Artist Friendly with Joel Madden - Vishen

Episode Date: December 23, 2024

On this week's episode of Artist Friendly, Joel Madden is joined by Vishen. Vishen Lakhiani is an entrepreneur and motivational speaker who’s the founder and CEO of Mindvalley. He also authored two books, The Code of the Extraordinary Mind and The Buddha and the Badass — and will release his third, The 6 Phase Meditation Method, in January. In a conversation with Madden, Lakhiani delves into the importance of meditation, friendship, and the life lessons that we can take into 2025. ------- Listen to their Artist Friendly conversation on ⁠⁠⁠⁠Spotify.⁠⁠⁠ ------- Follow Artist Friendly! IG: @artist.friendly TikTok: @artist.friendly YouTube: youtube.com/@artist.friendly ------- Host: Joel Madden, @joelmadden Executive Producers: Joel Madden, Benji Madden, Jillian King Producers: Josh Madden, Joey Simmrin, Janice Leary Visual Producer/Editor: Ryan Schaefer Audio Producer/Composer: Nick Gray Music/Theme Composer: Nick Gray Cover Art/Design: Ryan Schaefer Additional Contributors: Anna Zanes, Neville Hardman Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hey, what's up? I'm Joel Madden, and this is artist-friendly. On this episode, I'm talking to three-time best-selling offer and founder of the platform, Mind Valley, Vishin Lakiani. Let's go. I don't want to bed times. I don't want to have bad. I was thinking about it.

I was like, what am I going to talk to Vision about? So for anybody listening, and I've already explained who you are on the intro to the podcast, Anybody listening, Vision started a platform because that's something people can understand for personal growth. Yeah. And I think it's like a discovery of self. Yeah.

It's the idea that one of the reasons we're here on Earth is to become the best human beings we can be. I agree. Right? Like it's not about going to the gym. Life is a gym. Yeah. And it's not just about improving your health.

It's not just about mental health. It's about all of these unique abilities that God has given us, that we can experiment with, intuition, creativity, meta-learning, ability to connect deeply with people, to conscious parenting. There's this great mass of learnings that can make us become better humans, but schools don't cover it. And so this platform is designed to simply get these ideas out to people. Yeah.

It's exactly how I look at the world. Yeah. This is exactly how I see life. I see find myself in this body. this lifetime doing music. And if you judge someone at their first glance of how they look or what you may know a little bit of them, you miss the point. Right. And the opportunity of like what could happen if you go into a conversation or a meeting or an experience with zero judgment. Yeah. I do what I do, but I never look at what I do as the only thing I do. I'm on.

is on this curious, like, journey to figure out, like, what do I do? Who am I? Yeah. And what's possible? You know, and there's this idea that you just said of no judgment, that really hit me. So can I talk about something? Yeah, I love it. So, you know, we just finished the election.

Yeah. Last week, we found out that President Trump is going to be the next president. I was just speaking in an event this past weekend. This event, I was speaking. The other speakers were Jordan Peterson. were Tucker Carlson and Robert F. Kennedy. Right.

Right. Now, I live in Europe. I don't live in the U.S., but I love watching late-night television. I watch a daily show. I watch Stephen Colbert, and I didn't like those three guys because from what I was getting off the news,

all three of these men were jerks. Yeah, your perception of them. They were constantly being mocked. Yeah. So I tried to go in with no judgment and just listen to them. Here the ideas. list and they were so unlike anything the media made them out to be.

Yeah, usually the case. Yeah. Not a hint of racism. Nice. They have different viewpoints, but they were definitely not bad people. And that really stunned me. Like I realized how important it is to sit with everyone with a fresh slate. Yeah.

Right? And how in our world today so much, I know I think there's this aspect of the human mind where we like gossip. And that's how the media. gets us hooked in this bullshit drama. The bad part is we start judging each other and we come up with these crazy stories about the other side. I think it's so important right now

for Americans to just have an open mind towards the other side, whether it's conservative or progressive. Yeah, I agree. I actually feel like every time I meet someone, I have a clean slate. Yeah. And that's a great way of putting it, a clean slate.

Like if we all just had a clean slate, right. What would the experience be of every room, especially in entertainment, because we all get jaded. And I think we get so used to meeting people, and we rate people off. But the point of this show is a little bit of that approach to, I don't have any judgment on anyone. They can tell me their political beliefs. They could tell me their religion. They could tell me their habits. Right. Like a free flowing conversation. And when you have no judgment and then I'll go even further, not that I've ever talked about

but I have this word that I always say in the back of my mind when I go in, because music is very much like food. You could say, like, I don't like that kind of food. You might be wrong. You might actually have a dish you like. Music is the same way, because I don't listen to this or that. And then you get past that and you go, a person making it has to be special, especially if they've connected with all these people.

Right. It's not just a song. It's something in the music, the energy like we talked about. I have this word, I always say in the back of my mind, it's unconditional positive regard for every person that I meet. And then I started doing the show and it's a feeling that I have when I sit with anyone, unconditional positive regard.

And then if you carry that out into the world outside of just sitting down and doing the show, you can actually start to have that. Exactly. For everyone you meet. Right. You know, there's this aspect in Buddhism. It's compassion practice.

