"The Modern Day Monk: A Recap of 'Think Like A Monk' by Jay Shetty" (Part 3)
Sorry, it's been so long since I posted the last part. I was just too busy with my final exams and assignments of Semester 1. But now, I'm back, and it's time for the final instalment of...
"The Modern Day Monk: A Recap of 'Think Like A Monk' by Jay Shetty"!
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Chapter 9: Gratitude
Gratitude has many benefits for your mental health
In this chapter, Jay mentions a study where participants had to either keep a gratitude or stressor journal for a day. Compared to the group that had to write down what was irritating them, the group writing down what they were grateful for reported lower levels of stress. Gratitude can also make us more self-aware and fulfilled. Maybe that's because gratitude isn't just a habit, it's a mindset.
It's easy to get stuck in gratitude once you've mastered it
The virtuous cycle happens once we're grateful for something. As a result of being grateful for that one thing, dopamine is released, and we want to be grateful for more and more and more. There's no such thing as being grateful and envious at the same time. Once you've tapped into a state of gratefulness, it's hard to free yourself from it.
Gratitude can be practiced daily through routine
Like anything, it's important that gratitude is practiced in order to make it a part of your life. You can do this by adding gratefulness into your daily routine. Try writing down or at least thinking about something you're grateful for each morning. You can also practice gratitude during each meal for all the elements that have prepared it. Finally, there are some gratitude meditations that Jay recommends in this book, such as visualization of a joyful memory and chanting. Each time you practice gratitude, your gratefulness will get bigger, like a muscle.
Gratitude goes beyond saying thanks
The way I like to think about gratitude is synonymous with optimism. Gratitude is about seeing the positive in every situation, even during the toughest times. Think about the opportunities (or as Helen Keller said, "When one door of happiness closes, another opens.") and lessons that come with each little moment, and you'll be truly grateful for everything in life.
Kindness and gratitude go hand-in-hand
Kindness and gratitude are like clownfish and coral (or another symbiotic relationship): one complements the other. Both are required to live a healthy and positive life. Being kind or grateful to someone can give them kindness or gratitude. They're just as contagious as all the negative stuff, even if we don't know the people who are affected.
Service is a way to exercise gratitude
If you want to go far with your gratitude, it's best to engage in acts of service. Not only will these acts of service benefit whoever you're serving, but also make you happy and healthy. I'm not saying it's selfish to help others, it's just more of a win-win situation for both parties. Volunteering is a good place to start, but you can also serve within your own household, school, workplace and community. Nowadays with video chat apps like Zoom, Skype, BlueJeans, Hangouts, and FaceTime, reaching out to others from afar is a simple way to brighten up their day. Whatever the case, service will broaden your horizons and expand your gratitude, especially for others unlike yourself.
Gratitude comes after forgiveness
In addition to the people who've helped us and saw the best in us, we can also be grateful for those we are unsure about by default, the complicated people in our lives. For these people, we can forgive them for certain things they've done, then be grateful for other things they've done. Or as Jay puts it, "Try to find forgiveness for their failures and gratitude for their efforts". We don't have to do it for everyone, but we can at least try it for some people who've had an impact on our lives, whether positive, negative, or somewhere in between.
Chapter 10: Relationships
Strong relationships can boost longevity
It has been found that the places where people live the longest and healthiest lives not only have certain health practices, but also have a strong sense of community. The populations of these places are interdependent: they can count on one another to help one another, proving once and for all how much strong relationships with others matter in our day-to-day lives. That especially applies when considering personal growth.
