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Think Like a Monk - @jayshetty - Summary + Key Points

2020-10-27 · Book summary (Book Club) · Ali · recording, 9:39 · watch on YouTube

Topic: Mindset, motivation and happiness · mode: Explanation and tutorial · tags: Lesson from a book

In a Book Club episode on Jay Shetty's Think Like a Monk, Ali walks through the book's three parts, letting go (values, negativity, fear, intention), growing (dharma, the monk mind, ego) and giving (service), and adds his own takes: Stoic preferred indifferents, a market version of the dharma equation, and that his own drive to make videos is secretly a craving for admiration.

What is said

The parts of the video and what is said in each (★ — how much it matters to the video).

00:00:00 — Think Like a Monk: monks' wisdom for less anxious, more meaningful lives, in three parts

  • ★★ This Book Club episode, in Ali's series distilling highlights from his favourite books, is on Think Like a Monk by Jay Shetty. — 00:00:00 · Book Club
  • ★★★ Jay Shetty (quoted): Jay Shetty's Think Like a Monk takes the wisdom and traditions of monks to teach how to live less anxious, more meaningful lives: not by becoming monks, but by thinking like them. — 00:00:29
  • ★★ Jay Shetty (quoted): Think Like a Monk is divided into three parts: letting go, growing and giving. — 00:00:29

00:00:58 — Letting go: identity and values, negativity and spot, stop and swap, fear and detachment, the why ladder

  • ★★ Jay Shetty (quoted): The letting-go part of Think Like a Monk rests on four pillars: finding our identity, reducing negativity, detaching from fear and learning to live intentionally. — 00:00:58
  • ★★ Jay Shetty (quoted): Jay Shetty says identity is wrapped up in values, many of which we acquire through societal conditioning; filtering out that noise lets us steer towards higher values such as gratitude, service, truthfulness and compassion, and away from greed, lust, anger and envy. — 00:00:58
  • ★ Ali says negativity can sometimes affect his day and get to him in a way he would not like. — 00:01:56
  • ★★ Jay Shetty (quoted): Jay Shetty says negativity is a trait, not someone's identity, so we can let it go, distilling the monks' awareness, addressing and amending into three steps: spot, stop and swap. — 00:01:56
  • ★★ Ali likens spot, stop and swap, observing, reflecting and then modifying our behaviour, to what the Stoics taught, and calls it a really good way of addressing negativity and also fear. — 00:01:56 · stoicism

  • ★★ Jay Shetty (quoted): In Think Like a Monk the root of fear is attachment, our need to own or control things, so the cure is detachment: not owning nothing, but letting nothing own you. — 00:02:26

    “detachment is not that you should own nothing but that nothing should own you”

  • ★★★ Ali often thinks of the Stoic idea of preferred indifferents: he may prefer a 49-inch ultrawide monitor with a fancy keyboard and mouse, but he does not need them to be happy and is not attached to them. — 00:02:55 · stoicism

  • ★★ Jay Shetty (quoted): Jay Shetty says our motivations revolve around fear, desire, duty and love, and offers the why ladder, asking why until we reach the deepest why behind a want, to live intentionally. — 00:02:55
  • ★★ Climbing the why ladder on why he makes YouTube videos, Ali goes from teaching, helping and inspiring people, to fun, to what he calls the true cause: he secretly craves the admiration and respect of other people. (hedged) — 00:03:24

00:03:53 — Growing: dharma and the quadrants of potential, monk mind and monkey mind, mastering the ego

  • ★★ Jay Shetty (quoted): The growing part of Think Like a Monk revolves around finding our purpose, training our mind and mastering our ego. — 00:03:53

  • ★★★ Jay Shetty (quoted): Jay Shetty defines dharma, a Sanskrit word roughly meaning your calling, as a passion and skill that is also useful to others: passion plus expertise plus usefulness equals dharma. — 00:03:53

    “passion plus expertise plus usefulness equals dharma”

  • ★★ Ali says he has not quite figured out his dharma, his purpose or calling in life. — 00:04:22

  • ★★ Jay Shetty (quoted): With Jay Shetty's quadrants of potential, to grow and develop a purpose you should aim for quadrant two, skill and passion, spending your time using your talents doing what you love. — 00:04:22
  • ★★★ Ali thinks about the dharma equation in a more capitalist version: what do I enjoy, what am I good at, and what will the market pay me for, with the market paying as a proxy for being useful to others. — 00:04:52
  • ★★ Jay Shetty (quoted): Jay Shetty contrasts the monkey mind, which overthinks, stays busy and switches aimlessly between thoughts, with the monk mind, which lifts us out of confusion and distraction towards clarity, meaning and direction. — 00:05:20
  • ★★ Ali says the way to change or develop any mindset is Jay Shetty's spot, stop and swap, or a variant of it: spot a destructive thought pattern, stop thinking it, and swap it for something else. — 00:05:49
  • ★★ Ali says spot, stop and swap is much easier said than done, but the same idea underlies cognitive behavioural therapy: we can control our thoughts and actions, but only through practice. — 00:06:19
  • ★★ Jay Shetty (quoted): To foster humility, Think Like a Monk says to remember the bad we have done to others and the good others have done for us, and to forget the good we have done for others and the bad others have done to us. — 00:06:48
  • ★★ Jay Shetty (quoted): Jay Shetty says the ego is one of the main obstacles to growth and two-faced, telling us one moment we are the best and the next the worst; true humility takes the middle ground, recognising our weaknesses and working on them. — 00:06:48

00:07:17 — Giving: selflessness heals the self, four ways service helps us

  • ★★ Jay Shetty (quoted): The final part of Think Like a Monk is about looking beyond ourselves to act in service of other people; letting go and growing detach us from selfishness so we can give back. — 00:07:17

  • ★★★ Jay Shetty (quoted): In Think Like a Monk, service is a reciprocal exchange: when we serve others we feel good about ourselves, or as Jay Shetty puts it, selflessness heals the self. — 00:07:46

    “selflessness heals the self”

  • ★★ Ali says there is apparently a lot of research showing that pursuing compassionate goals, such as serving other people, increases your own inner happiness and contentment. (hedged) — 00:07:46

  • ★★ Jay Shetty (quoted): Think Like a Monk lists four ways serving others helps ourselves: it connects us, amplifies gratitude, increases compassion and builds self-esteem through a mission beyond the self. — 00:08:15

00:08:45 — Verdict on the book and pointer to the Obstacle Is the Way episode

  • ★★★ Ali calls Think Like a Monk a very good book, definitely worth reading, with more practical advice than his summary covers and ideas illustrated with lots of stories. — 00:08:45
  • ★ Ali tells Jay Shetty that they should collaborate sometime. — 00:09:14
  • ★ Ali points viewers to his Book Club episode on Ryan Holiday's The Obstacle Is the Way, which covers similar themes through Stoicism and many historical examples. — 00:09:14 · Book Club

Threads in this video

Mentioned

Central: dharma · Jay Shetty · spot, stop and swap · Think Like a Monk

Also: Book Club · cognitive behavioural therapy · Ryan Holiday · stoicism · The Obstacle Is the Way

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