From Meditating 8 Hours A Day To Forbes 30 Under 30

One of the best things about being an entrepreneur is getting to meet another motivated people who want to make an impact on other people’s lives. The people who set out to help other people’s problems are the type of people you want to hang out with, because these people will motivate you and inspire you, and you have to surround yourself with other successful people if you wanna make something of yourself. I love having other entrepreneurs and successful people over to my house, because there can be so much knowledge shared, and like I say, you can only learn something new from another person. I had Jay Shetty over at my house recently, and Jay has a pretty cool story. He went from being a monk to making the Forbes 30 under 30 list, and running a multi million dollar business to talk about what he’s learned from all of his experiences, and how he changed his mentality to become successful. Check out what he had to say. Tai: Obviously if you're in business, it takes some striving. I heard this quote by Albert Einstein. “A quiet and simple life is better, will bring more pleasure, than a life where you're seeking success with never-ending striving.” So what have you learned about that? Tell me how you ended up a monk, first? Jay: I was an average kid growing up in London, and when I turned 18, I was fascinated by these CEOs, entrepreneurs that we are today. Then there was this monk who came and spoke at my business school at Cass Business School in London. He captivated me and blew my mind, like a speaker I've never heard before. I then find out that he'd given up jobs at Google and Microsoft to be a monk. So I'm thinking to myself, “Why is he giving up jobs at Google and Microsoft to be a monk?” Like, “What's brought that about?” I start spending time with him. So I'm interning at banks and consulting firms in my summers, thinking that's what I'm going to do, and then I intern for the rest in India with him as a monk. Tai: So you wanted to be a monk like him? Jay: Yeah, he went to IIT, which is the MIT of India, and I was fascinated by this person. Then he introduces me to another like 200 monks, that are just like him, trained, and they're running basically this mini startup to save the world. They are creating these sustainable villages, which I know you've experienced too, and creating sustainable villages, food distribution programs that are helping millions of kids in India every day. The seed's kind of planting in my mind, of like what do I want to do when I'm 22 when I finish? Do I want to go off and do something meaningful with my life, or do I want to go off and make a bunch of money? There was something in me when he talked about selfless sacrifice, that kind of just penetrated deep right there, and that motivates me more right now too. I was 18 when I met him, and then for 18 to 22, I did everything under the sun that you would do when you’re 18 to 22 anyway, but in the back of my head, I was like, “When I'm 22 I'm going to go off and become a monk.” Tai: What did you learn? If you had to think of them in order, what lessons have you figured out? Not everybody can be a monk, not everybody's going to be a billionaire. How do you balance those? Jay: There's a beautiful verse in the Bhagavad Gita that says that detachment doesn't mean that you own nothing, detachment means that nothing owns you. And to me, that's that balance. That's that balance, it’s that you know that. If you're going over the millions and billions, but then that starts owning you. We've seen that destroy people. Tai: It's easy to fool yourself and be like, “No, no, no, no, no, I'm not dominated by money.” Was there a litmus test? Is there a test you had in the back of your mind, that you could know that you are truly detached? Jay: Kind of. One of my favorite quotes, which kind of complicates the whole situation, is from Charles Cooley, where he said that, "Today I'm not what I think I am. I'm not what you think I am. I am what I think you think I am." We're lost in that perception of a perception of ourselves. If all my billionaire mates are telling me, “No, man, you are all right, you've got money, you're good,” but you've got to have that reflection. But that's not going to come if you're just surrounded in the echo chamber. And you talk about this loads, having mentors. My thing is that, when I come up with an idea, I want to know what the Dalai Lama thinks, as much as what the Mark Zuckerberg thinks. Because for me, that polarity is what allows me to not get lost in the echo chamber. Tai: So you base your decisions off of the opinions of people you consider mentors? Jay: Kind of, I just think the more thoughtful, educated people you have give their opinions strengthens your ide. Tai: Right, that’s like one of my favorite quotes “Iron sharpens iron.” The more educated and positive people you surround yourself with the better you become. Jay: Exactly, and the second thing is fearlessness. We get trained in this for a month as a monk, and as a test, you are left with nothing. You get two pieces of clothes, you have no money, no food, and you're left on the streets in a tiny village to survive for a month. There's not like a supermarket on the corner or anything like that. And you have to figure out how to survive without anything to start with. That builds this incredible fearlessness and resilience. When you've had nothing, you know what to do when you have something. You have this unique perception on, at the beginning, you're just trying to survive. Like, your whole motive is, how do I live? By the end of it, the amazing thing that you want to mature to is that the evolution is you start noticing the people out there who are struggling more than you. ====== When Jay talks about fearlessness and surviving on what you have, it reminds me of what I've seen from my students' ecommerce businesses. I've seen people sell clothes, flashlights, fidget spinners, dog toys, and things like furniture and show me their revenue. It's crazy. Here's a screenshot of my very own ecommerce store me and my partner set up: In my "How I Make Money Online" Program, I teach you exactly how you can set up your own store. And for a limited time only it's $200 off the normal pricing while supplies last. Along with all the bonuses you get... today if you get in, you can get $4497 worth of value for just $497. [Click here to claim the discount]( ====== Tai: So that struggle makes you learn something? Jay: Exactly, that emptiness makes you learn a lot of things about yourself. So you have no money for 30 days. So at the start, you're excited, right? I'm one of those people who's coming out, I love challenges, I'm thinking, “This is going to be great. I'm going to figure it out. I can talk to people. I can charm them. I’m going to use all my skills that I've studied,” and all that kind of stuff. You have a bit of bravado and ego that you can figure it out. And then very quickly you realize that none of that charm works on the street, no matter what language you can speak, because again, like