And in my meditation practice, the sixth phase, which is the title of my book, I believe we should start meditation with a compassion practice. And you just made me see that that is similar to what you're saying. You're saying everyone in high regard. And you do it by imagining the love you have for, say, your daughter or your dog or your spouse, feeling that in your heart, but then expanding that for greater and greater and greater levels of humanity, starting with the people in the room with you, like this incredible

crew recording the podcast to the people in the city of L.A., people in California, people in the United States, regardless of political beliefs, and then the entire world. And when you do that enough, what happens is that you develop this unconditional positive regard for everyone. You start seeing the world as a friendlier place. There's this unique quirk in human in our brains. And it's called fundamental attribution error. Yeah. And what it means is that, let's say you're driving and someone cuts you off, right? In your mind, you will label them a jerk. You would think, my God, what an A whole. But if you do the same thing, you will justify it. Oh my God, my kid was late for school. I'm sorry, I didn't see that guy. So when you or someone you love does it, it is the situation.

But when someone else does it, it's a character flaw. And we're constantly doing this. People we don't know, we judged their mistakes as character flaws, don't trust them. People we know, oh, it's just a situation. I think this kept us alive when we were more tribal species. And you didn't know the character of the person in the other tribe. I mean, maybe he was going to kill you for the fruit that you had, right? You've got to be judgy. But right now, that's still in our brains.

And this fundamental attribution error makes us behave like assholes. Yeah. So what you said is so relevant. The compassion practice is so relevant because it tones that down and makes you see everyone as a really beautiful human being.

Yeah. Which I think we all are. Yeah. The base you're working from is they are a good person. Yes. and that's kind of where I come from. Right.

Not always. I think that, like you said, if you say back when we were tribal or you could say back when you were young and you were in the streets, you had to think of a different set of rules. Right. Because there were outcomes that you could, that were real. Yeah. But those are no longer outcomes that are possible. In fact, I always do this exercise where I think about how many decisions am I away from

my ultimate, my highest level of. of success or happiness or whatever you want to call it, health or whatever, whatever the version of best is. And you can actually walk through those and go, I'm five decisions away. Right. I'm 10 decisions away.

You know, it's fun actually to think that way. And I always encourage people to go, artists especially when they're in these pivotal moments where I'm like, well, you're not that many decisions away from your ultimate highest success. And how many decisions are you away from your worst self? Yeah. And you can get to a place where you're a bunch of decisions away from your worst self.

You can make enough decisions to get so much distance from that place that you'd have to make a bunch of bad choices to get to the worst. Yeah. And you spiral downwards, right? When it gets bad, when it gets bad, it fucks with your head. Sorry, can I say that? Yeah, yeah. I mean, and it gets worse and worse and worse. Bad decisions whack your brain and you end up making more bad decisions.

it's a negative spiral that goes downwards. Yeah, good begets good, bad be gets bad. Exactly. And then what most people I find, because I like to watch, with again, no judgment, more of an understanding of like, it's probably something like I believe in them. And they pinball around. So they'll make good decisions.

They'll get a little momentum. They'll blow it up. They'll get in their own way. And they make a bunch of bad decisions. And they kind of go back and forth. And they stay in this middle place where it's good sometimes. It's bad sometimes. Some people, I'm sure you know plenty of people that are highly successful, highly functional,

highly, you know, developed that have learned how to create all good patterns, make all good decisions, and are operating on the most optimal highest level of themselves. And even those people probably have areas of their life that could improve. Because I think we all do. But I do think there's a version of your life where you get the major categories like firing. The major categories for me are like health and fitness, relationships, personal relationships, love life, obviously, family, and friendships, and then a work life that you love. And then the transcendent part of life, which is your spirituality, you know,

the higher purpose of why do anything. So I think those are the, for me anyways, when I organize in my brain, I always think of, am I hitting that, am I hitting that? Am I hitting that? Am I hitting that? Am I by hitting that. Yeah. And I find when I'm doing one really well, one of them might be suffering. And I'm trying to find the balance of doing them all really well.

I think that's a very important idea there. We got to look at life holistically. So many people, they will crush it in one area, like finance. Right. But then because of their chase for money, another part of their life, maybe it's their family,

maybe it's their love life, maybe it's their health, goes crazy. There are six, which I think are really important, the six F's. Family, friends, friends are really interesting. We forget to prioritize friendships, but friends are so important to us. I'm a man who went through a divorce, right? And for a while, I almost felt that the family was not there anymore. And I'm still in great terms with my ex-wife.

I'm great terms with my kids. But what I really learned to post-divorce is the importance of friendship. So it can get lonely. And so really, really nurturing friendships. So you have family, friends, then there's faith. And fate could be whatever you believe in. There's a lot. It doesn't have to be God if you're an atheist. It's your belief in the country, your belief in Jesus, whatever. Faith. Freedom. Can you live life based on your own terms?

That's a luxury for many people. Freedom. To live life based on your own terms, to have the freedom to go on a road trip when you need to, you know, to wake up and decide you don't have to hustle and go through commute to get to the office, but you have that space. Freedom. And then there's finances, which is money, obviously. And then fitness.

