Episode 152 – Vishen Lakhiani – Conquering Fear, Defying Limitations, Living your best life.

foreign Experience Podcast the only podcast designed to fuse your left and right brain hemispheres and feed it the most entertaining and mentally engaging topics on the planet as we approach our scent please make sure your frontal temporal and occipital lobes are in

their full upright position as you take your seat of Consciousness relax your senses and allow us to take you on a journey we are the intimate strangers thank you for listening foreign what's up folks this is our episode with the shin lakiani of whom you may or may

not have heard of I promise you that after this episode you will remember who he is I read his book and loved it so much that we brought him onto the show best decision that I've made in show guest decisions in a long time because this is easily in our top 10 of the best

episodes we've ever done you can feel the passion wisdom and sheer knowledge that vision is relating you guys will love this one please make sure you pick up a copy of vision's book the code of the extraordinary mind also get to our channel follow me on Twitter all those

can be done at the human XP one last thing guys we do to everything we can to keep our show ad free for you if you get to our donate page help us cover what we're doing here everything so far has been paid buy me out of pocket and it's getting

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with your listener support thank you guys so much for listening and without much further Ado here is Vision lakiani The Human Experience has obtained the blueprint for retraining your mind as we speak to my guest Vision lakiani Vision my good sir welcome to hxp hi Xavier

this is an honor I um I'm honored to be here your story is remarkable I I love the book but there's some people that might not know who you are and what you do let's let's talk about that from you know going from being an engineer to founding mind Valley really give us that

story I graduated from the University of Michigan way back in 1999 so you can kind of guess my age right now I'm 40 years old now when I graduated my timing in a word kinda sucked because shortly after I graduated the.com Bubble Burst so I had moved out to the Bay Area with

dreams of starting a startup you know getting funding making a massive difference in the world only to find all of those dreams completely dashed I lost my my savings I lost all my money um and I couldn't get a job anywhere so sometime in about 2001 around two years

after graduation I had officially been fired twice I had lost to startups and I was so freaking in in-depth I couldn't even afford an apartment so I was renting a couch from a college student in Berkeley one of those two-seater couches so even my legs kind of dangled

off at the end and in desperation I was sending my resume out to any company on Craigslist that would hire me finally one company offered me a job but again the economy was so bad this was April this was around April or so 2001. back I remember that month alone 14 000 people

were laid off in the Bay Area there were pink slip parties where people would go to try to network their way to some sort of salary so I got the job but the economy was so bad they were not paying any base salary so I had to pick up the phone and call lawyers and sell them on

technology technology to manage their law firms and if the lawyer said no if I didn't close a sale I did not get paid that week or that month and there were people in my company who just were not earning nothing they were earning zilch so in desperation uh because I couldn't

close the sale I had no idea what I was doing I was a computer engineer trying to hack it as a guy who knew you know business I I got depressed and I got online and I was searching and I can't remember what I was searching maybe it was hope maybe it was

um to to to find meaning maybe it was why does life sucks so bad but I found a class on meditation and the class on meditation was being thought by a pharmaceutical salesperson in Los Angeles and she claimed that what she was teaching would dramatically help you

with business with life with sales all of these like hyper promises but I thought look life sucks for me right now I need to try something so I flew down to La I took the class and when I showed up you know I was the only person there apparently she wasn't very good at

marketing herself so I took the class and what she shared with me was astonishing I learned how to control my brain waves I learned how to channel intuition I learn how to connect with people with deep empathy I went back to work and Monday so it was I took class

over the weekend Monday I started work and by Friday I had had not just my best ever sales week but I was double my pre my previous record and I thought whoa this is kind of interesting so I continued applying some of these ideas in work and I continued getting better

and better and better in four months I got promoted three times I Was Made director of sales I was only 26 years old and I was made director of sales in the company of like a hundred people sent out to New York to hit their New York office I continued experimenting

with these Tech techniques I continued attending new seminars reading new books exploring just what my mind could do and soon I could do the director of sales job and the business development manager job I held two jobs simultaneously and again I was crushing it now at this

point you guys may be wondering well what exactly was I so I'll do a couple of techniques I learned one of the techniques that that blew me away was a simple technique to tap into intuition at our work everyone would go to the San Francisco Public Library they would be

assigned to a city so my city was for example San Antonio I would check out the San Antonio Yellow Pages and then I had to call every lawyer in the attorney section from A to Z in order right and hope that someone happened I happened to catch one and at a convenient time where

he would just listen to my whole pitch so that's what everyone was doing when I came back from this class I tried something different I wouldn't randomly call the lawyers I would go into a meditative State of Mind place my finger on the phone book run my fingered aims

and call only people I felt a certain impulse went so I was calling less lawyers but interestingly these lawyers were so much more likely to buy it's as if I was guessing but these guesses seem to be correct that was one and that boosted my sales the second thing I did

that doubled my sales again was was a simple empathy technique I learned to to shut my eyes go within and set an intention with the lawyer before I called them so if I was calling say Bob Jones I would see Bob Jones in my mind's eye I would imagine what he looked like

I would tell myself that this conversation was going to go smoothly that Bob Jones would have time for me that things would close if and only if this was going to be a win-win for everyone concerned that Bob Jones would see his firm go to new Heights because

of our technology that we would be able to serve him well that would be pleasurable and meaningful for this and the simple empathy visualization technique again double my sales and so with no with no sales training I was able to just crush it now after

