The Daily
'The Interview': Wellness Guru Jay Shetty Has Raised Some Doubts. Including His Own.
21 Feb 2026
Chapter 1: What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
Hi, this is Andy. I've been a New York Times subscriber for years and years, and I'm trying to get my teenagers interested in reading it. If they were to have their own logins and we could share articles, I think that would help get them interested. It would also then allow us to discuss over the dinner table or wherever. Thank you very much.
Andy, we heard you. Introducing the New York Times Family Subscription. One subscription, up to four separate logins for anyone in your life. Find out more at nytimes.com slash family. From The New York Times, this is The Interview. I'm David Marchese. Jay Shetty is without a doubt a giant in the world of wellness and mental health influencers.
His podcast, On Purpose, is incredibly popular, and its related YouTube channel, which features interviews as well as Shetty's video essays about self-improvement, has more than 5 million subscribers. His books, Think Like a Monk and Eight Rules of Love, were both bestsellers. And he's also just launched a production company called Perfect Strangers.
Part of Shetty's success has to do with his message. It's a breezy blend of pop psychology and self-help tips overlaid with some reassuring Eastern spirituality. Another part surely has to do with his backstory.
As Shetty tells it, he was a wayward young man who went to a lecture by a monk from the ISKCON movement, better known as the Hare Krishnas, and then decided to change his life and become a monk himself. He eventually left that life behind and became an influencer, determined to, as he's put it, make wisdom go viral.
While there's no doubt about Shetty's success, I did find myself with other doubts about him that I wanted to explore.
They were partly to do with a 2024 article in The Guardian that raised questions about many aspects of Shetty's public life, including accusations of plagiarism on his platforms early in his career, some allegedly misleading certification information put out by his online life coaching school, and even the extent of his training as a monk.
That's reporting that Shetty and his lawyers have disputed, and which we talked about at length in our conversation. So there are those tensions, and there's also the seeming contradiction of a man who espouses monk-like thinking while now living the glamorous life in LA as a superstar influencer, which turns out to be a tension he's been thinking about too.
Here's my conversation with Jay Shetty.
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Chapter 2: Who is Jay Shetty and what is his influence in wellness?
It was Grammys week, so very busy, but fun and enjoyable. So it was good. You know what's funny?
I've been watching so much of your stuff for, honestly, the last six weeks or something like that, really trying to immerse myself. And just yesterday, I watched a video of yours that had a segment about how to have difficult conversations. I thought the most useful part of it was that you talked about being clear about one's own intentions during a conversation.
And I think that's a very useful thing. And I feel like my intention with you and with everyone is to just understand as much as I can.
I love that. Well, thank you for sharing that with me. And my intention today is always to try and share myself as authentically as I can.
Good, because I hope I have some hard questions for you. So we'll see how that goes. But, you know, for people who aren't familiar with you and your work, which of your beliefs would you say are most fundamental to what you do as a sort of wellness self-help influencer? What are you fundamentally trying to teach people about?
I wouldn't even say I'm trying to teach. The four things I really am encouraging people to reflect upon are the four most important questions I believe that we all have to answer in life. The first is how do I feel about myself? It's a decision we make every day when we wake up and we look in the mirror. The second is what do I do for work? You know, what do I do with my time?
The third is who do I choose to love and receive love from? And the fourth is how do I choose to serve the world? And so all of my work is dedicated and devoted to helping people reflect on and answer these questions for themselves.
So whether someone comes and asks me like, hey Jay, like I really want to find my purpose or I'm kind of stuck in my job right now or maybe they're going through a breakup and they're looking for insight on what will help them heal or someone who says, Jay, you know, your work helped me
through a divorce or your work stopped me from committing suicide like i think those are the kind of things people usually come to me with and so that's what i find is usually the kind of questions and reflections and insights that people are looking for from me and i'm always trying to help them think through those challenges
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Chapter 3: What led Jay Shetty to become a monk?
So I trained as part of the Radha Gopinath and Bhaktivedanta Manna ashrams across India and the UK and Europe. And they are parts of that, yes.
And because of that training, there is this sense of ancient or spiritual wisdom around your content. And it's interesting because when I read your books or listen to your stuff, a lot of it reminds me of almost cognitive behavioral therapy material or self-help material that I've encountered in lots of different places, like list-making, gratitude journaling,
You talk about the importance of breathing, but it's within this framework of spiritual thinking. Can you tell me a little bit more about the interplay between your spiritual training and more secular self-help ideas that also comes up in your work?
Absolutely, yeah. I've always been passionate and fascinated by the intersection between ancient wisdom and modern science. And when I first read the Bhagavad Gita, which is the primary text that I reference in my books, which is a 5,000-year-old text and Eastern wisdom, To me, pretty much every modern growth idea or personal development idea can be somehow traced back to it and found in it.