And fitness is basically the body. I think if you start setting goals in these six areas, your life is going to be pretty much okay. You've got to start thinking of it holistically. You can't even leave out one area. You leave out faith. What are you going to do in those moments when life is just shitty?

Like, what do you have backing you up? And so I think being able to look at life holistically is a really important skill we all need to learn. Schools, by the way, they only teach you one. Finance. They teach you how to get a job. And even then, they teach you a really crappy, obsolete stupid way to make money.

Yeah, it's old. Yeah. I'm gonna. And like my music, my cabello can't with me and has to be able to continue my rhythm. For so,

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not seeenties, but of who they're them. This is bar records. The date. Yeah. So I was inclined to talk to you about this stuff.

You know, immediately you sit down and I start talking to you about my philosophical kind of approach to things. We're kind of having a free-flowing conversation. I like that. Yeah, yeah. But the person that you are. Yeah. Right? Because there's this, there's the energy of us.

There's the spirit of us. And then there's the us, the person. Right. How do you go between, say, something like a divorce, right? Where you're going through so much pain. Right. You're not going in trying to fail together. And I don't look at divorce as a failure. I think that when you succeed in divorce and it can go really well for both people because you grew out of this to even better, greater heights, which most people are so afraid of to say the word and to talk about it. But I've had a few friends that have gone through divorces. And I've seen a few do really well. And it was painful.

but they work together as a team to make it the best possible case as they could. And then I've seen it the other way where it's a very painful. It's completely painful. And I think about the person, right, you, your work is helping people get it right. And so you're a guy who has answers. People are coming in you and they're going, hey, what should I do about this? Or, you know, people come and they want information from you so they can grow. So a profound thing to do for a living and for your life's work.

But then the real person, when you're going through such a hard thing like a divorce, has to go home and deal with the reality of life where these things we have to work through. Who are you in both of those moments? Yeah, you know, it's crazy. You got me thinking about divorce. It's really, really, really interesting. I remember when I got divorced and we announced it on Instagram with my ex-wife, we put up a picture of the two of us and our two kids,

and we mentioned that this is happening. People didn't come out in support. Some people said, hey, you know, I'm here. Everyone firstly saw it as a sad thing. And then I started getting slammed, primarily slammed from people of my ethnicity, Indian. Because in Indian culture, divorce is seen as the ultimate failure. Okay.

There is no greater failure than divorce in Indian culture. Only 3% of Indians get divorced. Wow. At the same time, there were Indian women writing to me saying, hey, I'm so glad you shared this divorce message because I was thinking about divorcing my husband because he's beating me, but I can't because I'd be seen as a failure. Imagine how crazy that is, right?

So when we got divorced, I personally think, me and my ex-wife, maybe we should have gotten divorced a little bit sooner. I think it happened just at the right time. It was a realization we both have. But here's the interesting thing. We realized that it was meant to happen. And as soon as that realization hit,

both of us, I remember we had an argument. It was an argument one night. We both felt this weird energy come down on us, but it was like a godly energy. And we actually kissed. And then we said, you know, I think this is coming to a closure. And we were happy and smiling about it.

We agreed to stay together until February 15, spend one last Valentine's stay together, 19 years. We were going to wrap up 19 years together. And then we said in February 15, we're going to announce it to the world. And what we did is we followed a philombin, called Conscious Uncoupling by a writer called Catherine Woodward Thomas.

So Conscious Uncoupling first became famous when Gwynette Paltrow. Yeah. Okay, when she divorced her husband and she announced it. Me and my ex-wife, Christina, we were the second biggest conscious uncoupling that got people's attention. Right. But it was such a beautiful process. We went through Catherine Woodward Thomas's work. You work on a lot on healing.

You work on forgiveness. And so the divorce came together so well that we stayed friends. Let me give an example of what I mean by friends. Two weeks ago, I was on an eight-day road trip with my ex-wife and our two kids. And we had so much fun. We are friends. I moved to Estonia because she's Estonian.

Estonia's a tiny, beautiful, cute little European country. She wanted the kids to learn their native language. I agreed. Most beautiful women in the world, they say. Some of the most beautiful woman in the world. Yeah, my ex-wife is definitely, absolutely, absolutely gorgeous. And I moved to Estonia because I told her, listen, when we got married, you moved to New York to be with me.

you give up your job. Now you pick and I'll move because I don't want to be away from the kids. And so I live in Estonia. For me, it can get lonely, but at least I'm still there with my kids. And I still feel like their family. Four nights a week, at least I have dinner with them. Now, why is it that divorce can be so beautiful like in our case, but people don't see that? There's this great book I just read called The Expectancy Effect.

And it says that whatever you expect about the world will be true. Amen. If you expect ending a relationship is going to be a shitty experience and it's going to be painful, it is going to be painful. And not only that, but, you know, if you expect your body to heal from an injury faster, it heals faster. If you expect stress is going to kill you, stress will kill you. If you expect stress has no impact on you, stress has no impact on you.

There's a great TED talk on this. The same thing is true with divorce. We've been programmed, this is my theory, by religion to believe in the concept that every relationship is meant to last forever and ever and ever and ever and ever. Then you hand over a couple of thousand dollars to De Beers to buy a diamond ring that is the result of an ad campaign that they launched, I think, in the 1940s. But that's not the reality of the world. Romantic love only became a thing about a hundred years ago. There was literally an advice columnist, and I think the 1920s, and a woman wrote, I don't think I love my husband.