18 months at this company I I I I remember in my final month I was 400 over quota um and I decided to quit I decided to quit because I felt that the company no longer fit my my personal mission and I wanted to do something on my own and I decided look

education according to Nelson Mandela is the greatest way to change the world Nelson Mandela has a famous quote on that and I thought I want to start an education technology company and what better thing to get out to the world than meditation so I started a simple

e-commerce website I you know back then it wasn't as easy to start an e-commerce website so I had that Advantage it's quite quite remarkable what you were able to do you you went from this sort of Rock Bottom state where you're you're in your your friend's apartment living

on a couch and you you take a meditation class you realize the importance of kind of altering changing your brain waves so that you're more tapped into your intuition and and what is the the inner compass that inner compass that we all have and and suddenly your your sales

are are skyrocketing and and this is where I mean this is where I kind of cut you off so and this is the birth of Mind Valley is that right this well it was when I quit that job and decided to start a simple e-commerce site selling and promoting meditation

that was the birth of Mind Valley hmm okay and it mind Valley was taking losses for quite a while until it turned a profit is that is that correct well it was 2003 and being a computer engineer finally I found something to apply my skills to so it wasn't as easy back then

to start a online business you did not have things such as Shopify and so on but I could code my own checkout my own customer CRM system and so on and so I built my own website I got to apply my programming skills my meditation skills and I built one of the world's first

online websites for meditation and immediately it took off I remember my first customer was a woman called Barbara from Atlanta this was like December 22nd 2002 and it started out really slow but slowly and slowly the business grew today Mindvalley is in a

wide area of different fields we do everything from apps to festivals we have about 200 employees globally but it's all focused around one thing and it's still that one thing that one thing is spreading ideas in personal growth our vision our vision is to get these

new ideas these new areas of thought New Visions for health and wellness and meditation and mindfulness and better parenting and better relationships to as many people as we can that's amazing I mean why why Kuala Lumpur why Malaysia why would you

so Xavier do you want to know the cleaned up story or the actual story let's go with the actual story okay so the actual story is um and it's only now you know it's um and I'm only I'm gonna say this it's only now that I am safe telling you guys the actual story so

here's what you got to understand after September 11 2001 America was a very dangerous place than it is right now and um because of what had happened because of that terrorism there was a bit of a paranoia towards certain groups of people now I had been born in Malaysia

is a country that is about a 50 60 Muslim population I'm not a Muslim I'm I'm of Indian origin Malaysia is a very diverse country in Asia and I lived in the U.S at that point for almost 10 years I had graduated there studied there started the business there so I

was living with my wife who's European we were living in New York and so back then I had a different name my name was Vision Mohandas and Mohandas is a very common Indian name you know Gandhi's name is Mohandas Gandhi so I was named after my father who was named

after I guess Gandhi but I showed up at JFK airport one day and the guy looking at my passport called me Vision Muhammad and I said no it's Mohandas and he goes no it says Muhammad I'm like dude read it again it's mohen does and he said follow me and so I mean I'm sure he was

reading it super fast or whatever he took me to a back room and he told me you know there are certain things about your patterns of travel and so on that look suspicious we're gonna have to investigate you he kept me in that room for three hours and I was added to a

watch list a watch list called special registration now special registration essentially meant that for the next five years of my life I couldn't use certain airports I every time I wanted to enter or exit the United States I would be I would have to go for an interview at the

local airport or the place near the airport called the special registration Center and I would get fingerprinted I would get photographed I'd have to answer interview questions and but it was worse than that it wasn't just traveling every 30 days living in the

United States I had to report to the government I had to stand in a long line going sometimes four blocks to be called up to a window to have my credit cards checked so to make sure I don't know to make sure I wasn't buying fertilizer stuff to be interviewed to be

interrogated to have my picture taken it was literally like living on parole wow we loved the United States my wife and I wanted a kid born here but you know we decided we couldn't live like this and so we had a choice we could move back to

Europe which is where she was from or moved back to Malaysia Malaysia had beautiful warm weather nice beaches and so I thought well why not Malaysia and that's what we did now now after five years after five years the uh the the U.S embassy in Malaysia got me off the

list I decided to change my name to a safer sounding name and that's how my name is now Vision lakyani very interesting and you know in your in your book you you talk about struggle being this sort of launch pad to discovering new things new ideas to launching a

person into you know kind of the next level of who they are and I mean one thing I wanted to kind of comment about the book about something that you said while I was doing the research for the show I think it was on Facebook that you posted this that you said you said that

being on the Wall Street Journal bestseller list wasn't enough I I'm paraphrasing you said that you wanted this book to be a Dale Carnegie Napoleon Hill level book that that carried Through the Ages and is that right absolutely absolutely and and let me

tell you why today any any celebrity can launch a book and instantly because they are a celebrity it will hit the New York Times in the Wall Street Journal so you know because that of that initial press that comes out any guy with a business who has customers he buys from

you know could instantly like promote the book all over his business and it'll hit the top but those books will not have staying power within a week or two the books will fall off the list because to be a genuinely good cook books spread primarily through one one way only the

most effective way and that's Word of Mouth we buy books because we hear about them from our friends you know you can get in a TV show but again unless you're a celebrity few people are going to buy your book um I've had friends who have been on

talk shows like Good Morning America and they will sell 100 books right so the celebrity power causes spikes but it doesn't necessarily lead to a great book what I wanted to write is a book that's genuinely good a book that will pass from hand to hand from parent to son

from employee to co-worker for generations and the only way to do that is to write a genuinely good book that touches people so that was one principle but that's the second principle and the second principle is your book must get noticed which means that you got to

either arouse love or hate but not apathy and that's why in my book I write it in such a way where it's designed to make you really love the ideas really want to follow them really resonate with you or you will absolutely hate the book because the book stands for something it

stands for it stands for humanism and ideas around humanism it you know if you actually read the book you will see that they are anti-trump messages in the book and I'm not and it's not blatant but it's in there because the book is stand the book stands for humanism the book

talks about things that business books are not supposed to talk about such as intuition right many people would never talk about intuition in the business book I mean this book is right now and number four on the New York Times business list and and I was told by my

friends don't say that you can't say that because no one's gonna take you seriously but I've experienced it and I feel just because we cannot explain a phenomenon doesn't mean it isn't real so in that way in the forward for the book I I have this sentence I

say we grow through pain or we grow through Insight but never through apathy therefore this book will be painful at times and it'll be insightful at times but I didn't want to write something that you would ignore yeah you know I've talked to a lot of authors a lot of

