by Jay Shetty
We can’t address our thoughts and explore our minds when we’re preoccupied. Nor does just sitting in your home teach you anything. There are three ways I suggest you actively create space for reflection. First, on a daily basis I recommend you sit down to reflect on how the day went and what emotions you’re feeling. Second, once a month you can approximate the change that I found at the ashram by going someplace you’ve never been before to explore yourself in a different environment. This can be anything from visiting a park or library you’ve never been to before to taking a trip. Finally, get involved in something that’s meaningful to you—a hobby, a charity, a political cause.
Another way to create space is to take stock of how we are filling the space that we have and whether those choices reflect our true values.
AUDIT YOUR LIFE
No matter what you think your values are, your actions tell the real story. What we do with our spare time shows what we value. For instance, you might put spending time with your family at the top of your list of values, but if you spend all your free time playing golf, your actions don’t match your values, and you need to do some self-examination.
Time
First, let’s assess how you spend the time when you’re not sleeping or working. Researchers have found that by the end of our lives, on average, each of us will spend thirty-three years in bed (seven years of which will be spent trying to sleep), a year and four months exercising, and more than three years on vacation. If you’re a woman, you’ll spend 136 days getting ready. If you’re a man this number drops to 46 days. These are just estimates of course, but our daily choices add up.
TRY THIS: AUDIT YOUR TIME
Spend a week tracking how much time you devote to the following: family, friends, health, and self. (Note that we’re leaving out sleeping, eating, and working. Work, in all its forms, can sprawl without boundaries. If this is the case for you, then set your own definition of when you are “officially” at work and make “extra work” one of your categories.) The areas where you spend the most time should match what you value the most. Say the amount of time that your job requires exceeds how important it is to you. That’s a sign that you need to look very closely at that decision. You’re deciding to spend time on something that doesn’t feel important to you. What are the values behind that decision? Are your earnings from your job ultimately serving your values?
Media
When you did your audit, no doubt a significant amount of your time was spent reading or viewing media. Researchers estimate that, on average, each of us will spend more than eleven years of our lives looking at TV and social media! Perhaps your media choices feel casual, but time reflects values.
There are many forms of media, but most of us aren’t overdoing it on movies, TV, or magazines. It’s all about devices. Conveniently, your iPhone will tell you exactly how you’re using it. Under Settings, look at the screen time report for the last week and you’ll see how much time you spend on social media, games, mail, and browsing the Web. If you don’t like what you see, you can even set limits for yourself. On Android, you can look at your battery usage under Settings, then, from the menu, choose “Show full device usage.” Or you can download an app like Social Fever or MyAddictometer.
Money
Like time, you can look at the money you spend to see the values by which you live. Exclude necessities like home, dependents, car, bills, food, and debt. Now look at your discretionary spending. What was your biggest investment this month? Which discretionary areas are costing you the most? Does your spending correspond to what matters most to you? We often have an odd perspective on what’s “worth it” that doesn’t quite make sense if you look at all your expenditures at once. I was advising someone who complained that the family was overspending on afterschool classes for the kids… until she realized that she spent more on her shoes than on their music lessons.
Seeing posts on social media that compared spending and our priorities got me thinking about how the ways we spend our time and money reveal what we value.
A 60-minute TV show (“Flew by!”)
A 60-minute lunch with family (“Will it ever end!”)
Everyday coffee habit ($4/day, almost $1,500/year) (“Need it!”)
Fresh healthy food choices (an extra 1.50/day, about $550/year) (“Not worth it!”)
15 minutes scrolling social media (“Me time!”)
15 minutes of meditation (“No time!”)
It’s all in how you see it. When you look at a month of expenses, think about whether discretionary purchases were long- or short-term investments—a great dinner out or a dance class? Were they for entertainment or enlightenment, for yourself or someone else? If you have a gym membership, but only went once this month and spent more on wine, you have some rethinking to do.
CURATE YOUR VALUES
Doing a self-audit tells you the values that have crept into your life by default. The next step is to decide what your values are and whether your choices are in alignment with them. Contemplating monk values may help you identify your own. Our teachers at the ashram explained that there are higher and lower values. Higher values propel and elevate us toward happiness, fulfillment, and meaning. Lower values demote us toward anxiety, depression, and suffering. According to the Gita, these are the higher values and qualities: fearlessness, purity of mind, gratitude, service and charity, acceptance, performing sacrifice, deep study, austerity, straightforwardness, nonviolence, truthfulness, absence of anger, renunciation, perspective, restraint from fault finding, compassion toward all living beings, satisfaction, gentleness/kindness, integrity, determination. (Notice that happiness and success are not among these values. These are not values, they are rewards—the end game—and we will address them further in Chapter Four.)
