Mayim Bialik's Breakdown - Vishen Lakhiani: Practical Steps to Follow Your Heart & Generate Self-Love

Episode Date: October 12, 2021

Vishen Lakhiani (Founder & CEO of Mindvalley, author of The Buddha & The Badass and The Code of the Extraordinary Mind) opens up about his inspiration for starting Mindvalley, an award-winning education movement with millions of students worldwide. He details his past struggles with suicidal thoughts before making the decision to go against the grain and chase his dreams, shaping his own life free from judgement or stigma. After defining what it means to be an entrepreneur, Vishen teaches us how to be "unfuckwithable," practical exercises we can all do to generate self-love, and a 2-minute appreciation technique. He asks the three most important questions that lead to success and highlights the importance of setting end goals and protecting your sleep. Mayim and Vishen discuss the way science says we should meditate, the benefits of speed reading, and the pros and cons of thinking ten years into the future. Vishen Lakhiani's Books: https://www.vishen.com/codex BialikBreakdown.com YouTube.com/mayimbialik Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Think of your life as your art, as a masterpiece. It doesn't matter what anybody else thinks. You decide where the blue is going to go. You decide that you want to put a splash of red there. You decide that you want a yellow border. Nobody else gets to judge it. Your life is your life. You decide to live it the way you want to live it.

Hi, I'm Mayambiolic, and welcome to My Breakdown. This is the place where we break things down so that you don't have to. It's Mymbiolic's Breakdown. She's going to break it down for you Because you know she knows a thing or two So now she's going to break down Why your life isn't the way you want it to be And how to make it better

We have Vishin Lakiani Who is the author of The Buddha and the badass He's also the best-selling author of The Code of the Extraordinary Mind But he runs a company called Mind Valley

And they are like one of the best places to work in the world. And he has built this entire platform, basically towards you actually having a life that is the one that you want and deserve. I don't know how else to describe it. It sounds so lofty, but this is literally what he does. But before we introduce Vision, I'd like to introduce you to my very own Toltec masterpiece, Jonathan Cohen.

Hello, my name. Hi, everyone. That was a good one. I could also be the god of destruction, which Vission will explain later. Yes, and he will also explain the Toltec masterpiece. Jonathan, how are you today? I'm feeling good. I'm growing my roots very deep, so I will not flail in the wind. Is that something you do every day, or is that just today? You have to do it every day, or your root shrivel up again. That's what Vishen says. Shrivel. They contract. That's why you have to grow them and expand.

Yes, let them flourish beneath the earth. We're having someone on who speaks your language. He does not speak my language. I mean, I'm trying to speak his language. What happened when we read the book together? I have so many opinions. So many eye rolls. So much confusion.

I actually was on his podcast. He has a tremendously impressive and very significant following. I had a really beautiful time. I actually said I think it might have been my favorite interview that I've ever done for a podcast. He has a really, really neat. community and then I got to kind of listen in on a discussion group that they hold after they have podcast guests. So I got to hear kind of what people got out of what I said. And he, he attracts a lot of people who want to attract good things in their lives and people across a

spectrum of kind of spiritual belief and an entrepreneurial ambition. And he has this really, really amazing community. And they asked me questions like, how do you actualize the things you want? I was like, oh, I hadn't thought about it. But he speaks a lot of that language, which I'm, you know, kind of learning to understand. And he also, you know, he comes from a very, a very kind of corporate mindset, but I don't want people who aren't corporate to be turned off because I think that he says some things that are really, really impactful and that can really change how you frame your your life, which then will be reflected by your mental health. I mean, the things that he says, if we could make them true, like, for so many of the people

that I know and love, like, it's what I want for so many people is to be able to say, like, the fantasy, right? What's my fantasy of what I'd like my workplace to look like? What's my fantasy of what I'd like my relationships to look like? What is my fantasy of what I want life to look like every day so that I can do the things I want to do and be the person I want to be? Like, that's literally it. It's a great summary.

I want to read you a little bit about him. Vishin Lakiani is an entrepreneur and author and activist. On a mission, he says, to raise human consciousness. And he follows through with that. He's the founder and CEO of Mind Valley, an award-winning education movement with millions of students worldwide. He's also a two-time New York Times best-selling author for both the boot and the badass.

And as I said, the Code of the Extraordinary Mind. He grew up in Malaysia. He is Indian by ethnicity, I think is how he described it. He was raised Hindu and Buddhist, but grab a map because he talks a little bit about his family's journey and how they got from India to Malaysia as part of a religious and political turmoil that really did shape a lot of who he has come to be. I mean, his resume is unbelievable. And Mind Valley was recognized as one of the top 10 coolest. offices in the world by Ink Magazine. Is that how you say it? Ink? Or do you all say Incorporated, Inc? He's a passionate health and education activist. He has two children. He's the kind of guy who

knows like, he knows that. Like, if you were to be like, what supplements should I take? He's like, I know it. Let me pull it up and I'll tell you. Like, what books should I read? I got it for you. How do you meditate? He also's a meditation teacher. Like, he knows a lot of things. And I'm very excited to talk to him. Where do you think our office ranks on the top 10 coolest places to I don't know, Scott? Number one. That's the right answer, Scott. All right, let's welcome Vishin Lakiani to the podcast.

Welcome. Break it down. It is a pleasure to have you here. We're very honored to have you here. You were a person who has built something that we're very, very interested in talking about. So thanks for being here. Thank you. I am so looking forward to this interview.

