Pursue What You Love Before You Pursue Love with Jay Shetty [From the Archives]

23:46Craig Robinson:And that definitely happens. And I think on the flip side with men, sometimes I think they're maybe a little bit too visual. I think there are a lot of women who are open to a lot of different kind of men and a lot of different kind of lifestyles. Women want a partner. They want to feel loved. They want to feel desired. They want to feel chosen. And I think a lot of women, I would tell Adrienne, if you're just straightforward with who you are, you're going to find a mate. You're going to find somebody that wants to go on that journey with you and will be excited about it. And it might make taking the risks a little easier because you're not doing them alone.

24:28Craig Robinson:You know, I left my corporate firm when I met Barack and I had somebody who was like, I got your back. The risk you think you're taking, they're not that crazy. And I'm here to help you. That's when I said, I would rather have that in a partner than a higher income. I'd rather have somebody who was ready to do some hard things with me. but that meant I also had to be ready to do some hard things with him. I just think we shouldn't assume. You just gotta kind of get out there and meet people and come to people with your truth and then let them decide. But I feel like Adrian may be just too afraid.

25:15Craig Robinson:He's making some assumptions without even testing the waters that there is a partner out there for him that will embrace everything that he wants to be. And it could make the ride a lot more fun and easy than it would be doing it alone. So I don't know if that answers your question. No, that answers it. And I'm going to ask Jay to referee again. So.

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30:48Jay Shetty:I was listening to you, Michelle, and just relating in our own unique and different way to so much of what you said. When I met my wife, I'd just left the monastery and I was in debt. I didn't have a job. And even though I was a first class honors degree graduate, I couldn't get a job because surprise, surprise, no one wanted to hire a former monk. And so - Why not? So it was like, what are your transferable skills? Like sitting still and being silent? Like we don't need that. But it wasn't valued. Like I remember going, I wouldn't even get a job interview actually. I was applying online and I wouldn't even get invited to the next stage.

31:26Jay Shetty:It was quite hard on my own self-worth. And I was starting to date this girl at the time who's now my wife. How old were you? I was 25 going on 26. And so I was younger than Adrian. So I understand that there's a difference there. But there was a part of me that just thinking, will I ever get a job? Like who's ever going to give me a shot? And I'm so grateful to my wife for, you know, sticking through all of that with me and navigating it with me and never ever making me feel pressure. I think that's what I'd give her credit for is I've never felt pressure from her for a certain type of lifestyle, a certain set of things, even today.

32:03Jay Shetty:And I think that's what allowed me to take more risks. It's what allowed me to dream bigger. It's what allowed me to try new things and fail and go backwards and forwards. And for Adrian, I would encourage him, like I think we all are, of be honest about who you are, be transparent about what you want. And if you're not out there meeting people and having these conversations, you're going to assume that everyone wants you to be set up steady and stable rather than ambitious dreaming and navigating what that looks like. And so one of the things I think would be helpful for him is to start meeting people, is to start dating and also talk to friends who are in those environments.

32:46Jay Shetty:Talk to his friends who are entrepreneurs, who have left the world of work. Talk to them about who's friends with their circles, who's connected, because you're also going to find them in similar spaces. It's going to be more likely that one of your friends says, oh yeah, I just met this person. They're also trying to be an entrepreneur. They also want to be with someone who's figuring it out. And I think that culture today is growing compared to when you met or when we met. I feel like the culture today of people building interesting lives together is spreading further. Did you meet your wife in the wild or did you meet her online?

33:21Jay Shetty:Is that what it's called? Like normal in the wild. I love it. I love it. I'm faking that. And I'm using that forever. Based on that, it would be in the wild. You met her in the wild. Yes. And you met Barack in the wild.

33:31Craig Robinson:Yeah, because there wasn't. There wasn't any. There wasn't. We're old. No wilder place to talk to you. Yeah, there was. It was all wild back then. But so, you know, I'm interested in knowing how Adrian is meeting people. Because I agree with you. You got to get out there and open yourself up to failure on a relationship side to find that right person. And I think it feels like in this day and age, to your point, people are living more alone and being comfortable with being alone and doing things a certain way and don't venture out into the wild. And you might step in some dog mess every now and then.