The six lower values are greed, lust, anger, ego, illusion, and envy. The downside of the lower values is that they so readily take us over when we give them space to do so, but the upside is that there are a lot fewer of them. Or, as my teacher Gauranga Das reminded us, there are always more ways to be pulled up than to be pulled down.
We can’t pull a set of values out of thin air and make sweeping changes overnight. Instead, we want to let go of the false values that fill the space in our lives. The ashram gave us monks the opportunity to observe nature, and our teachers called our attention to the cycles of all living things. Leaves sprout, transform, and drop. Reptiles, birds, and mammals shed their skins, feathers, fur. Letting go is a big part of the rhythm of nature, as is rebirth. We humans cling to stuff—people, ideas, material possessions, copies of Marie Kondo’s book—thinking it’s unnatural to purge, but letting go is a direct route to space (literally) and stillness. We separate ourselves—emotionally if not physically—from the people and ideas who fill up our lives, and then we take time to observe the natural inclinations that compel us.
Choices come along every day, and we can begin to weave values into them. Whenever we make a choice, whether it’s as big as getting married or as small as an argument with a friend, we are driven by our values, whether they are high or low. If these choices work out well for us, then our values are in alignment with our actions. But when things don’t work out, it’s worth revisiting what drove the decision you made.
TRY THIS: PAST VALUES
Reflect on the three best and three worst choices you’ve ever made. Why did you make them? What have you learned? How would you have done it differently?
Take a close look at your answers to the Try This above—buried in them are your values. Why did you make a choice? You may have been with the right or wrong person for the same reason: because you value love. Or maybe you moved across the country because you wanted a change. The underlying value may be adventure. Now do the same thing for the future. Look at your biggest goals to see if they’re driven by other people, tradition, or media-driven ideas of how we should live.
TRY THIS: VALUE-DRIVEN DECISIONS
For the next week, whenever you spend money o
n a nonnecessity or make a plan for how you will spend your free time, pause, and think: What is the value behind this choice? It only takes a second, a flash of consideration. Ideally, this momentary pause becomes instinctive, so that you are making conscious choices about what matters to you and how much energy you devote to it.
FILTER OEOS, DON’T BLOCK THEM
Once you filter out the noise of opinions, expectations, and obligations (OEOs), you will see the world through different eyes. The next step is inviting the world back in. When I ask you to strip away outside influences, I don’t want you to tune out the whole world indefinitely. Your monk mind can and must learn from other people. The challenge is to do so consciously by asking ourselves simple questions: What qualities do I look for/admire in family, friends, or colleagues? Are they trust, confidence, determination, honesty? Whatever they may be, these qualities are, in fact, our own values—the very landmarks we should use to guide ourselves through our own lives.
When you are not alone, surround yourself with people who fit well with your values. It helps to find a community that reflects who you want to be. A community that looks like the future you want. Remember how hard it was for me to start living like a monk during my final year of college? And now, it’s hard for me to live in London. Surrounded by the people I grew up with and their ways of living, I’m tempted to sleep in, gossip, judge others. A new culture helped me redefine myself, and another new culture helped me continue on my path.
Every time you move homes or take a different job or embark on a new relationship, you have a golden opportunity to reinvent yourself. Multiple studies show that the way we relate to the world around us is contagious. A twenty-year study of people living in a Massachusetts town showed that both happiness and depression spread within social circles. If a friend who lives within a mile of you becomes happier, then the chance that you are also happy increases by 25 percent. The effect jumps higher with next-door neighbors.
Who you surround yourself with helps you stick to your values and achieve your goals. You grow together. If you want to run a 2:45 marathon, you don’t train with people who run a 4:45. If you want to be more spiritual, expand your practice with other spiritual people. If you want to grow your business, join a local chamber of commerce or an online group of business owners who are similarly driven toward that kind of success. If you’re an overworked parent who wants to make your kids your priority, cultivate relationships with other parents who prioritize their kids, so you can exchange support and advice. Better yet, where possible, cross groups: Foster relationships with family-oriented spiritual entrepreneurs who run marathons. Okay, I’m kidding, yet in today’s world where we have more ways to connect than ever, platforms like LinkedIn and Meetup and tools like Facebook groups make it easier than ever to find your tribe. If you’re looking for love, look in places that are value-driven, like service opportunities, fitness or sports activities, a series of lectures on a topic that interests you.
