 So I think the big question that everyone has having encountered your stuff for the first time is how do you go from monk to storyteller online and in such a big way because it really is an economy between two worlds and I know that when we think of monks we don't think of them on social media we don't think of them, you know, being out there in the public. Absolutely, so I always had this desire to spread wisdom. When I became a monk and got this incredible opportunity to study texts and books that were 5,000 years old all I could think about was like how do I make sense of this to someone who has no idea what this is being born and raised in London. I was just like how does this connect to that 18-year-old kid in London that I used to be? How does this connect to that girl who's getting bullied at college? How does this connect to that guy who hates his job? How does this connect to anyone? And so for me I was always reading all of these incredible texts 5,000 years old and going how do I make that relevant, accessible and practical to everyone because I was seeing huge benefits in my personal life from living those principles but I knew not everyone was going to run off to a mountain and become a monk and live the lifestyle I'd chosen but I felt I wanted them to experience that. So what I did was beyond, I mean this is a fast-forward version, but I started sharing content online very late. I joined social media in 2014 and in 2016 launched my first video. Before then I'd been creating content and speaking at universities and schools and companies for a long long time so I'd been testing what resonated with people, what connected with them and then I just decided I was like I want this to reach anyone who has a mobile phone and I read a study that said more people own a mobile phone than a toothbrush. So I was like if that's the truth then we need to get it out to everyone and I thought what better way than video. So I remember uploading my first video third Jan 2016 on YouTube and I had no idea where it would go or how it would do. I think it did okay and it started off really well and then I realized it was only doing well because I kept refreshing YouTube and the views kept going up. That doesn't work anymore by the way and I just wanted to spread wisdom at the pace people want entertainment. I wanted to make wisdom entertaining. I wanted to be engaging and I wanted to feel like you are watching television or watching a movie. It didn't need to feel like a class and so I started out and thankfully Ariana Huffington within three months someone showed her my video at Davos at the conference and her team reached out and they said we'd love for you to create a series of videos for HuffPost. We're not going to pay you anything but we'd love to test it out. So I made four videos for HuffPost. Those four videos did a hundred million views. It was the most amount of views that ever had and that overnight kind of had a big effect on my trajectory and that actually was the smaller end 2017. I really started focusing on my own content on my own channels and platforms and things have just been insane since then but the focus has always been how do you make this entertaining? How do you make it practical? How do you make it accessible and how do you make it actionable so that people can actually live it today? And I feel like most people listening to this have encountered your content and it's just different. It just feels different than the other content that's spread throughout social and the storytelling angle is a big part of that. Were you always a storyteller growing up or is that something that the solitude of being a monk sort of drew out of you? That's a great question. I was and I still am a big introvert at heart and as a kid I was like the shyest kid in school. I was okay at English. I love spoken word growing up so I'm a huge Eminem fan and I spent my teens listening to and I think I fell in love with English because of Eminem. Like being able to bend words, being able to like research in the thesaurus like synonyms to words or like looking at a dictionary for deeper definitions of words so that you could make them rhyme or mean something else. So I got fascinated with spoken word when I was around 14 and I love playing around with words and language. So I think that became a big part of my life in my teens and then when I became a monk so much of how we were taught were through stories like ancient stories, timeless stories, wisdom stories, like all the learning of the world has always been story and so because I was listening to incredible storytellers it was so wonderful to like absorb that atmosphere so I can't take all the credit for it was just because I was learning with monks who were just incredible storytellers and my job was to tell those stories but make them relevant. So I don't think I was always a storyteller. I think it's something that came from immersing myself in being a monk in that community and then it was something where I've just spent so much time with people's pain and I think that's often missed like over the last 13 years I've coached several people, thousands of people, worked with people, one-on-one groups and when you sit with people's pain you figure out how to break through that pain and connect with people and you realize more often than not it's a story and that story when it's real and it's genuine that breaks through everything so for me that's that's where it evolved it wasn't something I was naturally gifted at or had a skill in or any of that sort. Well it's certainly a thing that's been coming up in our conversations over and over again with the emotional component to the human spirit and that's going to be wrapped in stories and we tell ourselves stories to make sense of the world. We're putting stories together constantly to figure out how to get through things and Kobe here was just here with us talking about his new venture in storytelling to be able to give wisdom to young men and it's a wonderful thing because of course a lot of things as you mentioned some of these parables some of these lessons are thousands of years old and we might hear them in contemporary form but to us in that form they just sound like a fuddy-duddy cliche and we throw it out the window. Without that story how could we put any sort of emotional teeth into it and feel good about it. Yeah absolutely I completely agree. When we think about connecting with one another we do it through stories and when we meet each other for the first time we're sharing stories we heard your story of moving to LA even in the green room here and obviously you've studied some of the best stories in the world passed down thousands of years what have you drawn from those stories that you try your best to encapsulate in the videos that you create. Oh wow that's a great question I'm gonna tell a story to answer that question. It's not even that's old and I'm not even sure how completely factual it is but it's so powerful that I'm gonna share it anyway. The story is a claim to Alexander the Great it could be anyone and I would if that's not true then I would just listen in and think of any great warrior or any great Emperor or someone who achieved a lot in life and so the story is of when he's on his deathbed and when he's on his deathbed it said that he had three wishes and those three wishes when his ministers asked him what he wanted was that he wanted him to be carried by all the doctors to his funeral so he wanted his coffin and his body inside the coffin to be carried by all the doctors the best doctors to his funeral. The second thing is he wanted that path to be laid with everything that he'd gained in life all the jewels all the riches all the money everything and the third thing he wanted was that he wanted his coffin to be left open so that you could see his hands on either side right and the ministers looked him and said that is the most morbid thing in the world like this is your last wish and those your three wishes and they said why are they your three wishes and Alexander the Great explained he said that I want the best doctors in the world to carry my body because I want the world to see that even the best doctors in the world can't save you from death. He said I want the path to my funeral to be laid with everything I've gained to show people that you can't take anything with you and he said I want my hands to be outside of the coffin to show that we come into this world empty-handed and we