In a discussion with the host, Jay Shetty unpacks his philosophy on happiness, emphasizing the importance of aligning passion with service to others for deep fulfillment. He distinguishes between daily habits that maintain happiness and a deeper purpose that drives it, advocating for a balance where one's skills meet challenges to achieve a flow state. Shetty introduces a personal model for happiness, comprising learning, launching, and loving something each year to foster growth, excitement, and love. He suggests that launching new ventures, despite potential failures, can bring joy, and learning new skills should be in service of future launches and passions.
"Over the years, I've tried to kind of simplify what happiness is, and I sit here with my guests, and Mogadat was great at that as well."
This quote indicates the speaker's ongoing quest to distill happiness into understandable terms, highlighting that the guest Mogadat had valuable insights on the subject.
"He was unbelievable at kind of the concept of happiness."
Speaker A expresses admiration for Mogadat's grasp of the happiness concept, suggesting that Mogadat had a significant impact on their understanding.
"What are the kind of simple fundamentals that Jay Shetty requires in his life to live a happy life? And I'm going to use the word happy. I know it's a shitty word in many respects, but I just want to use that as the word."
Speaker A acknowledges the complexity and sometimes negative connotations of the word "happy" but chooses to use it for the sake of the conversation, aiming to uncover the basic essentials of happiness for Jay Shetty.
"Yeah, I'd say that I look at happiness as daily habits and then deeper purpose."
Jay Shetty outlines his two-tiered approach to happiness, emphasizing the role of both routine actions and overarching life goals.
"So there's things you can do daily that keep that happiness kind of moving and feel it's growing."
Jay Shetty suggests that there are daily practices that can promote and increase the feeling of happiness.
"And then there's almost the objective, the compass, the reason why you live and why you exist."
This quote points to the significance of having a clear life objective or purpose, which guides and gives meaning to one's existence.
"And for me, it's been really clear that finding your passion and using it in the service of others is what creates the greatest, deepest happiness."
Jay Shetty identifies the act of leveraging one's passion to help others as a key source of profound happiness.
"When you find what you love, what you excel at, what you're brilliant at, and then you can actually use that to improve people's lives, and you can use that skill, that passion, that energy to make a difference in someone's life, there is no better feeling than that."
This quote elaborates on the joy derived from applying one's talents and passions to positively impact the lives of others.
"And what I find is I meet a lot of people who've mastered their passion, but not for service. They mastered it for business, they mastered it for money, they mastered it for success."
Jay Shetty observes that many individuals have honed their passions for personal success rather than for the benefit of others.
"And they have all of that, but they haven't got the service element in their life. They don't understand how to use their passion for a purpose, and so they feel unequipped."
By highlighting the absence of service in some people's lives, Jay Shetty points out a common gap that can lead to a sense of inadequacy, despite other achievements.
"I'll don't feel fulfilled because they're missing what is my special role. Like, what's my position, what's my offering in this space, you kind of get lost after a while. And so to me, happiness is where both come together, where it's like I know what I love and what makes me happy. And when I do that for others to improve their lives, it makes them happy. So if you can do what makes you happy and do it for others and it makes them happy, that's going to give you happiness."
The quote emphasizes that fulfillment comes from recognizing and embracing one's unique role in life, and happiness is achieved when one's passions not only bring joy to oneself but also benefit others.
"But one of the biggest ones for me is I read a book a few years ago about flow state, and that book really transformed how I felt about things. And it talks about how being in flow is the intersection where your skills and your challenge match."
This quote explains the importance of flow state as a daily practice for happiness, highlighting the balance between one's skills and the challenges they take on.
"So if your skills are higher than your challenge, you'll feel bored, lethargic, and maybe feel stuck. But if your challenge is greater than your skills, you feel overwhelmed, potentially depressed and disconnected and disappointed."
The quote delineates the consequences of a mismatch between skills and challenges: boredom when skills exceed challenges and overwhelm when challenges are too great.
"So most of us are living in one of those discrepancies. And I find on a daily basis, I'm playing around with that equation for happiness, because that flow state of when you know you have a skill and your challenge is met, and even if you lose, you still get such a joy out of it because you know that you're still working in t"
This quote suggests that many people do not experience flow because of an imbalance between their skills and challenges, and it advocates for adjusting daily activities to achieve flow and, consequently, happiness.
"And I think that is an underplayed part of happiness, because it doesn't sound like something predictable or obvious, because people go, well, that's achievement, that's ambition. It's actually not."
This quote emphasizes that the relationship between direction in life and happiness is not commonly recognized because it is often confused with achievement or ambition. The speaker clarifies that it is distinct from these concepts.
"I believe that to create happiness day to day, in one year, in one month, in a week, you have to have three things. You have to learn something every year. You have to launch something every year, and you have to love something every year."
Jay Shetty outlines his personal model for creating happiness, which involves three annual commitments: learning, launching, and loving. This framework is designed to provide a balanced and fulfilling life experience.
"So when I talk about flow state that comes into the idea of raising your challenge is like launching something. The reason why launching something creates happiness is because it creates a feeling of nervousness. It creates a feeling of butterflies creates a feeling of excitement, like, I don't know what's going to happen."
Jay Shetty connects the idea of flow state with the act of launching something, explaining that the associated nervousness and excitement can lead to happiness. This underscores the importance of embracing new challenges and the unknown.
"The sense of the unknown can actually cause happiness. And so launching something is such a powerful way, and I think too many people will think for five years and think for ten years and maybe launch one thing in their whole life. And me and you have both. I mean, I can't wait to interview on my podcast, but I have launched so much stuff that has failed."
This quote highlights the idea that taking action and launching new endeavors, despite the risk of failure, can be a significant source of happiness.
"Then there's learn something, which is what we just talked about, learning a skill. So that's the idea of creating your flow state by saying, what skill do I want to learn? And every year I pick a skill, and it's usually based on what I want to launch the next year. So I'll go, okay, I need to learn podcasting. So 2018. I studied podcasting 2019. We launched the podcast. So what you learn turns in what you launch, and what you launch turns into what you love."
Jay Shetty explains his personal approach to growth, which involves choosing a skill to learn each year that will support a project he plans to launch the following year. This learning is directly tied to future actions and passions.
"So I try and plan my years out in that way. I go, what am I going to learn? What am I going to launch, and what am I going to love? So, yeah, I think that's how I try and create happiness on a daily, weekly, monthly basis without diving into things like gratitude and meditation, which are huge parts of my daily happiness. But I think those are ideas that are out there and that we've talked about before, probably."
In this quote, Jay Shetty outlines his methodical approach to happiness, which involves deliberate planning around learning, launching, and loving. He acknowledges other well-known happiness practices but chooses to focus on his unique strategies.