From The New York Times, this is The Interview.
I'm David Marchese.
Jay Shetty is without a doubt a giant in the world of wellness and mental health influencers.
His podcast On Purpose is incredibly popular and its related YouTube channel, which features interviews as well as Shetty's video essays about self-improvement, has more than 5 million subscribers.
His books, Think Like a Monk and Eight Rules of Love, were both bestsellers.
And he's also just launched a production company called Perfect Strangers.
Part of Shetty's success has to do with his message.
It's a breezy blend of pop psychology and self-help tips, overlaid with some reassuring Eastern spirituality.
Another part surely has to do with his backstory.
As Shetty tells it, he was a wayward young man who went to a lecture by a monk from the ISKCON movement, better known as the Hare Krishnas, and then decided to change his life and become a monk himself.
He eventually left that life behind and became an influencer, determined to, as he's put it, make wisdom go viral.
While there's no doubt about Shetty's success, I did find myself with other doubts about him that I wanted to explore.
They were partly to do with a 2024 article in The Guardian that raised questions about many aspects of Shetty's public life, including accusations of plagiarism on his platforms early in his career, some allegedly misleading certification information put out by his online life coaching school and even the extent of his training as a monk.
That's reporting that Shetty and his lawyers have disputed and which we talked about at length in our conversation.
So there are those tensions, and there's also the seeming contradiction of a man who espouses monk-like thinking while now living the glamorous life in LA as a superstar influencer, which turns out to be a tension he's been thinking about too.
Here's my conversation with Jay Shetty.
Hey, David.
Hi, Jay.
How are you?
I'm doing really well.
I'm doing really well.
How was your weekend?
It was good.
It was mellow.
Just stuff with the kids.
How about you?
Amazing.
It was Grammys week, so very busy, but fun and enjoyable.
So it was good.
You know, it's funny.
I've been watching so much of your stuff for honestly, the last six weeks or something like that, really trying to immerse myself.
And just yesterday I watched a video of yours that had a segment about how to have difficult conversations.
I thought the most useful part of it was that you talked about being clear about one's own intentions during a conversation.
And I think that's a very useful thing.
And I feel like my intention with you and with everyone is to just understand as much as I can.
I love that.
Well, thank you for sharing that with me.
And my intention today is always to try and share myself as authentically as I can.
Good, because I hope I have some hard questions for you.
So we'll see how that goes.
But for people who aren't familiar with you and your work, Which of your beliefs would you say are most fundamental to what you do as a sort of wellness self-help influencer?
What are you fundamentally trying to teach people about?
I wouldn't even say I'm trying to teach.
The four things I really am encouraging people to reflect upon are the four most important questions I believe that we all have to answer in life.
The first is, how do I feel about myself?
It's a decision we make every day when we wake up and we look in the mirror.
The second is, what do I do for work?
What do I do with my time?
The third is who do I choose to love and receive love from?
And the fourth is how do I choose to serve the world?
And so all of my work is dedicated and devoted to helping people reflect on and answer these questions for themselves.
So whether someone comes and asks me like hey Jay, like I really want to find my purpose, or I'm kind of stuck in my job right now, or maybe they're going through a breakup and they're looking for insight on what will help them heal, or someone who says Jay, you know your work helped me through a divorce, or your work stopped me from committing suicide.
Like I think those are the kind of things people usually come to me with.
And so that's what I find is usually the kind of questions and reflections and insights that people are looking for from me.
And I'm always trying to help them think through those challenges.
How much do you find?
The answers to those questions change depending on the individual circumstances.
Is it the case that you know, broadly speaking, the same kinds of answers apply in most circumstances?
Or it's more the case that, depending on the specific circumstances, the answers to say, you know, how can I find more purpose or how can I feel better about myself change.
There's two types of wisdom in my opinion.
There's timeless wisdom, universal principles and language that affects all of our hearts and that we all resonate with.
And then, at the same time, there's very specific, timely advice that we all need in a really difficult moment.
