1
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 The American idol.
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SPEAKER_03
The danger they endured.
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SPEAKER_03
They said my head should be cut off.
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The joy they brought to the nation.
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SPEAKER_02
You're free completely.
1
SPEAKER_05
No one is there to destroy you.
1
SPEAKER_05
I'm John Legend.
1
SPEAKER_05
Listen to Afghan Star on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
1
SPEAKER_02
 Hey everyone, this is Molly and Matt and we're the hosts of Grown Up Stuff How to Adult, a podcast from Ruby Studio and iHeart Podcasts.
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It's a show dedicated to helping you figure out the trickiest parts of adulting.
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SPEAKER_02
 like how to start planning for retirement, creating a healthy skincare routine, understanding when and how much to tip someone, and so much more.
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SPEAKER_05
We're back with season two of the podcast, which means more opportunities to glow up and become a more responsible and better adult, one life lesson at a time.
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And let me just tell you, this show is just as much for us as it is for you.
1
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So let's figure this stuff out together.
1
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This season, we're going to talk about whether or not we're financially and emotionally ready for dog ownership.
1
SPEAKER_05
 We're gonna figure out the benefits of a high yield savings account.
1
SPEAKER_02
And what exactly are the duties of being a member of the wedding party?
1
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All that plus so much more.
1
SPEAKER_02
Let's learn about all of it and then some.
1
SPEAKER_02
Listen to Grown Up Stuff How to Adult on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
1
SPEAKER_04
 Guess what, Mango?
1
SPEAKER_04
What's that, Will?
1
SPEAKER_04
So iHeart is giving us a whole minute to promote our podcast, Part-Time Genius.
1
SPEAKER_03
I know, that's why I spent my whole week composing a haiku for the occasion.
1
SPEAKER_03
It's about my emotional journey in podcasting over the last seven years, and it's called Earthquake House.
1
SPEAKER_04
Mango, I'm going to cut you off right there.
1
SPEAKER_04
Why don't we just tell people about our show instead?
1
SPEAKER_03
Yeah, that's a better idea.
1
SPEAKER_03
So every week on Part-Time Genius, we feed our curiosity by answering the world's most important questions.
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SPEAKER_03
Things like, when did America start dialing 911?
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SPEAKER_03
 is William Shatner's best acting work in Esperanto.
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Also, what happened to Esperanto?
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SPEAKER_04
Plus, we cover questions like how Chinese is your Chinese food?
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SPEAKER_04
How do dollar stores stay in business?
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And of course, is there an Illuminati of cheese?
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There absolutely is.
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And we are risking our lives by talking about it.
1
SPEAKER_03
But if you love mind blowing facts, incredible history and really bad jokes, make your brains happy and tune in to Part Time Genius.
1
SPEAKER_04
Listen to Part Time Genius on the iHeartRadio app or wherever you get your podcasts.
1
SPEAKER_01
 How did you marry the two?
1
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What a lot of folks think is, oh, I'll just go into the corporate world and I'll figure it out, but then you kind of get sucked in.
1
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I mean, perhaps it was your monk training allowed you to kind of get through the noise.
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You would develop skills that really helped you.
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 Yeah.
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So I really described my monk life as going to school and the last seven years have been the exam.
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And so I've been testing all of my monk school training in life in this world that we live in and it all works.
1
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And so I can genuinely say that any joy, happiness, or success I've experienced in my life today has come because of what I learned as a monk and
1
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 One of the biggest principles was that of Dharma and there's a beautiful verse in the Manusmriti which says, when you protect your purpose, your purpose protects you.
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And what I love about that is when I joined Accenture,
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 And I love the company, by the way.
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It was hugely good for me.
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And I had a great career there.
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But when you join a company like Accenture, there's such a pressure to become a generalist.
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So there's such a pressure to be good at Excel and PowerPoint, good to be communicator, and be good at logistics.
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And you almost have to become a generalist to be able to succeed.
