Episode Reviews

Dear Jay,I’ve been listening to your podcast during the whole last year and it has become part of my daily routine.Today’s episode has resonated so deeply with me that I just had to let you know.I’ve read many books on meditation but today I’ve come to a deeper level of understanding that it’s about sitting with the discomfort and not just doing whatever might feel better for that second. Distraction doesn’t heal. Distraction disguises the truth and what my soul is actually seeking.Hearing that you came back after being a monk for three years and had to pay back your student loan etc. whilst knowing where you are now, gave me hope and motivation not to give up. I’ve led a rather unconventional life – After I did my A-level I spent a year volunteering in Kenya, then another year in India, then moved to Berlin to study social work. Once I’ve had my Bachelor’s degree I moved to New Zealand for two years, where I’ve had a wonderful life, an amazing job supporting young people and friends that felt like a second family to me. Then I suddenly got so sick, that I wasn’t able to work anymore. I had to leave and go back to my home country where I moved back into my parents house and wasn’t able to work for another nine months. Turned out I was suffering from an auto-immune disease. Due to covid the borders closed and I wasn’t able to get back to New Zealand anymore. That was the time when I started listening to your podcast. I bought your book and created a journal with all the things I wanted to remember from reading and listening to your content. The journal is massive by now. I’d say your podcast might at least have had the impact that Steve Jobs Commencement Speech had on you.Doctors predicted I’d never get back to full strength and full health but there was something in me that knew different and fortunately I was right. Nowadays the doctors can’t explain how I can be in such a good state again. I am convinced it wouldn’t have been possible without changing my mindset and I can’t express how grateful I am that I got to hear your thoughts and insights and to listen to all those wonderful and inspiring people. It’s very much like you said, we dream through people and you made it possible that I could expose myself to peoples thoughts and experiences that I would never have heard about if it wasn’t for your podcast. Thank you so much. Thank you for saving my life. Thank you for your love, your kindness, your inspiration, your time and thank you for living your passion and supporting so many other human beings on doing the same.I could have thought things like “Why did that happen to me? That’s so unfair! I’ve literally had the most beautiful life and now it’s all over and I can’t be with my friends in New Zealand anymore. They’re so far away. Why did I get sick?” and so on. And yes, that thought crossed my mind. But it only did for a few seconds. I am so incredibly grateful that I got to have this experience. I am so grateful for having had such an amazing job and having met all those wonderful, loving and caring people and I believe it had to happen exactly the way it did because it brought me to where I am now Maybe I would never have appreciated things as deeply as I do now, if it wouldn’t have happened. Maybe I would never had known what makes me happy and maybe I would never have felt such deep love and acceptance as I did there. Since I do, it’s my mission to share and spread that feeling.I guess that’s one of the advantages this time has to offer – some guy in the United States literally saved a girls life in Germany without even knowing her personally and saved her from going into bitterness and depression. Thank you, thank you, thank you!