And so really it depends on how personally I'm in that space with someone.
If someone's at an event of mine and they put up their hand and they're on the microphone, they ask a question, then I get to look in that person's eyes.
I get to see their body language.
I can ask them a follow-up question.
If I'm creating something like a podcast episode, then that's naturally more broad, because it's me speaking from one to many.
And so to me, it's about being adaptable and being personal and being specific.
And so my approach is to always try and meet the person if I really can get to know them and actually be present with them.
So kind of the, to my mind, big differentiator for you or distinguishing factor is the fact that you trained as a monk.
Your book, of course, was called Think Like a Monk.
And specifically correct me if I'm wrong, but you trained within the ISKCON movement, colloquially known as the Hare Krishna.
Is that right?
So I trained as part of the Radha Gopinath and Bhaktivedanta Manna ashrams across India and the UK and Europe.
And they are parts of that, yes.
And because of that training, there is this sense of ancient or spiritual wisdom around your content.
And it's interesting because when I read your books or listen to your stuff, a lot of it reminds me of almost cognitive behavioral therapy material or self-help material that I've encountered in lots of different places, you know, like list-making, gratitude journaling.
You talk about the importance of breathing, but it's within this framework of spiritual thinking.
Can you tell me a little bit more about the interplay between your spiritual training and and more secular self-help ideas that also comes up in your work.
Absolutely, yeah.
I've always been passionate and fascinated by the intersection between ancient wisdom and modern science.
And when I first read the Bhagavad Gita, which is the primary text that I reference in my books, which is a 5000-year-old text and Eastern wisdom to me, pretty much every modern growth idea or personal development idea can be somehow traced back to it and found in it.
And so I find it to be an incredible map and conversation starter for so much of the spiritual wisdom that I love to share.
So recently we've been talking about the value of circadian rhythms and the need to see sunlight early in the morning.
And to me, there's something known as sun salutations in the Eastern tradition of yoga, where that's exactly what you would do.
Now, they didn't talk about it as a circadian rhythm starter, but that's exactly how you'd start your morning.
So I've always found it fascinating to find this intersection, because I'm personally deeply interested.
I also find that it's really beautiful when there are really practical ways of showing how these old ideas have a lot of validity today.
There's not many new things, but there are deeper ways of understanding the same thing.
We hear about things like mindfulness has kind of exploded over the last decade or so or people will talk about karma or living within one's dharma, which I think dharma can basically be understood as one's life purpose.
And people talk about these concepts that are rooted in religious and spiritual practices.
And Sometimes I wonder if people maybe mistakenly think that they can decouple the spiritual practices or like the true religious root of these things and just sort of use them in almost like a fast food kind of way.
Like it's a shortcut.
I have a different perspective that I'd like to share.
Yeah.
My perspective is that sometimes someone's starting point in a deep relationship practice may be really simple, easy and potentially even surface level.
And that may be them just dipping their toe in the water.
And that's how we all started something.
Like, I'll give an example.
During the pandemic, I...
I did around 40 days of meditation on live on Instagram, Facebook Live and YouTube Live and people could just join from their home.
And the amount of people that I still meet today who will come up to me and say Jay, I started meditating because of you.
Now, all these people had never meditated in their entire life.
Is meditating on Instagram Live the deepest, most profound meditation?
Probably not.
But if that's their starting point, if that's the connection point, then what a beautiful thing that people have gone on to like travel and maybe go on a meditation retreat and maybe do more with their own life, with whichever teachers or practices that they love.
I think to me, it's almost like it's a good thing.
Yeah.
I'm very interested in people's turning points in their lives.
So I'd like to ask you about what I think was your big turning point, which is, you know, you were a young man in London.
I believe you were going to business school at the time?
I attended Cass Business School, which is now known as Bayes Business School, yes.
And...
You ended up kind of on a whim going to a lecture by a monk whose name was, was it Garanga Das?
Garanga Das, yes.
And you were swept away, had this epiphany that he was saying something that you needed to hear.