And the response was, well, who cares? You're not supposed to love your husband. you're in a marriage for convenience, for kids, for property, for safety. You don't need to love your husband. Today we would think that's ludicrous. Now the stats is actually this. The average American will have three deep meaningful relationships in their life, which means everyone is going to go through two breakups, right?

And hopefully that third relationship is something till death does you apart. This means that your odds of going through a breakup, whether you call it a divorce or breakup are two out of three. It's going to happen. It's going to happen. But if we can just change our cultural understanding of it to see it as, listen, I've grown with this person, I've had so much fun with this person. And now we are transitioning from lovers to friendship. So much pain would be taken away. So much pain.

And the kids would be better. And we would be healthier. And just like my ex-wife is such a close friend, one of my closest friends, all of us could still have that close friend. And so we have to stop shaming divorce. We have to stop thinking that the ending of a relationship is a bad thing. It's not. It's life. We're meant to grow in life.

And sometimes you grow as much as you can with a specific soul. And then it's time to part ways, change the nature of that relationship. And maybe there's another soul that's going to enter your life that's going to accelerate your growth. Yeah. I agree with that. I've always felt that way. I totally agree with you. I've never looked at divorce as a bad thing.

Yeah. Now, I've been with my wife for 18 years, married for 14. I know exactly how you feel about your. ex-wife because there's a deeper, it's deeper than love. It is like, it's family. It's almost like a, it's so familial and so deep that love is the other thing that you have. Exactly. Because you're, you're building a life with them and it's a, there's something really primal about raising kids. Right. And doing things together to navigate, even in a modern world. Right. is a primal instinct you always lean on when you're making decisions together and it's like

you're working the fields together it feels like that's what you'd be doing if you were a thousand years ago building a little shelter and building out of life on a piece of land so i feel like that's what we're all doing together and then i do think that relationships evolve and morph and sometimes you have a friend who you'd say i'll never work with them and then you end up working together and doing doing great work because somewhere down the road, the relationship changed. And so there's all different, it doesn't just apply to marriage.

It applies to friendship and all relationships. But I love your take on it because I think people need to hear it. I think people need to stop being so mean to themselves and stop looking at everything as failure. Yeah. Instead of a learning or a piece of information. And you know, this doesn't mean that you don't try hard to make the relationship last.

Yeah. It doesn't mean any of that. but sometimes you just know that a particular journey has come to an end. I think there's one belief that if we can incorporate this belief, it'll serve us. And the belief is this, everything in life happens for me, not to me. Or everything in life happens for you, not to you. And when you have that belief, you understand that when a particular relationship comes to an end, there's a gift in that.

It is for you. And maybe the universe or whatever you believe in has a greater plan for you. Yeah, good luck, bad luck. Yeah. I've learned over the years as I've gotten older, one, you've got to heal. You have to heal the old wounds if you want to start the new life. The old life is full of pain and suffering and wounds. And usually in our childhood, usually most of us that grew up with trauma, we didn't realize the hundreds of beliefs that were programmed into us. and then by the people who are traumatizing us. So it's all wrapped up in this nasty ball of confusion. And then when you start to do the work and you go forward from this like new place of understanding like it's possible to completely change.

I do it every day. If I feel bad, I stop and I go, oh, I wonder what I feel bad. Oh, because you're scared. Why are you scared? Oh, because I'm afraid I'm going to fail or afraid I'm going to, around any little thing right and then i go okay that's old how about like this is exciting this will be fun uh i wonder what that is like let's let's go on with a with a different belief right and then go forward with it usually goes pretty well you have to try that a few times and then that one's gone then it's on to

the next one whatever you know i think it's like reprogramming beliefs is like a daily mindfulness of like every situational little thing zooming in zooming out zooming in zooming in zooming out zooming in zooming out about feeling your feelings and stopping when something doesn't feel good. And if it's not a warning that there is a real danger, which usually there isn't, it's some old belief that's trying to stop you from something that's not there.

Yeah, no, that's very true. Did you ever have any crazy beliefs that at some point in adulthood you realized you needed to shed? Yes. What would you define as a crazy belief? So I mean, growing, typically what happens is when we are kids, they say below the age of nine,

our brains are meaning-making machines. Yeah. Right? We're trying to figure out what the hell's going on in a very complex world. And so with a childlike mind, we form beliefs to create meanings of the world. So I remember I had an extremely wealthy uncle. And I went to visit his home, his beautiful home, with my mom and dad. And my mom was just a public school teacher.

My dad had a job. And I was maybe six or seven years old. And I remember this wealthy uncle made fun of me. And for some bizarre reason, he just reached down and just pulled down my pants and then laughed about it, thinking it was a joke. I don't even know why he did something that bizarre, but it kind of traumatized me. Yeah, it's mean. And in my head, I formed a belief, rich people are evil. Rich people are bad.

Yeah, me. I didn't understand how much that belief was hurting me until I started the business and it was so hard to make money. I kept losing money, fucking things up. It was so, 10 years into my business. I probably made less than if I just stayed in my day job until a therapist pointed this out. As soon as I fixed that belief, my financial life accelerated exponentially.

