I recently finished the book Think Like A Monk by Jay Shetty. This book is divided into three
parts - part one, two and three. In this video, I'm going to summarize part one. Hi this is
Supreet. I'm an engineer turned leadership trainer and Youtuber. I upload new videos about personal
growth, meditation and occasionally, parenting every Sunday. You can follow me at GrowWithSupreet
on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter. This video is divided into chapters or topics. You can either
watch or listen to the whole video or you can go into the description and click on the timestamp of
the topic of your choice. One of the first things that i really enjoyed in this book is a story that
illustrates the importance of breath when jay shetty went to monk school in india on his first
day he noticed a 10 year old kid monk teaching a class to five-year-olds at the end of the class
the ten-year-old kid tells jade that this was the first class for these five-year-old kids
in the monk school and this 10 year old kids asked jay what did you learn in your first
day of your school and jay said i learned alphabets and numbers
what did these kids learn from you in their first class and the 10 year old kid replies
they learned how to breathe and jay was a bit surprised so he said why and the ten year old kid
replies that breath is the thing that lasts with you from the moment you're born to the moment
you die it is the only thing that lasts throughout your lifetime and then look at the wisdom of
this 10 year old monk he asked jay when you get stressed what changes your breath when you get
angry what changes your breath we feel every emotion through our breath our breath is so
important so if we manage to navigate and manage our breath we can learn to manage life and that
is why in their first class these five-year-old kids are learning how to breathe on the topic of
values jay says that we live our lives trying to live up to the expectations of our parents or our
family or friends or our teachers or the society in general our family our friends the media the
society we are surrounded by voices telling us what we should do and who we should be but when
we tune out all these obligations and opinions and expectations of others it's only then that we can
hear our own inner voice the only way to build a meaningful life is to filter out that noise
and look within that is the first step towards building your monk mind look within to find out
what are your values our values are like an ethical gps that helps us navigate through
life it gives us directions towards which actions which habits and which people are the best for us
speaking of people let's talk about the next topic in the summary which is community it helps
to build a community that reflects who you want to be a community that reflects the future you want
ask yourself when i spend time with this person or this group am i getting closer to who i want
to be or further away i love the 25/75 principle about community that jay shares in this book
he says that for every negative person have three uplifting people in your life try to surround
yourself with people who are better than you in some way maybe they're happier maybe they're more
spiritual maybe they have better habits in life as in sports being around better players pushes
you to grow make sure that at least 75 percent of your time is spent around people who inspire you
instead of bringing you down there might be some people in your life whom you can only tolerate
for one week or one day or even one hour maybe you also know a person who is a one minute person so
make sure that you do not exceed these time limits when you're spending time with such people when it
comes to the people you love don't just spend time with them grow with them and if you want
to grow with me subscribe to my channel next week i'm going to be sharing the summary of part two
of this book so make sure you've subscribed and hit the notification bell the next topic in this
summary is negative thoughts when we are dealing with negative thoughts and emotions usually we say
that we are that emotion i am angry i am sad i am afraid but instead of saying i am that emotion try
switching to saying i feel that emotion i feel angry i feel sad i feel afraid when we do that
we are creating a little bit of distance between us and the emotion having this perspective calms
down our initial reactions and gives us the space to examine the emotion and the situation around it
another technique to handle the negative thoughts is called the spot stop and swap technique so the
first step is to spot the feeling become aware of that feeling and recognize and say to yourself
that i am feeling this emotion i take it a step further where once i have spotted the emotion
i try to examine where am i feeling this emotion in my body usually it would be
in my gut or sometimes in my chest or sometimes even in my head sometimes i can feel a heartburn
coming so this is something i think i learned from the book power of now where each time you
have a negative emotion you try to find it in your body where are you feeling it in your body
the second step is to stop so stop means to pause and consider why you are feeling this negative
emotion so keep asking yourself why until you get to the root cause of why you're feeling that way
and the third step is to swap so swap whatever you're feeling after you have
gained some perspective by examining it in step two you can swap it with a different way
of processing that situation ideally a more positive way of dealing with that situation
so spot stop and swap is a technique to deal with negative emotions by the way i'll be honest and
tell you that this is easier said than done but you can do hard things with practice
you can do anything and also if you meditate it helps to do these kind of things in fact i would
say pretty much every single challenge in the book or technique in the book to adopt a monk mindset
can be made easier if you meditate because most challenges be it relationship or healthy habits
or whatever most of these challenges are a mind game and meditation helps you to tame your mind
i now want to share with you a parable about negative thoughts this is the story of an evil
king visiting a good king who was hosting him and they were both going to have dinner so when
the dinner plates were brought the evil king asked for the plates to be switched
the good king said why and the evil king replied because you may have poisoned my food
at this the good king laughed and because the evil king saw the good king laugh he asked for
the plates to be switched one more time because he was thinking that maybe he is double bluffing him
and then the good king just started eating his food and the evil king remained hungry
the whole night what we judge or envy or suspect in someone else can guide us to the darkness we