leave this world empty-handed and that's one of my favorite stories and what I try and imbibe in my videos and live by is that I believe that we all have a finite number of breaths and we all get an opportunity to make them count and there's a beautiful thought by Maya Angelou where she said people will forget what you did people will forget what you said but people never forget how you made them feel and for me that's what we've got all of us have this limited amount of time and all that's going to be remembered is how we made people feel and so for me my videos are all about how am I making people feel if I can give people a feel of self-worth a sense of personal growth a sense of confidence a sense of self-esteem whatever it may be I want to use my living time doing that and what I love about this entire idea of sharing these stories is the realness tied to them right the stories that you're sharing they resonate because the emotions are real they're not saccharine they're not fake that you see on social media which is you know this alternate reality almost that people try to put their best foot forward and in your stories speak to the realness of emotion and the pain that we all feel as humans no matter where we are in life with obviously choosing the solitude to become a monk how does one leave it's sort of obviously a beautiful place with amazing friends and family to just go and seek that knowledge how do you end up making that decision especially at a young age I think the big thing is we all are looking for role models when we're growing up like I feel like we all had someone we looked up to and I was just fortunate and I have to I have to owe it to fortune and grace that I was so fortunate that when I was 18 one of my role models became a monk because my role models were celebrities CEOs entrepreneurs incredible people who are achieving a lot in the world but when I met him I got to meet someone who was truly happy and I think we meet a lot of people who have a lot of money who have a lot of success at a young age but you rarely meet someone who's truly happy and I think everyone who's listening right now or watching will be able to remember a time when they felt they met someone who is happy and I'm sure that's a rare memory but it exists and I was so captivated by that happiness that I felt this person was experiencing that I was like I want that you know and you feel that like I always say that it's always the common denominator in the room if you're in a room with someone who has millions of followers you be like oh I want that and if you're in the room with someone who has a yacht you'll be like oh I want a yacht and if someone lives in a fancy home you'll be like oh I want a fancy like we always want what we feel in the room like the person who has the most in the room becomes the most desirable but for me I was so fortunate to be in a room where someone was happy and that became the most desirable thing and I was just seeing around me I was aware that I was looking at people around me who had money but were sad who had the love of everyone in the like relationships whatever like the best-looking partners whatever and they still were sad and I was just looking around me at 18 and observing that I couldn't meet someone who's really happy apart from this guy and so it's like I want that so I ended up spending all my summer holidays from 18 aged 18 to 22 half of them in bars steak houses and working in the world of finance in London and the other half living as a monk in India so I call it my first ever split test or my ab test where I was literally like I'm gonna live the paradox like I'm gonna go from living up large like you know having fun having the best relationships drinking going out whatever it is and I'm going to compare that to the opposite and I can totally say by doing that experiment four years later I was convinced that the experiment of living as a monk was more meaningful more purposeful and made me more happy so I was like it's a no-brainer so that's how at an early age it was just an experiment and that's why my consistent recommendation to anyone listening is experiment with stuff like try stuff out go and live it for a week live it for a weekend don't just think about it in your head like get out of your head and get into action so if I just thought about it I probably wouldn't have done it but getting to experiment with it taught me so much do you remember what it was that you had seen from that person that that you hadn't seen from all these other successful people around you that was clear to you that that was happiness or that what he had was different than these other folks yeah absolutely I think the first thing was that he didn't try and justify his success to anyone so like he didn't walk into the room and say oh by and I found out afterwards he'd given up jobs at google and microsoft to be a monk but he never said that yeah and and he just came in and he was just totally himself and I felt that from him it was an energy he was like he was totally himself and bear in mind I wasn't spiritual religious so there wasn't a natural inclination towards him and he was totally happy being himself he was dressed in robes but at no point did he look uncomfortable to be where he was and bear in mind we were all young 18 year olds who do not get impressed by someone in robes so there was no external facet of him that was attractive or anything like that and the third thing was that I felt that he genuinely meant what he was saying and I think that's the hardest bit it's like we all know we've all played roles where you have to become someone because you're wearing a certain suit or role or title whereas when he spoke I was just like yeah that's what he thinks like that's what he believes that's he's genuinely living that and then when I got to see him in action you could see he just loved every moment and the way he dealt with every person was so gracious and so kind and so loving and so connect and I was like let's see if you can do that in India like there was a part of me that was still skeptical and then when I saw him in India it was exactly the same and I was like oh wow and now I've known him for such a long time that you see someone in multiple scenarios whether they're in front of a crowd or on their own and they're the same that's hard right like when someone can stay the same whether they're with a million people or whether they're with one person that's you know that wins your respect it's that authenticity yeah right and I feel it's easy to lose sight of that when you're collecting all of these things that make us appear make us appear successful now we would be remiss this month to not talk about toxic relationships and I would imagine at your age on that career path saying you know what I'm gonna go be a monk in India you dealt with some doubt and you dealt with some people who were like absolutely not and even to this day I'm sure you're dealing with those doubters so take us back to that moment when you are carving out a new path for yourself when everyone else is probably thinking you're leaving everything on the table behind for this one thing yeah absolutely I'm so glad you brought that up I tell this story on my podcast about how I was first greeted by everyone around me just going you've gone mad like literally all my friends at university were just like you've gone crazy right and the second thing was are you gay like that was the those are the two questions that I was asked and and this is what this is 2010 when I made the decision so nine years ago and people just like yeah so you're mad you've gone crazy you've been brainwashed you're gay or you know like what's and everyone's quite confused because they saw me as someone who is normal in in every other sense and and I was like yeah I'm the same guy I've just decided to graduate and become a monk instead of going work for ex-bank or ex-tech company and so what I realized was I was so sure of what I wanted to do that I wasn't going to let people's opinions break me down and even though it was uncomfortable in the beginning I'd built up such a brilliant other side of the bridge where I'd built up great relationships with monks I'd built up a great practice over the four years I'd built the other side of the bridge and that's where I feel toxic relationships are hard to leave when you haven't visioned the bridge of where you want to cross and if you haven't built the other side you're scared of putting that