"The Modern Day Monk: A Recap of 'Think Like A Monk' by Jay Shetty" (Part 2)

2020 has been quite a year, but here's to hoping that 2021 will bring us joy! Now it's time for the second instalment of...

"The Modern Day Monk: A Recap of 'Think Like A Monk' by Jay Shetty"

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The second section of this book is Grow. Once we've figured out our true identities, released all our negativities, befriended our fears, and set good intentions for ourselves, we can now learn to make better decisions in our lives by setting a purpose based on personality and passions, keeping a consistent and uplifting routine, paying more attention to the way the mind works, and sacrificing the ego for something even better. 

Chapter 5: Purpose

Find your dharma

Dharma is a Sanskrit word with a foggy translation in other languages, but Dictionary.com defines it as one's "essential quality or character". Jay's definition of the word is passion and skill, plus service, which he expresses as the formula: Passion + Expertise + Usefulness = Dharma. (Compassion could be in the equation, but it equates to usefulness as a service somehow.) If any of these things are missing in our life, then we need to keep searching, and the journey is long. 

Don't feel pressured to find your purpose early in life

With the success of teens and twenty-somethings in this day and age, society feels the pressure of making it at a young age, or else, we lose everything. In reality, it can take decades of our life to find our dharma, make it in our field, and have a lasting impact on others. Enjoy the process, and you won't regret taking any of the steps. Eventually, you will pursue your dharma, maybe not at 20 or 30, but definitely at some point in your life. Personally, I have nothing against people who made it young (even if they never really made it and still have a long way to go), since I do happen to like some of them. I'll just acknowledge the fact that it's okay to be a late bloomer. After all, taking your time to work on something makes more of the difference than rushing it (with time management in mind of course).

The strengths and weaknesses that you work on in life depend

If there's one lie that school tells us, it's that all of our weaknesses must become strengths. Sure, that's true in a way, but our weaknesses can be thought of as someone else's strengths, which we are trying to work on, even if we don't find them satisfying. Also, a low grade doesn't equal weakness, just inexperience, which can always be improved. When it comes to strengths, the only ones we should work on are our skills. But if our weaknesses aren't hard skills, rather soft, emotionally intelligent skills, then we should work on them, because they are crucial for overcoming the obstacles that life will throw at us.

There are four quadrants of potential, related to passion and skill

As you may have seen in my earlier blog post about Gretchen Rubin's Four Tendencies, I love matrices divided into quadrants! Unlike Rubin's model though, Shetty's Quadrants of Potential model doesn't categorize people. It categorizes the things we do, depending on whether there's skill and whether there's passion. Quadrant 1 is like having a job you loathe, you're skilled at something, but you don't have the passion for it. Quadrant 4 is like spending more time daydreaming than doing, you're very passionate about something, yet you're not skilled at it. Quadrant 3 is like being stuck in an abyss, you're not good at something and you're not passionate about it. Quadrant 2 is the ideal place to be, you're good at something and you absolutely love doing it. When evaluating the things we do, we should ask ourselves, "How can I move more of my time and energy towards Quadrant 2?" If most of our time and energy is spent on other quadrants, it's a sign that we aren't truly living up to our full potential and dharma. 

There are four varnas, which correlate with dharma

To help us find which activities fit in our second quadrant of potential and further seek our dharma, we can figure out our varna, or vedic personality. Based off the Bhagavad Gita, one of the most profound and timeless Hindu texts, there are four personality types, not present from birth, but of equal importance. Your varna doesn't determine specifically what job you have (as Jay explains in the chapter, 19th-century Britain used the vedic personality test the wrong way: to put Indians in job categories), nor what hobbies you pursue, but it can bring you one step closer to discovering your purpose. The four varnas are:

Creators: make things happen

Makers: enjoy building things

Guides: aim to bring out the best in people

Leaders: want to have an influence on people

The varnas complement each other in two groups. Creators and Makers complement each other. While Creators help Makers strengthen their ideas, Makers help Creators pay more attention to detail. Guides and Leaders also complement each other. While Guides help Leaders become more wise, Leaders help Guides become more organized. 

Actually, I'm noticing a pattern with the varnas. Like other quadrant models/matrices, these varnas seem to have developed from two factors: focus on detail vs. focus on the big picture and task orientation vs. people orientation. It's almost like the DISC personality classification system. Creators are task-oriented and focus on the big picture, Makers are task-oriented and focus on details, Guides are people-oriented and focus on the big picture, and Leaders are people-oriented and focus on details. The complementation of varnas is grouped by whether the varna is task-oriented or people-oriented, which is why Creators and Makers go together, as well as Guides and Leaders. Wow! Who knew? 