And I believe that because I believe rich people was bad and I believe I was good, I was pushing away money. Yeah, blocking it. Yeah. Yeah, I have every belief, probably lots of beliefs similar to you that people like me didn't have money.

So money was hard for me for many, years because we grew up poor. Yeah. So, and we were on the bottom end of poor, not on the upper into poor. So getting evicted, living with people, I got very good at making people feel sorry for me when I was little, because that's what we did. My mom would go and tell them the story, and we'd all sit there, and they would give us something. And we learned how to create a charitable feeling towards us. Yeah. And I found myself, my younger years, being very good at making people feel sorry for me. Getting past that, it's hard to make money. It's hard to keep money. People like us don't, if we come into money, we blow it. We're not rich people. Yeah. I think it was a deeper kind

of self-worth thing. I had to work on it for years. And I still stop myself from negative thoughts. Yeah. Or fear. It's funny, no matter how much money you get, you're still, you can wake up and go, is everything okay if you're not mindful of the old i'm still working on it i'm still working on healing that deep deep wound of like self-worth and what it feels like to be kind of like poor to feel poor because i certainly knew people that were you could say they were poor but they didn't feel poor they didn't act poor and so i think it's a state of mind yeah it is and it's how we feel about ourselves um but then there are real world problems like getting enough money to eat pay the electric or whatever, and those were certainly like our problems all the time. What did you grow up?

In Maryland, on the East Coast. And then that I was bad, that was a bad person, that I was, not to say I don't love my tattoos, but I think early in my life, I thought that it was just more a function of how someone like me should probably look. I've embraced it now. I love those tattoos. Yeah, you know, I like my tattoos, but, but how many do you have? I mean, I'm covered. Yeah? Yeah. But. Have you ever counted them? I would say I'd have to count the hours. So it's probably like 120 hours.

That's incredible. Okay, you take the record for the most tattooed person I probably met. Really? I interviewed a lady in my podcast. She had 74 tattoos. Okay. That was pretty impressive. Yeah.

But 100 plus, that's incredible. Yeah, hours or 120 hours or maybe more 200 hours of tattoos. So I still have some spots. But now I look at it as more of a expression of something I really enjoy. And it's not so uncommon now for people to have tattoos, but it contradicts a little bit. And also, I like a little bit of contradiction. I like for someone to meet me and maybe think one thing and then get to know me. What's the contradiction?

So the tattoos, what's that contradiction of the tattoos? You know, I think when you first see a tattoo, you might think someone's like a wild. Right. Or maybe they're tough or maybe they're like aggressive or. And I like things that, you know, the music I listen to, I listen to a lot of heavy music. sometimes. Sometimes I don't. I enjoy things that you, you know, but also I feel like I'm a thoughtful person. Definitely not aggressive. I wouldn't fight anyone.

Yeah. I wouldn't. Because that's a stereotype, right? Yeah. People with tattoos are aggressive. Yeah. I wouldn't want to make anyone feel bad. Exactly. I wouldn't, I would never want anyone to feel bad about themselves. It's definitely like a conversation piece. Yeah. You know, when I was, when my daughter was eight, I told her, you know, Eve, I'm thinking about getting

a tattoo and she's like, no, you can't get a tattoo. Bad people get tattoos. And then Eve turns 10 and she decides to dye her hair blue. And I told her, okay, if you want to dye your hair blue, dad gets to get a tattoo. And so I finally figured out the tattoo I'm going to get. What are you going to get? Have you ever heard of the earth flag? No. So that's this Swedish designer. And for a university project, he designs a flag for planet Earth. Okay, so I mean, get this. It makes total sense. We have flags for every country. There's an EU flag for a union of country. And But if we actually colonized a planet, like when we land on Mars, it's probably going to be Elon who gets us there.

But look, Elon's not doing this just with Americans. He's doing it with people from all around the world, right? Large chunk of SpaceX engineers are from India. We're probably going to be at that point collaborating with other countries that maybe we see as competitors right now. What is the flag that represents planet Earth? What is a flag that gives us an idea of our common unity? I like that.

That's the Earth flag. So the Swedish designer in college designs it, and it blows up. And it's gorgeous. It's a blue earth flag. And so I decided I want to support this project. I'm going to get the earth flag tattoo. And I'm doing a big event in Dubai at the side of the World Expo in Dubai. In January, we're going to be flying the earth flag.

I think it's so important, speaking about compassion earlier, right? It's so important to teach people that compassion doesn't stop just with people who look like you or with people who are within your country's borders. Compassion has to extend across the planet because so many of the problems that we're facing right now as a species, renegade AI, the potential for renegade AI, world wars, climate change,

no individual country can solve this. And so earth consciousness, I believe is the next level of human evolution. Yeah. So yeah, that's why an earth flag. I love that. I was thinking of why you were talking, what would you say your mission is?

