Global Anxiety, Inc.: How Jay Shetty Monetized the World’s Nervous Breakdown
From the ashram to the algorithm: Jay Shetty’s planetary takeover
By Our Correspondent, somewhere between Heathrow and existential despair
If you’ve flown long-haul recently, you’ve probably seen Jay Shetty’s face staring at you from the seat-back screen like a benevolent flight attendant who’s swapped safety demos for Sanskrit aphorisms. The former Hindu monk turned “urban monk” turned “purpose coach” has become the in-flight entertainment of choice for airlines that still pretend to care about passenger enlightenment. British Airways, Emirates, even the chronically broke Air India now pipe his TED-lite sermons into the skulls of 40,000-foot hostages—proof that enlightenment scales best at cruising altitude, somewhere over the Caspian Sea and a lukewarm chicken-or-pasta dilemma.
Born in London to Indian parents, Shetty has spent the last decade translating ancient Vedanta into LinkedIn posts digestible enough for a Milanese marketing director to forward to her underperforming team in Jakarta. His résumé reads like a parody of globalization: monk at 22, viral video strategist at 26, bestselling author in 27 languages, podcast host with guests ranging from Kobe (RIP) to the Obamas (eternal), and, most recently, Chief Purpose Officer at Calm, the meditation app valued at $2 billion—roughly the GDP of Bhutan, another place that has meditated on happiness and come up with a PowerPoint.
The business case for Shetty is deceptively simple: anxiety is the only commodity whose demand curve reliably rises with GDP. From Seoul’s exam-crazed teenagers to São Paulo’s burned-out fintech bros, the planet’s cortisol levels have become a renewable resource. Enter Shetty, offering a 21-day “reset” that promises inner peace without the inconvenience of quitting your job, dumping your spouse, or giving up oat-milk lattes. It’s McMindfulness for the McKinsey set, franchised faster than you can say “Namaste, quarterly earnings.”
Yet the international appeal is more cynical than spiritual. In Nigeria, where generators cough through the night and tomorrow’s fuel price is anyone’s bet, a 5-minute Shetty clip on “finding stillness amid chaos” is cheaper than therapy and less incriminating than Valium. In Warsaw, Poles binge his interviews while queuing for Ukrainian visas, clinging to the hope that purpose might be a sturdier currency than the zloty. And in Dubai—a city built on imported labor and exported ambition—developers play Shetty’s voice in show-flat lobbies to reassure buyers that their $3 million studio comes with karmic square footage.
Naturally, the critics have sharpened their malas. Scholars of South Asian religions accuse him of “dharma lite,” the doctrinal equivalent of decaf chai. Former monks mutter that real renunciation doesn’t come with a book tour and a ring-light. But Shetty’s genius lies precisely in turning critique into content: he’ll release an episode titled “Why Hate Feels Easier Than Love,” tag the academic who slammed him, and watch the algorithm reward the cycle with another million views. It’s enlightenment as engagement farming, a feedback loop the Buddha never had to deal with—mostly because 5th-century BCE Wi-Fi was terrible.
Meanwhile, governments have noticed. Singapore’s civil service now licenses his courses for mid-level bureaucrats, presumably on the theory that mindfulness reduces the urge to take bribes. The EU’s beleaguered mental-health task force has floated a “Shetty voucher” scheme—think farm subsidies, but for the soul. Even the Kremlin trialed a Russian-dubbed version until someone realized that telling conscripts to “let go of attachment” was counter-productive for battlefield morale.
As COP28 delegates in Dubai debate carbon offsets, Shetty quietly offsets existential dread. His latest venture: an AI chatbot named “GenShe” that texts daily affirmations in 47 languages, including Klingon for the truly lost. It’s only a matter of time before the IMF conditions its next bailout package on national daily downloads: “Greece, you can have the tranche, but first the population must complete Day 12 on gratitude journaling.”
Conclusion? Jay Shetty hasn’t just gone global; he has become the outsource for meaning in a century that forgot how to produce it domestically. Whether that’s a triumph of spiritual entrepreneurship or the last con of late capitalism depends, as always, on your seat class. Buckle up; turbulence is a mindset.
