Jay Shetty on Silence, Loss, and the Power of Presence

Photo Credit: Juan Veloz

BY LAURA SCHREFFLER

PHOTOGRAPHY JUAN VELOZ

STYLING CHRISTIAN STROBLE

GROOMING COURTNEY HOUSNER

SHOT ON LOCATION AT THE LONDON WEST HOLLYWOOD

Jay Shetty drives in silence. No music, no podcast, no playlist competing for attention — just quiet. When asked about it, he explains: “I spend a lot of time in silence. Not necessarily meditating — just driving, walking, thinking. That’s when I process things.” He pauses. “I’ve realized silence is one of the few ways I still connect to myself.”

That stillness sets the tone for everything about him. For all the titles — bestselling author, award-winning podcast host, former monk, global speaker — what stands out most is how present Shetty is. He answers questions slowly, thoughtfully, sometimes with long pauses that feel like small acts of rebellion against the speed of modern conversation. He laughs often, speaks softly, and makes eye contact in a way that feels disarmingly genuine.

When asked if he feels pressure to always have the right answer, he’s honest. “I used to. Not anymore, because I realized that I don’t always have the perfect answer and I don’t always have the right answer. And so the pressure to have it all the time was paralyzing.” He continues: “I realized that sometimes the right answer was silence. And sometimes the perfect response was listening. And sometimes the most healing thing you could do for someone is just hold their hand or hold their gaze.”

That humility is what makes Shetty so compelling. He’s not trying to be a guru. He’s trying to be human.

Born in London to Indian parents, Shetty grew up shy and searching. His parents wanted stability; Jay wanted meaning. At university, studying Management Science at Cass Business School, he heard a monk speak and everything shifted. “That night changed everything,” he recalls. “It was the first time I heard someone talk about success in a way that included happiness. I remember thinking, Why didn’t anyone teach us this before?”

Within months, he was spending holidays in India, living with monks. After graduating with first-class honors, he did what almost no one expected: he became one himself.

Photo Credit: Juan Veloz

For three years, he traded suits for robes — waking at 4 a.m., meditating for hours, living simply. “It wasn’t glamorous,” he says. “It was hard. But it taught me discipline and how to be comfortable being uncomfortable.”

Still, even in the quiet of the ashram, there was a spark of rebellion. “I realized I loved the philosophy, but I also loved creativity,” he says. “I wanted to bring what I’d learned to people who’d never step into a temple.”

That realization changed everything. In 2013, Shetty left monk life behind and returned to London. “It felt like starting over,” he says. “I went from complete silence to the loudest city in the world.”

After months of job interviews and applications, he joined Accenture as a consultant, where his monk training unexpectedly made him a hit. “I started giving talks to my team about focus and productivity,” he says. “People wanted to know how to stay calm at work. It made me realize there was a gap — people were starving for meaning.”

That gap became his mission. He started filming short videos about gratitude, failure, and mindset. Much of his ability to make ancient wisdom feel modern comes from an unlikely source: his love of rap and spoken word. Growing up, he’d journal in rhyme and deliver newspapers at 14 with 50 Cent in his headphones. “I think half my content today is inspired by hip hop,” he admits. “The rhythm, the way words land — it taught me how to make ideas stick.”

The videos exploded, eventually catching the attention of Arianna Huffington, who invited him to New York to host HuffPost Rise. “That was a big leap,” he says. “I’d never lived in the U.S., but I felt like it was the next chapter.”

In New York, Shetty’s reach expanded exponentially. His ability to make ancient ideas feel modern turned him into one of the most recognizable voices in self-development. Yet he insists that his rise wasn’t about branding — it was about service. “I never sat down and thought, How do I build an empire?” he admits. “I just kept asking, How can I help more people? The rest happened naturally.”

When he launched On Purpose in 2019, it was an experiment — a digital space where wisdom and vulnerability could coexist that quickly became one of the world’s top podcasts. But what makes On Purpose resonate isn’t the star-studded guest list (who have included guests such as Oprah, Madonna, Michelle Obama, Bill Gates, and Cardi B); it’s the atmosphere Shetty creates — and the authenticity, interest, and curiosity he puts into every interview. “Everyone has something to teach you,” he says sagely. [Today, Shetty’s content reaches 500 million views across platforms each month.]