first step on the bridge so for me I just built a solid other side of the bridge where leaving that toxicity wasn't hard but if I hadn't then it would have been super tough and it would have brought me down but for me it was like just detaching from those opinions that other people had around me now obviously coming out the other side being on the other side of the bridge and and now being celebrated how have you dealt with those people who you identified as toxic but now want back into this amazing life you've built right they doubted you originally they said this is not going to work you proved them wrong now they want a part of you yeah and and I think a big part of me when when people have doubted me is I've genuinely tried to take out the feeling of I'm going to prove them wrong and so every time I feel like someone is against me or I feel like some animosity or negativity from someone I remove the thought in my head that says I've got to show them because I don't want that to become my motivation because if that becomes my motivation and intention then now that person controls me and now they're not impressed when I come out the other side then I'm going to keep seeking their validation so I think that's a big thing we do in toxic relationships where we pin our happiness on to how that person feels about us good or bad and then you're left your whole life searching for that but going back specifically to the question you asked around around how how I would do that my big focus was how can you just want to connect with people as people now the people that stuck with me the whole way I trust them and love them more than anyone people who left and come back I don't trust them and I'm okay with that I have my distance because I'm just like there's if you weren't with me at that time then I can't trust you in the same way as I trust these people who've always been there so in the best thing is it's shown me my true friends and therefore I have a great group of people around me that love me that have always been there that if even if they misunderstood me they were honest enough to say yeah I don't get you but I'm going to stick around and I love that honesty too right it's not like everyone who stayed around was like Jay you're amazing you're making the best decision of your life they were just like I don't get you you're weird but I'm going to stick around because there's something here and then the other side of it is I feel like we give we give our toxic relationships and negativity so much energy we're like like for example in your comment section on Instagram for anyone who's on social media for everyone who's on social media you could pinpoint the one negative comment out of a hundred positive comments and we all do it we amplified the negative and you see it all the time and we do the same in our lives where we sit here talking about all the toxicity and so for me it's like I can either spend all my energy trying to convince that one person to love me or I can reply to the people that love me already and they'll love me more because they are already engaging them they're going to feel so happy that I responded to them and I think this is a great simple tip for everyone who's listening is just when you respond to positivity in your life it just increases when you respond to the negativity in your life it just increases and so trying to get someone to like you and defend yourself and control how they feel about you it wastes and drains so much energy and you could use all the energy for the people that love you so are you just swiping up past the negative comments I literally skip over negative comments genuinely since day one and I remember reading in the start and so I'll add this there have been times when I've looked at negative comments and they're like that's quite funny like you know it's they're funny they're true but overall I try to respond to everyone who said something positive and I rarely put any energy into put anyone who put anything negative because I don't want to change their mind they're entitled to their belief they're okay to feel that way and if I feel like it's good feedback I'll take it on board but if I feel like it's just someone being a keyboard warrior and you know it doesn't like me and saying what they want then I'm not going to take that seriously yeah it's pretty easy to tell the difference between the two hundred percent if there's some authenticity and truth behind it it's a much different comment than just unabashed hate yeah absolutely and I've had everything from he has a wind machine in his videos to make sure his hair flies right like I've had that that angle and I'm like you don't I don't I just went out on a really windy day this is exclusive on the podcast this is an exclusive on the podcast I do not have a wind machine but I've had everything from that and I laughed at that I thought that was a hilarious comment through to the other side of just like you know I don't agree with you and I don't agree with the point you're making this is my point and I'm like yeah you know what I had three minutes to explain that and I missed that point like you're right you know I agree with you if I had a podcast like this I could have explained myself so you know I but I do think that we do drag our own selves down we put all the energy into the negativity and amplify it now when you're leaving an opportunity like working at a bank or working at a tech firm to become a monk obviously your family is also going to be concerned about your well-being your success all of that how did you deal with your family not saying they're toxic but that doubt because I know a lot of our listeners are not happy where they are and I've gone through that myself and starting the show 12 years ago when everyone said you can't leave graduate school and it's a very difficult decision and I don't even know that I have tips for it I just did it looking back it's like maybe I shouldn't have done that but how do you deal with it when the doubt is coming from the people that you really love and you know they care about you yeah it was hard I didn't go to my graduate I graduated but never went to my graduation ceremony so my mom doesn't have a picture of me holding my degree and that was a big thing for her because I moved to India I just went so I never went to that and that was a big thing for her and actually my parents are very grateful my mom and dad are actually fairly liberal and supportive of anything I've decided it's my extended family that's had more opinions and been more involved in kind of stirring stuff up with my parents if that makes sense so the way I dealt with it was always asking myself these questions around you know is someone invested in my future is someone going to be there for me when I'm struggling and is someone paying my bills like those are my three checking system of who matters in life like your soul your mind and your paycheck and I think the biggest thing I asked myself was just am I going to look back if I don't do this am I going to look back going back to the Alexander the Great Story am I going to look back on my deathbed and say my mom and dad held me back because I may say I'm going to do it for them I'm not going to do this decision because I respect them and love them but am I going to hate them in the end or be bitter towards them or feel a negative feeling towards them because I feel they held me back and if that's the truth I never want to feel that about my parents they're incredible so I need to go and take the responsibility to make this shift and I think the truth is that when we think people are holding us back it's just us not taking responsibility for us to push forward like that's all it is because the truth is if you really really really really really want something right like if someone told you right now you had to get on a plane and there's a million dollars in New York no one would say oh my parents can't afford a plane like no one would say that you would do it if you really wanted it you'd get on a plane right now and you'd go pick that million dollars up so it's our own insecurity that we reflect on to the people around us and I think it's really important I get it there are people who are toxic around us I get it I had that too there were people who were just like literally people said to me like you realize you're going to fail at being a monk you realize when you come back no one's going to hire you you realize when you come back no one's