Can you tell me about what you heard in that moment?
That was so powerful to you that you thought well, that it actually became kind of a life-changing moment.
Really, David, it was probably even beyond what I heard.
It was... seeing a man who externally was not attractive to me in any way.
You know, seeing a man in robes with his head shaved, with an Indian accent from India, and...
I didn't understand even in that moment probably, of why I was so attracted to him, but it was his sense of peace, his sense of ease, his sense of confidence in being so different.
And I think at that age in your life, you know, you're always trying to fit in.
And here was someone who didn't fit in at all but felt like the most comfortable person in the room.
And to me, that was more important, I think, than anything he even said.
I want to ask you something related to that, which is, you know, it's to do with kind of your arc.
And you know, I think one of the things that's particularly unusual about your arc is that it kind of looks from the outside like it's an inversion of, like a typical monk's journey where, I think, you know, usually the typical version of that is somebody decides to embrace monastic life and then embraces a kind of asceticism or a renunciation of material things wealth, whatever it may be.
In some ways, it seems like you decided to pursue monastic life and then have moved towards.
I think you're probably doing pretty well for yourself financially.
You hang out with glamorous people.
You're a successful entrepreneur.
Are there any ways in which you feel like the spiritual tradition in which you were training is in tension with the life that you're living now?
First of all, I'm not sure.
Yeah, I'd say that there's a Understanding in spiritual tradition which is all about how, as humans, we tend to idolize or demonize things, and that the ultimate truth is to be able to utilize everything for a higher purpose.
And I think that's what's often missed.
And so there's a beautiful statement in the Gita which I was talking about earlier, the Bhagavad Gita.
That says attachment and aversion are two sides of the same coin.
And so I think we often in our Western understanding see detachment as better than attachment.
However, our the spiritual understanding is far more subtle and far more refined.
That detachment doesn't mean aversion.
Detachment means you can be close to anything in the world and use it for a higher purpose.
Now I'm not saying I'm doing that.
And I'm not saying I live in that.
I'm saying I try my best.
And I'd say that's my aspiration.
My aspiration is that every day, I'm living in the quote, unquote real world, or you know, however we call it.
Uh, I'm reminded of my flaws.
I'm reminded of how far away I am from truly living up to the spiritual pursuits that I have and have had for most of my life now.
And I love that.
I love being reminded of how far I have to go.
And so I would argue that I feel more close to growth in my current life than I ever did in the ashram, because in the ashram I could almost forget or think maybe I'd already found it.
Is there any part of you that thinks maybe that's an elaborate self-justification?
I have questioned that many times and I continue to question it.
I think that The spiritual philosophy of 5,000 years old is pretty clear on it.
So I take that as my authority over myself.
However, the other side of it, to be quite frank and honest, is I think it's also a graduation.
It's like I'm married.
I have businesses.
We have teams.
We have companies.
I'm not a monk anymore.
And I think it's almost like having to recognize that you've evolved, you've grown, your life has changed.
And yeah, I'm not living that way anymore.
It's partly why I wrote a book called Think Like a Monk, Not Live Like a Monk.
That was intentional because I think everyone can think like a monk.
I don't think everyone, including me, can live like a monk for the rest of their life.
I think the think like a monk, live like a monk distinction is sort of related to what I was asking about earlier, which is how usefully we can decouple sort of religious belief from religiously inspired action.
Yeah.
I know I keep asking you like, where is the line here?
But I'm interested in trying to understand where these boundaries are.
But is there a point at which thinking like a monk if you're not also living like a monk stops being monk-like thinking?
Do you know what I'm saying?
Maybe that was my version of like a Zen riddle.
It's a koan.
Yeah, exactly.
Yeah, it's a koan.
Yeah, Zen koan.
No, David, I really appreciate you.
I can tell that you're really trying to understand it.
And so I want to try and meet you there and help you with that.
Yeah.
It's probably different across traditions and everyone has their own version.
