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

by Jay Shetty

Confidence and high self-esteem help you accept yourself as you are, humble, imperfect, and striving. Let’s not confuse an inflated ego with healthy self-esteem.

Confidence means deciding who you want to be without the reflection of what other people think, but it also means being inspired and led by others to become your best self.

Spend time with healed, wise, service-driven people and you will feel humbled—and motivated toward healing, wisdom, and service.

The easy check to confirm that someone is offering criticism in good faith is to see if the person is willing to invest in your growth.

Are they just stating a problem or weakness,

or do they want to help you make a change, if not by taking action themselves, then at least by sug...

No matter what anyone says about me today or how I think I’ve grown, I have anchors that

humble me. They remind me of who I was and what I might have become if I hadn’t met people who inspired me to change.

You shouldn’t feel small compared to others, but you should feel small compared to your goals. My own approach to remaining humble in the face of success is to keep moving the goalposts. The measure of success isn’t numbers, it’s depth. Monks

Before giving a speech, I often prepare by visualizing myself going on stage to deliver it.

Anything you see in the man-made world—this book, a table, a clock—whatever it is, it existed in someone’s mind before it came to be. In order to create something we have to imagine it. This is why visualization is so important. Whatever we build internally can be built externally.

For example, if you meditate on a place where you feel happy and relaxed, your breath and pulse shift, your energy changes, and you draw that feeling into your reality.

Visualization activates the same brain networks as actually doing the task. Scientists at the Cleveland Clinic showed that people who imagined contracting a muscle in their little finger over twelve weeks increased its strength by almost as much as people who did actual finger exercises over the same period of time. Our efforts are the same—visualization creates real changes in our bodies.

Part of the practice of meditation is to observe the thought, let it be, then come back to what you were focusing on. If it isn’t hard, you’re not doing it right.

Appreciate everything, even the ordinary. Especially the ordinary. —Pema Chödrön

Benedictine monk Brother David Steindl-Rast defines gratitude as the feeling of appreciation that comes

when “you recognize that something is valuable to you, which has nothing to do with its monetary worth.”

Gratitude also helps us overcome the bitterness and pain that we all carry with us.

When you’re present in gratitude, you can’t be anywhere else.

“My imperfection has brought beauty to those around me,” he said.

When one door of happiness closes, another opens; but often we look so long at the closed door that we do not see the one which has been opened for us.”

“This didn’t work out, but there’s more out there,” the energy shifts to a future full of possibility.

Kindness teaches gratitude. This is what is happening in the microcosm of the thoughtful thank-you note: The kindness of your dinner party inspired your friend’s gratitude. That gratitude inspired her kindness to you.

Be kinder to yourself. And then let your kindness flood the world.”

Kindness begets kindness.

Expand your senses, expand your world, and the

pain will diminish. Don’t be the glass. Become the lake.”

Taking a broader view helps us minimize our pain and appreciate what we have, and we directly access...

The rich complexity of life is full of gifts and lessons that we can’t always see clearly for what they are, so why not choose to be grateful for what is, and what is possible?

time. It almost feels like they’ve been deliberately sent to you to assist or guide you through a particular experience, after which their central role in your life decreases.

Love is a gift without any strings attached. This means that with it comes the knowledge that not all relationships are meant to endure with equal strength indefinitely.

Remember that you are also a season, a reason, and a lifetime friend to different people at different times, and the role you play in someone else’s life won’t always match the role they play in yours.

five primary motivations for connection—and

Physical attraction.

Material. You like their accomplishments and the power and/or the possessions this affords them.

Intellectual. You like how they think—you’re stimulated by their conversation and ideas.

Emotional. You connect well. They understand your feelings and increase yo...

Spiritual. They share your deepest goa...

“Often, we get crushes on others not because we truly love and understand them, but to distract ourselves from our suffering. When we learn to love and understand ourselves and have true compassion for ourselves, then we can truly love and understand another person.”

The monk perspective is that you carry pain. You try to find people to ease that pain, but only you can do that. If you don’t work through it, it stays with you and interferes with your decisions.

until you heal the wounds of your past, you will continue to bleed.

You don’t have to be perfect, but you have to come to a place of giving. Instead of draining anyone else, you’re nourishing them.

“We are all connected; to each other, biologically. To the Earth, chemically. And to the rest of the universe, atomically.”

Helen Keller’s refrain: “I cried because I had no shoes until I met a man who had no feet.”

Everyone, even those of us who have already dedicated our lives to service, can always give more.

The highest purpose is to live in service.

Selflessness heals the self.

We seek to leave a place cleaner than we found it, people happier than we found them, the world better than we found it.

Service is always the answer. It fixes a bad day. It tempers the burdens we bear. Service helps other people and helps us. We don’t expect anything in return, but what we get is the joy of service. It’s an exchange of love.

When you’re living in service, you don’t have time to complain and criticize. When you’re living in service, your fears go away. When you’re living in service, you feel grateful. Your material attachments diminish. Service is the direct path to a meaningful life.