fought so hard to get there.
I had to first get through being eighteen to twenty
one without thinking about settling down or moving into a job.
I had to turn down a corporate job offer, had
to break up with girlfriends at the time. I had

(47:36):
to leave my friends and family behind. So many of
my extended family said to me, you're brainwashed, you're wasting
your parents' education, you're letting your parents down, You're never
going to get married again, You're never going to get
a job again. Like this is what I heard before
I became a monk, And it's really interesting to me
today because so many people say to me, they're like, Jay,
you have such a cool story, and maybe you did

(47:58):
it for the story. I even get some of that
criticism sometimes where it's like, oh, Jay, like you know,
did you just become a monk so that one day
you could do all of this? And I'm just like,
I'm like, I don't think you understand how uncool it
was for me to become a monk. It's something hopefully
that I've made more culturally interesting. But at the time,
it's like everyone in my life looked to me as
I was weird, Like why would you do that? Everyone's

(48:18):
going to work for a company and they're in a relationship,
they're thinking about having fun, and you're thinking about becoming
a monk. And so I left with a lot of
negativity surrounding the decision, but I felt really confident in it.
And then when I came back, I came back to
that noise. Severyone's like I told you, so, I knew
you wouldn't make it. Look, no one's going to give
you a job. Now you're never going to get married again.
Look at all your friends, they're promoted. Did you know

(48:40):
so and so just got promoted. Did you know so
and so just moved into a new flat. Did you
know that so and so is about to get engaged.
Did you know so and so is making this much money?
Now you're twenty six years old without a job and
eighteen thousand pounds in debt. It was a really depressive moment,
depressive because I'd felt like I failed at being a monk,
which was my dream, which really felt like I'd failed

(49:01):
at marriage because I felt like I got married to
being a monk and it felt like a divorce, Like
it really felt like a breakup. And it was the
lowest point of my life because I felt that was it.
I felt like I'd made it and I felt like
I'd found something, only for me to realize that wasn't
my path. And that's really hard to think something's your
path and then realize it's not. That's so challenging. And

(49:23):
I know a lot of people who tried to become
athletes and then they had an injury and then they
can pursue it. That stuff really messes with your mind.
And then when I came back, I'm coming back to
all this stress and pressure in these and they're right
because I'm applying to forty companies. I'm writing individuals, CVS resumes,
cover letters. I'm a first class honors degree, straight A student.

(49:44):
I have nothing lacking on my resume apart from I've
been a month for three years, and no one will
even give me an interview in London, like I won't
even get through. I will just get the automatic response
that says your application's not going further. So now everything
everyone's saying is true. Three years ago or four years ago,
when I became a monk, it wasn't true. Now it's true.
Now it's real, And that feels like a massive failure

(50:06):
because now I'm going not only did I fail it
becoming a monk, I now can't even reintegrate into society,
and now I'm behind this idea of I've fallen behind
and I've got debts to pay, my parents are not
well off. My parents are being wonderful and supporting me,
let me move in again. But now I feel like
a failure in my parents' eyes, even though they didn't
make me feel that way. I felt like a failure

(50:28):
in my extended family's eyes, who definitely had that rhetoric.
I felt like a failure in my friend's eyes because
I hadn't followed through and now they were ahead. And
I felt like a failure in my career because I
couldn't get a job. And so that was definitely one
of the lowest moments in my life. Not the lowest.
That said, it's the one before the lowest.

Speaker 2 (50:47):
So yeah, what's the lowest.

Speaker 1 (50:49):
The lowest was I have this really big high in
twenty sixteen and twenty seventeen, when my videos first get noticed.
I moved to New York because Arianna Humhlington sees my
content and I move over there and she wants me
to come there and work as half Post. The day
I get there, she leaves to start a new company
called Thrives. And she's amazing. I love her and I'm

(51:11):
still very good friends with her. But it took so
long to get my visa that it never quite works,
so I wasn't at half Post for very long, and
I ended up being in the US, in a new city,
four months away from being broke, and thirty days left
on my visa. Otherwise I'd have to move back to London.
And that's the most stress and pressure I've ever felt.
I don't count that as a failure because there wasn't

(51:32):
really a failure there. It's just a situation, hence why
I didn't include it. But it was just a really
stressful position to be in where I just got married.
We're in a new city, I've got four months away
to pay for rent and groceries, and then I'm out
of money and I have thirty days to renew my visa,
which I can't afford, and I don't know how to

(51:52):
get a lawyer, and I don't understand the process. And
so that was the most stress and pressure I ever felt,
more than even coming back from being a monk. And
it was after that so it felt even harder.