going to want to be with you you realize you know there are so many things like people like you know you're going to be socially dead like no one's going to care where you are there was so much of that but it didn't get amplified because I was strong in my conviction so the way I dealt with it was just keep strengthening your conviction rather than trying to weaken the argument because the the the opinions of others will get weakened when you strengthen your own right that's how it works you don't weaken someone else's to strengthen your own right I love that and and worse we're so sensitive to these things that I mean the your your best course of action is to strengthen yourself and I even know for myself personally that well AJ and I talk about this all the time of how well we have walled ourselves off of a lot of negative talk toxic people and it had been a while since I had any interactions with with uh that just wasn't positive and I and I guy had a friend of a friend that I was having dinner with started poking around about the podcast and what I do and for whatever reason just took a couple shots at me never met the guy before and it was we had this conversation it was so bizarre but the one thing that I noticed was there was a day and a half that I reflected on this stupid conversation now and I don't know where why he said what he said or his intent but I do know was that for a day and a half I had spent time reflecting on that trying to figure out well what did that mean and what's going on there and that was a day and a half and too much time already gone which I did not need to waste on that yeah absolutely and that's what we all do right like that one and thank you for sharing that that one and a half days could have been invested in in anything absolutely yeah no thanks for sharing that and great story when we talk about family obviously it's it's difficult for some of us because we want to succeed for them we know all the sacrifice they made but I think the one thing that gets lost in this is unconditional love even if you fail so you're listening to the show and your family is doubting you and saying you can't do this what is wrong with you you can't be a monk you can't create online videos you can't start a podcast I'm telling you that if you fail those doors are open 100% they are never closed on you the only thing that's going to hold you back long term is that regret of not trying and failing yeah absolutely yeah you're 100% right and and that's the thing that when I came back literally my family was like so there's some people that said oh we told you sir like when I came back from being a monk three years after a lot of people like oh we like we told you and the second thing I heard was like why are you back so early like you know like we thought you were going to do this for real and and that's it's felt like a failure because I wanted to do it for a much longer time and I couldn't so it felt like a failure in so many regards and then I had to refigure my life out but you're totally right that the people that genuinely love you will always stand by you like always and that's the best thing it's such a great test it's such a great test why do you want people around you that only love you when you do what they want you to do like why do any of us want that like why don't we just want people around us who genuinely stick with us through whatever we go through yeah we give away all of our power when we allow that to happen now obviously putting out content like you put out there is a concern and I'm sure a number of our listeners we talk a lot about perfectionism right you want the video to be perfect you want to have this massive impact and some of your videos have had ginormous impact and then some not as much how much thought and concern goes into launching that video and getting the traction that you're looking for and are there moments of self-doubt even today sitting where you are now yeah absolutely I always talk about there's two types of create well there's three types of creators but we usually end up one of the two so there's the sell-out creator a sell-out creator only goes with what the audience wants so you literally forget about anything you care about or believe in you just go for what you think is going to get likes and then the opposite is the selfish creator who only creates for themselves they're like I think this is amazing like I'm the funniest person in the world or I'm the deepest person or whatever it is and you create something and like no one wants to watch it because you literally made it for you and your mom like you know it's kind of like sits there and so I always aim for being in the middle I recognize that I want to stand for what I believe in but I also want it to connect and resonate and have a positive impact on other people's lives so that's my starting point that every piece of content should be true to me but it should resonate with people it should make a difference I set a goal very early on that my videos were only 75 percent complete and I say this everywhere actually I've never said it often I've never said it on a podcast but I've said it often in onstage and events my videos are only 75 percent complete which means I mess words up often so you'll see that sometimes my sentence wasn't perfect I mispronounced a word I developed a lisp on a word because it was in flow and I said it and it wasn't right but it felt right and other things where I finished a shoot and we forgot a shot that was huge for the video but I'm like it's all right 75 percent so my goal with every video is 75 percent and I've had to do that because I've realized that if I wait for 75 to 99 I'll be waiting for a year and a half or three years two videos I have two videos right and we release three videos a week right now and so for me the goal was always 75 percent and I love that yeah and I personally think that's a great aim because 75 percent is realistic it's quality so you're not settling for less but 75 to 99 is such a long journey well we've I'm sure all of us know people who want to be doing a lot of things and certainly things that we're doing and who for whatever I need to read this textbook or I need to write out the script and it's not perfect yet and I also work in music where I've just been in the room with somebody who just wants to twist knobs on mixing a song for months it's like just finish it just put it out there allow the other component to the critic or the enjoyment of somebody else and how many people do you think who are those types of people by you asking uh is it 75 percent that oh yeah it's 70 absolutely okay then put it out no no no way it's still a hinderance but I if you can live with that that's that's great I love that well now yeah I want to humanize you a bit I want to talk about that self-doubt because you talk about aiming for the middle right you're not being a selfish creator you're not just being a sellout how do you deal with that energy and excitement you have for this video and it doesn't hit it doesn't get the traction that you think it deserves that has happened so many times when a video you think is going to hit and it doesn't and then there's a video you're like that's never going to hit and it does and that's where I've reconciled myself doubt is recognizing that I don't always know what's going to work and that's a beautiful thing and that I've been and I've been feeling this often that I've got to where I want in life just not in the way I imagined it and that's the beauty of giving up that control and feeling slightly liberated so I'll give an example of what I mean by that I'm always working strategically effectively and impactfully in the best ways I can but sometimes the place where I put my most energy does the worst and sometimes something that I tried on the side like blows up and it's incredible and that's where I've reconciled myself down recognizing if I'm putting my best foot forward and I'm working strategically and effectively the things that are going to work will work and it may not be the things I expect and what we're doing is or what I do sometimes too is you're so focused on wanting one thing to work you miss the fact that there's like nine other things that are happening that are amazing around you that you could never have dreamed of and I've seen that in my life countless times where I wanted one thing to work three things were working over here but I was so like why is this not working like why is this