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 And I was dedicated.
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I was like, no, I'm going to stick to what I know.
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If I don't know how to do a VLOOKUP or a Microsoft Excel spreadsheet, that is OK.
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And I still don't, to this day, know how to use Microsoft Excel.
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And I'm really proud of that.
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That's like my greatest achievement in life, is never having to have learned how to use Microsoft Excel.
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 And so I was convinced that I was like, no, I've got to protect what I love and what I'm good at and what I'm passionate about.
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And what I was passionate about was education.
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So I was really involved in a lot of educational programs inside Accenture for our clients and inside the company.
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I very early on got introduced to social media at the company.
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And to me, it wasn't about social media.
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It was about connecting people and understanding people and people's behaviors.
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And so I got really drawn into that.
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And so I
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 straight away started to follow my passion inside the company and my curiosity inside the company, rather than try and be good at what they said you had to be good at.
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And that was probably the best thing I did because
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 I naturally learned, and I would use my weekends to upskill in those areas as well.
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And so when I was coming back to work, it was like, oh, Jay's passionate, and he has a strength here.
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And at the same time, I would always bring about meditation and mindfulness wherever I could.
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And so a year in, one of our executives asked me to speak at our summer event for all the analysts.
1
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And so there were 1,000 people of my peers in the audience.
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And no one knows who I am, or I don't have a profile at work.
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I'm one of the group.
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 and they'd asked me to speak about social media and mindfulness on stage.
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And I was like, that's like the biggest oxymoron in the world.
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Like, how am I going to do that?
1
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And so I remember teaching a mindfulness exercise on stage and it was just one of the most scary moments of my life because I went on
1
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 in between sandwiched in between the CEO of the company in the UK and Will Greenwood, who's a Rugby World Cup winner with England on the national team.
1
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Here's literal me who's just come out of being a monk and doesn't know if anyone's even going to care.
1
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And I went on stage and I taught a mindfulness exercise that I learned as a monk.
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 And it was just amazing because everyone appreciated it.
1
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And there's such amazing feedback across the company teaching mindfulness and meditation.
1
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And that's why I'm so grateful to Accenture because they really gave me a platform inside a company to go across the company and share that because they were prioritizing mental health so much.
1
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And so that's kind of how they ended up getting married by the time I was there.
1
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 And sure, you know, it's hugely helpful for the company to have you there doing this stuff.
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But part of your skillset really is kind of your knowledge of social media and how well you've been able to use it.
1
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And this gets to a principle that the first time we met, which was at a ranch in Montana as part of a foundation event, you know, you mentioned this idea that sharing wisdom, educating people doesn't have to be boring.
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And one of your realizations is that, you know, education can be fun.
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And if you harness that.
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 you know, good things can come from it.
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So let's talk a little bit about that philosophy and how it kind of played into what you did next.
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Yeah, so I started giving presentations pretty much as soon as I left meeting the monk and spent my time in India initially when I was 18, 19 years old.
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And so I set up a society at my university.
1
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I guess you call them clubs and societies here in the US.
1
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And so I set up a society, it was called Think Out Loud.
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And every week I would dissect a movie based on psychology, spirituality, and philosophy and science.
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 And so I'd take a movie like Inception, or I'd take a movie, mainly Christopher Nolan movies, I'm a big movie junkie, so Memento, The Prestige, Inception, all of those types of movies, and we'd show the movie, and then I'd break down the characters and analyze their behavior and all that kind of stuff, and I loved it.
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And I started that when I was around 18, 19, and 10 students would come, and by the time I graduated, 100 students would turn up every week, and it was totally free and open to anyone inside the university.
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And so I'd always had a,
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 desire to share psychology, philosophy, spirituality in a way that was relevant.
1
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And during my time at Accenture, where I learned so much about digital strategy and social media, I was just watching social media and just thinking, I was like, okay, so cat videos, dog videos, inappropriate videos.
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And then I was like, well, where's the space for wisdom?