Speaker 2 (52:03):
But so just rewinding a little bit, you got rejected
from over forty companies that right, Yeah, before you even
got an interview.

Speaker 1 (52:09):
Before I got an interview. Yeah, that's right. So all
the normal all the financial companies, consulting companies, like just
any professional services company in London that I was applying
to jobs for that were not out of my education
but because of my age. Yeah, we're saying no.

Speaker 2 (52:24):
Finally do you get a job? But at accentsion so grateful.
We'll never be more grateful.

Speaker 1 (52:29):
When I got that call back to the when I
got the call for the first interview, I was like,
I'm going to be the best interviewe of all time.
And then when I got a call back, because it's
like a three or four stage interview, it's not like
a one and done. Got through to the first part.
When I got through the second part, I was Okay,
this could be real. Got through to the third part
and I think, yeah, three or four something like that. Yes,
and while you were there.

Speaker 2 (52:48):
You started making these videos which were helping employees with
their mental health.

Speaker 1 (52:53):
Is that right? So I didn't make videos, but you know,
when you join a new company, at least I loved
how extented it. They had a great onboarding practice and
you know, really really good culture and how they set
us up for success. One of the questions was, what's
an interesting fact about yourself? My interesting fact was I
used to be a monk and I can teach meditation.
And so my colleagues would come up to me and
be like, that's weird or that's really interesting, like people

(53:14):
that have different views. And so I started teaching meditation
and mindfulness classes at ect Centure in my lunch breaks
after work at a client office, and literally two people
would turn up, but three people would turn up. And
I loved it because I was getting to do what
I loved and there were people who wanted to learn.
And I started to do this, and I set up
meditation mondays and people at the company would meditate at

(53:36):
the start of a meeting. And one of the managing
directors took a real liking to that work that I
was doing because they were really prioritizing mental health. This
is end of twenty thirteen in London, really prioritizing mental
health at the company, which was incredible to see. And
she said to me, she said, Jay, I'd love for
you to teach a session like this to your colleagues

(53:57):
at the summer event, the annual event, and there'll be
a thousand of your colleagues there. You'll be speaking on
stage at twicken And Rugby Stadium and would you want
to do this? And I was just like, this is unbelievable,
what an amazing opportunity. And then Jilly Bryant grateful to
her till this day for giving me that opportunity. And
so I went there that day and gave this presentation

(54:18):
and I was so stressed out because I was in
between the sea of the company and Will Greenwood, who
won the Rugby World Cup and he was invited as
a guest speaker. I'm just an employee at this point,
like when.

Speaker 3 (54:28):
You have the Breweries of the Duwali before, and I've
done a lot of speaking in between, but not to
that size. I've there a ton of talks and presentations
in between, but not to that scale. But I'm sitting
there the whole time going I'm not Will Greenwood, I'm
not Oli Benzacree, who is our CEO. At the time,
I was like, I'm not those people, Like what do
I do?

Speaker 1 (54:47):
What do I do? What do I do? And then
I said to myself, I remember, I just got to
be myself, like you know, I've just got to be
myself authentically and everything will be okay. And then after
that presentation, Jilly came up to me and she said,
I've seen a group of millennials be that present with
anyone else on stage or be that silent. It was
pindrop and you can She was like, you couldn't hear
a thing. And that day I started. From that day,

(55:09):
I started teaching meditation across the whole company. And so
that was like a real moment of just incredible. Yeah,
it's so relief.

Speaker 2 (55:17):
I also wanted to ask you and I want to take
you back to New York and those four months where
your four months from going broke and what happened next,
because it feels to me that your purpose was calling
to you. It was almost dragging you through. Yep, it
was just this fateful light. Yes that was guiding you.