not working that you miss that so self-doubt for me is something that I've tried to build a close relationship with and I get it all the time I still get it before a post before a video before anything I mean I was just in you know I'm working on my book right now I just launched a podcast and before I launched the podcast I had no idea how well it was going to do how badly it was going to do or anything and there was a part of me that was like are people going to listen to this like are people going to care like I asked myself all those questions still today number one I'm glad I asked myself those questions it means I'm human it means that I care it means that it's important to me I speak at so many conferences and everyone always asks me do you still get nervous I go yes I get nervous because I care the day I stop feeling nervous that means I don't care anymore if I don't care anymore that means I don't love what I do anymore so for me the first thing is I recognize that self-doubt just shows me that I care and that something's important to me whereas I don't doubt myself around things that I don't care about like if you ask me a question right now about what's the recipe for this amazing dish I wouldn't know and I'd say I don't know and I'd be okay with it because I don't care about cooking I'm not a cook right but if it's something that you care about you will you'll have self-doubt the second thing that I do with self-doubt is I go okay if that's the things that I'm doubting myself for what strategies what can I put into place to overcome them doubt is just a great way of making you check what you need to work on so if my doubt is oh my god not enough people are going to listen to this I'm like okay so how do we make it more listenable how do we make the content better how do we make the conversation better if my doubt is you know I don't feel like people are going to like this topic okay what themes am I good at talking about what is you know it's it's a great checking system to improve what you have so don't look at self-doubt as negative turn it into a positive by actually asking yourself those questions right so build a relationship with self-doubt because it's never going to go away right don't avoid it don't avoid it definitely don't avoid it it's never going to go away so if it's never going to go away build a happy positive relationship with it so my positive relationship with it is you're showing me what I need to focus on to feel less of that and most of us feel self-doubt because we're not researching we're not building knowledge we're not building expertise and I think that's the biggest thing for me is when I feel self-doubt is because I I'll give a perfect example when I was thinking about doing a podcast and you're doing interviews you don't just become an interviewer you have to watch interviews you have to absorb good interviewers you've you can't just be an interviewee you have to watch good interviewees and so for me a lot of us start something and we feel self-doubt because we've never learned that skill or we've never observed that skill so my focus is if I want to be a good interviewer I need to watch good interviewers if you want to be a good stage performer watch good stage performers if you want to be a good monk watch good monks right you don't become something good without seeing it so self-doubt comes because you haven't up skilled and the great thing today is you can do an online course you can up skill from here you can up skill from there you can just listen to this podcast and watch you guys who've done it for such a long period of time that's a seeing someone who's done something consistently that's the best way of getting good at something and then your self-doubt will disappear so self-doubt can only be cut by the sword of knowledge it can only be cut by the sword of upskilling so that's where it starts I love that yeah I it was so eloquent too on top of everything else I feel like when we're struggling with that self-doubt seeing it as a signal of like push forward don't don't back away it's so powerful you had a survey on instagram that I found fascinating and it asked your audience do people know the real you and half answered yes how sad is that to you that only half answered yes do you know what the truth is I'm not surprised I feel like we've lived in a world that's constantly tried to get us to fit in like we were always told to fit in stand in line and then when you grow up everything's like oh how do you stand out and how do you it makes no sense like right like I remember going to school and everyone was just like stand in line right fit in like we're the same uniform and then when you grow up it's like personal branding stand out be yourself and it's like okay so I'm not surprised that people don't know the real them because I think people are scared of being themselves because that may turn people off everything comes with connotations we've been taught to be a certain way of what's normal and acceptable all of those things I remember the first time I wore robes on a street right it was like so scary I was like what if someone who knows me sees me like I'm gonna feel weird and then you think about it like why like you know why do we think that because we've been you know all these conditionings have been placed so for me the big I'm not surprised by that is my first point I don't feel surprised by it and to those who answered no what's your advice to them to to allow people to see the real you to be more authentic I think the first thing is you've got to get comfortable being you see no one will ever be comfortable with you being you if you're not comfortable being you and I think we first try and prove ourselves to other people so my favorite this is like I talk about this all the time it's it's probably one of my favorite pieces of insights it's from a writer named Cooley in the 1900s and he said 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 so what he means by that is we are living in a perception of a perception of ourself if I think you guys think that I'm nice then I feel nice if I think that you think I'm weird I feel weird so we're constantly living through the perception of a perception of someone else so my first thing is get away from that take that away figure out how you feel about yourself so I would say happiness is how you feel about yourself when you're by yourself right like how do you feel about yourself when you're by yourself when no one else is around I think start there the when you mention that of these perceptions the first thing I was saying is how exhausting right to to want to know where what what you're thinking then what you're thinking of me and then now I'm going to home that just sounds like an exhaustive day and we've been friends for 12 years well these thoughts never cross our mind it doesn't happen around friends yes when we're around the people that we have a relationship with already we're not constantly second guessing ourselves and feeling inauthentic but when we're around strangers and we're trying to impress them instantly all of that self-doubt creeps in and all of a sudden we put up this facade so one of the easiest ways for me to fake it until I make it as I'm working through this process of trying to get more comfortable as an introvert meeting more people and having to put myself out there is treat people like they're already your friend right assume that they already like you start there that we're already friends and then you don't have this inauthenticity that you're struggling with I really like that that's such a great tip I love that yeah and and I think the other one is like just get comfortable being you and figuring out what that means like if you just observe when do you feel uncomfortable so I found this when I go to an event that I'm not speaking at that is not about what I do but I'm attending I've observed that I prefer finding a one-to-one conversation in a corner and going really deep with someone rather than trying to mill around the like popular circles and try and have and direct the conversation it doesn't work for me so now I can be myself by going it's okay if I don't network at this event if no one knows that I'm here it's fine I'm going to go off and have a meaningful conversation with one or two people when you know that you just feel the pressure of yourself and you're just like yeah like I can't be you know and then and then you can be so it's just observing when you feel