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Like, where does wisdom fit into all of this?
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 And where does wellness fit into all of this?
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Because even though it's ironic to use social media as a way of spreading wellness, it's still one of the few ways that we have an opportunity to share knowledge in a large way.
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And so I pitched my idea to 10 media companies in London.
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I said, why don't we start a wellness series, which are these short videos speaking about these important topics that we were never taught at school.
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 I got rejected by all 10 media companies because they said that I didn't have any media background.
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I didn't have any qualifications and that I'd never made a video before, which they were right about.
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And I, they also said that I was too old to be in media because I was 28 years old.
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And so I remember like networking with anyone I could.
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And I remember there's a famous exec who rides his bike around London.
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I remember chasing him on his bike, wanting to be like,
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 wait a minute, give me a job, I'll work for you for free.
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And I remember networking with another exec, my wife's best friend growing up is nephews of a famous exec.
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And I was like, all right, that's an in, let's jump on the phone.
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And he was like to me, aren't you marrying my nephew's best friend next year?
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And I was like, yeah.
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And he was like, well, why do you want a career change if you're getting married next year?
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And I was like,
1
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 because I love it and he was like no you're too old like just stay in your job it's safer and so I was getting all this clap back and then I ended up getting an opportunity I heard about an ethnic minorities TV training day that was running by the BBC at Pinewood studio.
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 So I went along to this ethnic minority TV training day, and there were six people in the room.
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Everyone was brown or black.
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And I walked into the room, and they were training us to be presenters.
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And I went there to test whether I actually had the skills because I thought, well, maybe I'm just not skilled enough.
1
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And so we did this test, and they were like, oh, Jay, you've got some really good skills and qualities, and you can do this.
1
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I was like, OK, give me a job at the BBC.
1
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And they were like, there's no jobs at the BBC.
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I was like, literally, did you invite six ethnic minority people here?
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 to tell us that there's no jobs.
1
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That's not great.
1
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And so they said to me, well, you should start a YouTube channel.
1
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And I said, yeah, that works for Justin Bieber.
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And that was genuinely my response.
1
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And it's how I felt inside.
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I was like, yeah, that works for Justin Bieber.
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That's not going to work for me.
1
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 And I got to a point where, and there's a beautiful Edison quote that speaks to this.
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He said that, when you feel you've exhausted all options, remember this, you haven't.
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And I realized that I'd exhausted all options apart from starting a YouTube channel.
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So using social media was never my first choice.
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And it wasn't even my intention, or I didn't think anyone would ever watch the videos.
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It's just the only choice I had left.
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 And so I started.
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I started my YouTube channel.
1
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And my first video did OK.
1
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And in the first three months, I had about 1,500 subscribers.
1
SPEAKER_00
But luckily, what happened is my global HR leader at Accenture, Ellen Shook, she showed my video to Ariana Huffington at Davos that year.
1
SPEAKER_00
 And that was the tipping point that changed my entire media career because I then got involved at that point in 2016 with the Huffington Post and Arianna Huffington when she was there and ended up moving to New York to work with her and the team there.
1
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And that was like the first tipping point of how my career took off four years ago.
1
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So it's really just, I mean, the key is like, you're putting out content that's really genuine, that's really purpose-driven.
1
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And, you know, the nice thing about YouTube is like, it's a great equalizer, right?
1
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Like it means that people with a message can kind of get up there and
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 do really good stuff and become incredibly viral too.
1
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Yeah.
1
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And I was pushing it out to everyone.
1
SPEAKER_00
So I would like, I had a database on an Excel spreadsheet, I guess, but it wasn't, I had an Excel spreadsheet, which literally had every media company's exact Twitter handle, email, and their address.
1
SPEAKER_00
And so I would literally send my videos via Twitter and email to all of these every single week.
1
SPEAKER_00
So I was literally on Twitter every week going,
1
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 hey, check out my latest video.
1
SPEAKER_00
Like, I hope you like it.