It's... Wait, let me really sit with your question because...
How much can you think like a monk if you're not really trying to live like a monk?
That's what the question is.
And my response to that with sitting there, and thank you for repeating it, is what if thinking like a monk was the beginning of that journey and living like a monk could end up being a potential pathway for the person who tries to do that? like i'll give it if yeah if every person in the world started to think like a monk things would just improve in general right so i don't i'm not i don't want to force everyone to try to live like a monk because that's not going to happen tomorrow or ever i don't think that's ever been the goal but it's how can we take these mental practices and how can we apply them to our everyday lives to actually improve our sense of peace and purpose i think that's the goal uh I'd like to ask a little bit more about your specific content now.
When I watch your material and mostly I watch it there are some guests like, for example, an Adam Grant who is.
I believe he teaches maybe at the Wharton School or something like that.
Yes, that's right.
Yes, yes.
Highly credentialed psychologist.
And then you also have on folks like John Edward, the psychic medium whose, let's just say, his credentials are maybe more up in the air.
Do you think about sort of what responsibility you have as far as the credibility of a given guest?
Yeah, absolutely.
Our team does a lot of research.
Our team works very hard on figuring out who we think would be great to introduce our audience.
We think it's a responsibility that we take very seriously.
At the same time, we're also listening to our audience as to who they'd like to learn from, who they'd like to listen from, what kind of things they're struggling with and challenged by.
And a lot of guests are guests that the audience wants to hear from, that they're asking for in the comment section or writing to us on our website.
And so I think to me, my job is to be curious and it's to be curious for my audience and community.
And it's also to allow them to be involved in finding people that they believe are important for their healing, important for their growth and important for their wellness journey as well.
Does skepticism fit into what you do at all?
Yeah, absolutely.
I think that it's, you know, for example, like I recently interviewed an astrologist.
And that's something that I had a lot of questions about, because it's not something that you know I've never really read a horoscope out of a magazine or you know, and felt that it was bad, valuable or valid necessarily, and so there's definitely my own personal interpretation that comes into it, but it's still coming from a place of wanting to learn and wanting to see where it goes, and it doesn't mean I always walk out of anything a believer or a, you know, a supporter in that sense, but I am fascinated for my audience.
I think avoiding topics or putting them aside doesn't gain any value either.
But how do we figure out what's true?
Like isn't there also some value in trying to determine whether or not astrology or psychic mediumship is actually true and not just a pseudoscience?
Like, truth is why we're here, to figure out what is true or not.
Totally.
And I don't disagree with you at all.
I think you're absolutely right.
I just think that truth when it comes to healing— is really, really open.
Healing doesn't look the same for everyone, and what helps some people won't help other people, and that's also true, and so it depends what your definition of truth is, and i think sometimes, when we talk about truth which is important and and, of course, the most valuable conversation, not every it's like me saying to you like, um david how, how long have you been with your partner?
17 years, something like that, 20 years?
Okay, amazing, amazing, which is incredible.
She'll be mad I didn't get that exactly correct.
I'm sorry to expose you like this.
I apologize.
Congratulations.
Honestly, that's amazing.
It's my wife and I's, it's our 10th wedding anniversary this year.
Oh, congratulations.
And 13 years together.
But it's like, how do I prove that my love for my wife is true?
Like what proves that?
I'm not saying that there isn't a way of answering that question, but it's a very hard question to answer as fact or fiction, because everyone will say something different.
Or if I asked your wife and you asked my wife, what proves to you that David loves you?
Or Jay, what proves to you that, you know, your partner loves you?
Like they'd probably give very different answers, I imagine.
Yeah.
I think you're mixing some things together that maybe shouldn't be mixed together.
I mean the answer to what is proof of my love for my wife.
I think the proof would be my actions every day.
But the truth of that proof is a very different kind of truth than, is my broken bone healed?
Or can the stars tell me...
What's going on in my life?
Or can we communicate with the dead?
These are all different kinds of truth that require different levels of proof.
