A MONK’S GUIDE TO LIFE

Youtube sensation Jay Shetty tells us how we can find purpose in life

Who would have thought a monk could become a celebrity? But as all of us search for meaning in our lives, in just a few years, ex-monk Jay Shetty has gone global. It could be down to his ability to distil deep wisdom into pithy four-minute Youtube videos, which means we don’t have to trawl through the ancient texts that he studied in his three years as a monk.

It can’t hurt that Shetty is open, charming and sincere. He also has piercing grey-hazel eyes and a friendly London accent. His wife, Radhi Devlukia-shetty, a dietitian who specialises in vegan Ayurvedic food, is equally spiritual and Instagram-beautiful.

Shetty, 32, has 26m followers on Facebook and 3.2m on Youtube. His videos have 6.5bn views (and counting). Why does he think he’s getting such a huge audience? ‘I think we are at a point in time when people are openly and curiously questioning, seeking different ways of thinking, living and being,’ he says.

And the monk’s mindset appeals because it helps you work out what works for you. While we’re used to searching for answers, he says, monks focus on questions. ‘When I was trying to get close to my fear, I asked myself, “What am I afraid of?” over and over again. When I’m trying to get to the root of a desire, I start with the question, “Why?”’

A third of Shetty’s audience is in the US, a third in Asia and a quarter in the UK. ‘That makes me more convinced that what I’m sharing is timeless,’ he says. ‘It applies to all people from all walks of life and backgrounds.’ Although on his podcast, On Purpose With Jay Shetty, his famous person quotient is high, too. He’s interviewed Kate Bosworth, Jada Pinkett Smith, Eva Longoria and Khloe Kardashian. Pinkett Smith and Shetty ‘connected deeply almost immediately’,

he says. Shetty says he is extremely grateful for all that has happened, which isn’t surprising, as gratitude is one of his practices (see his meditation ritual on page 50). But he hasn’t done it without being unashamedly modern and working hard, embracing social media and technology, as well as becoming an expert in behavioural science. In fact, Shetty was studying the latter with management at City, University of London’s Cass Business School when he had a direction-changing encounter with monk Gauranga Das, who’d been invited there to make a speech. Experiencing this new model of living prompted Shetty, post-graduation, to live and work in an ashram in Mumbai, India, then continue as a monk in Europe and the UK.

If Shetty has been accused of being a lightweight – you can’t get that much detail into a four-minute video – his new book, Think Like A Monk: Train Your Mind For

Peace And Purpose Every Day, shows he knows his stuff. It dissects the 5,000-year-old Vedic (ancient Indian) texts that Shetty studied into practical exercises to find enlightenment, all based on modern psychology. ‘I got fascinated by the parallels I saw between timeless wisdom and modern science. I saw how they complement each other,’ he says. In fact, Shetty says his personal passion – or dharma (more about that on page 49)

– is ‘studying, experimenting with knowledge, and speaking’.

So what can this book do for you? ‘It will give you a complete guide to growing into the person you want to be and for peace and purpose every day,’ he says. All his work aims to answer the four big questions that human beings have been pondering for decades. ‘Those questions are: How do I feel about myself or who am I? What do I do for work and what am I passionate about? Who do I give my love to and want to spend life with? And finally: How do I serve and impact the world?’ he says. We asked Shetty to give us some slices of wisdom that we can use in these key areas of our lives.