you said, people are used to beggars in India. So the natural resistance is, “I don't want to talk to you.” f we weren't dressed as monks, then that would have been, like, impossible, that you'd definitely die. So first thing I start doing is starting to ask people how I can help them. I'm just walking up to people. I see an old lady. I'm like, “Oh, can I help you carry your bags?” Start helping her carry her bags. When I help her to her home to get her bags, she gives me a rupee. Then I go up to someone else, and go, “How can I help you today?” Someone will be like, “Oh can you come and help me, I'm just fixing this in my home.” So I'll go and help them fix that thing, and they'll give me a rupee. You start realizing that service, bringing value to someone's life, is the way you start. Tai: Which of course, is the fundamental tenet to business. Jay: Absolutely, if you're not bringing that impact, if you're not helping grow someone's whatever it is, do the degree, the depth, of which you're going to help that person, the amount of pain that that solution is saving, that's going to lead to what you get. So literally I just started helping people, as much as I could, with the smallest activities. You start valuing these really small things. You just start becoming grateful, and obsessive over recognizing how much a small thing can change someone's day. Tai: So you survived this, obviously. Jay: Yeah, you survive. People come and check in with you every few days. It's not like a game or anything like that. You get checked in. But then by the end of it, you start noticing the pain of people around you. We were talking about messages, and one of Ghandi's message was, “I was sad that I didn't have any shoes, and then I saw a man with no feet.” That's where you get to by the end of it. You start thinking that all I'm trying to do is survive, but actually if I can use what I'm getting for service, so by the end of it, you're getting the food, and giving it to those who've got no leg and got no arm, and got blind, all the people, all the suffering that you see. That's what it's meant to do to your consciousness, is evolve it from survival for yourself to service. And that's the evolution, yeah, that's the whole point of the 30 days. Tai: And you stayed how many years? Jay: Three years I lived in an ashram. It's called an ashram, which is a monastery or a temple. You wake up at 4:00 A.M. every day. You sleep like four to six hours a night. You train to condense sleep, and expand your life by meditation. Then you wake up and you meditate for four to eight hours a day. Some of it's collective, and some of it's personal. You're spending about, yeah, roughly four to eight hours a day meditating. Tai: Wow, would you say meditation is important to you? Jay: Yeah, but it wasn’t easy at first. It gets easier over time, like practice with anything, but yes, the first month is like hell. And there are moments now where it’s still like hell. So I still do two hours a day now, that's my daily practice. But it's not about that. See, I always talk about how when I first started meditation, it didn't make me feel good. It made me feel like a bad person. Tai: Why is that? Jay: Because the analogy that's given in the actual Vedic literature, which meditation originates from, is that when you're rubbing a mirror with a piece of cloth, the first thing that happens if it has a lot of dust is that the dust comes in your face. So when you're trying to cleanse and get closer to your own unique identity, the first thing that happens is you start seeing lot of stuff that you don't like. And then you're seeing all of that stuff, and you're going, “Wait a minute. Is this me? Am I really that envious? Am I really that greedy? Am I really that competitive? Am I really that egotistical?” And that's hard. But that's a starting point. That awareness is a starting point. Tai: Do you think most people aren't aware? What percentage of people do you think are operating at near to 100% self-awareness? Jay: Oh it’s very low. Most of us are asleep, on many levels. Not just on a meditation level, but on so many levels. So many of us are asleep. Tai: Do you think that's because of society? Do you think it's because of childhood trauma? And more importantly, do you think it's fixable? Do you see people came in in this ashram, or wherever you were, and they were messed up individuals, either narcissistic or traumatized, PTSD, did you actually see some transformations through this process? Jay: Yeah, I mean, massively, but with patience. I think everything's fixable, but everyone has its own timeline and everyone's got their own clock. You’re not going to suddenly speed up that clock for someone who's gone to a really dark place. But the one thing that I can definitely say is that there is the transformative path, but we've got everything in society that constantly numbing us. Like I mean I know you talk about this a lot, that the most successful people in the world choose education over entertainment. Because entertainment numbs you. It makes you asleep, right? It's not helping you rise your consciousness from within. So if most of your day is spent numbing your consciousness, then how are you going to awake? Tai: You need to make the effort Jay: Exactly. Tai: What are a couple of practical things somebody can do to try to replicate and get some of the results that you’ve found? Jay: I think number one definitely is finding some space, whether it's 10 minutes a day, five minutes a day, just to start with gratitude. I think that's the beginning of this journey. The more specific your gratitude is, the deeper it is. The more it's like, “I'm thankful that I breathe”, which is too broad because everyone breathes. The more specific we get about our particular situation, like I'm just happy that I was able to walk into work today, and had meaningful relationships with the people I work with. Or I'm just happy today that I'm standing with Tai. That's a real specific gratitude, not that “oh, I'm in L.A., and it's sunny,” which a million people are experiencing. Tai: So something very specific. Jay: Exactly, if more people can find their true selves, I think they would be far more successful. Jay has lived an interesting life. With struggle comes innovation, and from innovation, you find ways to become successful. Have you ever tried meditation? I try to reflect on the things that I’m grateful for every day. I hope our conversation inspires you to grow to help others. If you have had mentors to help you along your way, make sure to pay it forward and to help someone in need. Stay Strong, Tai P.S. If you want to know How I Make Money Online, I've created a program where I show you How I Make Money Online. I've broken it down into 4 simple steps that you can follow. How do you think your life would change if you had an automated online business making you extra income? As a member of my email list I'm offering a scholarship to my program. Claim your scholarship today before the price goes back up. 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