have inside our own cells the evil king projects his own dishonor onto the good king in the same
way our envy or suspicion or impatience can tell us something about ourselves because we usually
project our own suspicion and our own emotions onto other people negative projections and
suspicions reflect our own insecurities and get in our way if you decide that your boss is against
you it can affect you emotionally you may be so discouraged that you do not perform well at work
or it can affect you practically you may not be able to ask for the raise that you deserve either
way just like the evil king you're the one who will go hungry now let's talk about complaining
mindfully this was one of my aha moments from part one of the book jay shetty says that happy people
tend to complain wait for it mindfully instead of just venting to somebody about your complaints or
frustrations if you mindfully complain and one of the ways to do that is to write in a journal
about upsetting events it can actually help you heal mentally as well as physically so write in
a journal about events or things or people that upset you and give yourself the chance to reflect
on your thoughts and feelings and to process them and that can be a very effective technique
to complain mindfully another way to complain mindfully is that instead of complaining to your
friend who can't do anything about it that your partner comes home late every night communicate
directly and mindfully with your partner when our complaints are understood both by ourselves and
others they can be more productive the next topic is forgiveness jay talks about various levels of
forgiveness the highest one being transformational forgiveness when we practice transformational
forgiveness it means that we forgive without expecting an apology or anything else in return
transformational forgiveness is linked to a slew of health improvements such as fewer medications
taken better sleep quality lack of headache back pain fatigue and nausea forgiveness eases our
stress because we no longer recycle the angry and negative thoughts both conscious and subconscious
when we make forgiveness a regular part of our spiritual practice we notice all of our
relationships begin to blossom because we're not holding grudges anymore there is less drama to
deal with i can personally attest to this in my everyday meditation i forgive people even those
that are hard to forgive and i've noticed that as a result of doing that just in my mind i'm
not actually going and talking to them but as a result of doing that i am a more peaceful person
now i'm going to talk about detachment a monk mind practices detachment monks realize that
everything they have including the life they live and the family they have is borrowed this reminds
me of a joke i read on the internet how do monks send emails they remove all attachments clinging
to temporary things gives them power over us and they become sources of pain and fear but when we
accept the temporary nature of everything that is given to us we can feel grateful for the good
fortune of having to experience them borrow them for some time imagine that you're driving a luxury
rental car do you tell yourself that you own it no you just try to enjoy it for the one week that you
have and because you only have it for one week you perhaps enjoy it even more and you're grateful for
the opportunity to drive a luxury car and enjoy it similarly if you're living in a beautiful airbnb
it has a nice hot tub and ocean views and a chef's kitchen you do not dread your departure
in a week but instead you try to enjoy it the most while you have it and you're grateful for
the fact that you got to enjoy it for a week so similarly we are all vacationers on hotel earth
when we can acknowledge all our blessings just as we do a fancy rental car or a beautiful airbnb
we are free to enjoy them without living in constant fear of losing them now let's talk
about intention when we achieve what we wanted but we are still not happy that is usually a
sign that we did it with the wrong intention for example if you start going to the gym to
build a body to get revenge from your ex that is a wrong intention because you haven't addressed what
you really need which is probably to feel loved or to feel understood so you may get that body
but because your your success is depending on an external factor which is provoking your ex
if it doesn't happen if your ex doesn't notice or doesn't care guess what you'll have that amazing
body but you'll still feel emotionally unsatisfied and unhappy so but instead if you went to the gym
to build a body with the intention of developing a strong body then by doing that you will get that
body as well as be emotionally satisfied sometimes the intention is good but the goal we give
ourselves to achieve that intention can be bad let's say my intention is to improve my confidence
and i decide that the best way to do that is to get a promotion at work so i work hard i impress
my boss i get that promotion but guess what after getting to that level i realized that
there are more levels and i still feel that insecurity so my intention to increase my
confidence was the right intention but the way i um gave myself a goal of getting to that intention
was not the best goal external goals cannot fill internal voids also be honest about what your
intention is the worst thing you can do is to pretend that you're acting out of service when
what you really want is material success so to really get to know what your intention is
ask yourself why many times why do i want this and why do i want that ask yourself why many times
until you get to your root intention and once you know your intentions live your intentions
simply having intentions is not enough we have to take action i wish is code for
i don't want to do anything differently something i haven't talked in this video but which i
absolutely loved while reading the book is the various quotes by jay shetty and by other people
so i have compiled my top 30 best transformational quotes from this book and compiled them into a
pdf if you would like a free copy of my pdf you can get it by clicking on the description below
if you have already joined my private email list then that pdf is already in your inbox
if you want to purchase this book the amazon links are in the description below if you use my link i
earn a small commission but you don't have to pay anything extra it allows me to continue to
make videos like this one next week i'll share my summary of part two of this book to make sure you
don't miss that video please subscribe and hit the notification bell take care and keep growing
okay now i should record yes recording okay okay now this is the full video so you can
close the door and don't make noises try not to okay thank you it might be coffee
but it should be quiet why do you always have to make coffee when i start recording
recording recording okay i have to sit straight i have to do this okay
you