at your best and then figure out how to do that in each place and that's going to take testing and time like you're going to go to a party you're going to do something that's not you and then you're going to go okay I'm not going to do that again and we've all been in that position but you got to do it once you got to do it once you have to do it once yeah exactly now let's talk about finding that elusive purpose I know it's a big core of your message and I know when we talk about figuring out who you are right get comfortable with who you are a lot of us are nervous thinking about that and one of the exercises in our in our boot camp is is ask what are your values who are you and and a lot of times because we've had all this outside influence marketing everyone telling us what we should do who we should be we lose sight of what it actually is to be us and in terms of finding your purpose that seems like it's the first step is getting comfortable with yourself understanding that how do we take that next step towards finding that purpose yeah so for me I define it as your passion is for you your purpose is for others so your purpose is when you use your passion to serve others that's the the link so for me the focus actually first becomes what's your passion like what are you passionate about what do you enjoy doing and then the miss the parts that that's usually miss so everyone here is for your passion find your passion it's like a cliche it's everywhere the difference is get really good at it like get so good at it and everyone always misses that point you can be as passionate as you want about tennis but if you're not really good at tennis no one's gonna care and no one's gonna take no and I think that's often missed that not only do you need to find what you're passionate about you need to turn it into an expertise which is undeniable and that requires the hard work that requires the work ethic that requires the early mornings that requires the training in whatever field you want to be and then and that's going to make you successful so when you figure out your passion and you get really good at it you're going to become successful but you're only going to be happy when you use that success to help other people and then you're going to figure out that link to purpose so you're going to find your purpose so when you realize hey I'm really good at this I love it I get a lot of happiness from doing it when you start using that to make a difference in other people's lives in any way it automatically switches into a purpose so you don't need to find your purpose it's just an automatic evolution or finding your passion and being really good at it and that's where we're messing up that we haven't found something we love and we haven't found something that we love that we've got really good at so what we usually do with our lives is we do things that we're not good at and don't love right or we do things that we're good at but don't love and we need to switch into the spaces of things that we love but are not good at and get really good at them and start finding out things that you are good at and you do love and so I would encourage you that any interest you have like just go and we just live in a world where you can explore anything and yeah anyway so yeah we can dive into more of it yeah let's talk about that that mentorship for you and that process of getting really good at it what did that look like for you okay now you know I'm passionate about storytelling yeah how did you get to the success around storytelling sure so my parents did the best thing ever when I was 14 I was really shy I didn't enjoy stages I didn't enjoy speaking my parents forced me to go to public speaking in drama school so I spent 14 to 18 in public speaking drama school changed my life I did not know what I wanted to speak about so even when I finished at 18 I still didn't like going on stage because I didn't have anything to talk about so now you've got the tools but you haven't got the passion so I developed somewhat of an expertise in four years but I didn't have what I was passionate about and then when I became a monk I was like this is it this is why I went to public speaking school because I love talking about philosophy I love talking about science I love talking about culture I love talking about life I love talking about growth etc in the mind so I got what I was passionate about when I became a monk so for me the process came from four years of consistent public speaking school like it changed my life and and that's all thanks to my parents for forcing me to go I had no interest in being a public speaker or a storyteller any of these things that was just I lucked out and then it was me finding what I was passionate to speak about and then I've spoken I've spoke of a three hours a day for the last 13 years and I spoke to audiences of zero all the way to audiences now of thousands but when I first started speaking I remember I was invited to speak at a university where I wasn't getting paid for I was like 20 years old I was invited to speak to this university no one showed up twice so they organized two events for me I was meant to speak about life philosophy etc all the kind of stuff I speak about now and zero people turned up and I practiced my speech both times to an empty room as if it was a packed room because I was like I'm still going to practice and so for me having done this for three hours a day for the last 13 years that's now being gratefully received online so I'm very fortunate that it's shifted from an offline world to an online world which we can dive into but the point is it's it's been my absorption and addiction for like feet for over a decade now one of the things that I wanted to ask you for myself I like traveling because I get to detach myself from the expectations of the influence of friends and social media you're just in a new place by yourself and you're going to do the things that you want to do with no no force in any direction you having an opportunity to go through what it's going to take to be a monk to go off to be detached from everything to be able to find out what those passions are for for the folks who are listening this who want to investigate who they are what those passions are who are unable to go off to a monastery or to have the the the time to dedicate to something like that seeing how well rounded with all these things you are what do you have to suggest to the to the folks listening out there yeah absolutely great great question thank you so much I think we always have been trained to focus on the results so people ask what do you want in life I'm like forget that that's the worst question to ask someone because when you ask what you want that's when the ads come in and you're like oh I want that car I want that home I want that dress I want that body I want whatever it is my question to do is what do you want to wake up and be every day like what do you want to wake up and do every day what's the process that you're in love with so we are thinking about the result whereas my question is forget the result what's the process that you're in love with doing so start there first of all don't start your journey of saying I want to be a movie director because I want to you know I want to hit the blockbuster charts I want to do this don't make it about that like don't don't be like I want to be a singer because I want to be Ariana Grande right like that's not the point that's just a result do you love singing every day and I realize this with a very honest question to myself I'm really passionate about football soccer I absolutely love the game I grew up on it I'm still a huge fan I missed out on it when I was a monk I've been catching up ever since like I'm like oh any football game I was just in London last week and I made sure I went I didn't couldn't see a game live but I went and watched it at a bar in London and I love the energy I'm so passionate about soccer I don't have what it takes to be a soccer player yeah like I do not want to wake up at 4am I wake up at 4am to meditate when I was a monk I wake up at 6 5 30 am now to meditate I do not want to wake up at 4am to go out on a reigning pitch and play soccer like I don't want to be in the gym for four hours a day I want to meditate for four hours a day but I don't want to play soccer for four hours a day and then be in the gym and train I'm not envious of any athlete in the world because it takes a different type of mindset