On Purpose host Jay Shetty's 8 rules of love: Which movies and songs have shaped your view of love?

Jay Shetty was on a tour of three cities – Mumbai, Hyderabad, and Bengaluru – promoting his second book, 8 Rules of Love: How to Find it, Keep it and Let it Go.

Unless you're a monk or have been distanced from the rest of the world for some other reason, there's a good chance you've heard of Jay Shetty. The 35-year-old life coach, influencer, and author has 50 million followers across social media, including 13.6 million on Instagram. Shetty calls himself Chief Purpose Officer and hosts the podcast On Purpose, which is downloaded about 20 million times per month, wherein he has conversations with A-list guests like Kendall Jenner, Matt Damon, and Oprah Winfrey. Given these, it is hard to comprehend that he spent three years, from 2010 to 2013, living life as a monk in an ashram in India.

Shetty was on a tour of three cities – Mumbai, Hyderabad, and Bengaluru – promoting his second book, 8 Rules of Love: How to Find it, Keep it and Let it Go. Within a week of its release (January 30, 2023), the book topped the New York Times best-seller list, following the tracks of his first book, Think like a Monk: Train Your Mind for Peace and Purpose Every Day, which was also on the best-seller list.

What he doesn’t explain in the book is the question: Why 8 rules? But he explains all that and more on his podcast, including the fact that the original proposal was to have 52 rules! The number 8 was selected for many reasons, primarily because it looks like the symbol for infinity. "When we think of love, we think of it as endless and unconditional. We truly believe that real love is infinite," he said on the podcast. "Number 8 is also a symbol of balance, one of the few numbers that is symmetrical in shape. We are starting to understand that healthy relationships are the ones where people are actually coming together to connect with each other. Think of it as two whole circles coming together to create something more beautiful and more powerful." Shetty goes on to talk about Chinese culture, where eight is considered the luckiest number and is purposely worked into wedding dates, birth dates, addresses, and finances. "In the Karmic and spiritual sense, the number eight is all about giving back. It realizes its successes are not its alone and will intentionally recognize and appreciate any help it has received, which is a key pillar to a healthy and powerful relationship."

In an email interview with Moneycontrol, Shetty said, “I always knew I wanted to write a book about love and relationships because it is something that’s so essential to living a fulfilled life. Many assumed that after the pandemic, everything would go back to normal, but what is normal? So many of us still continue to feel lonely or isolated and scared of starting a new relationship. What I want to be clear about is that I don’t mean to say that you have to have a partner to be fulfilled, but that it is important to experience love in your life. Love can be experienced in so many ways; it can start within yourself, come from service, or even acts of kindness towards people around you, and if you are giving love, that means you are experiencing it.”

In 8 Rules of Love, he has included a number of exercises which people can do to prepare for love. “One of my favourites involves uncovering our own impressions about love and relationships,” Shetty said. “Many of the ideas we have about what relationships should be like come from the media. So, one exercise that can be kind of fun is to sit down and list out the movies and songs that have shaped how you view love. For instance, is love a battlefield? Do you expect someone else to complete you? Are you hoping that a prince will rescue you, or do you want to be someone’s knight in shining armour? Then, take a critical look at what you’ve listed, because many of those storylines aren’t realistic or healthy, yet we carry those expectations into our relationships. Simply becoming aware of them can be tremendously helpful.”

Most of the wisdom he dishes out is based on his experiences at the ashram. As a management student at the Bayes Business School in London, he heard Gauranga Das speak on the campus. Inspired, he started training at Das’s ashram in Mumbai while studying, and after completing his studies, he began to live at the ashram full-time. Three years of rigorous training and back in London, Shetty got a job at Accenture and simultaneously began to offer meditation classes. On a colleague’s suggestion, he posted videos online and attracted the attention of Arianna Huffington, who directed him to post a few videos for Huffington Post. The rest, as they say, is history. Shetty became the man who offered the wisdom of ancient Indian philosophy in relatable and understandable nuggets. The West lapped it up and soon he became the one whom the world looked up to for purpose and mindfulness lessons.

The ex-monk tag has helped, but so has his personable demeanour. His advice in the book is mainly about finding love, whatever form, be it romantic or self-love. “In 8 Rules of Love, I describe the four stages of love, which are modelled after the four stages of life described in the Vedas, the ancient texts I studied when I was a monk,” he explained. These stages involve preparing for love, practicing love, protecting love, and perfecting love. “In some ways, the first stage may be the most surprising step because most of us don’t realize that love is something we need to prepare for. It’s in this stage that we really get to know and appreciate ourselves, to understand our own personalities, values and goals, so that we’re better equipped to have a successful relationship with someone else.”

4 takeaways from Jay Shetty's new book

As Shetty travels across the world spreading the word of love, we have collated some of his dating advice:

1. Pay attention to whether the other person is as interested in learning about you as you are about them. You don’t want to feel as if the conversations you’re having are one-sided.

2. Also, is this someone you could see yourself learning and growing with over many years?

3. Get a sense of how they deal with adversity and challenges, their tolerance for risk, and how they go about making decisions.

4. What is important to understand is that being a good match with someone doesn’t mean their ideas and attitudes are the same as yours, just that they’re compatible with yours. Maybe they’re a cat person and you’re a dog person, or they like to vacation at the beach and you prefer the mountains. That doesn’t have to be a deal-breaker. But if they’re telling you that having kids is a priority for them and you know you don’t want children, that's something you need to deeply consider.

Why Rules?

I consider myself a rule-breaker, someone who likes to rebel and bend the rules. I have always gone against the grain and done things differently. So why am I, at this point of my life, writing a book about rules? I have learned through life that you can be as innovative, as rebellious, as destructive as you think, but there are certain universal rules and laws that you just can’t break. It’s kind of like controlling the weather. While you can pack an umbrella, wear a coat or the right shoes, you can’t control rain, snow, sunshine or blizzard. That’s what the laws are about. They are working of own their accord and they exist whether you believe in them or not. You see them across different types of relationships, different cultures and different backgrounds. We start to recognize that if they are broken, we keep making the same mistakes again and again. When you look at relationships that succeed and the ones that fail, you see that the ones that are successful are following the rules.