Think like a Monk Summary by Jay Shetty

To think like a monk, you don’t need to leave your home and go to any mountain, you can think like a monk even while living a modern and happy life. All you have to do is train your mind to see the new ideas thoughts and values. Now the question comes that what is the need to think like a monk?

Think like a monk summary by jay Shetty

On this Jay Shetty says if you want to learn about innovation then you have to meet Elon Musk, if you want to learn about business then you have to go to Warren Buffett or Jeff Bezos and if you want to learn about basketball then you have to go to Lebron James or  Michael Jordan, in the same way, if you want to train your mind for calmness and peace, you have to go to a monk.

Monks are experts at calmness, happiness, discipline, and clarity all these are very strong characteristics of monk mind. And to Build the same thing the author tells us to think like a monk.

Let us know how you too can develop a monk mindset.

Find Your True Identity

Suppose you are standing in front of a mirror and there is a lot of dust on it, will you be able to see your face in that mirror? Obviously not. The author says this mirror is your identity, on which the dust of the influence of others is dusted. Because of that, you are unable to see your real identity. Influenced by someone’s wealth, we start running after money, or by being impressed by someone’s looks, we start changing our body and style. You will know your true identity only when you know your own value. Now it may sound very easy but many of us do not know our self-value. Whom we are rubbing shoulders with, they almost have total control over our minds. 

If one of your favorite celebrities says that money is everything, you start running after money, and if another one says that health is everything, you change your mind again.

This is totally wrong, you are basically adopting their identity. Now, Note one thing that getting inspired by someone or learning something from someone is not wrong but you have to think that what’s your internal values.   The content you are consuming like movies, news, television source video games, and more, all these factors together put the dust of influence on your mind.

The author calls it external noise which forces you again and again that what you have to do or what you not to do and only after clearing that external noise your real identity will come out.

Jay Shetty says that there are two types of values:

  1. Higher Value 
  2. Lower Value

Higher values will give us happiness, fulfillment, and meaningful life, on the other hand, lower values will give us anxiety, depression, and suffering. Your values also depend on your free time, action, and money spending behavior. That’s why in order to find your real value you have to follow two-step. The first one is, you have to Self-Audit yourself. You have found out how you spend your free time, how much social media you use in a day, and how you utilize your money. Your expenses also reveal the value you are living on.

self audit yourself

The second one is Self-isolation. You have to choose a place where there should neither be any human nor any distracting things like mobile or laptop. Now, in that personal space after avoiding your outer noise, you have to ask yourself that what do you believe in. You have to analyze what is right in your opinion and what’s wrong. You have to think about whether your values fit with the person you are living with. If you do not understand whether other people fit with my values or not, then ask yourself a question whether I will be closer to my goals or will I be further away from them if I stay with these people. You should spend time with people who can understand your values and help you to improve. 

When you give yourself space, time, and stillness, you can easily clear out the dust and can listen to the inner voice.

Remove Negativity

You will meet many different types of negative people daily who every time focus on negative things rather than positivity. If you expand the negative people a little more, then some people always keep taking out the mistakes of others, some people always keep complaining, some people are always just criticizing others, some people know the limitation but still, they pressurize others, Some people always talk by giving negative orders, while there are some people who always compare instead of appreciating. 

That’s for sure out of all these types of people, some type of people will be in your life. Every day you’ll come across some negative people and it’s not possible to avoid everybody. That‘s why to deal with those people, Jay Shetty has given us three methods to follow

Three methods to follow given by Jay Shetty:

  1. Allocate Time 
  2. 75/25 Rule
  3. Don’t Get Involved
allocate time, 75/25 rule, don't get involved

Allocate Time: Inside every person, there is a limit to tolerate, similarly, every person has a limit to bear, some people you can withstand a day, some people a month or a week, and some people you can take a minute or a second can’t even bear. That is why to decide in advance how much time to spend with which person so that even the limit of suffering is not crossed. With this, you can save yourself from that person’s negativity. 

75/25: According to this rule, you have to spend 75% time with your like-minded people and the people who inspire you. And try to spend only 25% of your time or even less on the negative people. It will help you to keep positivity inside you. 

Don’t Get Involved: Stop involving yourself in every problem and discussion till then you don’t have total knowledge and experience about that particular topic. So this could be the solution to outside negativity but negativity can happen inside us too. To get rid of inside negativity the author tells to use this three step method: 

spot, stop, swap

Spot>Stop>swap: Many people might have told you to control your thought and stay motivated. But it is not that simple, many times we get good or bad thoughts but you don’t have to control your thoughts instead try to understand them and change them with another thought. The first step is Spot, which means you have to find out the negative feeling and figure out that what you are feeling actually. Then the second step is Stop, you have to stop there and think that why are you feeling that emotion and go to the root cause of it. The third step is Swap means replacing that particular thought with a good thought or gratitude. 

For example, Brain Acton is a computer programmer and an internet entrepreneur. He applies on Twitter for a job but he got rejected. On this Acton thought, whatever happened it’s okay, it may have happened that some good thing will be waiting for me.  Then he applied on Facebook but he got rejected again. Again he thought, It’s okay, maybe a good thing is going to happen. After many more rejections Brain Acton doesn’t complain about it, he took these things as gratitude. And after some time, while working on his private project, he made such a thing which Facebook bought for 19 billion dollars, the name of that app is WhatsApp.

Another example, If you dilute a spoon of salt with half a glass of water, it’ll taste salty but if you dilute the same amount of salt with 10-liter water then you’ll barely be able to taste that saltiness. In our case salt is the rejection and the water is our perspective. If our perspective of seeing life becomes big then will not be able to depress us. 

One more thing you should remember is if you get happy with your success only and gets jealous of others then your happiness will be limited but if you get happy with others’ success as well then you’ll be limitless happy. 

Know Your Intention

When you want to achieve something but after achieving that particular thing, you didn’t get pleasure, it means your intention for achieving that thing was wrong. It is very important to understand the intention behind our every work. Either you do some work because of fear or any personal desire, some work as a duty, and some out of love. 

For example, many people want to be rich but after becoming rich some people don’t get that satisfaction and happiness. The reason behind that is the wrong intention. Actually becoming rich can not be the natural desire of humans, If we expand a little bit the mentality of this getting rich, you’ll find that people want to become rich so that they can live in a big house and can wear expensive clothes. If we expand this mentality a bit more then you’ll find that people want to buy expensive things only because they can get respect and good treatment from others.   

So if you know that your deep desire is to get love and respect, then you should work on that deep desire and not on the surface level desire. 

Remember one thing that your right intention can give you true satisfaction. 

Know your Space and Time 

Jay Shetty says every place has its own energy and time has memory. Every location gives us a different kind of aura. That’s why in the library people can read properly and not in the garden. That’s why the author says, we should assign a specific place for every work.  Now, Time saves a kind of memory, it means when you do the same work at the same time every day so that work sets on your mind and the work gets automated. You don’t an alarm clock to remind you that work. So, if you want to be more productive then do that same work at the same time at the same place. 

Serve Others 

Shetty says, the highest purpose of human beings is to serve others. The work that you like and the world needs it, then doing that work becomes your religion. This particular concept is called Misson in the IKIGAI book. Helping others should be your ultimate goal because help and love a circle not like a one-to-one exchange. It means If you help someone, then you will get its result in return in some other way. 

When the problem comes when you expect love and help from the same person whom you helped. So the more you spread love unconditionally, the more it will come back to you.

Wrapping up

This was the summary of the “Think like a monk” book. If you liked it then don’t forget to share this on your social media handle and if you have any questions then let us know by commenting down below.

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