bestsellers and no one has has has had the vision of of what you just stated the the long game vision of you know I want this book to reach more than just a list a special list that people get on when they sell enough copies and I think that alone is just so so profound to me

and you know it's a good segue let's dig in to kind of what the book gets into can you tell us what is what is the culturescape and how does how does the culture Escape affect the choices that we kind of are are ingrained or hardwired to to make

okay so firstly I am fascinated by evolutionary biology and one of the things you learn when you study evolutionary biology and I was talking to a to a friend of mine who's in the field he said the the the planet got effed as soon as human beings

evolve the brain with pattern recognition systems now what this means is at a certain point about Evolution we begin to see the Nuance of patents right and part of this pattern recognition system allowed us to develop new ways of communicating with language so an ape an

ape right could say look Tiger but a human being could say hey Bob don't go by the river because I saw a tiger there five hours ago so let's chill out here and wait and go back and fish tomorrow when that Beast might go away so as we develop these systems to recognize time

to recognize patterns to communicate human beings started Living in two different worlds and I just want to acknowledge there's a phenomenal book on this called sapiens by yuwal Hariri okay so we started Living in two different worlds and one world is the world of

absolute truth this is the world that says this rock is gray and it is hard this Berry is edible that's absolute truth it's true for everyone but there's also a world of relative truth and this world is the world of human language that exists in our heads human language

allowed us to create our mythologies our culture a designation for what a man should do what a woman should do it allowed us to create rules and values and and ways of assembling our tribe and communicating and hailing the leader but the thing

about this this world of of language is that it is not real it's not absolute truth it's relative truth meaning it's true for some people and not true for others but the problem is all of us as human beings tend to take the world of relative truth very often as absolute

truth think about how we blindly believe what our religions say or what a political leaders say or what we or what we believe in the television media we believe that you need a college degree to be successful we believe that you need a nine to five job we believe that

if you don't follow this particular rule of our religion this is going to happen to you you believe that a man and a woman need to unify and have a marriage and have 2.5 kids and two cars in the garage and then you're living in a normal family the problem with the

culture Escape is that the culture Escape evolved as a mental construct to keep us safe because for seven thousand years we lived in an unsafe world we lived in a world where hunter-gatherers were competing with each other for food or tribes were

fighting with each other for land but today we are living in the safest time in human history we're living in a time when we are connected to the rest of the world through the internet the rules that kept us safe the culture Escape which is that collection of human

beliefs rituals habits no longer is as relevant to us as it was before and therefore we can question that culture escape and I love this I love that you are challenging the status quo just because in my own experience I I tend to see what people are doing and I do the

exact opposite and I mean but a singular question that I have for you is I mean what do you what do you say and how do you deal with um a person who is kind of struggling with that you know they're they're being judged by their family they're being

told that what they're doing is the wrong thing they're they're being told no you should be a doctor lawyer whatever and and yet inside themselves they they have this passion for something completely different different I mean how do you how do you personally

recommend a person deals with that that fight because it is it is a battle well I I'll it is it is one of the hottest things that many people are going to go through I was blessed to have parents who were Progressive in many ways and and were open-minded many

people don't I have a friend who was exiled from her family because she married a man of a different religion but in the book in in chapter two of the book I deal with this topic and I talk about why it is so important to stay true for your values now here's

basically what I said and I quote a friend of mine um a writer and TV actress by the name of Psalm Isadora right and Psalm says the people who tell you that you need to follow a particular family or cultural belief or way of life love you but essentially what they are

saying is look at me I'm better because my chains are bigger and you got to understand that it is your right to to break those chains you have to you know recognize that they're doing it because they love you because like every other human being raised in

the culture Escape they have an evolutionary drive to keep their offspring safe whether it's a teacher or it's a parent it's their own natural tendency to keep you safe but you have to do what is going to be right for you otherwise you're living someone else's

life and that is the surest part to mediocrity and being miserable look I became a computer engineer because growing up in Indian culture see in the early 1990s Bill Gates visited India and Bill Gates in India was seen as one of the greatest men in the world and of

course it actually it actually changed Indian culture in some way he was the richest man in the world India was a poor country and Indian parents started telling their kids you must be a computer engineer my grandfather told me be like Bill Gates be a computer

engineer you know or at least work for Bill Gates and so I ended up studying Computer Engineering I ended up getting a job at Microsoft I went through five years of my life getting the best grades I could trying to learn computer engineering I got that job at Microsoft

I was in Bill Gates home and I decided I wanted to quit and Bill Gates is an amazing guy he was having a barbecue in his home for all the fresh new Microsoft employees but I realized I hated my job and I realized if I continued down this part I'd be working every day from nine

to seven in misery 11 weeks after joining Microsoft I quit and I joined something that really gave me a passion you know I I and and it it led to great things in my life I joined a non-profit basically but I did that against my parents advice and they were I'm sure

they were upset for a while but it led to who I am today no parent tells their child you know why don't you start a meditation company that's the short response to be successful so I think it's really important that we learn to be resilient that we learn to that these

people love us but that we Forge our own path anyway yeah I um you know I also work in the entrepreneur startup industry and uh a lot of my friends uh who went to very prestigious schools dropped you know 200 000 degrees to do their passion and

seeing that is both inspiring and the most scary thing that I've that I've ever witnessed because it seems like our culture now is almost moving towards that it's almost books like yours and others are pushing people to find their passion to look at truly look at

their passion because we we are sold this idea of immediately going into college after we move out of high school we we go to college we we pick a degree pick a major it's the most forced thing that in our culture I think is a disease and you know you you have

these rules and these [ __ ] rules that you you call um let's define those let's let's get into those I mean what are what are some of these rules so a a Brule is a [ __ ] rule that we adopt to simplify our understanding of the world and so one of the biggest rules is what

you just mentioned the idea that you need a college degree to be successful even the idea that you need college itself I can tell you Xavier I no longer believe in college I have an eight-year-old son I don't care if he goes to college or not what I care about

