- Whether in our personal or professional lives,
we're constantly bombarded by external noise.
What if we could develop a mindset that both cut out
that noise and helped to clarify our own intentions
free from the influence of others?
What if we could learn that mindset,
not from top executives or the richest people in the world,
but instead from the humble monk.
This is what monk and current celebrity YouTuber Jay Shetty
talks about in his new book, Think Like A Monk,
which unsurprisingly is the subject of this episode
of book club.
The series where I distil and discuss highlights
from some of my favourite books.
In the book, Jay takes the wisdom and traditions of monks
and teaches us how we can apply them to live less anxious
and more meaningful lives.
Drawing upon ancient wisdom and his own experience,
Jay outlines how the thinking of monks
offers valuable lessons that are pertinent
even in the 21st century, but he doesn't want us all
to suddenly become monks.
Instead he wants us to think like them,
to help combat the anxieties and pressures that we face
in the modern world.
The book's divided into three parts.
That's letting go, giving and growing.
And so we're gonna discuss each of those in turn
and figure out what lessons we can take from the book
to apply to our own lives.
Part one is about letting go.
And this revolves around four key pillars.
Finding our identity, reducing negativity,
detaching from fear and learning to live intentionally.
Firstly, we need to address our identity, which as Jay says,
is intrinsically wrapped up in our values.
He points out that actually a lot of the values
that we think we hold, they're not necessarily our own,
but we've acquired them through societal conditioning.
He writes when we tune out the opinions, expectations,
and obligations of the world around us,
we begin to hear ourselves.
And the idea is that if we can filter out this noise
and give us the space to consider our own values,
then we can begin to direct our lives towards higher values,
like gratitude, service, truthfulness, and compassion,
which ultimately propel us towards happiness,
fulfilment and meaning, and away from lower values,
like greed, lust, anger, and envy,
which ultimately just push us towards anxiety, depression,
and suffering.
The next part of letting go is addressing negativity,
which is one of those things that we always come across.
And if you're anything like me,
you can sometimes let it affect your day
and kind of get to you in a way that you wouldn't like.
But as Jay says in the book,
negativity is a trait, not someone's identity.
And so we can learn to let it go.
Monks talk about the process of awareness,
addressing and amending,
which Jay distils down to a three-stage process of spot,
stop and swap.
So this three-part process of observing, reflecting,
and then modifying our behaviour.
It's kind of what the Stoics used to talk about as well.
And it's a really good way of addressing negativity,
but it's also a pretty good way of addressing fear,
which is part three of letting go.
Monks believe that the root cause of fear
is closely related to attachment
or our need to own or control things.
If the cause of fear is attachment,
Jay says that the cure for fear is detachment.
We might sometimes think that detachment means indifference,
but actually Jay has a really good quote for this.
He says that detachment is not that you should own nothing
but that nothing should own you.
And again, this is a classic stoicism concept
that I think about a lot,
like when it comes to being attached to stuff like tech
or keyboards or cameras,
or even our friends and family,
stoicism teaches us that these things are preferred
indifference, that I can prefer to have
a 49 inch ultra-wide monitor with a fancy ass keyboard
and mouse, but it's ultimately an indifferent,
I don't need it to be happy, I'm not attached to it.
The final part of letting go involves questioning ourselves
so that we can live more intentionally.
Jay talks about how our motivations revolve around fear,
desire, duty, and love.
And he talks about the why ladder as a way of understanding
our true motivations for doing stuff.
He writes to live intentionally, we must dig
to the deepest why behind the want.
And this can be quite a fun thing to do,
or maybe not because it involves questioning ourselves
until we can get to the root of our intentions.
So if I were to ask myself,
why did I wanna make YouTube videos?
One reason might be because I wanted to teach people
and I want to help people and inspire others
or things like that.
Then if I was, why did I want to do that?
I'd probably say, well,
I wanna do that because it seems like fun.
And if I asked, why does that seem like fun,
then I might get to the true cause, which is that secretly,
I crave the admiration and respect of other people.
And that's why I'm making YouTube videos like this one.
Anyway, by living intentionally without negativity
and without fear,
we can begin to let go of the stuff
that's been holding us back and we can make space
for the second part of the book, which talks about growth.
As with letting go, growth also revolves
around some key principles,
which include finding our purpose,
training our mind and mastering our ego.
So if we start with purpose,
Jay talks about how we can identify our Dharma,
which is a Sanskrit term that roughly translates in English
to your calling.
He says that finding our dharma
isn't just about figuring out our passion and skill,
but it's about figuring out our passion and skill
that we have that can also be useful to others.
And so passion plus expertise plus usefulness equals Dharma.
And there's a nice quote here,
which is our passion becomes our purpose when we use it
to serve others.
If you're like me and you haven't quite figured out
what your Dharma or your purpose or your mission
or your calling in life is,
then one way of figuring this out is by using
the quadrants of potential as Jay calls it.
Many of us spend most of our days in quadrant one,
skill no passion or quadrant four passion no skill,
but to actually grow and develop our purpose,
we should aspire to be in quadrant two, skill and passion
so that we're spending our time using our talents
doing what we love.
