One of the most perennial and formidable trials of adulthood is navigating the daily reality of being tugged in multiple directions. Confronting the teeming signals that abound real life and online is enough to give any man grief. It’s by no accident that the volume and scale of the discourse on mental health has been exponentially amplified, the more we progress into a modernity that is increasingly technologised in noise and confusion. So how do you navigate the mind over matter?
To ascribe the ‘icon’ tag to Jay Shetty is to acknowledge his impact and appeal. As a starting point, it must be underlined that Shetty is a practitioner of his own lived truth. As a former Vedic monk, he stripped himself of worldly concerns in an ashram in Mumbai where he was domiciled. But his proximity to spirituality isn’t confined to the idyllic, but rather rooted in a realism that anyone can adopt into their daily lives. His videos have amassed more than four billion views and gained him over 20 million followers, making him one of the most-watched and credible people on the Internet and in the room.
As an especially bright torch is lit for mental health this month, Shetty shares with us some words of wisdom on mindful preservation for men, and why choosing self over chatter will always pay off in the long run.
“Mental health is a daily investment. It’s not something you achieve, it’s not a state that you arrive at and then you no longer have to do any work.”
Redirect your emotions
“When I lived as a monk, I was celibate for three years. The word for monk life in Sanskrit is ‘Brahmacharya’, meaning the proper direction of energy. You’re not trying to suppress sexual energy but you’re trying to direct it in a healthy way. I’m not discouraging anyone from being in relationships. I’m not telling anyone that they should be celibate, but have a period in your life, where you’re practising solitude so you’re comfortable with who you are. I look back and think, ‘I got three years of my life where I dedicated it to myself to understand myself’, that’s a really rare opportunity.”
Don’t stress about the final outcome
“Mental health is a daily investment. It’s not something you achieve, it’s not a state that you arrive at and then you no longer have to do any work. Just like our bodies have to be taken care of every single day, our minds have to be taken care of every single day.”
A friend in deed is a friend indeed
“I don’t want to give a meditation practice or mindfulness tool. Please pick up the phone to at least one person to build a relationship with them where you can truly talk about what’s actually going on. I think too many men suffer in silence. I hope that two friends read this and then pick up the phone and talk to each other. Because even if you’re just vulnerable with each other, that’s enough.”
Prioritise engagement over entertainment
“Everyone is competing with our phones and people will always lose to your phone because you can find anything on it. At any point, a person can’t keep up with that entertainment. But if we weren’t looking for entertainment but engagement, then a person supersedes. So, the first thing we have to do is ask more interesting questions if we want to find people more interesting and for us to be interested… it’s one of the reasons why, I think, we developed a liking for podcasts today; people love seeing people have interesting conversations.”
Eat well
“At one point, I was feeling more tired, not mentally, just physically. I asked my health coach, ‘What is it? Why am I feeling tired?’ I was already taking care of myself, working out and eating well. But it was then we realized that I had a Vitamin D deficiency. She said to me, ‘Jay, if anyone else had this Vitamin D deficiency, they would potentially even feel signs of depression’. It’s really important that we take a look at our diet. As much as we look at our mental diet, we must look at our physical diet. My mum’s homecooked food is probably one of my favourite things.”
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