1
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Just hoping that someone would see it and think that it was worth something and want to do something with it.
1
SPEAKER_00
And thankfully that was what also caught Ellen's eye at Accenture.
1
SPEAKER_00
And then she showed it to Ariana Huffington.
1
SPEAKER_00
So there was a real, like, you know, almost like this, I've always believed in the law of odds.
1
SPEAKER_00
And I really believe in it now that it's like, it's all about how many doors you knock on.
1
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And it's all about how annoying you're okay with being.
1
SPEAKER_00
And it's all about, you know, just keep,
1
SPEAKER_00
 being diligent, resilient, and determined to keep knocking on doors, even if you hear a ton of no's.
1
SPEAKER_00
And that's really the only skill that I think we all need apart from doing something you love and that you feel you have some skills in.
1
SPEAKER_00
But that's the third part that I think a lot of people miss out on.
1
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And I think, I mean, part of the success though, is that all that door knocking, all that resilience, it wasn't in the service of these like
1
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 vapid kinds of pursuits.
1
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It wasn't in the service of money necessarily.
1
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It wasn't in the service of fame.
1
SPEAKER_01
When I hear you talk about it, it was really that you had this goal of making wisdom go viral.
1
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Not in a way that would make you a fame and fortune, but you just wanted the stuff to get out there.
1
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 I genuinely did not believe that more than a couple of thousand people would care.
1
SPEAKER_00
Honestly speaking, I did not really think that that was meant for me.
1
SPEAKER_00
I did not have any plan on how I was going to make money from it or make it a real thing.
1
SPEAKER_00
My only intention at the time was, how do we just get these messages out there?
1
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Hopefully, a few people will have more meaningful conversations or get some insights.
1
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 based off of these videos and I'll carry on working at Accenture and I'll do these in the evenings and the weekends and it will make me happy that I'm trying.
1
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And I think that's where it came from.
1
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It was a really innocent thing of just like, I hope that, you know, I can just have fun and try and make content.
1
SPEAKER_00
And I used to spend five hours a day, five days a week to edit one five minute video, which are terrible odds if you're an editor.
1
SPEAKER_00
So if anyone ever tells you it's gonna take them 25 hours to edit your video and they charge $50 an hour, do not pay them.
1
SPEAKER_00
 I was editing my own videos and teaching myself because I couldn't afford to pay someone to edit for me.
1
SPEAKER_00
And so that's the process that it took in the beginning, at least, to get going.
1
SPEAKER_00
So I'd come back from work at about 8 p.m., edit from about 8.30 to about 1.30, go to sleep, do it all again.
1
SPEAKER_00
And then I got better at it when it started taking five hours a week instead of 25 hours a week.
1
SPEAKER_01
 Give me a sense of how this changed.
1
SPEAKER_01
You started, maybe 5,000 people will watch this.
1
SPEAKER_01
Now, what is the Jay Shetty media empire looking like?
1
SPEAKER_00
It's been an amazing, amazing journey with so many ups and downs and so many challenges and mistakes.
1
SPEAKER_00
 learning fast, and it's been a crazy, crazy journey.
1
SPEAKER_00
And externally, and I know you don't think this, Laurie, but often I get the thing of like, oh, wow, it's just been a great success story.
1
SPEAKER_00
And it's like, yeah, but for me on the inside, it's not at all.
1
SPEAKER_00
It's never felt like, oh, yeah, we're there now, and everything's great.
1
SPEAKER_00
It's been a real work in progress.
1
SPEAKER_00
 And the first tipping point was Arianna Huffington and the HuffPost.
1
SPEAKER_00
I moved on from the HuffPost in March 2017 and started working for myself.
1
SPEAKER_00
And so I haven't been connected with them professionally ever since.
1
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Arianna Huffington continues to be one of my greatest supporters and friends, and she wrote a beautiful testimonial for my book.
1
SPEAKER_00
 And so our relationship's been amazing, and her team and I's relationship's been amazing.