That's very interesting. I think it's very, you know, I wish I could articulate it. Yeah. But honestly, I can't put it in words. It's a feeling. Right. Right. And that feeling has to do with making human beings better, helping get out to people,

wisdom, ideas that can make them better. But at the same time, also helping human beings understand that we are cells in a larger entity. Right? Just like your body has trillions and trillions of cells working in unison. we are cells in a larger entity and it's I think right approaching 9 billion of us and that we can't forget that

like we are designed to be a species that works together yeah it I mean if you think about it all the studies show that your lifespan increases when you have community your health increases your productivity at work goes up when you're friends with the people at work

you know I just read a study that said that if you go to bed at night cuddling someone, you live longer, you have less stress, and you're happier. Yeah. Like, we gain all of these benefits coming together. Yet, this world, this world gets so much juice teaching us to judge other people, to hate, to divide. And I think part of my mission is to help bring people together.

So that's what I'm trying to do. Make us better humans, but make us collectively a better humanity. I think it's, you said Bruce Lee, you guys, have as nun chucks. Yeah. I think it's something like harmony. Harmony. Maybe.

That could be a word for it. It's like to put everything in harmony. Not to say we're going to discover your mission statement here. But I'm interested in it because I think missions are important. Right. I think in terms of missions, you know, it helps me stay the course. So this is really important. I sent my sister, who I love to death, who came from the,

the same, you know, she's an apple from the same tree as me. So we have a lot of the same. So when I'd see her struggling, and I was a little further ahead in my personal growth. And I probably had a decade on her. But I had resources. I had all these resources. I came out here to Hollywood and you can try all different things out here. And you meet some good people, though. You end up with our mutual friend, Fay. You end up with, you meet people and they all have something to share that you gain something from. You get these insights. And then you travel around and there's these really talented people that have philosophies that are all somehow connected. And so I'd been on this winding road, found an amazing teacher in my therapist and then other

people around me that are like-minded. And so she's back where I'm from. And I'd say was further from her development and I said, I was suggesting this and that and this and that. And then I sent her in Mind Valley. And I said, I found this great platform. Do me a favor. Here's a membership. Just do one thing there a day.

Go there for five minutes. Do one thing a day. And just treat it like school. Right. And I think you're going to find something. And then I think you're going to grow. And I think it's going to lead you to your, answers for yourself, right? And whether it's on the platform, off the platform, we start somewhere.

And then she did it. And she still does it. Do you know what program she started with? She's really into, and she talks to me about it all the time, is the quantum. Quantum jumping. Quantum jumping. What about you? What was the program that you did? I did the creative visualization. Okay, but Lisa Nichols. Yeah. Yeah. And I did that every night. Wow. What were you visualizing with visualization. I was visualizing being free. Right. To create.

That's fascinating. So I needed to be free to do things like this. Yeah. So why would you do a show? Right. Well, you know, the constant entertainment thing where I'm only one thing, so I can't do anything else because you're just a band guy. And you're a band.

I mean, you guys haven't had a hit song in 15 years. Who wants to hear from you? Right. And we started this company 10 years ago. But the same thing is we want to do something. We want to work. We want to go to work every day in chop wood, carry water, and build something that we feel. And do you feel that what you've been visualizing is manifesting in your life?

Overtly beyond. Yeah. And then you start manifesting scenarios and outcomes around growth. What's been the craziest thing you've manifested? A tech company. Wow. What type of tech company? It's a platform for live streaming concerts.

And it's the biggest in the world. What? And so you found it that? We built it, yeah. What's it called? Veeps. Veeps, okay. Yeah.

And now we're going into our original content and we're doing amazing things. We have magazines and we bought magazines and we've, we're building out this media company that's, I'd still say it's a baby. Right. But it's a big baby. And, um, you guys are building an empire. I love that. And, I mean, look at this space. One thing I told you when I walked into this, this whole studio you had is it makes me so happy.

I think I literally told you as we were getting to these chairs I said, I'm not normally this hyper. Why does this make me feel so good? So there's something over here that you're doing right. Well, these are all the little knick-knacks that we've picked up along the way

on the road to build a life you dreamed of. I don't even mean the knick-knacks. I mean the energy of the space. Yeah, but I think it's all in it. Right. I think it's creating a visual representation of your mind. Yeah.

And what's going on in there. So I wrote a book called The Buddha and the Badass. And I love this concept of the spiritual badass or the spiritual gangster. Yeah. Right? Or the Buddha badass. There are many different words, but they're describing the same archetype. And the Buddha badass is someone who is disrupting something in the world.

I mean, I'm not saying you've got to build a big tech company or whatever, but you're doing something. You're creating something in the world. You're entrepreneurial, but you are tapped into an inner core. Yeah. And there's an energy that you radiate. And it's palpable. People feel it. and you're in tune with yourself

and your relationships are going well and you aren't being mean to people, you aren't lonely, you want drinking yourself to death, you're just solid, you're solid. And that's the Buddha in alignment with the badass, right? The counter to that is the entrepreneur who is hustle, hustle, hustle, and their life is shit.

Or the spiritual hippie, for lack of a better word, who spends hours a day meditating, but it's completely broke. Right. But when you merge both together, there's this incredible force of a human being and I think you represent that really deeply, really well.

That's why when I walk into your space, I feel happier. Like Buddha. I feel energized. Happy like Buddha. There's an energy that you are radiating while you're doing epic shit. I like that about you.

Thank you. Well, I liked you before you walked in the building because I remember seeing you and I was, I like that guy. And I like mind value. I like the idea of it. I like the concept. This is important.