is that he finds meaningful work that's it meaningful work I don't even care if he follows his passion right his passion may be because passions are something you can follow as Hobbies his passion maybe to play the guitar and finally plays the guitar meaningful work I think

is really what we should all be doing I talk about that in the book and I talk about I I share an exercise called the three most important questions that any of you can Google online that will teach you how to get there but college degrees are a Brule the idea that you need to

get married is a rule the idea that you need to live in the same country that you were born in is April there are so many things out there that we blindly accept because of convenience because everyone else is doing it human beings as I said are pattern recognition

machines and one of the patterns that we tend to follow as a mental algorithm is if everyone else is doing it it must be okay and it must be safe and it must be the part to do and we do this to simplify a decision-making Matrix but it's not often the best way to truly

being successful I mean you've you've been through a lot in your life and you've you know you've there's a lot of up and up and downs with with owning your own company launching and you you happen to be incredibly successful at what you're doing mine Valley is huge and I mean

this book is is quite unique it how important is gratitude to you know sustaining a mental health it is probably one of the single most important things you can do so let's put it this way right we evolved our physical systems way earlier than we

evolved our conscious systems think about it this way when we get up to go to work we put on clothes we spray cologne we take a shower maybe shave or shampoo our hair get into a car looking good feeling good ready to dash off to work many of us will start today with a

healthy breakfast or working out at homo at the gym we've evolved as human beings to practice these things and people who do so would swear by them I don't know anyone today whom I work with who would get up and go and I'm not going to take

a bot today you know I'm going to skip that brush in my teeth yes if you go back if you go back to the 1910s and the 1920s stick you know most Americans did not brush their teeth in the 1920s the U.S army issued a health alert because tooth decay was a serious issue

among in in the U.S army even showering many people did not shower in centuries ago Queen Elizabeth claimed that she only shower twice in her lifetime the day she was born and the day she got married so a lot of things that we take for granted right now were

not normal back then we have evolved our physical systems so we we clean ourselves before heading out we wash ourselves yet billions of people wake up every morning with their minds filled with Gunk with worry with fear with anxiety with stress would dread for the

upcoming day and they do nothing about it we wash our bodies but we don't wash our minds we are trained to believe that our minds that worry is normal stress is normal fear is is normal jealousy or anger or hatred towards someone else oh that's just normal you know that waiter

pissed me off it's not normal just like Queen Elizabeth thought that her natural body odor was normal and that people of that time thought that it was okay for a even a rich man to bathe only once or a week and now we know better we need to realize that worries fears

anxieties are abnormal mental conditions they are signs that your mind isn't in a healthy State and that you can clean them within minutes just like you can take a quick shower and the solution to that is gratitude scientists have studied gratitude and said it has the

greatest correlation with well-being over just about any other mental characteristic gratitude studies now show that gratitude make you of less prone to anxiety it improves your heart performance it makes you a more forgiving person it creates better

states of kindness it improves your performance at work because it leads to happiness which in turn leads to better productivity so gratitude leads to things such as optimism other studies show that optimism saying salespeople can lead to a 55 better performance

gratitude leads to happiness studies show that happiness leads to better performance in exams studies show that doctors who are primed to be happy are 19 better at diagnosis so there are so many studies right now that it's almost a cliche to say practice

gratitude but honestly it is one of the greatest things we can practice now we don't hear about it in television commercials and so on because you cannot Market gratitude the Pharma industry hasn't yet figured out a way to bill you for gratitude they can build you for

Prozac I mean you can go on a Prozac subscription plan but studies actually show that gratitude can create just as good levels of happiness without the pharmaceutical side effects and that's why gratitude is one of the most important and crucial things you guys

can do okay so so you know we we've built a framework we've defined some of the things that limit us and we're getting into the things that we can do to change that um as as a sort of side question because I I also want to learn about who you are

and your life and and your process and I want to deconstruct that as much as possible you know you in your book you talk about kind of hanging out with Richard Branson I mean you mentioned Bill Gates earlier and Tony Robbins I mean how how are you

able to kind of how how are you able to enter this sort of very elite very Niche circle of human beings that are changing the world well a lot of it is because I I have a simple principle in life and that is usually some of the five people closest to you

so I like connecting with people who can inspire me people who can uplift me and I I make these connections by being of value to these people I'll give you an example Peter die man this runs the X prize Foundation he's probably one of the greatest entrepreneurs on the planet

today a man who thinks incredibly big thanks to him we have the private space travel industry thanks to him we have X price solving world problems he also founded Singularity University he's now started planetary resources which is mining for asteroids I saw Peter Diamond

to speak and I told him you know you really inspired me and I asked him I I would love to be able to learn more from you what can I do and he told me about a seminar that he runs and it's an expensive seminar it's like 10 or 20K to attend it's called abundance 360. he

told me that he runs non-profits and if I was an entrepreneur and I had you know excess Capital that I wanted to put to a good cause I could donate to as non-profit and I thought that was a really good idea and so every year I actually donate a large sum of money to

the X price foundation and as a reward for this I have Peter as a friend I got to interview him for the book I get to spend you know at least seven days or so with him on X prize events and X prize trips and I get to learn from him in other inspiring people through xprice

and you know it's a large sum of money and some people might say it's a ridiculous cost but the fact is I'm getting back to the world because X price is probably one of the most high performing ngos out there in terms of like value for dollar donating but at

the same time I get to meet with people who inspire me and never fail to remind me to dream bigger now any of us can do the same thing I had to start somewhere and I started and I started this whole idea of networking and connecting with great people in 2005 in 2005 there was

um a guy I know who was an author and he and at that point I had a Blog I simply had a Blog on personal growth and this guy who was an author had a program out I can't remember what the program was called but it was a really cool program on goal setting and he had his team

reaching out to bloggers saying asking if anybody you know would write a blog post about him and he wasn't a really big name but I did anyway I tested out his program I wrote a blog post and I think I I remember I think I helped him sell like thirty thousand dollars worth of