1
SPEAKER_00
And so 2017, I went on my own.
1
SPEAKER_00
And that was the hardest year of my life, because when I left, I was four months away from being broke, enough to pay rent and groceries.
1
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I'd got married six months before that.
1
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Me and my wife were living in New York City in a 500-square-foot apartment.
1
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And I have never felt that much pain in my life.
1
SPEAKER_00
 So leaving being a monk was hard, and then this was just a whole new low.
1
SPEAKER_00
And I literally was four months away from being broke and 30 days away from being kicked out of the United States because my visa was attached to the company.
1
SPEAKER_00
And so because I'd left, I had to apply for a new visa.
1
SPEAKER_00
And my 01 visa that I'm on and was on cost $15,000 to get a new one.
1
SPEAKER_00
So that was cutting massively into the budget that I had left.
1
SPEAKER_00
 And my mentor used to always say to me, one of my mentors in London would often say to me that, you know, when you experience pain, that's when you'll find your potential.
1
SPEAKER_00
I was like, yeah, yeah, yeah, that's all that, you know, philosophy, motivation stuff.
1
SPEAKER_00
And he was spot on.
1
SPEAKER_00
I was in such a tough space.
1
SPEAKER_00
 that I have never worked that hard in my life and had to figure a way out.
1
SPEAKER_00
And so 2017 was a lot of hard work.
1
SPEAKER_00
2018, I started to become more strategic, started to understand business more, started to become an entrepreneur and understand that if I was to do this on myself, I had to be able to produce good videos where I needed to pay bills, I needed to have a team, I needed to employ people.
1
SPEAKER_00
 And, you know, in the past three years of making content, we've had over like 8 billion views.
1
SPEAKER_00
You know, there's about 38 million people that are connected across social media networks.
1
SPEAKER_00
And it's just the podcast has been a joy.
1
SPEAKER_00
Laurie, you've been a phenomenal guest on it and people love that episode.
1
SPEAKER_00
And the podcast has been such a beautiful platform to have to meet amazing people and connect with them.
1
SPEAKER_00
 And then now the book's just come out a week ago and the love and the response has been just incredible.
1
SPEAKER_00
So to me, there's no number that's a goal.
1
SPEAKER_00
There's no number that's ever been a goal.
1
SPEAKER_00
I think if I had a goal, it would have been terrible.
1
SPEAKER_00
It would have been like, oh, 500,000 or a million or whatever.
1
SPEAKER_00
And so life is so much more fun when life beats your goals.
1
SPEAKER_00
 And so I don't set numerical goals.
1
SPEAKER_00
I set goals to be fully prepared in my creation.
1
SPEAKER_00
And then I let whatever comes, come.
1
SPEAKER_00
So with anything in my life, I just focus in on making sure that I've created the best thing I possibly can.
1
SPEAKER_00
And then I let that do the work.
1
SPEAKER_00
So that's kind of what it looks like now.
1
SPEAKER_00
And we have
1
SPEAKER_00
 everything from a certification school now with a thousand students enrolled to become life coaches through to the videos and podcasts and the book and all the entertainment entities.
1
SPEAKER_00
And the goal now is to move into gaining IP to do documentaries and movies and content in a way that we can create really incredible pieces of entertainment content that are made with the heart to educate and support and transform people's lives, not necessarily with me even in it,
1
SPEAKER_00
 but to tell the stories of amazing people that I think are missed sometimes.
1
SPEAKER_01
And so given the kind of speed of this, how have you stayed grounded?
1
SPEAKER_01
What are the top skills you've employed either from your training as a monk or just the kind of thing you've learned over the years?
1
SPEAKER_01
What do you do to kind of stay grounded as this trajectory is kind of skyrocketing?
1
SPEAKER_00
 get married because there's a great story that I love sharing about Robert Downey Jr.