For sure, but the proof is not... I don't disagree with you at all.
I mean the questions that you're specifically looking at.
I've been both curious and skeptical in those interviews.
I guess what I'm debating with you and enjoying the discussion that we're having is I think it's really hard to call someone else's personal experience of healing with something as not true.
Yeah.
And and that is something that I'm not willing to put aside, because that's an important thing that that humans also need to be curious and skeptical about is is allowing space for that.
I think it's easier to be like, yeah, true.
We, you know, the facts are all that matters.
So you know, I'm sure you know there was this Guardian article that came out in 2024 where the writer, you know, he sort of wrote about ways in which he said you, you know, you sort of fudge details, specific details about what your actual training was as a monk, how much time you actually spent in India, sort of when your entryway into spiritual thinking really began.
And the timeline of how all that happened.
But my question about that is whether you felt like you did have to try and simplify or elide details about your backstory so as to make your story more legible to more people.
Like, if there was a story about Jay Shetty that you wanted to tell publicly, did you feel like you had to tell that story a certain way, even if maybe that way was not 100 factually accurate?
I've always been open and honest about that time in my life and clear about it.
I mean, I lived as a monk for three years.
I traveled across India, the UK, and Europe.
And I think what's fascinating to me is the value I gained from that time is the teachings and the lessons I share.
And that's my focus.
And that's what I'm really about.
And that's what I'm really trying to deliver to the world.
Jay, I feel like we can go deeper with that answer.
Were there things that you felt like you had to... simplify or just tell in a more legible fashion?
No, not at all.
I'm extremely clear and open about my experience.
It was three years.
It was traveling.
I was learning deep meditation in India and study.
And then traveling to London to share and teach, traveling to Europe to share and teach.
That was part of our practice.
And I think I've created so much content and there's insights to this.
You know, whether it's my books, my podcasts, everywhere.
And it would be hard for anyone to consume all of that to really get the full picture.
And so I think if someone was reading and listening and following me on Instagram and social media and everything they'd, they'd be able to very clearly see it as well.
And they do.
And the other thing I wanted to ask about from that Guardian piece was there has been criticism of you in the past for earlier in your career, sharing words of wisdom without attribution or
Your online coaching school.
There were questions about whether aspects of its accreditation were misleading in various ways.
And as far as I can tell, that stuff has all been cleaned up.
But I guess my question to you is, what might account for those missteps?
Was there any intention to mislead in some way?
I think if you look at my videos from day one, you'll see me quoting sourcing, crediting appropriately, all the time.
And I value the work of so many other people that I share and wisdom from others that I've gained from and want to pass it on.
And we actually have a team now that's fully dedicated to crediting and sourcing and researching to make sure that all of those things are kept intact.
And I'm really proud of that, because it's such an important thing for us to be doing to make sure that people who deserve the credit receive it.
But that was an issue earlier, right?
Like what you're describing is a change in practices.
I think that... at the time there's so much wisdom out there.
There's so many things being shared.
It was never intentional.
Uh, it was never my values, uh to be clear and transparent and uh simply share wisdom that I've gained and learned.
And that's why if there were any discrepancies, they were definitely cleared up.
Are there things that you feel like you've learned from criticism of you that you've encountered over the years?
Yeah, I've learned that uh, Intention is important, and I've learned that there's such a profound need to see anything that comes your way as a mirror, to see how you can improve in every way.
And so I think that, whether it's feedback, whether it's criticism, I look at it from the perspective of how can I be better?
How can I improve?
How can we be better?
What can we do differently?
And I'm always willing to, you know, take that responsibility to do that, because I think that's what my teachers would want me to do.
That's what my training was, you know, geared towards me to do.
And so anything that comes my way is always a way of improving, a way of being better next time.
I mean, I'm so excited about the production company we're building.
I'm excited about all the exciting work that we're up to, because I almost can't believe that I get the opportunity to do this.
I feel very grateful for it.
I feel very fortunate, very lucky.
