I recently finished the book Think like a Monk by Jay Shetty. In this video I'm going to summarize
part 3 of that book. If you missed my summary of parts 1 and 2, the links to those videos will be
in the description below. This video is divided into topics or chapters so you can either watch
or listen to the entire video or you can find the timestamp of the topic of your choice and click on
it in the description below. one of the chapters in part three of this book is gratitude. gratitude
according to jay has been linked to better mental health, self-awareness, better relationships and
a sense of fulfillment. it also improves our physical health because gratitude blocks some
of the toxic emotions that cause inflammation and also lead to chronic illnesses such as heart
disease. i'm a big fan of gratitude myself. i practice gratitude daily when i have my morning
tea. i think of or write down three to five things that i'm grateful for that day. i also encourage
my kids to practice gratitude. if someone were to ask me that they want to improve their life
but they don't know where to start - there's so much to do - they want to start meditation,
they want to start exercising, eating healthy and so many other things but they don't know where to
start - i would recommend gratitude.. practicing gratitude. i think it's the lowest hanging fruit
that is easier to do than starting meditation or starting exercise. so that would be my answer
to you if you asked me where to start on your personal growth journey. jay says that if you've
been through a breakup, if you've lost a loved one, if anything has hit you hard emotionally,
then gratitude is the answer. in addition to being grateful for the good things in life,
also be grateful for the setbacks in life. so how do we develop this quality of gratitude? one of
the best ways to do so according to jay is through service and that leads me into the next topic
in the summary which is service. those who help others tend to live longer, they are healthier and
they have a better overall sense of well-being. devoting yourself to service doesn't mean that
you don't take care of yourself. yes, take care of yourself first, but also serve others and do
not wait for the moment when you will have enough time or enough money before you can start helping
others, because you will never have enough. the problems a lot of us face today are mental,
like depression or anxiety or loneliness, whereas for a lot of other people they're just struggling
to meet the basic needs of life such as food and shelter. we can heal our mental challenges
by helping them with their physical needs. so when you do service, it's not just that you are helping
those in need, you're actually helping yourself as well, maybe you're helping yourself more.
i love the story that jay shared to illustrate the idea of service: so there was an old woman and a
young man goes to this old woman and says, "i see joy and beauty around me, but from a distance.
my own life is full of pain". so the wise woman poured him a cup of water and put some salt
next to it and she said "put some salt in the water". so the man looked a bit confused but
he put a pinch of salt in the water anyway and the old woman goes "no, put some more salt".
he put some more salt and then she says "put more salt, put a handful of salt" and he looks very
skeptically at the old woman but he obliges. he puts a handful of salt in the cup of water
and then she asks him to mix it and drink it and, as much as he doesn't want to do it, he
takes a sip and then he makes a disgusted face and spits out the water. then the old woman
takes him to a lake and asks him to do the same thing - put a handful of salt in the lake.
he does that and then she says "take a sip of the water". he takes a sip of the water and she says
"how is it?" he replies "refreshing!". she says "did you taste the salt?" and he goes "not at
all!". then the old woman says these wise words to the young man "the salt is the pain of life. it is
constant. but if you put it in a small glass, it tastes bitter. if you put it in a lake, you can't
taste it. expand your senses, expand your world, and the pain will diminish. don't be the glass,
become the lake." taking a broader view helps us to minimize our own pain and appreciate what we
have, and giving is the best way to achieve this broader view. volunteering can reduce
feelings of depression and increase the feelings of overall well-being. nothing will help you
develop gratitude more quickly than volunteering. so try to volunteer, maybe it could be once a week
or it could be once a month. the next topic in this video is relationships,
and this also happens to be my favorite topic in part three of the book. whenever you give out
any energy - love, hate, anger, kindness - you will always get it back, one way or another.
love is like a circle - whatever love you give out, it always comes back to you. the problem lies
with our expectations. you assume the love you receive will come from the person you gave it to,
but it doesn't always come from that person. similarly there are people who love you,
who you don't give the same love in return. jay shares the example of his mother who would drop
anything she was doing just to get a call from jay. and at the same time, jay might be upset that
someone is not returning his text. while on the other side, his mom would be sitting thinking that
i wish my son would call me! so this was something very beautiful and it actually brought tears into
my eyes when i was reading this, that love is a circle and the love we give out always comes back
to us, but not necessarily from the same person. jay says that our lack of gratitude is what makes
us feel unloved. when we think nobody cares, we need to check ourselves and realize that the love
we give out comes back to us from a variety of sources. and whatever we put out will come back
to us. now, we have to be careful with this because there's always another side to everything.