And so I find it to be an incredible map and conversation starter for so much of the spiritual wisdom that I love to share. So, you know, recently we've been talking about the value of circadian rhythms and the need to see sunlight early in the morning. And to me, there's something known as sun salutations in the Eastern tradition of yoga, where that's exactly what you would do.
Now, they didn't talk about it as a circadian rhythm starter, but that's exactly how you'd start your morning. So I've always found it fascinating to find this intersection because I'm personally deeply interested. I also find that it's really beautiful when there are really practical ways of showing how these old ideas have a lot of validity today.
There's not many new things, but there are deeper ways of understanding the same thing.
You know, we hear about things like, you know, mindfulness has kind of exploded over the last decade or so, or people will talk about karma or living within one's dharma, which I think dharma can basically be understood as one's life purpose. And people talk about these concepts that are rooted in religious and spiritual practices. And sometimes I wonder if...
People maybe mistakenly think that they can decouple the spiritual practices or like the true religious root of these things and just sort of use them in almost like a fast food kind of way. Like it's a shortcut.
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Chapter 4: What controversies surround Jay Shetty's career?
I have a different perspective that I'd like to share. My perspective is that sometimes someone's starting point in a deep practice may be really simple, easy, and potentially even surface level. And that may be them just dipping their toe in the water. And that's how we all started something. Like, I'll give you an example.
During the pandemic, I did around 40 days of meditation on live, on Instagram, Facebook Live, and YouTube Live, and people could just join from their home. And the amount of people that I still meet today who will come up to me and say, Jay, I started meditating because of you. Now, all these people had never meditated in their entire life.
Is meditating on Instagram Live the deepest, most profound meditation? Probably not. But if that's their starting point, if that's the connection point, then what a beautiful thing that people have gone on to like travel and maybe go on a meditation retreat and maybe do more with their own life with whichever teachers or practices that they love. I think to me, it's almost like it's a good thing.
Yeah. I'm very interested in people's turning points in their lives. So I'd like to ask you about what I think was your big turning point, which is, you know, you were a young man in London. I believe you were going to business school. At the time?
I attended Cass Business School, which is now known as Bayes Business School, yes.
And you ended up kind of on a whim going to a lecture by a monk whose name was, was it Garanga Das? Garanga Das, yes. And you were swept away, had this epiphany that he was saying something that you needed to hear. Can you tell me about what you heard in that moment that was so powerful to you that you thought, well, that it actually became kind of a life-changing moment?
Really, David, it was probably even beyond what I heard. It was seeing a man who externally was not attractive to me in any way. You know, seeing a man in robes with his head shaved, with an Indian accent from India, and...
I didn't understand even in that moment probably of why I was so attracted to him, but it was his sense of peace, his sense of ease, his sense of confidence in being so different. And I think at that age in your life, you know, you're always trying to fit in. And he was someone who didn't fit in at all, but felt like the most comfortable person in the room.
And to me, that was more important, I think, than anything he even said.
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Chapter 5: How does Jay Shetty reconcile his monk-like principles with being an influencer?
Detachment means you can be close to anything in the world and use it for a higher purpose. Now, I'm not saying I'm doing that and I'm not saying I live in that. I'm saying I try my best. And I'd say that's my aspiration. My aspiration is that every day I'm living in the quote unquote real world or however we call it, I'm reminded of my flaws.
I'm reminded of how far away I am from truly living up to the spiritual pursuits that I have and have had for most of my life now. And I love that. I love being reminded of how far I have to go. And so I would argue that I feel more close to growth in my current life than I ever did in the ashram because in the ashram, I could almost forget or think maybe I'd already found it.
Is there any part of you that thinks maybe that's an elaborate self-justification?
I have questioned that many times and I continue to question it. I think that The spiritual philosophy of 5,000 years old is pretty clear on it, so I take that as my authority over myself. However, the other side of it, to be quite frank and honest, is I think it's also a graduation. It's like, I'm married, I have businesses, we have teams, we have companies, I'm not a monk anymore.
And I think it's almost like having to recognize that you've evolved, you've grown, your life has changed. And yeah, I'm not living that way anymore. It's partly why I wrote a book called Think Like a Monk, Not Live Like a Monk. That was intentional because I think everyone can think like a monk. I don't think everyone, including me, can live like a monk for the rest of their life.
I think, you know, the think like a monk, live like a monk distinction is sort of related to what I was asking about earlier, which is how usefully we can decouple sort of religious belief from religiously inspired action. Yeah. I know I keep asking you like, where is the line here? But I'm interested in trying to understand where these boundaries are.