1
SPEAKER_00
He was doing an interview at Cambridge University and he says, you know, when he comes home, he's like, my family's never like, oh my God, it's Iron Man.
1
SPEAKER_00
You know, he's like, they're just like, oh, can you take the trash out?
1
SPEAKER_00
Or can you, you know, so my mom and my dad and my sister and my wife, uh,
1
SPEAKER_00
 Beautiful reminders of, you know, I married my wife and met my wife well before all of this.
1
SPEAKER_00
And so it's always beautiful to have that relationship.
1
SPEAKER_00
And she's been an amazing grounding force.
1
SPEAKER_00
I think for me, I meditate still every day for an hour and a half to two hours every single morning.
1
SPEAKER_00
 That does change when I'm traveling and right now with my press cycle, it's kind of like 30 minutes, four times throughout the day, but that has been such a rock.
1
SPEAKER_00
And so in my tradition, I'm not allowed to teach any of what I teach if I stop doing that.
1
SPEAKER_00
And so that's like a focus and I've had bad days of meditation and had days where I just got through it.
1
SPEAKER_00
 failed at it massively from a monk point of view, but just turning up has been important.
1
SPEAKER_00
And every year, me and my wife go back to India to the ashram that I lived at for two to three weeks, and I live with the monks again.
1
SPEAKER_00
And I find that that immersive experience is such a boost.
1
SPEAKER_00
So I come back with all this reinvigoration and energy to apply.
1
SPEAKER_00
And those have been some of the most important practices, the daily habits, the relationships in my life, the people in my life are all very grounded and
1
SPEAKER_00
 not necessarily from the communities and circles that I work in, and that's really important.
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SPEAKER_00
And also just revisiting the monks who always remind me how long a way I have to go with my practices is always really special.
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SPEAKER_01
 Well, we're going to open up for questions, so put some questions in the chat, but you reminded me of the answer I often give when people ask about me being grounded is this idea of having to practice what you preach.
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SPEAKER_01
If you're the teacher, you can't totally be screwing up on all these wellness practices because somebody is going to notice that and that's going to be really embarrassing.
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SPEAKER_00
 And you're always going to make mistakes too, and have bad days and days where things don't work out.
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SPEAKER_00
And there's going to be days where you're not as kind as you want to be, or not as compassionate as you want to be, and not as loving as you want to be.
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SPEAKER_00
But that's humbling, and that's still a lesson.
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SPEAKER_00
That, for me, is the greatest humbling thing about sharing wisdom, is every time you say something, you constantly are reminded of how far you are away from it.
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SPEAKER_00
 And that's the best thing about saying this all day, because you're constantly going, oh, wow, yeah, I need to do that better, or I need to get back to that.
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SPEAKER_00
And so talking about it a lot is very helpful.
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SPEAKER_01
Yeah.
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SPEAKER_01
And I think that's one of the things that is also something that I think we forget in the modern age, and we don't do such a great job of when we train students at university, is this idea that we're still on a journey.
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SPEAKER_01
I think there's this, in university, it's like, when I get into school, that's when I'll be happier.
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SPEAKER_01
When I get my degree, that's when I'll be happier.
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SPEAKER_01
When I get the perfect job or when I meet the perfect person.
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SPEAKER_01
But
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SPEAKER_01
 it continues, right?
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SPEAKER_01
There's constantly room for growth.
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SPEAKER_01
And I think we're constantly feeling like, you know, we're not really adulting.
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SPEAKER_01
We're not really there yet.
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SPEAKER_01
We're not really expert, even if we're supposed to be.
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SPEAKER_01
And I think that remembering that it is a journey can be really powerful too.
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SPEAKER_00
Absolutely.
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SPEAKER_00
I can't wait for your questions.
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SPEAKER_00
I know.
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SPEAKER_01
Yeah.
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SPEAKER_01
So jump in with some questions on the chat while you're doing that.
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SPEAKER_01
So tell us a little bit about the book.
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SPEAKER_01
You mentioned some of the chapters that are in it, but what do we have to look forward to?