so first thing is find the process the way to find what you're passionate about is literally use your weekends and evenings to do a test on anything the best way is go into a course test it out try doing it once go and shadow someone who does it someone in your life that does it if you want to be a podcaster come and shadow you guys for a week right and see what their life's like see what it actually looks like to research to sit with a guest to find new guests to work it out like go and shadow someone who's already doing it and then try and do it for a day like try and do the schedule of someone you look up to for a day like if you can do that for a day and you loved it then do it for one more day and if you loved it do it for another day and that's going to trickle in so that's a much smarter way to finding your passion rather than just sitting there and reflecting which is cool which is important but I'd encourage you to just get out there right get out there and live the life of someone who's doing it when they started that's another point don't focus on what people are doing now focus on what they were doing when they started so a lot of people ask me they're like jay how many videos do you make a week i'm like i make three videos a week plus my podcast on top of that plus instagram and they'll say oh wow that's too much and i was like yeah but when i started i made one video a week right like you don't have to start at what i'm doing now like you you start so that you know go back to that well what's been so fascinating with all of the guests that we've had on and all of their accomplishments and successes is they all speak to the same thing that the results don't last the results you have a positive rush this was great and then immediately they're like okay what's the next thing i can do yeah and when we focus on the results it literally is chasing ghosts because every result that we think was going to be that big win turns out to be just another step towards something else yes and i feel that when we lose sight of time right when we started this company and we were trying to get these interviews together and get the podcast going and coaching there were times where we'd pull all nighters and not even blink like time flew by and we didn't even realize it and then the next day we're like so i have to just do it again that's where we're starting to uncover this passion that we're talking about it's not when we're sitting at the clock watching the minutes go down and go okay when can i get out of here when can i go do this other thing i think the other thing that's so interesting about this message that i really love is this idea of experimentation at any age right i think a lot of the advice online is like oh you're young experiment no if you're old experiment everyone should be experimenting and you've seen these results in all of the content you've produced that it's through experimentation that you've learned how to find that message how to tweak things and how to grow and when we're not experimenting we're just standing still absolutely and that's the biggest challenge right we're not experimenting enough and so a lot of my friends will say jay you always look like you've got something exciting going on in life and i'm like yeah i do but that's because like nine people told me that my other ideas sucked right and so like i've i get more wins because i get more failures because i'm failing so often i'm trying so many things out so often that don't go right and then everyone sees the one thing that goes right and that's how it works and that's the odds for anyone that's not just me anyone who's doing what they love every day is trying a hundred different things and most of them are not working but because they're playing the game of numbers something's got to work like that's how i live i'm just like if i try 10 things this year one of them's got to work but if i try one thing this year most likely it probably won't work right and that's the biggest challenge if we just up our experiments it like you gotta you know do something new for every weekend this year i was just thinking of the instagram uh where it's just here's everything that i failed at today here's everything i'm gonna be failing at and it's nothing just but another failure in the life of and uh and a lot of people too was like wow there's a lot of this going on yes the more comfortable you get with that failure the more you realize it's just blips it's not anything that anyone is talking about maybe that guy who's in your comment section he's gonna hold on to it but you're not holding on to it no and everyone you love and respect and look up to that's been their path and i think that's what's given me so much that's what's liberated me from it like steve jobs is one of my biggest role models in in certain areas of his life and when i've read his autobiography his biography sorry by walter isakson it's like the guy has failed so many times yet all of us like most of us have a phone that's an iphone or an apple product in our home or whatever it is it's like he's not worried about all those times that went wrong because he obviously won big in in this area of his life so my takes just everyone you look up to whether it's an athlete an entrepreneur a coach or CEO whatever it is they have messed up so many times i just know that so when you're messing up you're on the path like you're on the same path right and and i yeah i encourage people to share what they're failing at too because it just helps now to to wrap on this cool concept of toxic relationships we talked about identifying it going off and doing it and seeing the naysayers for who they are right now you're in a position of success and when you are successful more and more people want a piece of you want to take that success and use it for their opportunity how do you find that inner circle you talked about okay i have people in my inner circle telling me those are nine bad ideas don't mess with them how do they get in a circle walk us through that process for you what do you mean about how do you get in my inner circle the people that you rely on to tell you hey that's a bad idea right you talked about you surround yourself with people who said those nine ideas we aren't going to spend too much time on that how did those people walk into your life how do you let them into your life to become that inner circle you could trust yeah and that's hard that's hard i think something that happens is you have to surround yourself by peers in a space to who understand you and don't see you as competition and that's really hard and it's like a fine line i genuinely believe that collaboration wins always so i my whole approach to most things has always been hey i want to collaborate with you whether i'm bigger on social media or smaller on social media i'm just like i just want to work together because i think that's going to win long term for all of us both not just in terms of success in numbers but more in terms of i want to be friends with you and so i reach out regularly to people that i admire in different ways and i reach out to them and say hey i'd love to get to know you i'd love to learn from you i'd love to connect i'd love to be a friend like not i'd love to for you to teach me how you do this and if that comes naturally from that relationship amazing if it never evolves into that i've just got a great friend who now gets me so i try and make friends in two areas one is in an area of people who understand my life because i feel the conversations you can have with someone who does exactly what you do are just so great because they already get you right and someone that i had on my podcast lately her name is lili singh superwoman she's become a recent friend she's been incredibly and is incredibly successful on social media she's using a platform for doing amazing good in the world and she was someone i reached out to because i was just like hey like you've been doing all of this for a while you started on youtube a lot longer than i did and i would just love to connect from you and hear from you and she's become an incredible friend and we've just been sharing ideas and learning together and it's like that relationship's awesome and then at the same time i'm trying to find people who are not in media so i still have friendships with the monks back in india and i just spent january in india for a month i was meditating again for roughly about 21 days and i have them in my life because