If you’re not sure where others fit in relation to your values, ask yourself a question: When I spend time with this person or group, do I feel like I’m getting closer to or further away from who I want to be? The answer could be clear-cut; it’s obvious if you’re spending four hours at a time playing FIFA soccer on PS2 (not that I’ve ever done that) versus engaging in meaningful interaction that improves the quality of your life. Or the answer could be more vague—a feeling like irritability or mental fuzziness after you spend time with them. It feels good to be around people who are good for us; it doesn’t feel good to be around people who don’t support us or bring out our bad habits.
TRY THIS: COMPANION AUDIT
Over the course of a week, make a list of the people with whom you spend the most time. List the values that you share next to each person. Are you giving the most time to the people who align most closely with your values?
Who you talk to, what you watch, what you do with your time: all of these sources push values and beliefs. If you’re just going from one day to the next without questioning your values, you’ll be swayed by what everyone else—from your family to hordes of marketing professionals—wants you to think. I remind myself of the moment in the storeroom all the time. A thought comes into my mind and I ask myself, Does this fit my chosen values or those that others have selected for me? Is this dust or is it me?
When you give yourself space and stillness, you can clear the dust and see yourself, not through others’ eyes, but from within. Identifying your values and letting them guide you will help you filter external influences. In the next chapter these skills will help you filter out unwanted attitudes and emotions.
TWO NEGATIVITY
The Evil King Goes Hungry
It is impossible to build one’s own happiness on the unhappiness of others.
—Daisaku Ikeda
It is the summer after my third year of college. I have returned from spending a month at the ashram and am now interning for a finance firm. I’m at lunch with a couple of my colleagues—we’ve grabbed sandwiches and brought them to the concrete courtyard in front of the building, where low walls crisscross the hardscaping and young people in suits eat speedy lunches, defrosting in the summer sun before returning to the hyper-air-conditioned building. I am a monk out of water.
“Did you hear about Gabe?” one of my friends says in a loud whisper. “The partners tore apart his presentation.”
“That dude,” another friend says, shaking his head. “He’s sinking fast.”
I flash back to a class Gauranga Das taught called “Cancers of the Mind: Comparing, Complaining, Criticizing.” In the class, we talked about negative thought habits, including gossip. One of the exercises we did was keeping a tally of every criticism we spoke or thought. For each one, we had to write down ten good things about the person.
It was hard. We were living together, in close quarters. Issues came up, most of them petty. The average time for a monk’s shower was four minutes. When there was a line at the showers, we would take bets on who was taking too long. (This was the only betting we did. Because: monks.) And though the snorers were relegated to their own room, sometimes new practitioners emerged, and we rated their snores on a scale of motorcycles: this monk’s a Vespa; that one’s a Harley-Davidson.
I went through the exercise, dutifully noting every criticism I let slip. Next to each, I jotted down ten positive qualities. The point of the exercise wasn’t hard to figure out—every person was more good than bad—but seeing it on the page made the ratio sink in. This helped me see my own weaknesses differently. I tended to focus on my mistakes without balancing them against my strengths. When I found myself being self-critical, I reminded myself that I too had positive qualities. Putting my negative qualities in context helped me recognize the same ratio in myself, that I am more good than bad. We talked about this feedback loop in class: When we criticize others, we can’t help but notice the bad in ourselves. But when we look for the good in others, we start to see the best in ourselves too.
The guy sitting next to me on the wall nudges me out of my reverie. “So you think he’ll last?”
I’ve lost track of what we’re talking about. “Who?” I ask.
“Gabe—he shouldn’t have been hired in the first place, right?”
“Oh, I don’t know,” I say.
* * *
Once I’d spent time in the ashram, I became very sensitive to gossip. I’d gotten used to conversations with primarily positive energy. When I first arrived back in the world, I was awkwardly silent. I didn’t want to be the morality police, but I also didn’t want to participate. As the Buddha advised, “Do not give your attention to what others do or fail to do; give it to what you do or fail to do.” I quickly figured out to say things like “Oh, I’m not sure…” or “I haven’t heard anything.” Then I’d shift the conversation to something more positive. “Did you hear they’ve asked Max to stay on? I’m psyched for him.” Gossip has value in some situations: It helps society regulate what i
s acceptable behavior, and we often use it to see if others agree with our judgments about other people’s behavior and therefore our values. But there are kinder ways to negotiate these questions. More often, we use gossip to put others down, which can make us feel superior to them and/or bolster our status in a group.
Some of my friends and colleagues stopped trying to gossip with me altogether; we had real conversations instead. Some trusted me more, realizing that since I didn’t gossip with them, I wouldn’t gossip about them. If there were people who thought I was just plain boring, well, I have nothing bad to say about them.