The energy you give will always come back to you
While in the ashram, Jay expected that his acts of service to others would come back to him. Then, he got upset, since he felt that no matter how much love he gave, it wasn't being returned, even though he had a loving and caring personality. One of his teachers said that it wasn't his personality that was the issue, it was his previously mentioned expectations. He suggested that love is like a circle. Though the recipient of your love won't always give you love in return, the energy you passed on will come back to you through another person. It's a lot like karma, actually. As Jay states (in bold letters, so it's very important), "Too often we love people who don't love us, but we fail to return the love of others who do". Instead of building a feedback loop between us and another person to represent our love, we should instead build a network consisting of different kinds of connections between us and different people. With this, we recognize how love and care will come back to us through people within this network after we love and care for certain people within the network.
There are four types of trust
To further build trust between us and certain people in our relationship network, there are four qualities we look for. A person we trust should have at least one of the following. (Alliteration pattern ahead!)
1. Competence: One has the skill and experience to solve your issue.
2. Care: One cares about your well-being and needs to support you.
3. Character: One has strong morals and practice what they preach to better advise you.
4. Consistency: One is always available when you need them and can help you get through anything.
You have season, reason, and lifetime friends
Based on a poem from Jean Dominique Martin ("People come into your life for a reason, a season, or a lifetime."), there are three types of friends we'll have in our life. 'Reason' friends come in with intention and help you to grow, even through the most difficult of times. 'Season' friends are temporarily present, but they'll at least bring you energy for a certain period. Finally, 'lifetime' friends are with you the longest, and play a central role in your well-being and success. The quantity of each type of friend you'll have is much like a pyramid. Lifetime friends are whom you'll have the least of, while season friends are whom you'll have the most of, and the quantity of reason friends will be in the middle of these two. By being more open, we will accumulate more of these types of friends, no matter how often they come and go.
There are four stages of trust, which can be practiced daily
The following should very well correlate with how much experience you have in a specific relationship, though the time is takes to complete each stage does vary.
Neutral Trust- We see positive qualities of a person that we like and may associate with trust, however it doesn't equate trust, since trust doesn't equal likability.
Transitional daily practice: committing to the promises you've made
Contractual Trust- We can trust a person to do something for us as long as we do something in return, or the other way around.
Transitional daily practice: giving compliments and constructive feedback
Mutual Trust- We do a favour for a person because we trust them, expecting an uncertainly delayed something from them in return.
Transitional daily practice: standing by the other party when they've experienced something hard
Pure Trust- No matter what happens to any party in the relationship, we'll always have each other's backs.
One more thing to note is that not all levels of trust will be achieved with every person in your network, no matter what kind of relationship you have with them. Graphing each person by the highest level of trust you have with them, you'll probably see a slight number of people at pure trust, but a lot of people at neutral trust, as well as lesser numbers at contractual and mutual trust. That's okay, no one is perfect, and not everyone thinks like we do.
Connection is more powerful than attraction
There are five motivations for connection, which don't just apply to romantic relationships. The first, physical, is what we usually think of as attraction, loving how they look, their presence, or just the thought of them. Then, there's material, a love of accomplishments and possessions they afford, and intellectual, a love for how they think and come up with ideas. However, the last two types, emotional (understanding of your feelings) and spiritual (sharing of deep goals and values), are more powerful; they encourage stronger and longer bonds with others. The problem with the last two motivators is that they're not what most people are attracted to, rather the first three. Even my expectations for an ideal partner aren't as focused on the latter two than the former three. As Jay said in one of his videos, "Compatibility (the latter two) is more important than chemistry (the former three)", so choose your partners wisely.
Quality of time matters more than quantity
What would you rather do? Spend 4 hours sitting with Alex while checking IG on your phone or spend 2 hours talking and sitting with Alex? The former is a high quantity, low quality situation, while the latter is a low quantity, high quality situation. When it comes to relationships, any kind of relationship whether it'd be with family, friends, a significant other, or a complete stranger, quality should matter more than quantity. For monks, it's all about giving people your full attention and presence, and not so much about how long this is done for. From a scientific perspective, high quality of moments brings up strong emotions which get associated with memories of this moment that will stick around forever, which you'll eventually be most likely to think about when you think about a certain relationship.
