Jay Shetty's 4 top tips for finding and keeping love
If you type the words 'when will I find' into Google, you'll discover the most commonly searched-for final part of this sentence is 'love'. This one little word holds a myriad of definitions: familial love, romantic love, universal love, self-love. Whatever its form, love is a fundamental part of the human experience. It’s something we all yearn for, but how can we manifest it in life?
In his book, 8 Rules Of Love, Jay Shetty, author, podcaster, life coach and former monk, examines this most complex and powerful of human emotions. He draws from Hindu texts called the Vedas to create a four-step process that allows us all to find and keep love, whatever our situation.
Shetty has studied the Vedas extensively since he spent three years living as a Hindu monk near Mumbai in his early 20s. During this time, he would meditate for four to eight hours a day, and spent many hours poring over Vedic texts. ‘When I saw the practical and accessible wisdom hidden within them, I started sharing these messages and insights with the world,’ he says.
Fourteen years on, Shetty’s viral videos have gathered more than four billion views and Shetty himself a global following of millions. Now 36, he lives with wife Radhi in Los Angeles and has used his learnings to carve out success as the host of his podcast, On Purpose, and as author of the 2020 best-selling book, Think Like a Monk.
He also works as a life coach and to date has trained and certified more than 2,000 other life coaches in a curriculum he developed, rooted in Vedic principles.
‘The Vedas introduced me to the fundamental idea that love has stages, or ashrams,’ he explains. ‘As I worked with individuals and couples on their relationships and transitions into and out of love, I saw that the validity of these concepts stands the test of real-life settings.’
Here, Shetty shares the wisdom he has found – and tells us how to apply it to modern relationships.
The first ashram: Preparing for love
The first ashram, Brahmacharya, teaches us to prepare for love by learning how to love ourselves in solitude. Alone, we can acquire skills such as compassion, empathy and patience, all of which prepare us to share love. So often, our worst decisions are made when we don’t like where we are – which is why people who feel lonely or desperate are more likely to settle for the wrong partner.
Solitude is about taking time for ourselves to do the work internally, figuring out what we want and need, so that we can communicate this effectively to others.
It can be helpful to do an exercise called a ‘solo audit’. First, I would recommend spending a week keeping track of the time you spend alone. Then, for the next month, start doing one new activity alone every week. At the end of the audit, you will be familiar with your own preferences without leaning on someone else’s priorities or goals.
The texts also ask us to consider what love means to us. For instance, one person could say, ‘I love you,’ and mean they want to spend their life with you, while another could say it and mean they want to spend a night with you.
When you say, ‘I love you,’ you’re committing to your own definition of the word. So, try these three questions: first, how do I want to feel in love? Second: what is not love to me? And third: which of these perceptions are truly mine, and which ones have I adopted from society? So often, we think about what we want from the other person but neglect to consider how we want to feel ourselves.
The second ashram: Practising love
The second ashram, Grhastha, focuses on extending our love to others while still loving ourselves. The texts explain how to understand, appreciate and co-operate with another person’s thoughts, beliefs and preferences.
The earlier you learn about someone’s values and goals, the quicker you can make decisions that are right for you, or have conversations that are difficult upfront but will make life easier later on. Respecting that person’s values means you don’t want them to change, nor are you forcing them to value what you value equally.
If we take the example of my own life, my first love is my purpose – my work and service. My wife’s is her family. We had some really uncomfortable conversations at the beginning of our relationship about this, and we had to be okay with the fact that we will be apart sometimes because we’ve chosen to do the things we love. But we also know that we need to come together sometimes and strike a balance.
A great way to build and maintain excitement and intimacy in a long-term relationship is by using a framework called ‘the four Es’. At the very base of that journey is enjoying ‘entertainment’ together – watching TV is great, but it’s surface level and not where your connection should end.
A level up from that is ‘experiments and experiences’, when couples do something that they’re both novices at, to allow them an opportunity to find out something new about each other. A step further is the third E, ‘education’ – going on a course together or learning independently and coming together to discuss it and build connection.
And finally, the highest form of intimacy is ‘engagement’ – serving together. This could be doing charity work or running a marathon; something tough and meaningful that requires you to support each other.
If you work through it, this framework allows you to set goals together to strengthen your connection. So often in our relationships, we tick the boxes – settling down, often marriage, kids – but relationships flourish best if we keep growing them.
The third ashram: Protecting love
Vanaprastha, the third ashram, is a healing place where we can retreat to seek peace and learn how to resolve conflict. Many of us believe in a fairy tale in which a great relationship is one that has no disagreements, but as you try to love someone, there will be wounds or times when you feel hurt. If you prepare for conflict, you’ll be able navigate it better when you do find yourself in that high-pressure place.
Vanaprastha teaches us to approach conflict as a team. The most valuable tool for this is working out what your partner’s fight style is. Most people can identify with one of these three: venting (‘I want to talk about it right now’), hiding (‘I need some time out to gather my thoughts’) and exploding (every emotion coming out, in a way that you feel it immediately).
In my own relationship, I am a venter, whereas my wife is a hider, and in the early days, when she disappeared mid-argument, I was left feeling like she didn’t care enough to sort things out. Now, by understanding how we’re different, I know we need to compromise and set a time to come back to resolve things once she has had the space she needs. This way, we can have a healthier disagreement and protect our love.
The fourth ashram: Perfecting love
The final ashram, Sannyasa, is the epitome of love – extending our love to every person and every moment of our lives. Chances are, we spend a lot of the waking day with people who aren’t our partners – so why limit the love in our lives? Why not experience love, practise it and create it, instead of waiting for it to find you?
I was once in an Uber and on my phone, and after about three minutes, I realised we hadn’t gone anywhere. When I asked the driver what was happening, he said, ‘I was just waiting for you to say hello.’ I was mortified, but it was also a great wake-up call. We often expect the barista to smile at us or the taxi driver to ask about our day, but the texts describe how, in order to receive love, we need to show it.
The more you do this, the more you will experience the depths of love from different people. You can seek love for your whole life and never find it, or you can give love for your whole life and find joy.
Below is a useful exercise I like to use called Sharing Love Meditation:
1. Take a deep breath. And breathe out.
2. Take a moment to think about all the love you have received in your life.
3. Think about all the love you have expressed and shared with others.
4. Now, feel all the love within you, from every source, including yourself. Bring your awareness to all the love you have chosen to have within you. Notice it in your heart. Feel it cascading across your body, enlivening your feet, legs, arms, chest, and head.
5. Feel the love getting stronger, and more powerful. Notice it radiating from your heart space. Now, see this love going out to the people you know and care for.
7. See it reaching out to every person who you know is struggling.
8. Now, feel it projected to people you’ve never met, and the strangers you see every day.
9. Now, feel the love within you extending even beyond that, reaching every person in the entire world.
8 Rules of Love: How to Find it, Keep it, and Let it Go by Jay Shetty (Harper Non Fiction) is out now
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