his program and he was happy and he said you know I'm doing a networking event and um maybe you can come and you can and you know he told me flat out I'm not qualified for his networking event but I could come as a volunteer and I did I went and I volunteered there I met more

people and I asked them how can I add value to you is there anything I can do could I interview you could I you know could I could I share a blog post about you could I volunteer for you and I worked my way up over 11 years and anyone can do that it's really about if

you want to get if you want to network with the with great minds figure out how can you add value to them hmm yeah many people many people do it the other way around I go to conferences and I have people coming up to me going hey you know I have this great business

idea could I get you on a phone call for 30 minutes so you can advise me and and it's just impractical I mean every good entrepreneur every good CEO knows that our time is worth tens of thousands of dollars per hour to our business if I get on a phone call with someone and

advise someone for 30 minutes that's actually costing me money that many people don't get it one in ten actually asked me how they can add value to me nine out of ten ask me for stuff yeah I mean that's that's got to be tough because I mean you you've done a lot of

people admire you and so they you know they they just don't have they don't have that ability to kind of see past you know the first layer which is you know that that boundary if you're asking me for something you're not you're not helping me and you know and it's it's

like you you can't go around and help everyone that you even if you want to you can't go and help every single person that asks you to help them and Xavier if if I can share one thing I just realized I missed out on the best possible tip for your audience and the

best possible tip is start be a connector if you want to connect with Incredible people be a connector so here's what I did in 2010 I decided to start my own Festival I observed that you know many people would go to entrepreneurship seminars and they

would skip the lecture speaking spot but and hang out in the bars because they love connecting so I started my own Festival back then it was called awesomeness best but now it's called AFS that I invited 250 people entrepreneurs and people who

had you know were doing great things in the world to come and hang out together and an event in Costa Rica I put up my own money so I was gambling my own money that this was gonna take off or I was going to lose money and actually 250 people came I went up to incredible

speakers like chip Conley who started you know um the Jordan Hotel chain and it's now part of Airbnb and I asked them if they would come speak and I put together this incredible thing and now every year it happens every year thousands of people

apply to attend afes where they can come together and connect with each other but by putting myself as the founder of it I get access to all of these great minds today 80 percent of my friends are a fasters and you know it's turned into a really really remarkable thing that

anybody could do this anybody could decide that you know I want to start a a book Society within my city where people are going to come together and discuss the latest Business book They're going to read oh I want to start a a CrossFit movement where people who want to get

better at Health can come together and work out together and it's a really really great philosophy I started in a small way and I grew and grew and grew to now having my own Festival being part of the x-price Innovation board and so on but I did it all in 10 years you

start with a small group and you expand from there I love it I I truly I I the vision and the the aspect of you know really you really have this Talent of of seeing Beyond you know you're seeing 10 12 moves ahead and you know it's it's really remarkable

um let's has their mission has there been any single moment where I mean has this happened yet for you where you have said okay I I've made it or or is that you know an elusive kind of thing where you're still kind of kind of pushing the edge no no that's so that's a trick

question okay and it's a trick question because of this modern goal setting I talk about this in chapter um chapter six of the book modern goal setting is screwed up we teach people that they need to pursue goals but the problem is many of the goals that people are

pursuing are goals from the couch Escape including the goal be an entrepreneur that is a [ __ ] goal most entrepreneurs are miserable they thought they wanted to do it because they wanted Freedom or they wanted to build a great product or they wanted the experience of

being a leader or they wanted you know the satisfaction of being looked up upon only to find that they are trapped into the equivalent of having a day job working crazy long hours but now with added risk and if you don't believe me ask most entrepreneurs I mean it most

people who listen to your podcast when they think of entrepreneurs they think of startup entrepreneurs who got funding and and so on but that's not the case the guy who runs the local grocery store or you know opens up a restaurant is an entrepreneur as well a guy who's an Uber

driver trying to earn a living on his own as a contractor is in many ways an entrepreneur most people are barely surviving now the reason for that is because we are trained to chase mean schools rather than end goals so means goal is a means

to an end get a college degree be an entrepreneur is a means goal what we are really chasing though are the end goals are I want a life of freedom I want to live in a way where I can work 20 hours a week and spend 20 hours with my son or wife or daughter I

want to write I want to write I want the experience of being able to inspire people daily now when you set end goals you open yourself up to unusual means to get there but you don't get trapped into the means of the culturescape one of my end goals savior was to be able to stay

in a gorgeous luxury hotel every six months and have my children and my family with me and experience life and have friends with me and when I set that goal I had no freaking idea how to do it seems so counter to being the CEO of a large company of a 200 person company

yeah but then the idea for atheist came to me and now every six months I am staying in a luxury hotel I was just in Greece and in six months from now it's in the Mexican Riviera and I'm there with 200 people who are attending atheists and I'm there

because of the host and everything is paid for and because I'm bringing so much business to the hotel I get the presidential suite and so somehow this bizarre goal that I put down on paper when I was you know when I was in my early 20s came true but

I set it out as an end goal it was something I wanted for the end in itself so when you understand the difference between means goals and end goals you learn to hack life to find faster optimized routes to what truly speaks to your soul what truly makes you happy

okay now back to your question right is it ever enough as long as you are attaining your end goals it will be enough but if you're chasing mean schools it's never going to be enough because mean skulls always mean there's something next a means goal

is something you do so you can attain something so you can attain something you study hard in high school so you can get into a good college so you can do well in your LSAT so you can get that law degree so you can start your own Law Firm so you can be a lawyer and be a

fancy fancy big wig only to realize that 50 of lawyers I read this recently suffer from depression because their jobs are miserable and they're wondering how did I get here right yeah yeah wow it's just such a profound idea and I love it um you know you in the book you talk

about bending reality and you know you mentioned you just mentioned uh hacking happiness you know how do we do this so this is one of the more controversial aspects of the book this is probably the part of the book where so if you look at my book on Amazon