Sorry, I'm a Maker. I love building things out of ideas. Why don't you try figuring out your varna?

You can grow your dharma in several ways

The Vedic Personality Test is a good place to start, but it doesn't matter until you do something about your varna and your dharma. Be more aware with the actions you take, and evaluate if they fit with your dharma. A good way to do this, which Jay recommends, is by keeping an activity journal. For each activity you do throughout the day, take note of whether you enjoyed the process and if other people enjoyed the result, simply for observational purposes. You can also find the reason, based on your varna, why you love doing something (kind of like the why ladder in Chapter 4). For example, you might want to start a blog (very obvious why I put this example) because you are fascinated by web design (Maker) or to motivate others to live a better life (Guide) or teach people something new (Leader) or just discuss some interesting ideas you've came up with (Creator). You can always push yourself more from your dharma, and extend it beyond your comfort zone, such as making a podcast, ebook, and/or YouTube channel with goes along with your blog. How you use your dharma and varna is totally up to you!

Chapter 6: Routine

Wake up earlier

At the ashram, the monks that Jay Shetty studied with had to get up early. Jay wasn't used to the practice of waking up early without command. When he was younger, he would be woken up by sudden stimuli, such as his mother's voice or the sound of an alarm clock. From his experience as a monk, Jay learned that waking up early can have a profound effect on the rest of your day. Not only does waking up early free up more time, but it also adds higher value (remember Chapter 1?) to your day. In order to be able to wake up earlier than usual though, you must go to sleep at an earlier time than usual. The magic number for sleeping hours, based on what I know, is eight. In fact, as mentioned in this chapter, richest man Jeff Bezos commits to getting eight hours of sleep each night. Based on this logic, if you want to get up at 5 a.m., you're gonna have to be in bed by 9 p.m. or earlier. But you don't have to start there. Jay suggests you begin by waking up fifteen minutes earlier than usual, with a less invasive alarm to guide you. One important thing to keep in mind after you wake up: don't use a device to check the news and social media right away, as it can mess with your brain and add negativity to your day no matter how early you rise. There are some other, more beneficial things you can try instead of that as part of your morning routine, which I will discuss next.

Make some T.I.M.E for your morning routine

T-Thankfulness: expressing gratitude (covered later in Chapter 9) in some form, through journaling, prayer, and/or visualization

I-Insight: gaining knowledge, such as by reading a book or listening to a podcast (I've recently started a new routine of watching a motivation-themed video every morning, as provided by the daily podcast 7 Good Minutes and online video hub InspireCastTV)

M-Meditation: can be fifteen minutes spent on breathing, visualization, or chanting, whatever form of meditation works for you

E-Exercise: yoga, cardio, stretching, weight training, the list goes on...

Your evening routine should prepare you for the next morning

If you want a healthy morning, you should give yourself a healthy evening too. Before going to bed, instead of watching your favourite show on Netflix, plan what you want to do tomorrow, but don't stress about it all night. Also, find a uniform, not for while you sleep, but to wear the next morning. That way, you'll have less decisions to make in your day. Finally, and most important, be aware of your thoughts and emotions as you go to bed. "The emotion you fall asleep with at night is most likely the emotion you'll wake up with in the morning," Jay says (and it's written in bold, so it's very important).

See everything with fresh eyes (mindfully)

Jay recalls how in the ashram, he and the other monks would walk the same path every day. Sounds boring at first, but they were asked to open their eyes for something new every time. They didn't just have to see the thing, rather notice it. This exercise is designed to encourage attention, even in the most familiar situations. Finding the new as we go about our day allows us to be open and enjoy the little things the world brings us. 

Give your life some sound

When there's too much noise around us, it can take a huge toll on our cognition, the way we think. Instead of finding a way to not listen to that noise, we should choose the sounds we listen to every day. A nice alarm tone, an uplifting song, a podcast, motivational speeches, ASMR (I won't judge). Find sounds that make you feel good and are which are in tune with the feelings of the day.

