Every issue, GRAZIA USA highlights Game Changers, who inspire, educate, and celebrate individuality, beauty, and style. Meet Jay Shetty, a former monk who has inspired billions through his books, YouTube videos and podcast On Purpose. Ahead of the new release of his latest book, 8 Rules of Love, Shetty looks back on his journey.
When I was 18, I had met people that were famous and met people that were rich, that were strong, that were beautiful and attractive, but I don’t think I’d met anyone who was truly happy. Then I met a monk for the first time — he was happy. I thought to myself, “I want what he has.” I was inspired by seeing how content and how confident and how happy the monks were.I just deeply wanted to understand how they’d discovered that in a world that was chaotic and difficult.
When I graduated, I lived as a monk from 2010 to 2013. During that time, I woke up at 4 a.m. every day. I slept on the floor and lived out of a gym locker that fit all of my possessions and had two robes — one to wear, one to wash. It was truly a really special time where I learned some really powerful skills. One of them was adaptability, the idea that we didn’t know what was going to happen every day. We were moving around, sleeping in a different space every day. I didn’t have a room that was my own. That really taught me how to deal with uncertainty. Another skill was this idea of self-mastery. When you’re silent for long periods of time, first your mind goes crazy and is really loud. And then you learn to steady it, it gets quieter and you are able to make sense of the thoughts in your head. For me, the ability to have self-mastery and silence the mind and be able to direct energy to where I wanted it to go was really powerful.
When I left, I was 25 and went back to the corporate world because I was $25,000 in debt. I moved back in with my parents but they are not well off, so I couldn’t just rely on them. Despite having performed exceptionally well at school, I applied to 40 companies before I got a yes, because, surprise, surprise, no one wanted to hire someone who’d been a monk. Everyone was like: “What are your transferable skills? Sitting still and being silent are not exactly what we’re looking for.” I finally got a job at Accenture. Even though I worked in digital strategy and social media, I actually got to share my passion there and taught meditation. I started to see just how powerful the tools and techniques I’d learned as a monk were and that gave me more faith that I should be able to share these with anyone in the world.
I started doing talks in London and usually like five people would show up and sometimes no one would show up. I started pitching a mindful video series to lots of media companies, and I was rejected by 10 of them. I went to a TV presenter’s training day for ethnic minorities, and they told me that I should start a YouTube channel. My videos caught the eye of Arianna Huffington and within three months of me posting weekly to YouTube, she asked me if she could share those videos on HuffPost. The first four videos shared did over 100 million views. It was the first point of my career change.
Read GRAZIA USA’s Winter issue featuring cover star Lizzy Caplan:
I moved to the U.S. in 2016, I launched my podcast On Purpose, which today is the number one health podcast in the world. I launched my book in 2020, which became a number one New York Times and Amazon best seller. And then, we launched a lot of education programs and my coaching certification school, where we certify and credit life coaches. I recently became the chief purpose officer at Calm. My new book, 8 Rules of Love, comes out on January 31 and I will go on my first ever world tour. I have been online for so many years that to actually get the opportunity to hold people’s hands, look them in the eyes and hug them, I’m extremely excited to be with my community in person.
I’ve kind of dedicated my life to helping people discover their potential and find their purpose. I feel deeply grateful and humbled for every person who takes out time to listen to a podcast, to watch a video, to read my book, because I’ve done this for so many years. To be in a position where we’ve had billions of views, hundreds of millions of downloads, millions of books sold, it’s just truly something I’m so grateful for. My heart goes out to everyone who feels that I’m useful in their journey of self-discovery.
— As told to Colleen Kratofil