you'll see the reviews are really interesting it's it's 87 or 90 five star reviews but there are also lots of one star reviews from people who blatantly hate the book this is one of the things they hate about the book I suggested the book that reality is malleable that

we cannot explain it but to some degree our minds influence our reality and I'm not talking about the simplistic idea of programs such as the secret I find that very simplistic I don't know what causes it but I believe that we can bend reality I

believe that luck is within our control and I believe this because I keep seeing instances in my life and instances in the lives of other really successful people I know that shocks us we don't know how this coincidence or synchronicity came onto our lap but we

know that we wanted it to and we were focused on it in the right way and I suggest a formula for bending reality and the formula is this have amazing Visions pulling you forward exciting things that you want to do but at the same time be happy now

so a lot of people think you got to focus your thoughts and think and think and think about that thing that you want often no because if you are in the wrong frame of mind your thoughts about it are thoughts of worry or fear or anxiety that it's going to

come with you you must be in the state that I call um the state of pending reality where you have these bold visions of what you want to do in the world but the second ingredient is you are not attached to those Visions if they come they come if

they don't come they don't come they are nice to haves rather you are happy now you have made it you don't need anything more now it's a tricky state to get to get them because Society doesn't train us to be in this state but if you believe that you have made it that

you're happy now you find that the visions that you want come to you but you've got to be unattached from those Visions so again it's a it's a it's a big philosophy I've given one hour speeches on it you can you can Google me and you'll find several speeches I've

done that talk about this you know for people who want to learn it yeah but um but but that's the magic ingredient and I strive every single day to put myself in that state to have big goals and Visions pulling me forward but to be happy now to be happy in the present

is there is there a technique or is there a sort of ritual that you use to sort of elicit these ideas these these creative Inspirations that you have I mean is is there any specific task or way that you come up with new fresh ideas yes so you can train the mind you

can train the mind to tap into intuition and inspiration I developed a a 15 to 20 minute meditation I call it the sixth phase it is unlike other meditations because it's not about mantras or rituals or any of that other stuff that turns people off I don't believe in

clearing your mind or any of that whether it's six mental exercises that you do and the six days has become very very popular if you download mindvalley's meditation appana it's installed free you can get online and Google Talks um I I get um there's a major conference called

wisdom 2.0 and Silicon Valley and I get the second most highly watched talk ever at their conference after Eckhart Tolle so you can find that on their Channel and it's about the six days and I also included a chapter on it in my book and if you buy the book you get a free

course that teaches you this method but I'll summarize it basically you just like a character in a video game have you ever played those old 90s video games where you gotta you know where your character is on a quest and you gotta up level you gotta up level

your charisma up level your endurance up level your skill you remember what I'm talking about right so identify that in the human world there are six things that we constantly have to up level and this 15 to 20 minute meditation is called the six days because it takes you

through two to three minute exercises in order to up level yourself the first is compassion if we create more compassion human beings the world becomes a more beautiful place and up leveling yourself in compassion means you see other human beings as beautiful as amazing you're

kind to that waiter who might mess up your order you are generous and empathetic to your family and your co-workers so compassion is the first one so we teach a simple idea for compassion second is gratitude we've spoken about that the third is

forgiveness people don't get this but forgiveness when you learn how to forgive it actually boosts your endurance it Studies have shown it uses things such as your ability to do a vertical jump others have said it bruises IQ so forgiveness is a really

key part and it makes you a um a more gentle happier human being then so those three phases are about happiness in the now right the first ingredient of bending reality we then go on to phase four five and six which is the second ingredient of pending reality which is

about having a vision so baseball is about seeing yourself three years into the future most of us underestimate what we can do in three years and overestimate what we can do in one year so this space helps you craft that vision for yourself phase five is

picturing your perfect day unfolding and phase six is feeling blessed it is you know if you have a religion and you pray to a particular God if you're an atheist and you just you know want to feel supported phase six is where you you feel that feeling of support whether

it's coming from within from your family or from a higher power so this particular meditation takes you through those six phases and it up levels you and people who do it say it's like taking a magic pill every day if there is a pill remember that movie Limitless

if there is a pill that gets you there it's this and people underestimate it because it's free and it's easy and we shouldn't do that um but it's one of those things which I think is one of the biggest changes in my life when I started doing this it

changed me and it transformed my business and it transformed how I get out there in the world and every success I've had is because of this one daily habit that I do every single day or at least it's the single greatest correlation to any success I've had I'm

blown away I I truly I mean I think that this is the the next level that we I mean you have developed a blueprint for this sort of mechanism of not only reaching this sort of idea of success but also attaining a sense of fulfillment in what you're doing and as

you mentioned earlier there's not it's not this end goal it's it's this you know it's this process of it and having the happiness now realizing that you've made it already you've already made it and I love that about this book and just a truly amazing

um there's a chapter in your book called be unfuck withable I you know how can I not bring this up be unfuckwithable how How would how did you come up with that name for this chapter it's a it's another one of those things right you know people people tell

me how how can you teach meditation and use the f word as if it's some magic word that creates bad vibes no [ __ ] is an incredible word it it it it it it it is the idea you know it's it's what causes us to be born it's love making it just has a bad connotation but it's how

you use the word and I use it here as a form of power being unfuckwitable it means being immune to judgment to criticism but also being immune to praise because if you give someone the ability to lift you up through praise you also give them the ability to

control your emotions through criticism right unfuck with the bow means being steady in who you are it means being able to forgive people in the past who have wronged you so it's about healing your past through forgiveness and you control all that those people may be

you know they they they they may have done you wrong and you don't have to wait for them to come and apologize you can forgive them forgiving your past is part one the second part of being unfuck-withable is being grounded in the present it's having mindfulness

practices at your disposal so let's say you are someone cuts you off and flips you the finger while driving it doesn't shake you up you're cool that way so it's being grounded in the present and third being unfuckwitable means having being confident about your future and

knowing that the choices you make you are making them for yourself and not because someone is pushing you in that direction not because you're following someone else's rules so that's really what this chapter is about it's it's a way of getting you

