Think Like a Monk: Train Your Mind for Peace and Purpose Every Day

by Jay Shetty

of tea, I will be equally incapable of enjoying my dessert or my tea when I finally have them. … Each thought, each action in the sunlight of awareness becomes sacred. In this light, no boundary exists between the sacred and the profane.”

Your only opportunity to succeed is

in that moment. Whether you are at a work meeting or having dinner with friends, the conversations you have, the words you choose—you won’t ever have another opportunity just like that one.

In that moment you can’t change the past, and you’re deciding the future, so you might...

Yesterday is but a dream. Tomorrow is only a vision. But today well lived makes every yesterday a dream of happiness, and every tomorrow a vision of hope.”

A desired distraction at work bleeds into unwanted distraction on vacation.

We are training our minds to be where we physically aren’t. If

you allow yourself to daydream, you will always be distracted. Being present is the only way to liv...

Routines aren’t just about actions; they’re also about the locations in which those actions take place.

The more your personal spaces are devoted to single, clear purposes, the better they will serve you, not just in the fulfillment of your dharma but in your mood and productivity.

Write down all the noise you hear in your mind on a daily basis. Noise that you know you don’t want to have. This should not be a list of your problems. Instead, write the negative, self-defeating messages your mind is sending you, such as:

If your mind says, “You can’t do this,” respond by saying to yourself, “You can do it. You have the ability. You have the time.”

There are three routes to happiness, all of them centered on knowledge: learning, progressing, and achieving.

Identify the ways you’re making progress, and you will begin to see, feel, and appreciate the value of what you are doing.

Reframe your self-criticism in terms of knowledge. When you hear yourself say, “I’m bored, I’m slow, I can’t do this,” respond to yourself: “You are working on it. You are improving.” This is a reminder to yourself that you are making progress.

Putting a solution-oriented spin on your statement reminds you to be proactive and take responsibility rather than languishing in wishful thinking.

A simple way of overcoming this is to learn one new thing every day.

Many of the frustrations we endure can be seen as blessings because they urge us to grow and develop.

Use the awareness of what deep pain really is to keep smaller disruptions in perspective.

And when you must face a truly devastating ten, own it, take the time to heal it. This is not about reducing the impact of all negative experiences; it’s about gaining a clearer view of them. And sometimes a ten is a ten.

spent fifteen minutes a day for four days writing their “deepest thoughts and feelings” about the most traumatic experience of their lives. Not only did the students say they found the experience to be valuable, 98 percent said they’d like to do it again.

“Make my mind my friend,”

We are defined by the narrative that we write for ourselves every day. Is it a story of joy, perseverance, love, and kindness, or is it a story of guilt, blame, bitterness, and failure? Find a new vocabulary to match the emotions and feelings that you want to live by. Talk to yourself with love.

What we don’t want to do is waste time on regret or worry. Practicing presence helps us do as spiritual teacher Ram Dass advised and “be here now.”

Ask yourself questions about right now. What is missing from this moment? What is unpleasant about today? What would I like to change?

Ideally, when we talk to ourselves about the present, we look back on the negative and positive elements of the past as the imperfect road that brought us to where we are—a life that we accept, and from which we can still grow. And, ideally, we also think of the future in context of the present—an opportunity to realize the promise of today.

Detachment is a form of self-control that has infinite benefits across every form of self-awareness that I talk about in this book, but its origin is always in the mind.

Gita defines detachment as doing the right thing for its own sake, because it needs to be done, without worrying about success or failure.

Detachment is not that you own nothing, but that nothing should own you.”

pride is “the cause of the most damaging fall for the soul.”

The ego doesn’t want to be better. It wants to be seen as better.

That is the nature of judgment: It almost always backfires on us in one way or another. In the act of criticizing others for failing

to live up to higher standards, we ourselves are failing to live up to the highest standards.

Am I finding fault in order to distract myself or others from my own insecurities? Am I projecting my own weakness onto them? And even if I’m doing neither of those things, am I any better than the

Soldier mindset is rooted in defensiveness and tribalism; scout

mindset is rooted in curiosity and intrigue. Soldiers value being on the right side; scouts value being objective. Galef says whether we’re a soldier or a scout has less to do with our level of intelligence or education and more to do with our attitude about life.

Low self-esteem is the flip side of an inflated ego. If we’re not everything, we’re nothing.

Sometimes it takes the deflated ego to show you what the inflated ego thought of itself. I was humbled.

In the darkness of the ego we think we’re special and powerful and significant, but when we look at ourselves in context of the great universe, we see that we only play a

small part. To find true humility, like the firefly, we must look at ourselves when the sun is out and we can see clearly.

Some tasks build competence, and some build character. The brainless activities annoyed me, but eventually I learned that doing an activity that was mentally unchallenging

freed space for reflection and introspection. It was worthwhile after all.

When salt is used in the best way possible, it goes unrecognized. Salt is so humble that when something goes wrong, it takes the blame, and when everything goes right, it doesn’t take credit.

What belongs to you today, belonged to someone yesterday and will be someone else’s tomorrow.”

Humility comes from accepting where you are without seeing it as a reflection of who you are.

So often we don’t take chances because we fear failure, and

that often boils down to a fear of our egos getting hurt. If we can get past the idea that we’ll break if everything doesn’t go our way immediately, our capabilities expand exponentially.

I spend most of my time at the library, reading broadly about personal development, business, and technology. Humbled, I return to being a student of life. It is a powerful way to reenter the world.

Being a victim is the ego turned inside out. You believe that the worst things in the world happen to you. You get dealt the worst cards.

It won’t grow from an external factor that’s beyond your control. I couldn’t control whether someone gave me a job, but I focused on finding a way to be myself and do what I loved. I knew I could build confidence around that.