I was talking to someone about the production company that you're.
Is it say you launch, you're launching it or what?
How would you describe what's in there?
We're announcing it with you.
Perfect Stranger.
I haven't even, I haven't even talked about it yet.
Yeah, it's the first time.
But I was talking with someone about Perfect Strangers and she said to me that one of the things that you're you're interested in doing is being like a destination for a certain type of celebrity interview.
Is that accurate?
I'm not sure.
No, no.
I would say on purpose already is that.
I mean, I would say that my podcast has already been established as a place when we find people of whether they're athletes musicians actors artists experts, thought leaders who really want to open their heart and have a space to really talk about Things that they've never talked about before and behind the scenes whether it was Madonna last year talking about her spiritual journey or Emma Watson talking about the you know the behind the scenes of an incredible career.
I feel On Purpose is that destination, and I'm really grateful and proud that we've been able to create it, because I want to tell stories that make people feel less alone.
David, did you see Adolescence?
Yeah.
Yeah, I don't know.
I was extremely moved by that.
And I feel like that's like a gold standard of things that I'd love to be able to create and put out there.
Stories that help parents have better conversations with their children, help partners have more efficient conversations with each other.
Create content that sparks conversation, allows people to have deeper conversations about mental health awareness and what it looks like to really raise awareness of these things in a way that isn't on the nose, that isn't maybe teachy in a traditional sense, but allows people to really brought into the heart of what's going on and what's happening at the root.
And so I think that I'm glad that you've seen it, because I think that's a really good example of something that I would aspire to want to make.
Yeah.
You talk about the subject of detachment in your work.
Do you think you've practiced detachment in this interview?
Have I practiced detachment in this interview?
What's your definition of detachment in that question?
I think in some of my questions around sort of criticisms or controversies, you gave answers that felt safe and maybe a little more comfortable, rather than detaching from what's safe or comfortable and answering in a somewhat more objective or clear way.
That's why I ask.
And I would say that to me, my definition of detachment is am I able to be present here and be open and honest with you and clear with you?
And I've tried to do that to the best of my ability.
I appreciate you speaking with me.
And I am very much looking forward to talking with you again.
And I think it's just a couple of days.
Yeah, absolutely.
I look forward to it as well.
After the break I talk to Jay again and we go deeper into the possible conflict between his monk-like principles and being an influencer.
I don't fault you for that skepticism and that thought process, because I've felt the same internally.
Jay, I'm very happy to be speaking with you again.
Me too, David.
It's good to see you.
Do you have any thoughts from our first conversation?
Anything lingering?
I think there was, you know, something that maybe I didn't get a chance to share with you.
And it was around this idea of just, we talked a bit about any sort of criticism coming your way.
And I think when I think about that, to let you in on that, it's like, for me, that's uncomfortable.
It's hard because... you're trying to do something with the best of intentions.
And I think we all want to feel understood and we want to feel seen.
And I think when you're misunderstood or not seen in the way that you would like, it's hard for everyone.
And it's been very hard for me and difficult for me.
And I think when you're being judged, the first point is not to push that person away.
It's to see whether that exists in you.
And I think when you actually look at yourself in that way, you can find everything exists in you.
You can find and that's really vulnerable to say, it's really open to say that you can find that every intention exists within you if you really take a look in the mirror and if you're not scared of looking at that.
And so when I look at my experience of all of that, I've kind of come to this conclusion of well, I do want to be deeply spiritual and I want to be really successful.
Like I do want to be deeply connected to my monk principles and I want to do really well as an entrepreneur.
And it almost feels like to me, the balancing of that, or the aligning of that, very honestly and candidly speaking, is worth pursuing because, rather than this fixation we have specifically in the west of being like i'm just going to be this and this is how i define myself to the world and myself um, that answer has opened up so many questions for me.
Um, you know, i think i uh, i definitely have judged you in a certain way, and it's related to trying to reconcile the monkish principles with the entrepreneur-influencer principles.