strong so that you can go and Chase and pursue those crazy dreams you want while being grounded and happy in the present and not being pushed around by the culture escape and other people's expectations of you yeah wow it's so huge and I mean Vision so okay let's

put it all together man I mean like we've created we've gone through the culturescape we've we've identified this idea of you know not doing not doing the things that people maybe expect of us and we move through these levels and I feel like there's stages

and it's almost like an Awakening you're waking up to the Matrix or something but you talk about living your quest you know and and how to kind of live for a life of meaning and what I mean what is that what does that translate into for you

well again you got to remember I'm a geek writing a book I'm a computer engineer I grew up being called a nerd I played computer games and hacked them all my life and letting your quest actually comes from my my computer games if you if you think

about great computer games there's always this Quest that someone goes on and I believe all of us are here on the planet to find that Quest and I don't think that there is a that there is a particular Quest that a higher power puts us on and demands that we have to

do the quest is something personal but a quest is basically this it is something that you're going to do on the planet that will leave the planet better off for the rest of humanity the problem is many people forget this when it comes to defining their life for their life

vision and they end up in situations where they're actually working on projects working for companies which are not doing good for the planet so in the book I introduced a concept called Humanity plus and Humanity minus Humanity plus accompanies and businesses

that are helping push the human race forward you Xavier with your podcast that's inspiring people is Humanity plus Elon Musk and Tesla is Humanity plus Apple that creates great consumer electronics and beautiful design is Humanity plus but there are also

companies out there that let's be honest they need to die out because they're actually producing businesses and services that are negative to the world and I'm just going to call out one company right now because we don't see that it is a Humanity minus company

that's Coca-Cola and pepsian and McDonald's Coke sells high fructose corn syrup which is dangerous to the human biology but they Market it as happiness in a can they repeatedly deny and buy their own scientific studies that show that coke doesn't really cause diabetes

they are continuously trying to Market it to teenagers I have a friend who's one of the most brilliant men in Silicon Valley who was approached by Coke and he told and they asked can you help us figure out a way to get this to moteans and he said essentially

[ __ ] off no money is going to be able to buy my soul like that but think about it right people work for Coke I have a friend recently who quit Coke and he said you know when you're working for Coke in your first couple of weeks you go through this moral dilemma and you

want to quit and they get you to stay by paying you 30 of birth any other job you could possibly get and my message in my book is don't fall for that I mean we are facing a world right now where for the first time I believe we are handing a world to our children that is worse

off than the world we inherited you look at Millennium salaries for example millenniums for the first time are worse off than the previous generation and where global warming is a serious threat and obesity is another serious threat the degradation of our food is another

thing and so we need people today who are going to stop and say no to [ __ ] jobs for Humanity negative companies so companies that were started in a different era when the only thing that mattered was shareholder value and we need people to join the X prizes the

Teslas the the companies of the world that are actually helping push Humanity forward now I'm not saying you need to save the world all I'm saying is don't [ __ ] it up for the Next Generation yeah wow Bravo man I I truly truly respect everything that you're saying

and doing um you know I I want to sort of you know we've we've covered a lot of material and there's more in your book but I I want to give you a chance to I mean for the person out there that may be listening to the show and is struggling you know they're they're

struggling however that struggle may be what would you what do you say to that person how would you kind of lift them up like how do you give a person hope that is trapped in a job they hate working for something that they don't believe in feel like they have passion a passion to

do something great for the world what do you what do you say what single thing can you say to that person so so I I wanted to understand the concept of kensho and Satori it's a very important idea I talk about in chapter 10. now we grow so kensho and Satori comes from the

Reverend Michael Beckwith who teaches at the Agape spiritual center in Los Angeles it's a it's a church for humanism that is it's just incredible but one of the ideas he shares and I and I quote him in the book we grow our soul will give us an opportunity to grow

through kenshaw moments or Satori moments kensho is growth through pain Satori is growth through inspiration now the problem is most people are not fully tapped into their soul and so when we need to get steered into the right direction the soul will go you know I'm

gonna make you I'm gonna mess things up for a moment here so that you learn a lesson and so we fall sick we fall sick and we get hospitalized but we learn to eat better and take better care of our bodies a business restart fails but it teaches us something and it gives us the

idea for our next business we fall in love and someone breaks our heart but it helps us then later find the man or woman we are really meant to be with all of us go through kenshaw moments have gone through so many cultural moments you know from having my health screwed

up to having my heart completely cut apart to losing multiple businesses each of that is a stepping stone but after a while you gotta you learn to see the patterns and I've now learned that kensho is simply a way to auto correct and when you see pain as a way to

autocorrect you realize that you start to adopt this Eastern philosophical idea that there is no pain there only is what is and what is is often just a way to help put you in the right path now when you start seeing this you open yourself to more Satori your soul goes oh he's

listening he's not wailing and whining about that illness or being stuck in hospital he knows that you know this is just part of the plan to get him to wake up and when you start doing that you start moving towards Satori moments which is where you awaken you move into

the right direction through inside Satori moments are beautiful I'll be meditating and I get a Satori moment I'll be in the shower and I get a Satori moment and that Satori moment is something where I learned about a new way I can add value to the world a new

way I can be happy recently I was in Greece right for afest and I got invited to visit a refugee camp and I got to see these Afghan and Syrian and and Iraqi refugees living in in the most miserable conditions and I got to talk to the children there learn about their

lifestyle and I realized that was a Satori moment I realized I wanted to do something for this so I spoke to people in the camp and they are putting on a Kickstarter campaign to raise funds and I'm helping promote that campaign I'm helping rent them raise fifty thousand

dollars and it was it wasn't painful it was an Insight it was an Insight on how I could add value to the world and when you learn to live life like that life becomes beautiful you start seeing these Awakenings you start having these opportunities just show up that make you

happy that give you Joy that show you how you can add value to the world and that's when you're really living a life that is extraordinary love the message man love it I mean we're approaching the end here Vision I've got a couple more questions for you um