34:13You clean your shoe off. You can't be like me and throw your shoe away when you step in some dog pee.

34:21Craig Robinson:But the thing, you know, I want Adrian to think about the power of building something with someone, you know, because I also worry that, you know, Adrian's on this path. He's going to have the perfect everything, will have bought the house. And he might get suspicious of bringing someone into that who hasn't been part of the climb, you know. I think in my marriage, we're stronger because we've been through a hard climb together. I mean, we've seen it all. I loved my husband way before there was any idea he might be president of the United States. In fact, if I thought that, I probably wouldn't have married him.

35:04Craig Robinson:But the beauty of just trudging through some hard stuff together, it can bind you in a unique way. I don't want Adrian to rob himself of having a good partner along that journey because he could achieve all that, meet some woman, and then he'll wonder, well, do you love me just because I've got the house and the nice job? I mean, so back to the point of there isn't really one right answer. I mean, he could do all of that and then grow suspicious of somebody who's just glomming on, you know, rather than knowing that somebody is marrying him for him.

35:46Jay Shetty:Yes.

35:46Craig Robinson:And then he might find himself trapped in sustaining something that he might not even enjoy. But he's married a person who married him because he does have a big bank account and a big house and has created this financial stability. He could decide in 10 years of being an entrepreneur or trying something big that he doesn't even want to do that. I mean, life is long. And that's the other thing I'll say to Adrian. Life is long. You know, he might be interested in this big job now or being an entrepreneur, but in 10 or 20 years, he may want to do something else. You know, he may have kids and decide like you did.

36:30Craig Robinson:I mean, and Craig, you should tell your story about your transition. Because I will joke that we stopped checking boxes sort of at the same time in our lives. We started at these high-salary careers and ran away from it because I know I was running towards fulfillment, not the salary. And, Craig, you did the same thing. Well, my situation, Jay, was a little bit different but similar philosophically. I was fortunate enough to get drafted, but I didn't make the NBA, so I didn't make a whole lot of money. I went overseas to play for a couple of years. And I was fortunate enough to play for a coach over there who said to me, you know, you went to Princeton, you played for Pete Carrillo.

37:19Can you show my guys how to play a little bit of that offense? And I did. And we went from being the 12th place team out of 12 to being in third place.

37:29Jay Shetty:Wow. And I thought, you know what I'm going to do? I'm going to be a coach. and I went back to Princeton to go visit her because she was still there. I stop off and I see Coach Carrillo and I said, Coach, I know what I want to be. I want to be a coach. And he said, you don't want to be a fucking coach. Why would you want to be a coach? Here you are, a black guy from the South side of Chicago with a Princeton degree and you can't give up this basketball. Now he wasn't doing that maliciously. He was being a mentor and saying, there's more for you out there than being a coach. And of course, I was like the dutiful player.

38:12I went straight out of his office and to Wall Street. And I began to work my way up. The whole time I'm thinking, I should be a coach. I should be teaching kids. I should be teaching them the lessons that I learned from my first coach, who was my father. and one of the former assistants from Princeton offered me a job being an assistant coach at Northwestern University. This is where I come to my sister and I'm like, I just got offered an assistant coaching job, but I go from making what a trader makes to making about$45 ,000 a year. And I'm going through a divorce. I've got two kids, four and eight, and I'm trying to figure out, should I make this move?

39:00And that was when you said, what did the kids say? And I was like, I haven't told them yet. And she's like, you should talk to them. At least you'll know where they stand. And so I put this decision basically in the hands of an eight-year-old and a four-year-old. And I said to them, I said, daddy's getting a new job. And my eight-year-old said, are you moving away? And I was like, no, we'll still be here. but I'm going to be a coach. And he looked for a minute and he said, does that mean that your office will be a gym? I totally didn't expect that from him. And I said, well, it won't be the gym, but it'll be right next to the gym.