Speaker 1 (55:34):
Yes, Yeah, it felt like another thing that had gone wrong,
but it actually was an opening. I think if that
moment never came, maybe I would have just continued making
videos on the side, or it would have been a
nice hobby. And by the way, I would have been
really happy with that, because at that time I didn't
know what was possible. So I would have happily had
a hobby of giving talks on the evenings and making
videos on the weekends. I I wouldn't have been an

(55:54):
issue with that. One of my mentors, Thomas Power, who
lives in London, who was part of training us at
accenture or on social media. He doesn't work at Extension,
but Accentuon brought him in and he often would say
to me. He said, Jay, you'll realize your potential when
you're in pain. He said, that's when you'll realize your potential.
He said, you will never realize your potential when things

(56:14):
are going well. And I used to always be like,
am proactive, Like when you're proactive, you always know your potential.
And those four months are being broke, like being away
from being broken, having nothing and being married newly. That
made me realize how much potential I had because I'd
never been under that much pain, and so I got
the most disciplined I'd ever got. I got the most
focused I'd ever got. I sent probably like a thousand

(56:36):
emails in that first week letting people know what I
could do for them. I would edit videos if they
needed it. I could make training videos for their company.
If they needed it, I would. I was doing anything
just to survive, just to live. But it brought this
energy out in me that I didn't even know I had,
which was this relentless, resilient, consistency and pursue of excellence

(56:56):
that until that point was not really realized. And now
I live off that energy like I think it's been
the same energy that's fueled so many of the last
few years, which is really beautiful. It's almost like you
discover a gear you didn't know you had, and now
I know which gear I can get to, and that's
a really special, special thing that I got from that experience.

Speaker 2 (57:17):
Your final failure goes back to when you were eighteen
and you were leading a team and someone gave you
some advice.

Speaker 1 (57:23):
Oh gosh, Yeah, I was leading a community youth group
that organized retreats and events, and we'd taken a group
of students to Italy and I was new to this,
and I was new to management and new to leadership.
But I was getting a lot of criticism from the
senior leaders in the youth group. It wasn't the most

(57:44):
encouraging atmosphere, and a lot of people were saying to me, like, oh,
you're not a good manager, You're not a good leader.
I'm eighteen years old, I have no idea what management
and leadership even mean. And I'm getting a lot of criticism.
And to me, they're the ones who did this before,
so they must know again, this idea that they are authority,
they must know more than me. So I'm listening very carefully,

(58:04):
and one of them said to me, they said, you know, Jay,
you're not very assertive. You're like not a very assertive person.
That's why you'll never be a good manager, you never
be a good leader. And really what they were saying is, Jay,
you're not tough enough. And then they went on to
say that they say, you're not tough enough. You're not
you're not like, you don't know how to delegate and
tell people what to do, and so people never listen
to you. And I've never been that way because I

(58:25):
think I've always been loved by my mum in such
a sweet, compassionate, caring way that I consider my leadership
style today to be that way. I can be assertive,
for sure, I've had to learn to be assertive, but
I think at that time I didn't know the balance
between affectionate and assertive, and I think I was very
out of character with someone. For someone who would have

(58:47):
thought that Jay's quite a gentle person, he's, you know,
even if he's saying something that's hard to swallow or
be very thoughtfully shared. And I think I was very
out of character with one of my team members. And
not only did I hurt him so much that he
didn't talk to me for the rest of the retreat,
he never has till this day, has never talked to

(59:07):
me ever again. I called him, I left messages, I
asked people to talk to him. I tried anything possible
to get through to him. After we came back from
the retreat, realizing I'd made a horrible mistake, and he
never got back to me, never applied, never messaged back.
And it was a really tough experience because it was

(59:29):
really upsetting because that wasn't me and I knew that
it probably hurt him more because it wasn't me. It
was so out of character, and it was just, you know,
I would have said to him something along the lines
of like, oh, you've been really unorganized, you haven't been
thinking about it. We need your help, you're not working
hard enough. Like it was something to those that extent.
It wasn't I didn't swear at him, or I wasn't
rude it. You know, it was along the lines of