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SPEAKER_00
 Yeah, so the book is a interweaving of personal stories, scientific studies, courtesy of Laurie and many other amazing friends who were able to share with me studies on monks' brains, meditation, gratitude, all the principles
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SPEAKER_00
 in the book, and then the strategies and steps to how you can make it real in your life.
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SPEAKER_00
And that's really where I place a lot of emphasis is it's not an autobiography.
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SPEAKER_00
It has biographical elements.
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SPEAKER_00
The book is really a guide and how to life book as to how you can practice the monk mindset in the real world.
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SPEAKER_00
And I really believe that the monk mindset is not just an option, but it's necessary because we live in a life that is full of noise and full of overwhelming information.
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SPEAKER_00
And
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SPEAKER_00
 If you think about it, if you want to learn about a subject, you go to the people that have mastered it.
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SPEAKER_00
I always say, if you wanted to learn about tennis, you'd go to Serena Williams, or if you wanted to know how to perform, you'd want to go to Beyonce.
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SPEAKER_00
If you want to learn how to master your mind, monks have dedicated their life to that.
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SPEAKER_00
It's not even about my experience.
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SPEAKER_00
The studies I talk about in the book are about monks who've done this for 20, 30, 40 years.
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SPEAKER_00
 And so it's not even about my monk journey, it's about my fascination with the minds of monks, because they've dedicated their life.
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SPEAKER_00
And all the studies show, and I had an opportunity to interview Matthew Rickard, who's been known to be the world's happiest man, because his brain scan had the highest form of gamma waves, which are linked to obviously happiness, joy, and attention.
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SPEAKER_00
 And there's tons of studies like that.
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SPEAKER_00
So for me, the book is about practical tools and tips to finding your purpose and understanding what that truly means, what it means to create service opportunities in your life, and how to let go of the negativity that we face and the overthinking and procrastination that we come across every day.
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SPEAKER_01
 And so that might be a nice way to transition into one of the questions we have, which is from Amanda, one of our awesome Silliman fellows, who asks, how have you learned to embrace or perhaps cope with the fear that comes with going against the grain and listening to your intuition?
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SPEAKER_01
Yeah, because it's one thing afterwards to be like, it all worked out.
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SPEAKER_01
You have billions of views.
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SPEAKER_01
It's all good.
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SPEAKER_01
But that fear was probably something you had to contend with a lot in those few years in between.
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SPEAKER_00
 And I still have that fear today.
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SPEAKER_00
Like following your intuition gets harder.
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SPEAKER_00
Like when I first moved to LA, I thought that there were certain rules of how things work here.
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SPEAKER_00
And I had to know agents and I had to know managers because I didn't know any, I don't know in my family or in my immediate circle has ever done anything in entertainment.
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SPEAKER_00
So I have no background in this whole industry.
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SPEAKER_00
And so I was learning a lot and I didn't trust my intuition.
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SPEAKER_00
I always thought that people were smarter than me in the space and knew more than me.
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SPEAKER_00
 And I realized that people were smarter than me and didn't know more than me, but they didn't know my intention.
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SPEAKER_00
And so I've constantly been reminded to go back to my intuition and intention.
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SPEAKER_00
So how do you overcome the fear?
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SPEAKER_00
The first thing that's really important, and I talk about this in the fear chapter of the book, is that you have to really understand what you're actually scared of.
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SPEAKER_00
 So what I mean by that is a lot of the time we think we're scared of something, but actually we don't know the root of what we're scared of.
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SPEAKER_00
And the way you do that is ask yourself, what are you scared of?
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SPEAKER_00
And then you ask yourself the question, well, why am I scared of that?
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SPEAKER_00
What am I really scared of?
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SPEAKER_00
And then your mind will come up with an answer and you listen to it patiently.
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SPEAKER_00
And then you ask yourself, well, why am I scared of that?