while being grateful in relationships is crucial, at the same time, we also don't want to settle for
something which is less than what we deserve. and jay beautifully points it out in this sentence "in
every relationship you have the opportunity to set the level of joy you expect, and the level of pain
you will accept". wow! that's a wisdom bomb isn't it? when we feel unloved, we need to ask ourselves
"am i offering help as often as i ask for help? who is giving to me without receiving anything
in return?" with friends or colleagues, get into the habit of asking yourself
"what can i offer first? how can i serve?" we tend to expect every person to be a complete package,
giving us everything we need. that is setting the bar impossibly high! it is as hard to find
that person as it is to be that person. even your partner cannot provide you everything that a good
relationship should have at all times. and these four things that a good relationship should have
are care, character, competence and consistency. though your partner should be reliable, nobody,
nobody is consistently available in the way you need them all the time. we expect our life
partner to be our everything, to complete us. but even within that deep and lifelong union,
only you can be your everything. wow! sometimes, our network of compassion
may not be broad enough to guide us through the complexity and chaos of life. so we have to open
to new connections. so those four things that i mentioned in the beginning - care,
character, competence, consistency - you may not get all four of them from the same person.
so you might get one thing from one person, something else from another person. talking of
expanding our network of compassion, sometimes the family we are born into may not provide us with
everything we need. so it's okay to find and build your own family outside of the family that
you were born into. and this doesn't mean that we neglect our own family or distance ourselves from
them. we can still continue to do our duty and be a part of that family but at the same time we can
maintain a distance, if that is good for our mental health and our growth journey. and we
can try to make a family of friends that would fulfill the needs which aren't being fulfilled by
our biological family. ready for some more wisdom bombs? here we go! the biggest mistake we make is
to assume that everyone else operates just like us. we believe that others value what we value.
we believe that what we want in a relationship is what others want in a relationship.
sometimes we find ourselves making the same mistake over and over again, attracting the same
sort of incompatible partners or picking them in spite of ourselves. if this happens, this
isn't bad luck. it's a clue that we have work to do. the monk perspective is that you carry pain.
you try to find people to ease that pain, but only you can do that. once you've unpacked your
own bags and you've healed yourself - mostly - then you will come to relationships ready to
give. you won't be looking to them to solve your problems or to fill a hole. nobody completes you.
you're not half. you don't have to be perfect, but you have to come to a place of giving. instead
of draining anyone else, you're nourishing them. phew! that was heavy! let me lighten up the mood a
little bit by sharing a quote from the internet. "relationships are like a walk in the park.
jurassic park". the next topic we'll talk about in this video is meditation. jay recommends adding
a mantra to your meditation practice. jay says that where affirmations change the way you speak
to yourself, mantras change the way you speak to the universe. the vibrations from Om have been
shown to stimulate the vagus nerve which decreases inflammation. vagus nerve stimulation is also used
as a treatment for depression. jay recommends to start meditation with 21 minutes a day,
using a timer to give yourself seven minutes each for breath work, visualization and mantra.
when you are ready for more, you can expand these 21 minutes to twice a day, once in the morning and
once in the evening. and the last topic in this video is death meditation. the most common regrets
of dying people are the following: "i wish i had expressed my love to the people i care about. i
wish i hadn't worked so much. i wish i had taken more pleasure in life. i wish i had done more
for other people. whenever you're trying to make a big life change or learning something new or going
on a trip -when you're confused whether you should do it or not do it - jay suggests to try doing a
death meditation. so imagine you are on a deathbed and then ask yourself these questions: what do i
wish i had done? what experiences do i wish i had had? what do i regret not giving more attention?
what skills do i wish i had worked on? what do i wish i had detached from?
he also recommends to do a death meditation at the beginning of every year to inspire new paths
in the upcoming year. something that i haven't been able to cover in my summary videos are some
of the very beautiful quotes in this book. i have compiled my top 30 transformational quotes into
a pretty pdf and if you want your free copy of that pdf, you can get it by clicking on the link
in the description below. if you're already on my private email list, then that pdf should be
already in your inbox. finally, if you want to purchase this book, the amazon links are
in the description below. if you use my link, it helps me to earn a small commission but you don't
have to pay anything extra. and this allows me to continue to make videos like this one. if you got
value out of this video, make sure to give it a like and subscribe to my channel as i upload new
videos every sunday. take care and keep growing! i am a big fan of gratitude myself i practice you
i'm a big if anything at all has because i i don't know where i was going which we may feel that we
are helping them but... get this broader view regret get this bro... jay all part three of the book if