You've got to have a place like this. And also, I feel because I'm the same way. I'm like, I want 20 people to start this. Right. The more the merrier, bring it on. Bring on and we end up working together because our music company was founded on artists getting more out of their life than just fame because that's what you get at the end of this thing. Yeah. And most of you, you end up with a drug problem, confusion, and you're like, what was all that for? Now I'm washed up. No one cares about me. right and that's how you feel right and what we want artists to do is build lives they like living in

and they can have the success and you know fame is a byproduct of doing great art and you manage fame it isn't something that you aspire I think you think you want it because you think it's love you think it's admiration you think it and some of it can be but but at the end of the day it's a byproduct of doing something that other people are touched by and that they that they enjoy or or they love or that they feel. And now some people can do it through fear or they can do it by talking and saying wild things. And that's more of something like a spectacle.

Right. So you could go out on the street and strip down and do something crazy and every want to look. That's kind of what happens to me on the internet is people kind of, they make a spectacle of themselves. And it hurts me to see that because they're not betting on their talent.

They're betting on their ability to... Yeah. It's not art. It's scandal. And I'm not judging that. I'm hurting for them because I do think that we are more than a train wreck. And so anyways, I think we started our company because we had the experience. We came in.

We were young. We were 20 years old. And we knew nothing. We were uneducated. And all we thought we wanted was money. But, oh, if we get money, we'll be okay. And then so we were very easy to take advantage of. We were very easy to be led this way or that way.

And as we got older and wiser and more experienced, we started to start. slow down. Then we met our wives. Then I had a partner and a person who believed in me who didn't actually care. She grew up in fame. Her dad was and she wasn't impressed with the music success. She just liked me. It was the first time, I think, that I had experience where someone was like, I just like you. You can quit. I just want to be with you. Right. That's a beautiful feeling. And then I was like, oh, there's a me here instead of the guy everyone thinks I am on stage, which is a part of me. It's a projection of me or it's some version of me out there. And that is, you know, bigger, more confident maybe

or more entertaining. But over the years, then learning how to take all those pieces and integrate them into the me that has all those things, and it really is me. But like the Buddha thing, because I like that you said Buddha,

I always tell myself, is the only thing I know about Buddhism, I don't know anything about Buddhism. Yeah. But I like it. I like the piece that I feel when I think about it. It's to just be is enough.

And so it doesn't, mean we should sit and do nothing, but while we do everything, we should sit and do nothing. To me, that's what I get from it. What I get from it is a peace to be happy. Do you go good? Do you go bad? I don't know. It could be good. It could be bad. You could tell me the greatest news in the world. And I could go, hmm, that could be good or could be bad. I don't know. But to be able to go forward in peace with actually, I'm just going to go forward and do things that I want to try to do because we should. and be okay with just being me, whatever the outcome is.

I think that was like the place I needed to get to. And so you're centered, you're grounded, but you're also doing epic shit. Yeah. That's this quote by Ken Wilbur. He's a philosopher. And he wrote a beautiful essay called Egoseness, which I really want you to read, Egolessness by Ken Wilbur, like a short five-minute essay.

But in there he says something really profound that hit me. He said, The great spiritual masters of the world, from Jesus to Moses to Padma Sambaba were not feeble-minded milktoes. There were movers and shakers who rattled the world with the force, with the force of their ambition, from subduing entire continents to building to bringing bullwhips to the temple. They shook the world and created things that lasted eons.

Yeah. Right. I mean, you think about Buddha. Buddha wasn't just meditating under a Bodhi tree. He instigated a revolution in his country. And so I believe that truly spiritual people are actually going out there and building something and I think maybe that is what you are doing.

You're building from your spiritual core. That's why you have a tech company and you have a hit song. And you are married to such an incredible person and you have this incredible space. Yeah, it's like the physical, it comes out of you and it becomes a physical thing. You know what I think you've got to do next?

I think you need to get a tattoo that says Buddha badass or spiritual badass or spiritual badass or spiritual gang. I will. I'm going to get Scott Campbell to think of something that represents Buddha badass. And when you get that, I want to see it. I want to see what that symbol is. You should have Scott do your tattoo. I'm looking for a good tattoo. Scott's amazing. Scott Campbell. Yeah, he's in LA. He's amazing. Okay. That's awesome. There's a couple of good guys. I do a TV show called Inkmasters. Uh-huh. And it's a tattoo. No way. It's a tattoo competition.

So you're the main person to ask for tattoos. That's incredible. Yeah. So I'm the host of the show. It's on Paramount Plus. It's a great show. Okay, I got to check it out. And it's a bunch of great tattoo artists. Scott does all my tattoos. There's a couple great guys. DJ Tambi's amazing. Nico Hurtado. There's a bunch of great guys around.

But, yeah, tattoos are... So I'm getting the earth flag and then I'm getting Amor Fati. What does that mean? Amor Fati. It means love of life. It's by Nietzsche. Oh, I like that. I like Nietzsche.