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SPEAKER_00
 And then your mind will come up with an answer and you listen to it and you accept it patiently.
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SPEAKER_00
And then you ask again, why am I scared of that?
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SPEAKER_00
And you keep doing that with your fear until you get to a root fear.
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SPEAKER_00
And I realized that my fear at that time was letting down my parents.
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SPEAKER_00
Like that was my root fear.
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SPEAKER_00
Like I didn't want to let down my parents who'd worked so hard to give me an education and they were immigrants into London and they'd worked so hard to give me all these opportunities.
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SPEAKER_00
 And I realized that I think what would really let them down, because then I asked myself, well, what would really let them down?
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SPEAKER_00
I realized what would really let them down is me being disappointed with my life choice and blaming it on them.
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SPEAKER_00
 And when I got face to face with that as the real fear, that actually if I did what they wanted me to do, chances are I'm going to be pretty depressed and sad.
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SPEAKER_00
And then I'm going to blame it on them.
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SPEAKER_00
Or even if I don't blame it on them, they're going to see me be sad.
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SPEAKER_00
And that's not going to work.
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SPEAKER_00
So the way you get the strength to listen to intuition, first of all, is deeply understanding your fear, not just glossing over it.
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SPEAKER_00
 The second step is experimenting with the life you think you want.
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SPEAKER_00
So if I hadn't spent those summers and those vacations living as a monk, I would not have been confident to listen to my intuition.
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SPEAKER_00
So intuition has to be backed up by action.
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SPEAKER_00
You can't just feel good about something.
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SPEAKER_00
You have to try it out and test it and be willing to do that.
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SPEAKER_00
And the third thing is you have to know that when you choose to do your intuition, you've got to be ready to go all in because chances are that more is going to be demanded of you.
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SPEAKER_00
 So you've almost got to turn on that mode of all in when you decide to fall into intuition to really push it upwards.
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SPEAKER_00
Because sometimes it's easier to do stuff that works in the world, but if you want to make something work, you've got to do that.
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SPEAKER_00
So I'd say those are the top three ways of overcoming the fear.
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SPEAKER_00
 And again, you still might be fearful even when you take your first step and that's fine.
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SPEAKER_00
So you're not trying to get rid of fear and then take your first step.
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SPEAKER_00
You're just trying to understand your fear and then take your first step.
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SPEAKER_00
So I'd say I, I do stuff that scares me all the time.
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SPEAKER_00
It's just that I understand the level of fear I'm dealing with in the same way as if someone said, so you're going to bungee jump, right?
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SPEAKER_00
Or you're going to skydive.
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SPEAKER_00
 you'd want to know that you were on a plane that was safe, you were jumping from a height that was fair and safe and doable, and that other people have survived before.
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SPEAKER_00
If you've done that research and you have that knowledge of your fear, you can give it a go.
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SPEAKER_00
But if someone just said, OK, we're going to go on a plane right now, I'm going to throw you out, you'd say no.
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SPEAKER_00
And so some of us, when we're following our intuition, it's almost like blindly skydiving.
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SPEAKER_00
 And that's not going to work.
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SPEAKER_00
That's rarely going to work.
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SPEAKER_00
It has to be not necessarily calculated, but it has to be composed and conscious and intentional.
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SPEAKER_01
 So it's both kind of knowing that your fear is just that, it's fear.
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SPEAKER_01
It's not like a real warning system being like, hey, you're going to die if you jump on this plane, but then kind of being there to bear with it and walk.
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SPEAKER_01
And also read your chapter on fear, which I think is also going to be important.
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SPEAKER_01
And so Zach asks about possession.
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SPEAKER_01
When you go for being a monk, you basically have no possessions.
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SPEAKER_01
And then you come out of that and I assume a reasonable apartment in LA and some photos behind you at the very least.
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SPEAKER_01
So some stuff and you're more than just like the cot, right?
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SPEAKER_01
 And so how did you transition away from that or any tips for finding the sweet spot of owning and possessing?