Stop Being a Dumb Monkey and Start Using Your Brain

Jun 30 (edited) in Self Improvement & Motivation

In our fast-paced modern world, we're constantly bombarded by external noise, both in our personal and school lives. What if we could develop a mindset that not only filters out this noise but also helps clarify our own intentions, free from the influence of others? This is the central question addressed in Jay Shetty's book, "Think Like a Monk."

Jay Shetty, a former monk turned celebrity YouTuber, takes the ancient wisdom and traditions of monks and teaches us how to apply them to live less anxious and more meaningful lives in the 21st century. Drawing from his own experiences and ancient wisdom, Jay outlines how monk-like thinking offers valuable lessons to combat the anxieties and pressures we face in the modern world.

"Think Like a Monk" is divided into three main parts:

Letting Go
Growing
Giving

The first part of the book focuses on four key pillars:

Finding our identity
Reducing negativity
Detaching from fear
Learning to live intentionally

Firstly, we need to address our identity, which as Jay says, is intrinsically wrapped up in our values. He points out that actually a lot of the values that we think we hold, they're not necessarily our own, but we've acquired them through societal conditioning.

He writes: "When we tune out the opinions, expectations, and obligations of the world around us, we begin to hear ourselves."

The idea is to filter out the noise and create space to consider our own values. This allows us to direct our lives towards higher values like:

Gratitude
Service
Truthfulness
Compassion

which ultimately propel us towards happiness, fulfillment, and meaning, and away from lower values such as:

Greed
Lust
Anger
Envy

These lower values push us towards anxiety, depression, and suffering.

Negativity is something we all encounter, and it can significantly affect our day if we let it. Jay reminds us that "negativity is a trait, not someone's identity." This perspective allows us to learn how to let it go.

Monks use a three-stage process to address negativity:

Awareness
Addressing
Amending

Jay distills this into a more accessible three-step process:

Spot
Stop
Swap

This process involves observing our negative thoughts or behaviors, reflecting on them, and then modifying our behavior. It's kind of what the Stoics used to talk about as well. And it's a really good way of addressing negativity, but it's also a pretty good way of addressing fear, which is part three of letting go.

Monks believe that the root cause of fear is closely related to attachment or our need to own and control things. If attachment is the cause of fear, Jay suggests that detachment is the cure. However, it's crucial to understand that detachment doesn't mean indifference. As Jay beautifully puts it:

"Detachment is not that you should own nothing, but that nothing should own you."

This concept aligns closely with Stoic philosophy, which teaches us to prefer certain things (like relationships, possessions, or achievements) without being overly attached to them.

The final aspect of letting go involves questioning ourselves to live more intentionally. Jay discusses how our motivations revolve around four main drivers:

Fear
Desire
Duty
Love

To understand our true motivations, Jay introduces the concept of the "why ladder." He writes:

"To live intentionally, we must dig to the deepest why behind the want."

And this can be quite a fun thing to do, or maybe not because it involves questioning ourselves until we can get to the root of our intentions. So if I were to ask myself, why did I want to make this post? One reason might be because I wanted to teach people and I want to help people and inspire others or things like that. Then if I asked, why did I want to do that? I'd probably say, well, I want to do that because it seems like fun. And if I asked, why does that seem like fun, then I might get to the true cause, which is that secretly, I crave the admiration and respect of other people. And that's why I'm making posts like this one.

Anyway, by living intentionally without negativity and without fear, we can begin to let go of the stuff that's been holding us back and we can make space for the second part of the book, which talks about growth.

The second part of the book focuses on three key principles:

Finding our purpose
Training our mind
Mastering our ego

Jay introduces the Sanskrit term "Dharma," which roughly translates to "your calling" in English. He says that finding our dharma isn't just about figuring out our passion and skill, but it's about figuring out our passion and skill that we have that can also be useful to others. He provides a formula for identifying our Dharma:

Passion + Expertise + Usefulness = Dharma

And there's a nice quote here, which is "our passion becomes our purpose when we use it to serve others".

If you're like me and you haven't quite figured out what your Dharma or your purpose or your mission or your calling in life is, then one way of figuring this out is by using the "quadrants of potential" as Jay calls it:

Skill, No Passion
Skill and Passion (ideal)
No Skill, No Passion
Passion, No Skill

Many of us spend most of our days in quadrant one, skill no passion or quadrant four passion no skill, but to actually grow and develop our purpose, we should aspire to be in quadrant two, skill and passion so that we're spending our time using our talents doing what we love.