Assign energy to location and memory to time

What do you do in your bedroom? Most likely, you sleep, but you probably also watch TV, do work, eat, and/or exercise. That's too much activities, or "energies" for one bed. Instead, divide your energies into spaces around your house (or in your community if you're someone who enjoys writing your future best-selling novel at a Starbucks cafe). Your bedroom is for sleeping, while you can watch TV in the basement/living room, work in a separate office space, eat at a dining table, and exercise in a mini gym space (or the actual gym, but there's a pandemic going on right now, so working out from home is the safer option). What's more, if you want to remember to do something more easily, set the activity for the same time every day. For example, if you want to workout more, you could set your schedule to work out at say, 9 a.m. every day (You could add exceptions if you are busy certain days though). An even better technique is pairing a new habit with an existing one; for instance, setting the workout time for just after you wake up or come back from work. With this practice, you actually end up making less excuses.

Most of us don't actually multitask

It's rare to truly multitask, as only 2% of people can do it effectively. What most of us think of as multitasking is actually rapid switches between single tasks, or "serial tasking". This can ruin our attention span and our ability to recall. The more effective alternative is doing one thing at a time, or single tasking. Why check your Facebook feed while working on an assignment, when you can just finish the dang assignment, then check your Facebook feed? Heck, how about not checking your Facebook feed in the first place?! The only exceptions, situations where it's okay to multitask, are habits that pair well together, such as listening to music while doing chores. 

Chapter 7: The Mind

Having a monkey mind can cause stress

As I mentioned in the first instalment of this series, most of us are dominated with a monkey mind, which switches between thoughts quickly, like a monkey swings from branch to branch. However, these "branches" are usually negative: comparison, criticism, fear, self-doubt, and stress. These negative thoughts we have will never be resolved if we keep thinking this way. 

The monk mind is a more mature version of the monkey mind

I already compared the monkey mind with the monk mind in the first instalment, but one way to think of these two minds is as parent and child. The monkey mind is like a child: demanding, impatient, impulsive, sensitive, and bad at knowing what value really is. Meanwhile, the monk mind is more like an adult or parent: intuitive, aware, and in control if well-trained. Maintaining a strong relationship between the parent and child requires balance, as should be the case with your monk mind (conscious) and monkey mind (subconscious).

The mind itself is like a chariot

Another analogy that the Hindus use is about the mind being like a chariot. There are five horses, and each of them represent one of the five senses (Note: according to science, we have way more than five senses, but let's not overcomplicate things). These horses are drawn by reins, which represent the mind. The reins are driven by a charioteer, which represents our intellect/awareness. When the charioteer is asleep, the horses have full control of the reins and are driven by the stimuli around them. But if the charioteer is awake, it doesn't let the horses take the lead, instead driving the chariot itself. In that same way, if we can train our minds to be more aware, then we won't be tempted by whatever our senses point us to.

We can only truly control our emotional sensations

Jay discusses a study that was done on monks to see how they experienced pain as compared to non-meditators. The subjects were hooked up to a device that triggers pain through the release of heat. The devices build up gradually to a maximum heat, then cool down. Brain scans of the monks as the device began to release its maximum heat showed intense activity in the areas of the brain that sense physical pain, but no activity in areas that sense emotional pain. When we experience pain, we feel some of it physically, through strong sensations generated by nerve receptors, and some of it emotionally, such as through anxiety and fear. But as is the case for the experienced monks, we are capable of controlling the emotions we associate with pain. In order to achieve this state, we should start by taking control of sensory input, since they can trigger intense emotions, both pleasant and unpleasant. Examples include tidying up your house (Marie Kondo style), giving up on sugary goods, deleting social media apps, throwing away things that remind you of trauma or hardship, and anything addictive. As for the triggers you don't have control over, such as the words and actions of other people (as an advertisement or in the real world), you could visualize yourself detaching from that thing, or just focus on whatever is under your control. 

Your subconscious can be changed through consciousness

In an older blog post, I've addressed an important lesson about the subconscious and conscious mind from Dr. Bruce Lipton: that your conscious actions eventually become your unconscious, or subconscious actions. However, this can also be the case for our thoughts. When we ride the same train of negative thoughts, judgments about ourselves that we're not good enough, every day, it becomes engrained in our subconscious, and it repeats, over and over again, in our head without us even having to think. The solution? Wake up! Activate your conscious mind, and let it catch the negative thoughts that the subconscious mind plays and reframe them. "I suck at X." becomes "I'm going to get better at X by doing Y." "I'm not attractive." becomes "I can be more attractive by doing Z." Turning your problems into solutions is the monk way of thinking. As for action, take tiny steps every day so you can eventually solve the problems that have been circulating your subconscious mind and that have been translated through your conscious mind.

Note: The next section of this chapter discusses detachment, but I've already covered that in the summary of Chapter 3 in the first instalment of this series. Basically, Jay is saying that when training the mind, we should detach from our thoughts, because we are not our minds, rather we're an observer of our minds. Jay also mentions austerities, such as fasting or taking a break from social media. We don't all have to practice these for a super prolonged amount of time, but trying them out allows us to think more positively and have a healthier mind.