So Nietzsche says you got to think... Sorry, love of fate, not love of life. Amor Fati. What Nietzsche says is you got to live life with an appreciation of your life. life to such a point where you would relive your life over and over and over and over and over. You love faith. You believe that whatever is happening in your life is a blessing. Yeah, similar to what I said earlier, right? Like the belief that everything that's happening to me is happening for me rather than to me. So Amofati simply means accepting what's happening and fucking loving your

life. Yeah, me and my brother have this like thing we always say to each other. He's my partner. We do everything together at my brother bench we've done everything together we're twins so must be incredible having a twin brothers and we do everything together and we're best friends and we always say we believe that we are these like we think we're conscious but we're not and we're like trees we just grow life is the sun life is the water life is the earth and it's forcing you to grow because that's what you do because you're a tree. And so everything that happens is the next thing you need to grow. Oh, I like that.

Everything that happens is the next thing that you need to grow. You can use it if you want. I like that. I'll quote you. So I think the best way to market something is let it market itself. People are going to use it. And I just told you, my sister, we talk about it. We talk about it.

Once a week, she tells me something that she discovered about herself or she learned. So when you think about the, the future of what you're building in the world, and let's just say just with Mind Valley, there's probably other things, but when you think about the future of what you're building, is there a landing spot? Is there an end game? Yeah, yeah, yeah. There is. We're building a new education model for humanity. I like that. Right. Current education model focused on getting you a job, making you a cog in the wheels of machinery. That is what Calvin Coolidge said education is about in the 1920s, creating people who are cogs in the wheels of industry. But who the fudge wants to be a cog?

Right. What we want is to live a really beautiful life. We want our health. We want our family. We want our friendships. We want to do things that matter. We also want financial, you know, we want a financial cushion. We want all of that. School doesn't do a good job of teaching that. Schools can teach skills. That's fine. But even with skills, like the world is changing so fast, you go to college for four years, you come out. It's a completely different world. AI has taken over. it's going to be nanotechnology, and then it's going to be cold fusion. Who knows what's coming up next? And so what we want to create is a better education system. Now the trick is, first we've got to get all of the greatest teachers together, so that's what we're working on. Now we've got to build a really

good app. And I'm really happy that our app just got selected by Apple. It's now an Apple store is all around the world, but we've got to make the app even better. And then we've got to bring in AI. And what the AI is going to do is, you see, all of education right now, you're being hit by a government mandated curriculum. Some guy who lived in the 1930s figured out what you are learning in school today, decided what you're learning in school today. What we're going to do is we're going to create a system where you can feed your goals, your wishes, your dreams, your ambitions into the system and it customizes the education for you. It customizes the lessons, the teachers, the meditations. It customizes your day. It guides and coaches you. But then it doesn't just stop there.

What it does is it will pay attention to what's happening in the world. Let's say, you know, a big podcast like Andrew Huberman just releases a new talk on why men need to give up alcohol. It'll digest that and feed that to you if that's what you need in your life at this moment. But it'll go further. It will know the people in your city, the people around you

and arrange for you to come together and meet them to have, it might say, hey Joel, see, okay, not you, let me pick a different person. Tom, let's say Tom is lonely. Tom is looking to meet other good male friends. It may invite Tom. to meet Harry, who happens to be in the same city. They have a lot in common,

and they won't happen to be free at 2 p.m. on a Saturday. Why? Because the greatest thing about college is that it brings us together. And so as we build this app, we want to help you understand your goals, give you the education that matters, help you make sense of this ever-changing, rapidly evolving world.

But then that will make you a better human, but it's incomplete. Because we do our best when we are part of something bigger. And so Tom has to meet Harry. All of us need to connect with the, right people in our lives, friends, lovers, families, mentors, people who can help us take an idea and bring it out into the world. And that's what we want to do. And if we think we can do that, I think we're going to be able to make a pretty positive dent on the world. Yeah, it's like this

collaboration we have to have with each other that I think we're taught. Well, I think a lot of us come up in this impoverished kind of way of going, I can't share anything. Yeah. It's all I have. When you get out of that and you realize, no, no, you either see the world as a barren place, empty place with no opportunity where life is hard, or you see it as a buffet of opportunity. And the world is your oyster. So people coming together and they realize like, oh, when we work together, when we cooperate,

when we collaborate, not only do we succeed together, we also influence each other. If you have a friend who's successful, and you're more likely to be successful. Yeah, that's crazy, you know? Like if you have friends who are obese, you become obese. If you have friends who are fit,

you significantly become fitter. Like Jim Rome, the great writer, said, you were the sum of the five people closest to you. That's crazy. I believe that. Yeah. And so you want to be careful who you pick. Yeah. And give yourself the freedom and the license to pick.

Yeah. And not just accept. Well, I thought your app was really good, though, as far as you're, you know, it sounds like you're going to expand it. Yeah, we just want to get it better. But it's not, it's very, you know, as apps go, because I'm a student of user experience. And I found yours to be the best. one. Well, thank you. And the new one just launched, the one that's in Apple stores, that one just dropped. That's great. Yeah, to the public. It's awesome. Yeah. Congrats on everything. Thank you.

You've had an amazing life. Yeah. Thank you. You're doing amazing work. Hope I see you again. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I hope you enjoyed today's episode of artist friendly. If you really liked it, you can follow, like, subscribe to the show, anywhere you listen to podcasts, Spotify, Apple, Amazon. We appreciate your support and we'll see you next time.