And I think it's skepticism that comes from a particular type of perception of you.
And I think that when I think of you as someone trying to operate within a spiritual or a mental health realm, then my skepticism kind of If I think about you as someone operating within an entrepreneur or a sort of influencer realm, then I feel like you're sort of who you are is much easier for me to understand.
But those are my own hang-ups.
I want to know how you think you should be perceived.
What is the correct lens through which to understand Jay Shetty?
David, I want to be honest about that, going back to my earlier point that I was saying is...
I don't fault you for that skepticism and that thought process, because I've felt the same internally right.
So like to be honest with you, it's like the reason why that's even interesting to hear for me is because I've had that conversation with myself.
The paradox or the paradoxical nature of my journey is something I've had to live through and I've had to reconcile mentally emotionally spiritually, practically like it's something I'm wrestling with on a daily basis.
And so when you say how I want to be seen, it's not even an easy answer, because I'd say that I want to be seen as someone who is striving spiritually and striving entrepreneurially at the same time.
Because I don't think that, yeah, I think both spirituality and success are not mutually exclusive.
And even if they are, and that's what I discovered at the end of my life, I'm open to that.
But I'm excited by the experiment and hypothesis of if it is possible.
That experiment fascinates me and pulls me closer to it.
And I'll tell you why I believe it's a worthy pursuit is because the other choice is to say okay, I think people can just be successful and not be spiritual.
I don't know if you want to live in that world, David.
I don't want to live in that world.
I don't want to live in a world full of successful people who don't have deeply held values and have integrity and try and create a difference in the world and be of service and make an impact and do things that are valuable.
I don't want to live in a world where people who are successful don't have those values.
And I'm glad I get to pass that on and be the latest mailman for.
And that's how I really see it.
And so I think it's a bit of a weak argument, because the alternatives are not ones that me or you would subscribe to either.
Yeah.
I realized I didn't ask this earlier.
I think it's an important part of your story, but why did you stop training as a monk?
Yeah, it was one of the hardest points in my life because it sounds crazy to say this, but it was my dream while I was at college.
And that wasn't because I lived a perfect life at college, at university, but it was like I'd made it kind of like this thing of like.
I really hope I can do this after I graduate.
And I was actually at one point thinking of quitting university and doing it then.
And And the monk teacher said to me no, you should finish your education and do it after that, which I'm very grateful they did that.
But it was one of the toughest things.
I dreamed about it.
I'd wanted it.
I'd really believed that that was going to be my path.
I really believed I was going to do it for the rest of my life.
Whether that it was me being naive or whether it was my youth enthusiasm, you know, at 22 years of age I really believed that.
And so leaving wasn't easy.
It was very difficult because I felt like I was failing.
And that, at that point in time, was one of the heaviest things I was going through, even though, because it felt like a divorce.
That's how I- Was there a precipitating incident?
Like why did you make the decision to leave?
Yeah, no, no, no.
So the why was, it was extremely rough on my health.
My health was taking a massive hit.
Your fasting or?
Yeah, I'd spent time in hospital during my time in the monastery um, both in india and the uk, and i i was.
I was struggling.
I had had polyps in my throat that had to be lasered out a year before i left.
I had exhaustion, which was some doctors said it was chronic fatigue.
It was.
I was really like i was emaciated.
I weighed around i want to get the metrics right, but i weighed around like 60 kg, if that's right like i was like really, really emaciated and i'd lost a.
So physically you were struggling.
Yeah, physically I was struggling.
And so there was a massive health component that really hit me hard.
And I think what's really interesting is when your physical health goes, it affects your mental health and your emotional health even more.
So partly what I'm expressing is feeling like a divorce and a failure.
I think it's also because my physical health was falling apart.
That was a big part of it.
And the other side of it funnily enough at the same time was I didn't genuinely deeply believed that all of that self-awareness made me realize i wasn't a monk and maybe i don't have what it takes and that realization i mean, i left.
Now 30, it's been 13 years since i left, so i'm a bit distant from that emotion now but um, it still hit me.