they remind me of like the roots and they remind me of the truths that bring me back so i kind of like both i love people who totally get my space and usually those are people i reach out to and then i love having my roots down so most of my inner circle now is from people i've reached out to or they become people who've been reaching out to me for a long long time and have been consistently reaching out to me asking for nothing so it's been people who've just really believed really engaged really supported and i just sense energy intuitively too like i'll take a meeting with someone and decide in a meeting whether i'm going to speak to them again or not and i just trust that because my intuitions i've been trying to strengthen it over the years and it's it rarely lets me down so i kind of go with that a lot and my my encouragement to everyone listening is you have a powerful intuition you're just covering it with your head so just listen to how you feel when you're with someone like listen to your heart listen to your gut listen to your instinct because it's probably usually right don't let your head get in there and make stuff up right that survival instinct is there for a reason yeah and a lot of us don't trust it i love the duality of having obviously in your niche the people who are also killing it so you don't have to explain yourself and you can actually trade war stories and a lot of times through collaboration see angles that neither one of you would have seen on your own but then also the duality of like hey i need to be grounded too like i need to keep the people in my life that we're not here for the success we're not here to build this huge platform but we're here to teach me those core truths that now i have to share with the world yeah and it's beautiful when they cross over sometimes too like there are sometimes when i'm with a social media person who says something really useful for my roots and there's someone times when i'm with roots and they say something else and there's a great story actually about when the prime minister of india mody he visited facebook and mark zuckerberg interviewed him at facebook at the headquarters and mark zuckerberg told his story he said that when he was struggling with the direction of facebook in 2009 he went up to his mentor to ask a question now smart zuckerberg's mentor happened to be steve jobs and so he went up to steve jobs and he said steve i'm struggling with the direction of facebook what do i do and at that time you know i mean steve jobs is steve jobs he could have said anything and it would have made sense but you know he could have said go and meet a venture capitalist he could have said go and meet an investor he could have said go and meet a tech company he could have said i'll tell you what to do instead he said i think you need to go to india and spend some time in an ashram a monastery in india with monks he goes when you do that you'll find the answer of what you want to do and to me that is exactly why the people that are most successful in this world are successful because they surround themselves with people who have differing beliefs and mit did a research study on this they found that people who are more innovative and creative in an organization knew people who didn't know each other so when you know people who all know each other you end up with the same answer the same belief and confirmation bias exists and you just keep building that echo chamber whereas if you've got two people who don't agree and you get a checking system then you can trust your gut and go with what you believe so i think i try and move away from having people around me and it's not just yes men or yes women it's about it's not just about that it's about building a circle of people like you said that want different things for you and knowing what they want for you so when i'm with my mom all my mom cares about is my health right my mom does not care how successful i am how many videos have how many people i help even that now my mom will get over that she's like how's your health are you taking care of yourself are you sleeping well are you eating well like that's my mom and it's like if i go and i measure everything most of that that's wrong but if i know that that's what my mom wants for me that's beautiful that's what i get from her and she'll take care of that and same you know everyone plays a different role in your life don't expect everyone to play the role you want and don't expect everyone to play the same role recognize that everyone's playing their role in your life and let them play it that's what makes a good movie if everyone played the same role in a movie it'd be boring very boring right so now having access to all of that great knowledge thousands of years old spending time just consuming it in the monastery our fans are huge readers is there a book that really changed you that you wish more people read that you could share with our audience yeah great question so there's a book that i love called the journey home it's the story of a man who hitchhiked at the age of 19 from america and london across the world in search for the truth and it's incredible because it shows that desire is a true seeker and it's got travel it's got potential romance opportunity it's got that sacrifice it's got everything and it's just it's a true story it's an autobiography it's just a really incredible story of how someone can truly seek the truth and want to find themselves and what that takes and what that looks like so that book is incredible it's called the journey home by Radhanath Swami it's an autobiography it's incredible i highly recommend it and then the Bhagavad Gita is the book i studied as a monk it's five thousand years old it's the story of a warrior getting advice from a divine coach getting insight into life it's been it's it's a book that's like the classic of India and today most knowledge that i read seems like it stems from it like there's really a quote or a instagram quote or a tumble that i find that wasn't influenced by the Bhagavad Gita it's it's not the easiest read but it's incredible if you dive into it with someone who knows it well the the last question i have for you we were talking about this before i'm sure our audience is is interested as well starting a podcast what what are your goals for this show obviously you have these great videos where are you taking your podcast yeah thank you so much yeah the podcast is called on purpose it's on absolutely every platform and the reason why i opened up this medium in my life was i wanted to build depth with my audience so i feel like videos give you scale in terms of you can touch a lot of people for like three four minutes but i love the community i have online and i and i really believe i've got this incredible community and i wanted to build depth i wanted people to get to know me better i wanted to get to know them better and the thing that really brought it about was i wanted to create a show a podcast that allowed friends that i knew and guests that i have to go beyond what people see them as so to go beyond their profession and into their purpose and so some of the guests so far have been everyone from my wife to Russell Brand to Novak Djokovic to Giselle to Rob Dierdek a ton of incredible other people on the podcast as well everyone's amazing and i've got a mix of people that have been friends that are celebrities and athletes all the way through to clinical neuroscientists all the way through to just i'm going to interview my mom too that's going to be a lot of fun so it's a mix of of personal but i want to push beyond what people see these professional icons as and move into purpose because i sat through watching too many interviews on mainstream media where you've got someone trying to go deep and you just want to talk to them about numbers results and success and i've noticed that there are a lot of people out there in the world who want to speak about purpose passion and meaning just like we all have today and i want people to see that side of these incredible minds so for me it's about building a community it's about building a relationship with my audience and and a greater audience too and i'm so grateful that it's had so much love so far already so yeah thank you thank you thank you for joining us it's been a great conversation thank you for having me yeah loved meeting you guys today and hopefully we'll get to do lots more together as well yeah thank you for your time