Tuning in to your mind is like exercise

Your brain isn't a muscle in an anatomical sense, but you can train it like one. The more we train our brains to experience less negativity and more awareness, the easier it will become to do it, while our minds will grow in the process. Eventually, positive thinking transforms from a conscious action to a subconscious action.

Chapter 8: Ego

The ego can hide your identity

As mentioned in Chapter 1, our identity can have many layers, by us being different people in different situations. Our ego can penetrate through all these layers, making our real selves more blurry. We create a false, more vain version of ourselves, hiding our insecurities, fears, scars, all our inner demons. We are driven to lie in order to seem like we're right about everything, even if we know something's false. To understand the real you a little more, think about what you do when there's no one around. This reminds me of the C.S. Lewis quote: "Integrity is doing the right thing even when no one is watching." The choices we make, whether alone or with people, should better reflect integrity, otherwise we aren't truly good inside.

Discrimination can worsen the ego

To build more confidence against others, the ego ranks people based on certain attributes that are different from ours, whether it'd be race, body type, disability, orientation, religion, gender, socioeconomic status, politics, et cetera. From this act can stem endless forms of discrimination such as sexism, racism, and classism. Why judge others when we can just acknowledge that all humans are similar in a sense? Our DNA is at least 99% identical, so we're all part of the same family. As Jay mentions in this section, the Dalai Lama said, "Under the bright sun, many of us are gathered together with different languages, different styles of dress, even different faiths. However, all of us are the same in being humans, and we all uniquely have the thought of 'I' and we're all the same in wanting happiness and in wanting to avoid suffering." True. While egoistic people treat unlike people differently than people like them, monks treat everyone as equals, and with the Dalai Lama's thought in mind, we as humans must do the same.

Judgement always backfires

When we judge or criticize someone, it will always come back to us in some form, but not just through karma. Projection is the act of expressing whatever we're experiencing which we don't want to deal with to others. Through judgment, we project our own demons without admitting that we're the ones experiencing them. For example, if we offend someone for being unworthy, then we feel that we're unworthy. Lastly, remember: You're never any better than the person you're criticizing. You're just making yourself worse.

Even if you already know it, you should see it with new eyes every time

Our ego can hold us back from learning more and growing, since we assume that we know everything, but we don't. And it goes beyond the individual level. Governments, institutions and corporations have adopted this sort of ego, or "soldier mindset", as Julia Galef calls it (watch her TED Talk, please! It's so good!), into their cultures. They enact their policies and carry out their operations without a care in the world about what others think. These days, we've all heard the story about how the newly distributed Pfizer and Moderna vaccines (both mRNA by the way) proved to be more than 90% effective. But what if I told you that percentage was only true in preventing symptomatic COVID-19, with no evidence that it can halt asymptomatic transmission of the disease, which is why the mask stays on after vaccination? Even you hear the same story more than once, there's always new information to take in every time, which is why you should approach everything with open eyes and open ears.

Humility heals the ego

The ego is either one of two extremes: we're the best and we're the worst. Humility is about understanding what is between the extremes of our ego. It recognizes what we're good at while recognizing what we need to work on. To heal our ego, we must remember the bad we've done to others and the good others have done for us, while forgetting about the good we've done to others and the bad others have done for us. Staying attached to the latter two fuels our ego. We can also take time to think about these actions, such as receiving a compliment or arguing with someone, and step into the other's shoes in order to respond the right way.

Confidence is different from ego

People usually associate the words "self-esteem" and "confidence" with arrogance; however, that's never the case. As ego is a high state of selfishness, confidence is a high state of humility. While the ego wants all the attention and money in the world, confidence doesn't care if it gets attention or money at all. The ego tells lies to cover up its demons, while confidence admits its demons candidly, in true authentic fashion. Finally, the ego fears and defends what others think of it, while confidence filters others' opinions and sticks the being its best self.

You are not your success or your failure

Previously, I've mentioned detaching from your fears, thoughts, and possessions, but how about detachment from your achievements and setbacks? Don't feel too proud for your success nor too ashamed about your failures. Embrace humility and be grateful for the life you've lived and all the investment that you and others have made into it. After all, it does take a village to lift someone up to their full potential.

Next time: I recap the final section of "Think Like A Monk", on how to use the skills you've acquired in the previous sections to give back beyond the individual level. Catch you later!