(59:51):
just being quite forceful when that wasn't who I was.
And that's always been a reminder to me of don't
act out of character for anyone, and don't just trust
someone knows better than you, especially when it comes to people.
Lead with your heart, lead with what you know best.
And yeah, that failure is a tough one because it's
hard when you can't turn it around. I think when

(01:00:12):
most people tell their failure stories, it's conveniently stuffed. That
also works out. Yes, it can be a humble it
can be a humble brand, but that one's like, there's
no brand, there's no brag because I don't now have
a relationship with him. It's not like, oh, no, we're
best friends and we just went out for drinks yesterday.
It's like I still hasn't talked to me. I obviously
stopped pursuing an apology after probably maybe six months. I

(01:00:34):
think there's six months of time that I let go
by where I was really pursuing him and trying to
get through to him through different people, and then I
just said, Okay, you know what I was wrong. I'll
take it as a moment of you know, there's that
famous quote that says that the best apology is changed behavior.
I don't know who said it, but it's a beautiful thought,
and I really like that statement. And I thought, well,
that's the only way I can forgive myself, and that's

(01:00:55):
the only way that I can improve for the future
is change behavior. And my main change behavior is don't
listen to anyone else just because you think they know
a bit more than you, and do something out.

Speaker 2 (01:01:04):
Of character and act in alignment with your soul values.

Speaker 1 (01:01:08):
Yes, yeah, yeah, exactly, Like even till this day, I
just I wouldn't talk to anyone like that. It's just
not how I've been raised, It's not how I've been
trained by my mum. I'm not you know, that's not
who I am, And I don't want to act out
of alignment. Again.

Speaker 2 (01:01:20):
I'd love that person to be listening to this podcast.

Speaker 1 (01:01:23):
I mean, that would be incredible, and that would be
a beautiful story. But I've also just let go of
the idea that that even has to happen for closure.
And I think I'd like people to think of breakups
that way. I'd like people to think of endings that way,
that not all endings have to have a fairy tale,
and not all endings have to have a magic moment.
Some of them just teach us something special for the
future and benefit other people. And you can't let one

(01:01:46):
person's experience define the rest of your life. You just can't.
And that doesn't mean I don't feel sorry. It doesn't
mean I don't feel bad about it still. I mean,
even talking to you about it, there's part of me
that feel guilty. But at the same time, we have
to understand that different between guilt and growth, and guilt
can keep to you blocked forever from growth, and growth
is far more the healer of guilt.

Speaker 2 (01:02:09):
Oh, that's so good understanding the difference between guilt and growth.

Speaker 1 (01:02:13):
Yeah, And I'm more focused on growth. I'd rather become
better and be better and choose better moving forward than
make myself feel bad and criticize myself and judge myself
to feel guilty. And I think often we stay in
that place of like, I'm going to criticize myself, I'm
going to judge myself. I'm going to make myself feel
guilty because somehow that makes me feel better that I
feel bad about it. Yes, but actually growth is me

(01:02:35):
really saying that I feel bad about it because I'm
choosing to become better now for the future.

Speaker 2 (01:02:41):
J Chesse, I could talk to you for hours.

Speaker 1 (01:02:42):
I can talk to you.

Speaker 2 (01:02:43):
Really, this has been an education in enlightenment. I'm so
grateful to you for how you are in the world,
for the books that you write, for taking the time
to talk to me, and for ensuring that I'll never
watch the Notebook in the same way again.

Speaker 1 (01:02:58):
Well, I want to thank you because I I really
and I don't just say this. I say this when
I feel it. And there's an energy that you create
in this room. There's a space, there's a tone of
your voice, there's a presence in your questioning, and I
really love observing all these like very micro moments, and
sometimes I feel that way and I feel I've gone
inward to answer a question versus going outward. And I

(01:03:20):
felt like that today and this in your presence and
in your space and the wonderful atmosphere you've created, I
just want to acknowledge that, because, Yeah, if anything's been
good in this conversation, it's because you can be in
a room sometimes and you can feel that there's so
much space and there's so much pace, and this room
feels so slow right now, and it feels so present,
and it feels so there's just like a beauty in
this room that you know, and that's your energy. So

