Craft an Inspiring Environment With This Monk's Unorthodox 3S Method | Jay Shetty EP 603

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

0:11You talk a lot about practicing meditation and also prayer. And you say something that was interesting that you said about using silence to hear in between the lines. So can you share what that means to hear in between the lines? When I hear the word mindfulness, to me what it really means is intentionality. What I mean by that is Are you crafting, designing And intentionally creating your life? Or are you just coasting in the passenger seat of your life Which is just dragging you and driving you wherever it's taking you And so it's the difference between being the driver Or being in the passenger seat And so to me, living intentionally is what allows you to live a life of by design.

1:03I'll give you an example of what mindfulness can look like. There's something in the book that I talk about called the three S's, which are sights, sense, and sounds. Now, if you think about that, we're exposed to sights, sense, and sounds every single day. Yeah. Every single day. But how many of us have crafted those to be sights, sense, and sounds that we want in our life? When we were monks, one of the most important things was what was the first thing you saw, the sight, when you woke up? And right now, most people are probably seeing their screen. Yeah, I think 80 % of people look at their screens first thing in the morning and the last thing at the night.

1:39So you're seeing your screen first thing in the morning. But what are you really seeing? You're seeing everyone else's priorities. You're seeing everyone else's issues and challenges. You're seeing everyone else's messages to you, which means you're already starting your day off reactively. But what if you started your morning looking at a painting that inspired you or a picture of a loved one that brought joy in your heart or your favorite quote by Lewis or by anyone else that when you read that in the morning, you were like, oh, yeah, I feel in charge today to make a difference in the world.

2:08So imagine the first thing you saw in the morning was something inspiring. How much would your day change? That's mindfulness. Mindfulness is being intentional and mindful about what you are exposing yourself to. Let's talk about sounds, Meg. So sounds was something that I started to study actually much later from a modern life perspective. But when we were monks, we would wake up to birds. We would wake up to water. We'd wake up to gongs or cymbals. Chants. Chants, exactly, which are all beautiful sounds. Now, the crazy thing is all of us wake up to something called an alarm. I don't know why anyone would want to wake up to an alarm.

2:46Why would you want to wake up alarmed? alarmed it means now your system is alarming like why would you want to do that why would you want to wake up in shock in a state of like a jolt I don't think that's a positive way to wake up so changing the sound that you wake up to now I'm not saying that everyone can wake up to nature sounds maybe you're one of those people who just hit the snooze button again but what if you woke up to a sound or a song that brought you joy now when I lived in New York for two years between 2016 and 2018, I started to feel quite exhausted by the end of the day. And I was really looking into like, why is it that I feel tired?

3:21And I started to realize I came across this term called cognitive load. And what it means is that a lot of the sounds that you hear in New York City are sounds that are insignificant for your mind to process. Drilling, construction work, taxis honking, driving, cars screeching, scratching. People yelling at each other in the streets. People yelling at each other on the streets. All of that sound is called cognitive load, where your brain is now trying to make sense of meaningless sound. The amount of sirens that I remember hearing on the streets. Now, when you hear sirens, sirens have an emotional trigger, and they have an emotional response to them.

3:59So think about your day. Think about when you come home from work. What sound do you want to hear when you're working? What sound do you want to hear at the end of the day? When you sound design your life, that's called mindfulness. That's being intentional. and then finally scent scent is such a powerful sense that we're not even aware how many of you when you smell your favorite food can't already wait to eat it like you can almost taste it you can taste it already without just through scent when you walk into a massage spa it's the scent the eucalyptus the lavender the sandalwood scent puts you in zen without trying and so mindfulness is intentionally creating a life that makes you feel what you want to feel without having to just create the feeling from inside you may say Jay you know I really struggle trying to be positive I struggle trying to deal with anxiety I struggle trying to be focused your sight sense and sounds can help you do that yeah and you start creating an environment where you naturally feel that like today when I walked into your studio I saw your books I saw these motivational quotes, I saw a boxing glove, and it's like all of a sudden you're like, oh, I'm in an uplifting environment, right?

5:13So you already get triggered. Exactly. Yeah, I think a friend of mine mentioned one time on the podcast, Chris Lee, said you want to create an environment like a rainforest where things can thrive and grow, as opposed to having an environment like a desert where things go to die. That's beautiful. And if you have sights, sense, and sounds that are like a desert for your life, for your heart, and it's going to be hard to grow those things from your heart. But if you create an environment of a rainforest where things can grow, water, nature, you know, cool air, things like that, then you can really start to cultivate that growth.

5:58Thank you so much for listening to today's episode of The Daily Motivation, and I hope you have an amazing rest of your day. If you enjoyed this episode, make sure to click the link in the description. that will take you to the full episode of our main podcast on the School of Greatness. And if you are loving the daily motivation, please follow us over on Apple Podcasts and Spotify and leave us a review over on Apple Podcasts right now. And if you want more exclusive content and ad-free listening experience, make sure to subscribe to our Greatness Plus channel on Apple Podcasts right now. And if you want to get even more inspiration from our world-class guests and learn how to improve your life and take it to the next level, then make sure to sign up for the Greatness newsletter and get it delivered right to your inbox over at greatness.com slash newsletter.

6:54Again, have an amazing day and I'll see you tomorrow with another episode of the Daily Motivation Show.