And so ultimately by combining passion with expertise in the service of others crucially, that helps us figure out our purpose and figure out where we're gonna go.

There's a more capitalist version of the dharma equation, which is sort of how I think about it, which is that, what do I enjoy? What am I good at? And what will the market pay me for? And the market will pay me for something is sort of a proxy for this is useful to other people. So that's another way of framing it if you find the sort of idea of how can this be useful to others, a little bit hard to wrap your head around.

So step one, along this journey of personal growth is finding our purpose. And then step two is developing the right mindset. And here, Jay contrasts two mindsets: the "monk mind" and the "monkey mind."

Monkey Mind: Struggles with overthinking, busyness, and aimless thought-switching.
Monk Mind: Lifts us out of confusion and distraction, helping us find clarity, meaning, and direction.

And like, as I'm saying this, I'm recognizing that this stuff can seem very abstract. Firstly, you should read the book 'cause it's good and he gives more practical advice about this. And there's only so much I can squeeze into a post, but essentially to develop a monk mind, we can use the same spot-stop-swap framework mentioned earlier. This involves:

Recognizing destructive thought patterns
Stopping those patterns
Replacing them with more constructive thoughts

And so if we find ourselves thinking in a certain thought pattern, like recognizing a destructive pattern of thought, which itself takes some practice, we observe it. So we spot and then we stop thinking like it, and then we swap it for something else. And again, this is so much easier said than done, but it is ultimately the foundation that all sorts of things like cognitive behavioral therapy and stuff rest on this idea that yes, we can control our thoughts and our actions, but it's only through practice that we can actually do that.

Anyway, assuming we're all on this journey of getting a monk mind rather than a monkey mind, which is very much a work in progress for all of us. The third step on this path to growth is letting go of our ego.

Jay talks about how the monks teach that our ego is one of the main obstacles to our growth. And in fact, most of our egos are two-faced, in that one moment it's telling us that we're the best. And the next moment it's telling us that we are the absolute worst.

Jay talks about how true humility is understanding that our mind wants to take us to one of these extremes and instead opting for a middle ground where we're actively recognizing our weaknesses and working to improve on them and to help foster humility, there are two things we need to think about and two things we need to forget, Jay suggests we:

Remember the bad we've done to others
Remember the good others have done for us
Forget the good we've done for others
Forget the bad others have done to us

By consistently practicing this, we can restrain our ego's selfish tendencies and increase our overall gratitude.

The final and perhaps most important part of the book focuses on looking beyond ourselves and thinking about how we can serve others.

The previous ideas of letting go and growing are ultimately about detaching ourselves from our own selfishness so that we're in a position to give back to society and to others through service.

While giving to others is fundamental to service, monks teach that there's a reciprocal exchange: when we serve others, we actually feel good about ourselves. As Jay puts it:

"Selflessness heals the self."

There's apparently loads of research about this as well, that says that when you go after compassionate goals, like serving other people in some way, that actually leads to your own increased inner feelings of happiness and contentment

Monks identify four ways in which giving service to others benefits us:

Firstly, it connects us. I.e., You have to actually go out into the world to help other people or put yourself out there, which is, you know, a connecting thing.
Secondly, it amplifies gratitude, like giving to others and helping other people helps us realize how grateful we are for the things that we do have.
Thirdly, it increases compassion. I.e. it helps open up our eyes to the needs of other people, which again is a good thing for ourselves
And fourthly, it builds self-esteem by giving us a mission and a meaning beyond just satisfying the self.

"Think Like a Monk" offers a compelling argument for adopting monk-like thinking in our hectic modern world. By learning to let go of negativity and fear, growing through purpose and mindfulness, and giving through service to others, we can find greater peace, fulfillment, and happiness in our lives.

While thinking like a monk might seem abstract, Jay Shetty makes a convincing case: in a world full of anxiety and frenetic energy, why wouldn't we want to learn from those who have mastered calm, peace, and happiness?

Again in this post, I've only touched on a sliver of the surface of the ideas in here. There's a lot more stuff. He illustrates it with lots of stories, which is very nice. And of course, you can check out Jay's YouTube channel, which is a constant source of inspiration for many millions of people.

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I'd love to hear your thoughts. Jay Shetty talks about the importance of identifying our true values. What's one value you hold that you're certain is truly your own, not influenced by societal conditioning?

The title was not meant to be rude, it is just a way to make people click the post, I know you are not a monkey mind only if you have been or will be using the strategies I have been sharing here!!

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