what is something that you would say extraordinary people have in common extraordinary people have a vision for their life a vision for how they want to contribute to the world how they want to grow a vision for what experiences to want to have in their

life but here's the thing right that vision isn't just about them that Vision involves pushing the human race forward to some degree and it doesn't mean you have to start a huge company it could be a vision for how you want to grow a vision for the beautiful experiences you

want to have of travel and a vision for your contribution because you're just going to be the best mom or dad you can be a race amazing kids for 18 years and that's good that makes you extraordinary but there's a second ingredient and the second

ingredient is they have made it exactly like you said they have made it and by made it it means that while they have that Vision where they are right now they are happy they are unattached to that Vision so if you have to ask me for that definition that's really it

extraordinary people love life life is unfolding for them in this beautiful way it's as if coincidences and synchronicities fall on their lap they are happy where they are there's nothing that they are chasing they know that to Chase is to push away and they have

these Visions for how they want to expand their life and grow their life and these Visions are coming are coming to them with ease and a friend of mine recently shared with me a quote and I wanna I wanna share this quote with you um sure give me one give me one second

to just pull it up okay yeah no problem because this quote really best explains extraordinary people and um this quote actually comes from an Afghan refugee which is really interesting many people have heard of this quote but they didn't know that the guy who shared this quote

was an Afghan Refugee from the Mongol invasion of the 13th Century A.D the Afghan refugee's name we know him in the west as Rooney and today Rooney is the probably the most I think he's the best-selling poet in America how interesting is that right that the best

selling poet in America was an Afghan Refugee so Rooney said this when I run after what I think I want my days are a furnace of distress and anxiety if I sit in my own place of patience what I need flows to me and without any pain from this I understand that what I want also

wants me is looking for me and attracting me there's a great Secret in this for anyone who can grasp it yeah wow what a profound profound quote what this means the way I you can perceive the the poems of Rooney in many different ways how I say this is to

understand that if that what you want also wants you I believe there is a life Bossa the ancient Greeks called agaya um energy force around the world and if we want what is best for Humanity that thing wants it to and will cooperate with you and suddenly set in

motion the wheels and the mechanisms the Kaizen and the Satori moves to help you get there but you don't have to chase it because as soon as you chase something you become in the words of Rumi furnace of distress and anxiety and this breaks that flow and this is why it's so

important to be happy in the now to have those things but to not be attached to them to know that where you are right now is good you are complete you are you are enough you have it you have everything you need to be happy right now and then you can put yourself in the

state that's when magic happens wow what a what a beautiful note to I think close on here I really think it's remarkable what you've done actually there's there's one last thing and I think out of everything in your book I think this was one of my most favorite

things that you that you kind of suggest and talk about you talk about um future dreaming and kind of daydreaming and seeing ourselves doing the things we love seeing ourselves succeeding seeing ourselves and using it as a type of affirmation in which we

have already attained the things that you know we are seeking and using it in a way in which we kind of float you know with it in a in a daydream and it's it's very eloquent the way you put it right well it's it's an exercise I do every single day future dreaming is actually

stage four in the six phase uh meditation and what I do is I think about one aspect of my life and where I want that aspect to be in three years right now for me it's owning a really beautiful home that I can share with my kids and my wife in California

facing the sea and I see myself standing in my balcony reading a good book oh sorry sitting in my balcony reading a good book or gazing out at the sea listening to the crashing waves and I just experienced that for a moment that's my vision that's my goal I have

no anxiety I'm not chasing it it's just something I want to see and have in my life in three years and I find that as I start doing this opportunities start emerging that get me there and this has really been the story of my life I would start by thinking about where I want to

be three years from now in a in a non-attached sort of way and then the opportunities would unfold as long as I was in a state of happiness in the now so that's future dreaming yeah yeah wow I mean I I kind of want to keep asking you questions fish and I'm

learning so much from this conversation I mean it is there is there one thing that you have personally struggled with is there any single kind of idea or thought or just anything that was part of the grind yeah I I struggled with self-esteem like most of my life I I

thought it was unattractive I thought I was a geek I didn't think I was I was worthwhile I'm a guy who never actually you know had a girlfriend until I was 22 because I I was just so I just had poor self-esteem and um I I grew up with that eyesight I was

legally blind without my glasses until I had surgery I grew up with a skin problem so my face was just covered with acne um I had chronic acne and all of these things just really gave me low self-esteem for the first half of my life until I was maybe 23 24 and like

meeting other people I knew many other people out there even people listening right now may face this it was a Kaizen moment it was opportunities for me to grow to learn for example that skin problem exposed me to books on healing on energy healing and visualization and

I learned that the skin is one of the most responsive organs to imagery therapy this got me experimenting with meditation and visualization and after five years of chronic skin disease I healed my skin in five weeks using a visualization wow that wow opened me up

to the power of visualization which is stuff I now share in my book so if I hadn't had that skin disease perhaps I would never have written this book because I would never have started exploring all of these different options so I really believe that everything in

life happens as a you know as a wave to push you forward it's just how you choose to view it yeah man wow I mean how long did it take for this book to get hit the best seller um it it hit the list in about a week from being released yeah I mean it's that good I I

highly recommend it everyone everyone who's listening the book is called the code of the extra extraordinary mind the author is vishin La La am I saying your last name right right yeah and uh Vision where can where can people find your work get to Mindvalley well you can

learn about Mindvalley on well the first thing I recommend is go to mindvalleyacademy.com that is our main website that's where we we bring you all of these amazing teachers and such and um you can get the book from Amazon you know just go to Amazon and search for it

code of the extraordinary mind this is The Human Experience Vision thank you so much for being here what a wonderful amazing conversation truly remarkable to have you in in my presence or it's really an honor to to speak to you and your and your work is really remarkable

and I think it it you know it's hitting the best seller list which you know which might not mean anything but I think it's helping a lot of people already so yeah thank you so much this is The Human Experience guys thank you guys so much for listening uh we will

see you guys next week