And so ultimately by combining passion with expertise
in the service of others crucially,
that helps us figure out our purpose
and figure out where we're gonna go.
There's a more capitalist version of the dharma equation,
which is sort of how I think about it, which is that,
what do I enjoy?
What am I good at?
And what will the market pay me for?
And the market will pay me for something is sort of a proxy
for this is useful to other people.
So that's another way of framing it.
If you find the sort of idea of how can this be useful
to others, a little bit hard to wrap your head around.
So step one, along this journey of personal growth
is finding our purpose.
And then step two is developing the right mindset.
And here, Jay gives us the comparison between the monk mind,
and the monkey mind.
The monkey mind is one that struggles with overthinking,
busy-ness and switches aimlessly from thought to thought.
The monk mindset on the other hand,
lifts us out of our confusion and distraction
and helps us find clarity, meaning, and direction.
And like, as I'm saying this, I'm recognising
that this stuff can seem very abstract.
Firstly, you should read the book 'cause it's good
and he gives them more practical advice about this.
And there's only so much I can squeeze into like,
I don't know, a 10 minute long YouTube video,
but essentially the way to change any kind of mindset
or develop any kind of mindset is to use Jay's
three-part framework or a variance of it,
which is spot, stop and swap.
And so if we find ourselves thinking
in a certain thought pattern,
like recognising a destructive pattern of thought,
which itself takes some practise, we observe it.
So we spot and then we stop thinking like it,
and then we swap it for something else.
And again, this is so much easier said than done,
but it is ultimately the foundation that all sort things
like cognitive behavioural therapy
and stuff rest on this idea that yes,
we can control our thoughts and our actions,
but it's only through practise that we can actually do that.
Anyway, assuming we're all on this journey
of getting a monk mind rather than a monkey mind,
which is very much a work in progress for all of us.
The third step on this path to growth is letting go
of our ego.
Jay talks about how the monks teach that our ego
is one of the main obstacles to our growth.
And in fact, most of our egos are two faced,
in that one moment it's telling us that we're the best.
And the next moment it's telling us that
we are the absolute worst.
Jay talks about how true humility is understanding
that our mind wants to take us to one of these extremes
and instead opting for a middle ground
where we're actively recognising our weaknesses
and working to improve on them and to help foster humility,
there are two things we need to think about
and two things we need to forget.
We need to remember the bad that we've done to others
and the good others have done for us.
And we need to forget the good that we've done for others
and the bad that others have done to us.
And if we can do this consistently,
we are restraining our ego that wants to be selfish
and think that we're the best.
And we're generally increasing our own gratitude
and the gratitude that we put out to the world,
which is always gonna be a good thing.
The final part of the book's probably the most important,
and it talks about how we can learn to look beyond
just ourselves and instead think about how we might act
in service to other people.
The previous ideas of letting go and growing
are ultimately about detaching ourselves
from our own selfishness so that we're in a position
to give back to society and to others through service.
But although giving to other people is a fundamental part
of service, the monks actually teach
that there is some kind of reciprocal exchange going on
in that when we serve others,
we actually feel good about ourselves.
And Jay puts it nicely when he says in the book
that selflessness heals the self,
there's apparently load of research about this as well,
that says that when you go after compassionate goals,
like serving other people in some way,
that actually leads to your own in increased inner feelings
of happiness and contentment and the monks themselves
talk about the four different ways
in which giving service to other people helps ourselves.
Firstly, it connects us.
I.e, You have to actually go out into the world
to help other people or put yourself out there
on the internet, which is, you know, a connecting thing.
Secondly, it amplifies a gratitude,
like giving to others and helping other people
helps us realise like how grateful we are for the things
that we do have.
Thirdly, it increases compassion.
I.e. it helps open up our eyes to the needs of other people,
which again is a good thing for ourselves
and fourthly, it builds self-esteem
by giving us a mission and a meaning
beyond just satisfying the self.
And so ultimately thinking like a monk might seem
like a bit of an abstract idea,
but as Jay talks about in the introduction,
like given the amount of anxiety and hecticness
and freneticness that we've got in the world at the moment,
why wouldn't we learn from the people who are calm,
peaceful, and happy, people like monks.
So overall, Think Like A Monk, very good book,
definitely worth reading.
There's gonna be a link in the video description
if you wanna pick yourself up a copy,
if you haven't got it yet.
Again in this video,
I've only touched on a sliver of the surface
of the ideas in here.
There's a lot more stuff.
He illustrates it with lots of stories, which is very nice.
And of course you can check out Jay's YouTube channel,
which is a constant source of inspiration
for many millions of people.
And Jay, if you're watching this,
we should collab sometime.
If you liked this episode,
you might like to check out this video here,
which is my book club episode of Ryan Holiday's,
The Obstacle Is The Way
which covers similar themes to Think Like A Monk,
but approaches it from the lens of stoicism,
using lots of historical examples
so check that out over there.
Thank you so much for watching.
I'll see you in the next video, bye-bye.