So That's like a collection of I'm letting you in on all of it because it's not as easy to be like.
There was this, it was like there was health, there was my self-awareness through all the meditation.
There was emotional weakness, mental weakness, understanding of who I was.
It was a complicated time.
I just have, I don't mean to belabor this.
I have one more question about, just one more, just one more.
Sure, sure, sure.
About kind of like attention.
So you know, I understand, that one of your larger goals is to like I guess you could say like bring people into the tent where they might encounter ideas that can help improve their lives.
But sometimes, like is the way that you have to do that, can that feel a little bit funky for you?
For example, the way you have to title your videos online, right?
Just these are sort of algorithmic necessities for capturing people's attention.
But they have titles like, you know, attract anything you want.
Break free from your trauma.
Wake up completely different.
Now, of course, you and I both know no one video can deliver on that promise.
But I feel like your position is no.
But you know, that's how you get them in, and then we present them with information that can be helpful.
But is there—do you ever feel like it's a little—
I guess funky is the word that comes to mind for me.
Do you ever feel a little funky about the fact that to get people in you have to kind of make these hyperbolic promises?
It's a great question.
I think that I love... writing something like that and then almost debating the concept in my video.
Like for example, I debate this idea of manifestation.
So I have many videos that have manifestation in the title, but as soon as it gets in there, I'm like guys, there is no such thing as manifesting what you want simply by dreaming about it or writing.
You know, whatever it may be, I'm actually breaking it down.
And so sometimes I think it's a way of debunking myths.
Sometimes it's a way of actually introducing people to new ideas.
And I do agree with you that We live in a attention economy.
We live in a space where we have to have the ability to help someone get through the door.
That is just the way the world works.
It's just the way things are today.
And to me, if the promise and what's on the inside is valuable, that's actually also what will make people stay.
So if it was simply just a title, the views and the transformation wouldn't be valid or valued.
It wouldn't happen.
Jay, I know I've been sort of implicitly critical or skeptical of the idea of like quick hit fixes or easy answers, but what's one thing we can leave people with?
Hopefully then you know your answer.
We can clip it and put it on our socials.
It'll go viral.
But what's one...
We have to put the right title on it, too.
But what's one piece of advice you want to give people here at the end of our conversation that you think could really help them when they go back to their lives?
Sorry, I'm taking my time because you've asked me such a big question and I don't want to be.
I don't want to be.
I think as humans, we have this tendency to say God, the last five years in that job were a waste of time.
Now I found my path.
Or you know what?
That relationship just wasted three years of my life and I don't know if I'll ever find love again.
And we have this habit of almost disregarding our experience, our lessons, our emotion, everything we've been through and now saying we found it.
And I would encourage people to reflect on those moments, to learn from them, to value them, no matter how difficult and painful they might be.
And there'll be so much value in it.
I don't think that clip's going to go viral or give you what you want, but it's something that's been on my heart and mind a lot.
Yeah, well, you know, all I ever want is an honest answer.
So thank you very much and good luck with everything in the future.
David, you too.
Thank you so much for your time and energy and I hope our paths cross again.
You can subscribe to our YouTube channel at youtube.com slash at symbol the interview podcast.
This conversation was produced by Seth Kelly.
It was edited by Annabelle Bacon.
Mixing by Sonia Herrero.
Original music by Dan Powell, Rowan Nemisto, and Marion Lozano.
Photography by Devin Yalkin.
The rest of the team is Priya, Matthew Wyatt Orme, Paola Newdorf, Joe Belmunoz, Amy Marino, Kathleen O'Brien and Brooke Minters.
Our executive producer is Allison Benedict.
Next week, Lulu talks to Maggie Gyllenhaal, director of the new movie The Bride, about how Hollywood treats female directors.
It's fine.
Like, when we make little movies, cute.
It starts to get dangerous when women have their hands on a lot of money.
I'm David Marchese, and this is The Interview from The New York Times.
