{"id":68235,"date":"2022-12-02T20:52:04","date_gmt":"2022-12-02T20:52:04","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/graziamagazine.com\/us\/?post_type=articles&p=68235"},"modified":"2022-12-02T22:12:18","modified_gmt":"2022-12-02T22:12:18","slug":"jay-shetty-game-changer","status":"publish","type":"articles","link":"https:\/\/graziamagazine.com\/us\/articles\/jay-shetty-game-changer\/","title":{"rendered":"Jay Shetty Dedicates His Life to Helping People Find Their Purpose, Inspiring Billions Along the Way"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Courtesy Jay Shetty<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

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 <\/strong><\/em>On Purpose<\/strong><\/a>. Ahead of the new release of his latest book, <\/strong><\/em>8 Rules of Love<\/a>, Shetty looks back on his journey.\u00a0<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

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\u2019t think I\u2019d met anyone who was truly happy. Then I met a monk for the first time \u2014 he was happy. I thought to myself, \u201cI want what he has.\u201d I was inspired by seeing how content and how confident and how happy the monks were.I just deeply wanted to understand how they\u2019d discovered that in a world that was chaotic and difficult.<\/p>\n

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 \u2014 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\u2019t know what was going to happen every day. We were moving around, sleeping in a different space every day. I didn\u2019t 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\u2019re 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.<\/p>\n

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\u2019t 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\u2019d been a monk. Everyone was like: \u201cWhat are your transferable skills? Sitting still and being silent are not exactly what we\u2019re looking for.\u201d 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\u2019d learned as a monk were and that gave me more faith that I should be able to share these with anyone in the world.<\/p>\n

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\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n

Read GRAZIA USA<\/em>\u2019s Winter issue featuring cover star Lizzy Caplan:<\/strong><\/p>\n

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