39:43And my four-year-old daughter said, do they have a pool there? And all of the agita that was inside me just went away. And that's when I made the decision to go into coaching. So for Adrian, I'm like, do what you love doing if you can. Now, he doesn't have a family now. So to me, he's in the perfect position to try some stuff.

40:06Jay Shetty:I think sometimes when Adrian's sitting there going, do I have to quit my job and start this out? There's things at his great company that can fuel that passion. There's something there for you to learn. And actually, when you try and make that leap or that jump without this healthy transition, you rob yourself of all the time that you get to learn, make mistakes. When I was at Accenture, I got to see how corporate companies build programs for mental health. We had 500 ,000 employees at the time. I got to think about what that looked like. How do you scale mindfulness across a company? I got to ask questions without the risk, without the fallout.

40:44Jay Shetty:And so I think Adrian's in a great position and I think he could be throwing it away. And I would encourage him to first fall in love with where you are. Make work meaningful. I think it's okay to want to change where you work. But first, make your work meaningful wherever you are. Yeah.

41:15How do we change that? I mean, I know you're doing what you can. You're talking about it. You're having some quality people on your show. And to Mish, your point, we want to just be able to help folks like Adrian understand that you're going to get a lot of messages from a lot of different places. Here's what we think is the healthiest way to go about it.

41:38Jay Shetty:I think it has to be top down and bottom up. And so I was speaking to a client of mine a few years ago, who's a CEO at a large company. And we'd worked on some really tough stuff with him. And then I'd said to him that the next stage of his growth was for him to share what he'd been through with his team. And he said to me, he said, Jay, I can't share it. And I said, what do you mean? And he said, well, if I share it, I'm going to appear weak. Weak, lose my leadership. I'm going to lose the clout and the authority I have. And I said to him, I said, you sharing your weakness makes you strong. Like you being able to tell them, I went through this, I found help and I've come out the other side is the narrative we need to hear.

42:22Jay Shetty:So I think one of the biggest challenges for men today specifically is leadership position men either not making the space, not having the time. Maybe they were never given the opportunity. And I think that's what I see the most compassionately and empathetically is most people who don't give people the opportunity are people who weren't given the opportunity themselves. And so I think the best thing we can all do is turn to both men and women in our lives and all genders in our lives and just look at someone and say, what are you going through? Where's that space for leaders to openly share? And I'm thankful that people have come on the podcast and shared those stories.

43:02Jay Shetty:I remember, Michelle, you were talking about your kitchen table being the place of stories. It's like, this has to happen in informal settings, not just on TV. I think it's important, but it needs to happen everywhere. And then bottom up too, I think that a lot of us today are really scared of asking for help when we're going through a tough time. We're scared of even asking our parents. We're scared of asking our friends. We're scared of asking our brothers and sisters because we're scared that our problems aren't big enough. They're not real enough, that they're not valid enough. And we keep questioning whether anything we have to say is enough only to realize that if we don't ask for help, that's the biggest weakness.

43:45Jay Shetty:And our greatest strength is our network, is our community. And so don't put yourself in a position where you're your only stability and foundation, which is where Adrian's kind of at right now. He's trying to figure it all out on his own.

44:00Craig Robinson:And I would want Adrian to spend some time not just thinking about the achievements, but to think about the kind of life he wants. And not in terms of just job title, but how do you want to feel about your day? Is it going to be enough for you to have a big bank account and work all hours and never see or have time for the people that you love? If you have kids, do you want to spend a lot of time with them? Would that bring you joy? Do you want to go to their games? Is that something that you care about? I would want Adrian, and I think I would want all men, to do a little more of that soft soul searching, that it's okay to identify and nurture those real true feelings.

44:50Craig Robinson:It's like, who are you? And it's okay if you're not a hard-driving competitive mogul. That's okay. We don't need all of that in the world. In fact, I think we have too many men striving for one kind of leadership. We need a broader cross-section of men in the world. So who are you, Adrian, deep down? And then work to build the life based on that truth. And that may require a little counseling. It's definitely going to require him to talk to more people, to find some community, his kitchen table, and to actually have conversations. People who know him and can say, Adrian, man, you're really not that dude.

