3 Questions To Improve Your Life | Jay Shetty EP 791

0:00Hi, my name is Lewis Howes and welcome to the Daily Motivation Show.

0:11One of the first questions that always comes to my mind is, how can I be of service today? How can I be an, and this is extended from that first question, how can I be an instrument of love, compassion, and kindness? And that's what I count as service in my definition. And so what I would say to anyone listening is, define the words yourself. because what service means to you, me, may be different to you. And so it's important. But for me, it's like, how can I be of service today? And the reason why I love that is when you're wired for service, you're set up. Service sets you up to feel satisfaction, to build bonds and create connections and does so much.

0:48So being of service is one of the first questions I would ask. The second question I was asked myself is, what do I love about myself? What do I actually love about myself? That is probably the most powerful question anyone could ask because most people never learn to love themselves. Totally. And we always find the things that we don't love about ourselves and we fixate on those things. And that's one of the repeating thoughts in our head that keeps us playing small every day. All the time. All the time. And we talk a lot about today's self-love and self-care. You know, a lot of that starts with self-awareness, which we know about, self-knowledge.

1:21But self-knowledge creates self-trust. And a lot of it's like learning to trust ourselves. And it's like, if I don't know what I love about myself, how am I ever going to trust myself? How am I going to trust that I have my best interest at heart? And so asking yourself, what do you love? And then the third and final question I think I would ask myself is, is who do I want to be? Who is the person that I need to be that I can love, that I want to love, that I want to give more love to? Like what parts of growth are there still available? And there's one thing I want to add, which isn't a question, but it has been a really reaffirming or deepening affirmation for me that I keep reminding myself, and I think it's helped a lot of people that I've shared it with, is literally some days I'll just put my hand on my heart and I'll just repeat to myself, I'm exactly where I need to be.

2:11It's just such a great reminder. Like if you literally put your hand on your heart and you just go, I am exactly where I need to be, you stop getting lost in the future. You stop worrying about the past and you realize that everything you need to learn, everything you read right now to make a change, it's all right now. It's all right here. And so that's one of my favorite things to repeat. It's not a question, but... It's more of a mantra saying... Correct, yeah. We feel like, oh, I'm doing better than everyone. I'm kind of like winning the game. Or more often we feel behind, but we feel like, oh, they just got promoted.

2:43Oh, they just, you know, they got proposed to. Whatever it is, like we always feel... They had their first child or whatever. They had their first child. They bought their first house, whatever it is. And we're always feeling ahead or behind. And so when you say to yourself, I'm exactly where I need to be, you realize you're not ahead or behind and the problem is if you always think you're ahead or behind then you're always comparing yourself to others whereas if you're where you need to be you now just need to get to the next place of where you want to be yeah and and also you only get ahead of yourself by first being present with yourself if i wouldn't have gone to monk school then i think you can become successful but still feel extremely dissatisfied or misuse the success Yes.

3:29And I don't think that that can be blamed on anyone because no one's ever been taught how to deal with failure or success. There's no class on here's how you deal with failure or here's how you deal with success. But the funny thing is, those are the two most extreme things that we all experience. And the things we're most afraid of are failure and success and success. I think one of my first things in failure is don't take it more personally than it actually is. And I'll give an example of that. when I was applying to 40 companies that all rejected me before an interview, all I was getting was an automated response saying your application will not go any further.

4:08I can't take that personally because they didn't meet me in person. They didn't have a interaction with me. They just saw my name. They saw I'd been a monk for three years. That resume is useless. I mean, what's your transferable skills like sitting in silence It's stillness. Surprise, surprise. No one wants to hire a monk. And so they rejected you. But that's not personal because they didn't meet me in person. I'll give you an example. Me and you, we reach out to countless guests to be on our podcast. Who say no all the time. Who say no all the time. But if I don't hear a no from the guest directly, that's not a no.

4:41Like someone's team can say no. Someone's assistant can say no. Someone's PR team can say no. But until they say no personally, it's not a no. So if I deal with a failure where someone meets me in person, I genuinely believe failure has feedback. And so for me, it's like failure has the ability to actually tell you what you need to improve. Now, not to improve to get their attention, improving to get the actions that you want to take. And don't make that result about the person who said no. Don't try use failure as a way to prove someone else wrong. When you prove others wrong, you end up trying to get validation and approval for them.

5:19And now if they're not impressed when you're right, you lose again. So you end up losing twice. And you spend all this time and energy, years maybe to prove something wrong. I felt good for a moment. Yeah. And then I feel empty again. Totally. That's the thing about failure in the second half is you have to see failure as an improvement. If I'm completely honest, everyone who rejected me in my life up until now has made me more hungry, taught me so much more about myself and made me up my game. And I think if failure doesn't make you up your game, it's the same as losing in a sport. I think we feel that pain because we look at a failure, right?

5:57We look at it as a complete definition of us, right? We're looking at it as there's that famous statement of like, you know, failure is an event, not a person. Whereas we start thinking we are the failure. Like we say, I am a failure. I got rejected. And it's like, no, your application got rejected. Your efforts. Your effort, your specific effort at this moment in time got rejected. Your specific exam at this point got failed. You didn't, you are not a failure. And so you have to disconnect and distance yourself from the event. One of the biggest mistakes we make is we don't study the stories of the greats.

6:38so how many people's lives have you studied from start to finish yeah if you've studied someone's life from start to finish i genuinely believe this is like the core skill that's needed i would say that the people i admire i have studied their lives from start to finish i know why they made bad decisions what they consider to be good decisions like there's autobiographies and biographies out there there's podcasts like ours where people come and listen to people's stories is if you've not studied someone's story, then you can't follow that path because every time you hit a rejection, so every time I get rejected, I think of Steve Jobs getting kicked out of his own company.

7:15Crazy, isn't it? Every time I fail, I think about Michael Jordan losing a game. Every time I get tired of training, I think about Cristiano Ronaldo putting in that extra rep. Those are the visual cues that we need, but you only get those visual cues if you've done the research and the study. And then you go, oh if Steve Jobs was kicked out of his own company but then still had the audacity at one point to go and build Pixar then I think I'm alright if I just didn't get this job yeah and he wouldn't and Apple wouldn't be where it is today without him getting kicked out learning the lessons having humility like gaining some compassion all the things that people said he didn't have fully at that time he learned by having to be kicked out start something else and then he came back to Apple and built it to where it is today well helped build it to where it is today Apple wouldn't be where it is today without him being a rejection.

8:12I am so excited for you to finish the rest of your day strong. If you enjoyed this episode, make sure to click the link in the description, and it'll take you to the full episode of my other show, The School of Greatness. Make sure to come back tomorrow for another episode of The Daily Motivation Show. Thank you.