Photo Credit: Juan Veloz

That curiosity has made On Purpose one of the world’s most listened-to podcasts — and Shetty, one of the most trusted voices in self-development. Still, he insists success was never the goal. “I didn’t start with a plan,” he says. “I started with a question: How can I serve more people?”

If that sounds lofty, his delivery isn’t. He punctuates sentences with humor, self-deprecation, and an easy kind of candor that makes him instantly likable. “I don’t go into an interview thinking about what I can get out of someone, or how they can be exploited, or how they can open up to me in a way that they haven’t before. That’s not my intention,” he explains. “I go into it with compassion, with clarity, and with being really present in myself and wanting to see where it goes.”

That approach — empathetic, unhurried, curious — has drawn out moments of rare honesty from some of the world’s most guarded public figures. “When you listen with intention,” he says, “people can feel it.”

Yet despite the global reach, Shetty remains grounded. He talks openly about his own imperfections — his tendency to overthink, his impatience, the constant balancing act of being present while running multiple businesses.

But lately, the challenges have been harder than impatience or overthinking. At 38, he’s reached the age where loss stops being abstract. “I have family members that are really unwell or passing away,” he says quietly. “You get to a certain age and all of a sudden life gets real in a way that it didn’t just ten years ago.”

It’s the kind of grief that no amount of meditation fully prepares you for. “The hardest lesson I’ve had to learn recently is just there’s something really interesting about the passage of time and what you start experiencing at different ages,” he reflects. “I think as humans we don’t think about something until we have to think about it. And I think the lesson I’m learning is it’s always better to start preparing yourself for what’s to come. Not in a morbid way or a negative way, but in a way that you can truly value the time you have.”

That honesty — unguarded, humble, sometimes self-deprecating — is what humanizes him. For Shetty, the pursuit of purpose has never been about perfection — it’s about presence.

Photo Credit: Juan Veloz

Still, even as his platform has grown — two New York Times bestsellers, a global tour, partnerships with brands rooted in mindfulness — he remains reluctant to see himself as a finished product. “I don’t think we ever ‘arrive,’” he says. “I think we’re all works in progress. The moment you think you’ve got it all figured out, life teaches you something new.”

As we talk, there are flashes of humor that undercut any temptation to paint him as saintly. He jokes that his desk is usually covered in notes and snack wrappers. He teases himself about the fact that he still hasn’t learned to say ‘no’ to new ideas.

A personal mark of that habit shows in his three tattoos, all from before he turned 21: “Dear God” on the back of his neck, a microphone on his neck, and a treble clef morphing into a peacock feather on his back. “I was told that the hardest place to get a tattoo was your neck. So I was like, okay, I’m just going to start with the hardest place, and that’s where I got my neck tattoo,” he says, laughing. “That’s the kind of person I am. So I want something, but then I think, Okay, what’s the hardest thing I can do? Okay. Got it. Let me do it.”

Photo Credit: Juan Veloz

He hasn’t gotten another since becoming a monk, though his wife Radhi — who has her hands covered — keeps asking him to join her. But Shetty has, thus far, declined,  content with the story his existing tattoos already tell.

There’s an ease about him that comes from knowing who he is… and who he isn’t. Whether he’s recording an episode, writing a new book, or simply making tea at home, his philosophy is remains consistent: do the small things with great intention.

Jay Shetty is sitting in his Los Angeles home office, sunlight streaming through the window, giving him an almost angelic glow. His home is filled with natural light and clean lines, a visual calm that mirrors the stillness he’s worked so hard to cultivate. But for all his monk-like discipline, he is far less interested in perfection and more obsessed with what makes us human.

He laughs easily — sometimes mid-sentence, sometimes at himself — and that’s the first hint that the man behind the mindfulness empire isn’t chasing enlightenment; he’s enjoying the experiment.

At home, that real life unfolds beside his wife, Radhi Devlukia-Shetty, a plant-based chef and co-founder of their sparkling-tea brand, Juni. They first met when he was still a monk — Radhi’s mother had asked him to teach a service at a temple. Radhi admired him quietly from afar, eventually becoming close friends with Jay’s sister. When Jay left monkhood, his sister told him Radhi was interested. By late 2013, they were dating.

“She’s my opposite in the best way,” he says, smiling. “Radhi has this energy that’s just pure light. I can be serious; she makes me playful. She keeps me honest.”