45:34Craig Robinson:People who can look you in the eye and say, like I did with my brother, you really love coaching and you'd be a great coach. So go coach. We got your back. But if he never taps into that and doesn't learn how to share some of this agita, you know, he'll be struggling alone for a long time. But we need to train ourselves. Speaking as men, we're not as good at being empathetic. We're locker room guys, right? And as soon as you're vulnerable in the locker room, you get attacked. And sometimes it's in a humorous way, but it's an attack. Like we need more people like the J's of the world, like me, like all of us who are, who understand this issue to be out in the world doing it at the kitchen table level, to your point.

46:28So with that, so we've talked about a lot of things. I would love to hear what you would think a couple of or a few takeaways for Adrian based on our discussion.

46:41Jay Shetty:Yeah, I think what Adrian needs is practical advice is how can you look at this differently? How is there not only two choices? We've all said this today. What's that third choice? What's the middle path? What's that version that puts them together as opposed to separates them apart? And so I think that's the most practical advice for Adrian is let's approach this through a new lens where we're now not looking at it in a divided way and wanting a harmonious life. That's not going to happen. The second practical advice I'd say to him is stop trying to predict, project, and assume everything. There's this feeling, and we all do this, we plan, project, and predict the partner we're going to meet, how our profession's going to go, how things are going to be.

47:29Jay Shetty:And I think both of you would say, having lived life more than I have, it rarely goes to plan. like it pivots so often. And so be open to the pivot. I think we place so much emphasis on making the perfect decision that we sometimes don't even ever make one. And so I think be active, start that company on the side, get out there and date, stay at the company and keep doing well, start putting things into practice and then pivot rather than trying to theorize perfectly in your mind how everything's going to play out. Terrific. Anything else to add to your...

48:07Craig Robinson:Just to emphasize that a happy life looks very different than what we think it looks like. Once I stopped checking boxes and started thinking about who I wanted to be in the world, not what I wanted to be, not only that, I realized that there's so many ways to be happy. You know, I mean, maybe Adrian will decide that he doesn't want to get married at all. You know, he may decide to have a partner and not have kids. He may fall in love with a partner who doesn't believe in marriage. I mean, life be lifin'. That's the other saying I like that my kids say. Life just be lifin'. And be open to it. There is no perfect way to be, you know.

48:56Craig Robinson:Every way of being is good, you know. And if you're showing up in the world as a good human, kind, trying to do the right thing, that's what a good life is as far as I'm concerned. And I can't add to either one of those. The only thing I will say to Adrian is don't be afraid to be an old dad and be in our ODC, which is the old dad's club, because those kids will keep you young. And you had your second set of kids. How old were you just to? So I was See I don't know how to think that way I just know that Austin is 14 and I'm 62 So I was 48 Right? Does that add

49:42Jay Shetty:That's inspiring for me too I'm not a dad yet and I think about that often So I'm going to be hopefully joining the ODC Yeah listen You see you got your hair now Just wait that stuff is gone Once you have kids No but I Listen, Adrian, I hope this was helpful for you. But Jay, I want to thank you for being on. Man, it just is an absolute treat for us. Isn't he amazing?

50:08Craig Robinson:He's just amazing. You see, and she was going on and on. I'm like, he can't be this good. And then I heard you and I was like, oh my God, now I'm with you in person. And I'm just so thrilled that you're a part of the family. And we absolutely want to have you back at some point.

50:25Jay Shetty:Oh, I'm so touched by that. But honestly, I think it's the pleasure's all mine to sit with you both, to learn from you both, to hear about your stories. And I'm so grateful you're doing this format because I think there's something special about siblings sitting together and sharing their journey and the amount you know about each other. I think it's beautiful. And I think this will inspire a lot of siblings, a lot of family connections to improve. Thank you for being such a wonderful example. Thank you for inspiring me to want to do more with my sister now. That's our next episode. So we're going to call Amy.

50:56Jay Shetty:It's very grateful. You're calling her. Thank you so much. Yeah, thank you. Thank you, man. This has been terrific.

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