(01:03:43):
energetically great, strategically great. And I'm not getting paid for this. Yeah,
I really I really appreciate you. Thank you. Appreciate you,
thank thank you, thank you. When you go into a

(01:04:07):
dance studio, at least one wall is usually lined with mirrors.
That's because it can be really helpful to see ourselves
so we can notice our missteps, yes, but just as important,
so we can also see what we're doing well, and
mirroring the positive is also something we can do for

(01:04:28):
one another. I'll explain the next seven minutes are about
your relationships and how a little reflection can help spread
the light. I'm Jay Sheddy. Welcome to the Daily Jay. Now,
as per usual, let's pause to get centered with three
deep breaths inhaling and exhaling, arriving and settling, connecting with

(01:05:06):
this moment, and dropping in. It was a typical afternoon
on a typical day. My friend was standing in line
at a regular neighborhood grocery store waiting to check out.
As usual, she stepped up to the cashier and smiled,

(01:05:26):
and the cashier smiled back. Then something surprising happened. You know.
The cashier said to my friend, I'm always so happy
to see you in my line. Really, my friend said,
why is that? Well, the cashier replied, it's just that
you're always so friendly, and it really brightens my day.

(01:05:51):
My friend was taken aback. She had no idea. But
my friend isn't the focus of this story. It's the
cashier because she did something that's so simple that actually
pretty rare. She reflected my friend's light back to her.

(01:06:11):
Writer Edith Wharton once said, there are two ways of
spreading light. To be the candle or the mirror that
reflects it. Most of the time we try to be
the candle. We do whatever we can to spread our
own light. Yet there's an easy and powerful way we

(01:06:31):
can do even more. We can also be the mirror.
When my friend had that exchange with the cashier, it
shifted something inside her. Suddenly she saw herself as a
person who could improve someone else's day just by being herself.
This is how mirroring magnifies. It encourages people to lean

(01:06:53):
into the good they're doing and amplify their positive traits.
The truth is everyone has a light inside them, but
when you see it, how often do you acknowledge it?
Maybe your mother always helps you feel better when you're stressed.
Maybe there's a colleague whose consistent compassion makes your experience

(01:07:15):
at work that much better. Maybe you think back to
how a certain teachers mentorship made a huge impact on
your life. But have you ever told them, Have you
ever held up that mirror and help them see that
about themselves. We often underestimate the impact we have on
other people. But your appreciative words and actions have the

(01:07:40):
power to make someone's day, even to change their life,
and it causes their light to spread. It doesn't take much,
Plus it feels really good to do it, and so
your light amps up to now. I'm not suggesting that
you be insincere or over the top, but the next

(01:08:02):
time you catch a glimpse of someone else's brightness, consider
reflecting it back to them, because if each of us
could help others shine a little bit more, ultimately we
might be able to light up the whole world. On
that note, let's do a short meditation and then reflect

(01:08:23):
on how you can spread the light. So first, get
comfortable wherever you are, maybe stretching your neck or shaking
out some tension, closing your eyes if that feels good,
and giving your mind permission to embrace a sense of calm.

(01:08:50):
Beginning to notice your breath. Here, your natural breath as
it flows in and out, No force, no fight, simply
observing your body doing the simplest of acts, being and

(01:09:17):
breathing gently, resting your attention there. If your mind ever
starts to wonder, well that's to be expected, considering you're
human and all. Just see if you can catch it

(01:09:41):
before it drifts too far away, and bring your awareness
back to your breath in and out, rise and fall

(01:10:06):
in your own time, at your own pace, Keep breathing
and keep tuning in and now let's open it up.

(01:10:32):
Think about someone in your life who inspires, comforts, or
supports you. What about them do you find motivating or uplifting?
How can you mirror their light? Can you commit to

(01:10:59):
getting in touch with them today now? If you're looking
for another way to spread the light, you can go
ahead and share this message with a friend. I'm so
grateful for your energy and focus here. I'll see you
tomorrow

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Host

Jay Shetty

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.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}4 Essential Trust-Building Practices to Strengthen Relationships & Why You Shouldn't Let External Validation Control Your Life