Chapter 11: Service
The highest purpose is to live in service
When writing this book, Shetty decided to save the best for last, in other words, saving the most important lesson he learned as a monk for the last chapter of this book: living in service. Though you may be struggling to help yourself, the only sure path to healing yourself is through helping others. To understand the concept of service better, think about what nature does (the best lessons in life can be learned through the observation of nature). Trees give oxygen through the absorption of carbon dioxide. Plants provide us with nutrients. Water hydrates us. The sun warms us up and the wind cools us down. The purpose of everything in the universe is to serve, and since you're part of the universe, you're no different.
Service is good for the soul
We are born to love and serve, while hate and judgment is just something we learn overtime. Luckily, the fact that goodness is innate should remind us that service has a huge benefit for our bodies and for our souls. Service allows us to connect, while improving levels of gratitude (Chapter 9), compassion, and self-esteem (Chapter 8). Despite most of us not being able to serve 24/7 like monks do, we can still adopt a service mindset, where we approach every situation with selflessness. Easier said than done in a world of media and distractions, but it's possible to achieve as long as we believe.
The biggest benefit comes with the smallest things
Monks are the best examples of service, but that doesn't necessarily mean they serve in the grandest of gestures. They practice small acts of kindness towards others every day inside and outside their resting place, which can compound to have a big impact on their daily lives and the world. Their secret is about consistency, combined with intention, but with the expectation of a potentially delayed reward of course.
How much you give shouldn't depend entirely on your wealth
Sure, it's important we take care of ourselves and make some cash, but how or if you serve shouldn't depend on how much time and money you have. It takes a change of mindset through detachment to realize that wealth doesn't matter when you're serving and take action.
We should have a reason to serve
Like anything we do in life, we should serve with intention. As mentioned in Chapter 4, no intention is pure, so we can serve for a variety of reasons. Going back to the four fundamental motivations, let's say you choose to serve by doing small acts of kindness for people on the street. You may want to do it because you're afraid of what others think (fear), you want to look good (desire), you've been encouraged by someone to do it (duty), or you just want to make someone's day (love). Jay's tip: serve within your dharma. Whatever the situation you're in, there's always an opportunity to serve, but do it for a reason.
We are motivated to serve when we think of the world as one family
Jay tells the story of Kailash Satyarthi, whose purpose in life was to put an end to child labour. While running a campaign enlisting 100 million youth to speak out against child labour, he was threatened many times. The only thing Satyarthi felt was missing was compassion. He cared about the millions of child labourers as if they were his children, his family. When we think of the world as a single family, we start to feel certain emotions for the pain of others, as well as help them whenever we can, even if we can't directly serve them. In other words, we treat others differently once we adopt this mindset.
How we serve should be based on our pain
Think about the times you've suffered, felt lost, or were in need. You serve best when you follow your heart, when you serve those who are going through the same and need guidance or support. Or as motivational YouTuber and fellow Canadian Evan Carmichael puts it, "Your purpose comes from your pain". For example, maybe you were once a struggling entrepreneur or freelancer, so it's best for you to serve other entrepreneurs/freelancers who are currently struggling to set up their business, maybe by creating a website, podcast or hotline. By serving this way, you let others know they're not alone. Even the smallest acts like texting, calling, or posting a message on social media can help fulfill your serving purpose. Actually, it should be called just "purpose", not "serving purpose"
Well, that's it. We've reached the end of the series! If you want to buy Jay's book for yourself or as an act of service to someone, you can find it on Amazon here. Jay also has episodes of his #1 podcast On Purpose which are free excerpts from this book: Introduction, Chapter 1, and Chapter 2.
Have a great February, and I'll see you in the next post!
Thank you Angelina for your summary and effort , reading your blog was pleasant ,the way you explain'it was simple and totally clear , hopefully it'll enlighten our path forward .
ReplyDelete"If you light a lampe for someone else it will also brighten your path".