But is there a point at which thinking like a monk, if you're not also living like a monk, stops being monk-like thinking? Do you know what I'm saying? Maybe that was my version of like a Zen riddle.
It's a koan. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, it's a koan. Yeah, Zen koan. No, David, I really appreciate you. I can tell that you're really trying to understand it. And so I want to try and meet you there and help you with that. Yeah. It's probably different across traditions and everyone has their own version. It's, wait, let me really sit with your question. Yeah.
How much can you think like a monk if you're not really trying to live like a monk? That's what the question is.
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Chapter 6: What are the four fundamental questions Jay Shetty believes everyone should reflect on?
And I don't disagree with you at all. I think you're absolutely right. I just think that truth, when it comes to healing... is really, really open. Healing doesn't look the same for everyone. And what helps some people won't help other people. And that's also true. And so it depends what your definition of truth is.
And I think sometimes when we talk about truth, which is important, and of course, the most valuable conversation, it's like me saying to you, like, David, how long have you been with your partner? 17 years, something like that, 20 years. Okay, amazing, amazing, which is incredible. She'll be mad I didn't get that exactly correct, but. I'm sorry to expose you like this. I apologize.
Congratulations. Honestly, that's amazing. It's my wife and I's, it's our 10th wedding anniversary this year. Oh, congratulations. And 13 years together. So, but it's like, how do I prove that my love for my wife is true? Like what proves that?
I'm not saying that there isn't a way of answering that question, but it's a very hard question to answer as fact or fiction because everyone will say something different. Or if I asked your wife and you asked my wife, what proves to you that David loves you? Or Jay, what proves to you that your partner loves you? They'd probably give very different answers, I imagine. Yeah.
I think you're mixing some things together that maybe shouldn't be mixed together. I mean, the answer to what is proof of my love for my wife, I think the proof would be my actions every day. But the truth of that proof is a very different kind of truth than, is my broken bone healed? Or can the stars tell me... What's going on in my life? Or can we communicate with the dead?
These are all different kinds of truth that require different levels of proof.
For sure, but the proof is not... I don't disagree with you at all. I mean, the questions that you're specifically looking at, I've been both curious and skeptical in those interviews. I guess what I'm... debating with you and enjoying the discussion that we're having is I think it's really hard to call someone else's personal experience of healing with something as not true.
Um, and, and that is something that I'm not, uh, willing to put aside because that's an important thing that, that humans also need to be curious and skeptical about is, is allowing space for that. I think it's easier to be like, yeah, true. We, you know, the facts are all that matters.
So, you know, I'm sure you know there was this Guardian article that came out in 2024 where the writer, you know, he sort of wrote about ways in which he said you, you know, you sort of fudge details, specific details about what your actual training was as a monk, how much time you actually spent in India, sort of when your entryway into spiritual thinking really began. And
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Chapter 7: How does Jay Shetty define success and spirituality?
And I think when I think about that, to let you in on that, it's like, for me, that's uncomfortable. It's hard because you're trying to do something with the best of intentions. And I think we all want to feel understood and we want to feel seen. And I think when you're
misunderstood or not seen in the way that you would like it's hard for everyone and it's been very hard for me and difficult for me and I think when you're being judged the first point is not to push that person away it's to see whether that exists in you and I think when you actually look at
yourself in that way you can find everything exists in you you can find you know and that's really vulnerable to say it's really open to say that you can find that every intention exists within you if you really take a look in the mirror and if you're not scared of looking at that.
And so when I look at my experience of all of that, I've kind of come to this conclusion of, well, I do want to be deeply spiritual and I want to be really successful. Like I do want to be deeply connected to my monk principles and I want to do really well as an entrepreneur.
And it almost feels like to me, the balancing of that or the aligning of that, very honestly and candidly speaking, is worth pursuing rather than this fixation we have specifically in the West, of being like, I'm just going to be this, and this is how I define myself to the world and myself.
That answer has opened up so many questions for me. You know, I think I definitely have judged you in a certain way, and it's related to trying to reconcile the monkish principles with the entrepreneur-influencer principles. And I think it's skepticism that comes from a particular type of perception of you.
And I think that when I think of you as someone trying to operate within a spiritual or a mental health realm, then my skepticism kind of If I think about you as someone operating within an entrepreneur or sort of influencer realm, then I feel like you're sort of who you are is much easier for me to understand. But those are my own hangups. I want to know how you think you should be perceived.
What is the correct lens through which to understand Jay Shetty?
David, I want to be honest about that, going back to my earlier point that I was saying is, I don't fault you for that skepticism and that thought process because I've felt the same internally.
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