Together, they’ve built a rhythm that looks effortless from the outside — two wellness entrepreneurs sipping matcha in matching neutrals — but feels, in reality, like the rest of us: tender, chaotic, and funny. They argue about work, the dog, whose turn it is to load the dishwasher. But what makes it work, he says, is intention. “It’s not about never disagreeing. It’s about how fast you come back after. We try to come back quickly.”

That philosophy became the spine of 8 Rules of Love, his second New York Times bestseller. The book, part research and part reflection, reads like a field guide for imperfect people trying to love better.

Set to debut this month, the Audible follow-up, Messy Love, pushes that vulnerability further. Listeners hear couples work through conflict in real time as Shetty coaches them gently toward each other. “I wanted to make something that showed what love actually looks like,” he says. “It’s not a filtered photo. It’s hard work and small miracles.”

For him and Radhi, those small miracles often happen in the kitchen. “Cooking with her is therapy,” he says. “We put on music, she’s dancing, I’m chopping badly — it’s chaos, but it’s connection.”

Photo Credit: Juan Veloz

That sense of playful ritual inspired Juni, the sparkling-tea brand they launched together. The origin story is personal: Jay’s longtime sugar addiction. “When I met my wife and growing up, I used to eat a lot of sugar. And even throughout college, I got through with eating a chocolate and a soda every day,” he explains. When Radhi, a nutritionist and dietician, started making him aware of it, they looked for alternatives but couldn’t find any that worked. “I didn’t really love sparkling water or flavored sparkling water. It wasn’t tasty enough. And the sodas all said they didn’t have sugar, but they all actually had sugar.”

So they set out to build Juni — which stands for “just you and I.” “It’s the idea of me and my wife, me and my mum who drink tea together, my wife and her family, you and me,” he says. “Just you and I can share a moment together.”

These intimate tea moments — carefully curated, intentionally shared — became a microcosm of his emerging spiritual philosophy: that transcendence isn’t found in grand gestures, but in the quiet, deliberate spaces where human connection blooms. For someone who once woke before sunrise to meditate for eight hours, Shetty now finds spirituality in the moments in-between, and sometimes in the most surprising of places.

Take theme parks, for instance — an unlikely and unexpected obsession —which I learn when he literally lights up talking about his imminent visit to the new Universal Epic Universe. “Disney, The Wizarding World of Harry Potter at Universal — there’s something about stepping into a place designed to make you believe again,” he says, adding with a grin, “Plus, I’m a big Harry Potter fan.”

Bingo! The kind of confession I was looking for. When asked which Hogwarts house he’d be sorted into, he doesn’t hesitate. “Gryffindor!” he declares, sounding like the Sorting Hat itself (if you know, you know). “Gryffindor feels right.” It’s fitting — the house of the brave, the bold, the ones willing to take risks.

Just as the magical world of Hogwarts represents courage and possibility, Disney has always been another realm where imagination transforms the ordinary into the extraordinary. “I love how it makes you feel to be there. Everyone there’s just happy. It’s like being reminded that joy still exists.”

But his  goes much deeper than its candy-coated covering, and his reasoning is pure Jay Shetty. He leans forward. “You know what I admire about Disney? It doesn’t pretend everything’s perfect. The stories are full of struggle, of loss, of trying again — but they always come back to hope. That’s life, right? We all need that reminder to believe again.

“Plus,” he adds, “I have this fascination with being transported to new places.”

Photo Credit: Juan Veloz

It’s a small confession, but it says everything. Because for all the stillness and structure, Jay Shetty still believes in wonder. He still believes in the good. And that belief, more than any technique or mantra, might be the most spiritual thing about him.

He sits back, quiet for a moment, before offering a reflection that feels like his truest self. When I ask what he’d tell his monk self about who he’s now become, he’s thoughtful: “I know there’s parts of me that I’m still working on and need to improve. And then there’s parts of me that you’d be really proud of.” He continues: “I know that you really value certain values and qualities that we’ve dedicated our life to pursuing, but I’m far away from those, but I’m still working at it.”

Then he adds: “But I want to acknowledge that you wouldn’t even have imagined the connection we’ve been able to make with people across the world, and the amazing stories I get to hear every day.”

The room falls still. And for a moment, it’s clear what he means — not that peace lives in temples or mountains or meditation halls, but in the way you choose to move through life.

In the end, Jay Shetty hasn’t left the world behind at all — he’s learning how to love it more deeply, one real, quietly hopeful, extremely human moment at a time.

Photo Credit: Juan Veloz