How To Find Purpose Through Adversity | Jay Shetty EP 740

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

0:12Today's episode is here to inspire you to live your best life today. Stories are one of the most powerful tools we have to inspire us, help us see the world differently, and take action towards our dreams. And here is one that I love.

0:35I lost someone really important to me, a mentor, a few days back. I can't be positive about that. You can't be happy about it. Yeah. It's hurtful. You feel sad. You feel lost. But guess what? I can find meaning in it. Because I can make a list of every lesson he taught me and make a plan to try and live every one of those lessons. Wow, that's beautiful. And so if you're in a really tough situation right now, don't look for positivity. Don't look for happiness. Look for meaning. it helps to just in that moment and it's in those painful moments that you realize how powerful you are we all know that like you really recognize it and you know this example has probably been shared before but if you have a wound and you've cut yourself you can't rush the healing you can't rush it if you broke your arm I mean and you've been through so many bodily injuries you can't rush the process it's going to take six weeks minimum to heal broken part yeah minimum and you've got to sit through that it's painful there's no injections you can take.

1:30There's no videos you can watch. There's nothing you can listen to. But our challenge is we try and rush through the pain rather than reflect through the pain. We try to rush the healing process. Try to rush the healing and you can't rush healing and healing is meant to be slow because it buys you time. It buys you reflection. It gives you so much space to slow down. And that's what your body's calling out for. And this is our emergency. Like, how many times have you heard it? Where you slow down and that's when you fall ill. Because guess what? Your body has been trying to tell you to slow down.

1:58When you feel pain, pain makes you pay attention. That's what pain's for. Notice this. Notice this. Notice me. Look at me. It's like a crying baby craving for attention. When a baby's crying, you don't just go, oh, I was crying. You don't just go, oh, yeah, we'll just put it in another room and forget about it. You go to it and you find its needs. Whereas with our pain, when something's painful, we're just like, oh, yeah, I'll just forget about it. I'll escape from it. I'll do something else. You have to go into that pain. Unnumb the pain. Unnumb the pain. That's it. With alcohol or whatever. In 2016, I moved out to New York.

2:29So just let me paint a picture of 2016. I moved three jobs. I got married. Wow. I moved country. And I just started a whole new life. Like my life just transformed. So we went through all of that with my wife in one year. And by the way, all of that was surprises. The job change was surprises. The country change was a surprise. The marriage was not a surprise. We planned that. But apart from everything else, everything was a surprise. Now I said I like surprises so I can roll with it. But my point is that's a lot of transition in a year. So much transition. And I felt the burden of being in a new city where we had no family, we had no friends.

3:09And my wife who loves being around her family and no one understands just how close she is to them. I felt this burden on me that I had taken away her time with her family. And now she was alone. So I was going out to work and she'd be crying at home. And I was thinking, she's got no friends, she's got no support. And I know you can relate to this with moving and relationships and so much going on. And so it's like, I'm dealing with that. And guess what? Six months later, I have to leave and move on and work on a new career to build everything myself. And then I'm four months away from being broke.

3:42And so on top of all of this, I've now got four months away from being broke. I've got enough money saved for four months to pay for rent and groceries. And that's it. In New York City. And that's it. And guess what? Even on top of that, I've got 30 days before my visa runs out and I'm kicked out of the country. So I can't even live here anymore. So not only have I just got married, moved job three times, changed career again, had to move into a apartment, four months of being broke, and I might get kicked out in 30 days. And my renewal for my visa cost$15 ,000. So that's going to eat into those four months.

4:14I have probably never been under that much emotional, physical, and mental pressure in my life. Like genuinely, I felt it. And I felt my body change. My breath was more stressed. I would be breathing faster. Shorter breaths, not deep breaths. Heart beating faster. Not working out. You get into lazy habits. You start craving junk food. Sugar, you have energy. I'm living in a 500 square foot apartment with my wife, which is tiny. Like everything's in that space. And guess what? We both work from home. So I'm now sitting at a desk, hunched over, trying to figure stuff out. She's trying to cook in the same room.

4:50Like I'm trying to, just trying to figure out what to do. And I remember the next morning sending like a hundred emails to people and just being like, this is who I am. This is what I can do. How can we serve? And the beginning three months of that journey was so stressful. Like they were so stressful because I was like, what if I have to move back to London? What am I going to say to her parents? I mean, I just took their daughter away. Like I've lived in New York City for six months and my life falling apart. Like, you know, so much. and all I can say is that I remember coming home to my wife knowing that this was going to be the truth and I came home and I said to her I said to her I guarantee you this is going to be the best thing that ever happened to us what?

5:31the pain? the pain I said that to her the night I came home and then she gave up I literally came home I looked her in the eyes and go this is the scenario and I just want you to know that I guarantee you this is the best thing that's ever going to happen to us and I said to her and this is a monk statement that we used to repeat I said to her I'm just not going to judge the moment don't judge the moment because what we do is we try to label moments as good or bad. And when you label a moment as bad, it now does not have the opportunity to become good. I'll give an example. If I go, I don't like this book.

6:01This book's bad, right? If I say that, guess what? I will never pick it up and recognize the value that's inside of it because you've labeled it. And we label stuff like we label, oh, that restaurant's bad. As soon as you start labeling people or anything as good or bad, you limit it. You stop it from being something else. And here's the truth. every moment can evolve into being anything if you give it the opportunity to right but as soon as you say it's got no value anymore you lose it and so for me i had to say to myself don't judge the moment and i'd keep repeating that don't judge where you're at don't judge what's happening yeah don't judge it as negative don't don't just start saying it's negative because guess what we've all been in positions where a gift turned into a curse and a curse turned into to a gift.

6:44That's true. Totally, why is it that so many people that win the lottery go broke? Gifts can turn into curses too, but because we label them as the best moment in our life or the worst moment in our life. Whereas when you approach things to neutrality and just what you have on the table, you can be like, okay, what am I gonna do next? If you lose, cry for a day. And if you celebrate, if you win, celebrate for a day. Yeah, that's it. And then move on the next day, get back to training. Don't let it run it. Don't live in the past. Don't live in the past. And what we do is when we lose, we cry for a month.

7:15And when we win, we just move on. Which means that our negative experiences hold us back and weigh us down more than our positive experiences. If you win, celebrate for a day. If you lose, cry for a day, move on. Simple.

7:36I 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.