If You're INSECURE & Trying To Seek VALIDATION From Others - WATCH THIS | Jay Shetty

when was a time where you just didn't feel like you were man enough i'd probably say my whole life like it's it feels like such a real thing because when i was growing up as a young boy i was overweight and i was one of the few ethnic minorities in my area and so i was bullied at primary school and i'd always be picked on or the mick taken out of whether it was racism or whether it was about my weight or or body image and all of those kind of issues and i actually didn't

take it that personally because i'd go home and my mom loved me oh and so i was raised i feel like i was literally raised by my mom and that's one of the reasons why i never felt man enough because my mother was the most involved parent my dad was very much aloof let me make my decisions failures choices but my mother was always there my mother taught me how to shave my face she taught me my skincare routine she taught like my my mother was like the first person to teach me a lot of

what people's dads usually teach them and that wasn't because my dad was a bad father it's just that that was his style and we have a great friendship now but uh with my mom she was the one involved so i never felt man enough because i didn't have a man teaching me man things or however you want to put it i was always surrounded by my mother my sister and powerful women in my life and i wasn't really exposed to alpha males or any of those figures so how's that manifest like do people call your

mama's boy did they call you names yeah all of it i remember when when someone would pick on me at school i'd go tell my mom that my mom would come to school to like you know like they're like why are you treating my son like this and that's like the worst nightmare for a kid right it's like it's like everyone in the school is like oh gosh look it's jay's mom again and you know my mom can be pretty protective of of me especially when i was younger and so she'd get right in there

with the headmistresses office or the dean's office and just be like can't have this happen and then everyone would find out and then and would laugh at you more and so i think i think it ended up i actually think it just made me more of who i am today but uh when i went to high school i started to crave more male attention so going from that i then went to an all-boys school oh wow so i went to an all-boys school from the age of 11 to 18 and at that point you have

no one else's validation or recognition to get apart from other boys right now i want to fit in did you so did you seek or crave that attention absolutely that's when i was like oh now i want to be seen as strong and i want to be seen as cool and i want to be seen as the guy and i want to be seen as this and that and so i think that manifested in being quite competitive and so i wanted to get a spot on the school's rugby team i wanted to get a spot

on the school's swimming team i wanted to get a spot on this you play rugby i did i think a big part of it was that masculine feeling that it gave me and so i think it manifested in insecurities at high school so as i got older i actually think between 14 to 18 it manifested as insecurities of seeking validation and recognition for that which was not me so i wasn't looking to be loved because i was empathetic and compassionate and kind which is how my mom raised me i was looking to be liked because

i was bold and courageous and strong and physical and competitive and so you almost start looking for validation for the things that you're not so you became you were performing absolutely every day absolutely absolutely masculinity feels like uh like it it's a total dance right it's a total choreography and you're kind of watching other men like do it right like even the handshake like how am i supposed to like do the hug then the pull then the um there's like a pull there's a tap sometimes no no it's the bra yeah there's a lot of

different uh it's very funny um not funny but it can be entertaining as a woman to just kind of watch that and be like i'm so happy i don't have to figure um that out but but i want to come back to the you know your point about service which you really you know opened up our conversation with i feel like we over emphasize service for women right that you are at the service of the people around you and that's your value in the world and we kind of under emphasize service for men and it

seems like for you finding service as purpose was really very meaningful part of your identity i'm wondering how you see you know us being able to make that connection what does service look like for men and and how is it tied to masculinity yeah i i mean i saw what i was saying was i saw my mother's sacrifice growing up so my mother was raising me and my sister deeply with love i've always felt loved by my mother and then she would also have her own business so i didn't even know i didn't know she

was an entrepreneur but she was an entrepreneur which was so weird because she never made herself out to be an entrepreneur and so she had her own business she started it so that she could work more flexibly and she was taking care of my sister she'd drop us to school she'd pick us up she'd make us dinner she'd be working as well and at one point became the main breadwinner in the family as well and so i saw my mom serve or sacrifice in this way and so i feel like i got trained by watching

her and observing her and then when i met the monks who the predominant monks that i lived with were all men and service was at the core of their entire being so our teachers would always tell us that the only way a culture succeeds is if everyone wants to serve everyone else and so that was like the encouragement of that culture and that's where it became so real to me and for me service and masculinity go hand in hand but service and humanity go hand in hand and i think this is it's slightly veering off

from where we are but i think it's an important point to make is when i lived as a monk we stopped identifying as men and women and we were asked to identify as consciousness and that distinction and difference just kind of created this huge like weight of my shoulders because now it's like oh i'm not masculine or feminine or i'm not this or that i'm just you just are i'm just i'm just consciousness i'm a human i'm a soul and whatever you want to call it i'm energy and that energy is wired for service and

so the energy inside each of us at this table is wired for service so the way it connects is that we've been designed to serve but unfortunately and i've heard that a lot from from women is that often it turns into being a martyr or or going to the point of self-sacrifice and self-sabotage because of how it's encouraged more and i was speaking at this event and a man came up to me he was probably in his 40s and i had just told a story about how when i met the monks at 18 they shifted

my perspective to service and he said to me he goes you're so lucky that you got that at 18. i was like yeah i know trust me like i'm so grateful to my teachers he goes no no no really he goes i only realized that someone else mattered when i had a child and he was like that's the only that was the first time i realized that someone apart from me mattered and and you know he was obviously being really vulnerable and i appreciated him sharing that and i met it with compassion but i think

that's the case that for a lot of men i don't think we're trained early on in our life to realize that not just do our kids matter or our partners matter but everyone matters and more people matter well you're rewarded if you don't right like on the rugby team you know sort of the culture you're describing where you get rewarded if you are individualistic competitive and you know have this kind of attitude and again for women it's the opposite we we get heavily punished when we when we take on those characteristics that's true yeah but

that ungendering is so interesting right that happened um and and that surplus of energy that you felt is something that we could all access right if we weren't weighed down by these gender stereotypes it's like the freedom right yeah so you're saying that you had sight you had knowledge growing up by your mother and you kind of held that to yourself i gave it up because i saw it as less than so it's not even that i held it back i gave it up and substituted it you traded it in for your man card correct

for this toxicity which then obviously encouraged more people to go down that path and then i think the best thing i've done to try and remove that is uh when i became a monk i became the mentor to a lot of young men in london and those young men are still involved in my life so i've known them since they were like 16 to 18 years old they're all like 26 to 28 years old now and so i feel like those 25 guys they know who they are like those are like my favorite success story

because those i i just see them make amazing decisions with their partners their careers like they're all most of them in relationships now and i see the husbands and the fathers they're becoming and i mean it's it's you know many of them become fathers before i am one and it's just inspiring that they're also leading that way and showing me that people don't have to make as bad as mistakes or go as far as i did here are three signs you're struggling with a lack of purpose number one you feel pressured to know what you

want to do with your life number two you've lost interest in your own life and feel disconnected number three you don't know what your skills are or you feel you lack them hope is not lost you can get through this having purpose and meaning in our lives helps guide us through the ups and downs and create structure in our day-to-day life that's why i've partnered with calm the leading app for mental health and wellness the app has a library with thousands of meditations songs to help you relax and focus and sleep stories to help you

get a good night's rest and now you can find the daily j a daily series where i'm sharing proven tools and techniques to improve your mindset and mental health in a matter of minutes