You're in Estonia, correct? Yes, Tallinn, Estonia. How did you get there? Well, I, you know, like typically. when you want to go to a country, you either climb over a fence and become an illegal, or you get citizenship by inventing something really radical. I took the easy route. I fell in love with an Estonian woman, got married, produced two kids, nothing out of the ordinary. And then I got a residential permit. And I get to stay here until 2027. I'm now divorced from my Estonian wife,

so my residency expires in 2027. But I'm hoping at that point my kids will appeal to the government to allow their father to stay and I'll be able to build a life here. I love Estonia. More Americans should discover this place. Lyme, we're moving. We're moving. I'll be your new wife. I'm not Estonian, but we can work it out. You're not from Estonia. Tell us a little bit about who young vision was. Where are you from? What'd your folks do? What's like the, well, what's the thumbnail? I am not young vision anymore. I feel young, but I am a 45-year-old middle-aged man with two kids. I was born in Malaysia. I'm of Indian descent, which explains the name Vision. I was named after the Hindu god of destruction, Vishnu. I don't know why. That's typically

if you have a child, you wouldn't name them after the god of destruction, but my parents did, and which is why I'm one of the few visions in the world. So it's easy to find me. I'm the only vision on Instagram and Twitter. Vision at gmail.com. Super easy. I just bought all of those usenames. I grew up the son of a school teacher and an entrepreneur. And I guess that's why I'm in the field I am right now, ed tech, growing up. I really wanted to be a teacher. But I saw the tough life my mom led working as a public school teacher in Malaysia. You know, the equivalent would be maybe 400 US dollars a month as the salary, long commutes. And I wanted to do, I wanted to teach at scale. And I decided that I wanted to focus on things that regular education forgot. Wellness,

meditation, spirituality, entrepreneurship, creativity, all the stuff that we wish we really learned in university. And that's what caused me to build this company, Mind Valley. It's the education that university forgot. And we deliver it in a really, really cool way. We're going to get into all of those good things, as well as your book that will be sort of basing our conversation on the Buddha and the badass, which is a totally badass title, The Secret Spiritual Art of Succeeding at Work. But this is just a question that I have, just because I'm curious about these things.

How did your family end up in Malaysia? Because for people who may not know, that's not like, was your family from India? I wouldn't normally think that you would be in Malaysia. So how did they get to Malaysia? Right. So that's a really, really cool question, right? So I belong to a group of people called Cindy's.

Sindis are known as the Jews of India. Now, let me tell you why. I know you're Jewish. You'll probably find this interesting. Sindhi culture and Jewish culture has a lot in common. Sindhys lost their homeland. In the partition of 1947, when the Brits decided to carve up India and to Pakistan and India, sin was right in the middle.

So the country got cut in half. And then there was this huge migration. The Hindus had to move to India. The Muslims had to move to Pakistan. Of course, nothing went. planned. There were huge riots. A million people were killed in this scenario. But my grandfather could see that coming. He could see disaster coming. And so in 1939, he put his family in a boat and they left sin. And they decided to go to Malaya. Back then, Malaya was this country that is made up of

modern Malaysia and Singapore. It was one country, part of the British Empire. So we settled there. My mom has a twin sister born in Singapore. She was born in Malaysia. My dad was born in Malaysia. and that's where we built a life. So we grew up in British culture. The only language I speak is English, although ethnically I'm Indian, I don't really have much of a connection to Indian culture other than Bollywood movies,

which are awesome, if you haven't seen one lately. But I grew up in Malaysia. And in the middle, I ended up marrying in Estonian. We were living in Malaysia. And in the middle of the pandemic, Malaysia got really brutally hit. Okay, so get this, right. The Economist magazine made a list of the 50 countries

worst hit by the pandemic. They called it the normal C. index, Malaysia was right at the bottom. Schools were closed. Kids still today are not allowed to go out. And so we had to leave Malaysia. I just moved into a new apartment. I'd been living in my new place for three days. It was my dream apartment, and I managed to get a government permission to leave the country. All the other borders were shut down. So I got in a flight with my ex-wife, our kids, we moved to Estonia, and we had to rebuild a new life. It's now been 13 months, and we're doing the best we can. Wow, that is, I mean, people need to get out their maps for this,

to fully understand kind of the... I told you it was going to be a geography lesson. No, it's, it's really fascinating. My Ambialx breakdown is supported by Superpower. We all know the feeling of leaving a doctor's office and kind of feeling like we didn't get anything out of the experience that was useful. Maybe they're like, you're fine, drink more water. There's no real data. There's no game plan. This has happened to me many, many times, especially on the perimenopause journey. That's why we're fascinated by what Superpower is doing. They send a licensed professional to your home or you can visit a nearby lab. One simple blood draw with over 100 biomarkers.

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What's an entrepreneur? I'm going to caveat it by saying the brief time I attempted to go on dating apps, brief, very brief, a minute and a half ago. I was very nervous because most men describe themselves as entrepreneurs. And I didn't know what it meant. I mean, I know what the word means. Like, I get it. But when you talk about that, like, was my grandfather an entrepreneur? I don't know.

He was a peasant immigrant who, like, had to work in sweatshops. that entrepreneurish? What's an entrepreneur? It is such a bullshit term. I'm so glad you're questioning it. It is, it's a term that's so much BS, right? I mean, the spectrum is so wide. Elon Musk is an entrepreneur. That I get. Right. But, but, but some guy who gets on fiber right now and says, I'm going to design your logo and add a ringtone for five bucks. Technically, he's also an entrepreneur. It's, it's such a bullshit term. So, so I, I just think it's overhyped. It's one of those things that became glamorous.

And I honestly don't think we're going to be using that word 10 or 20 years from now. Okay, but what does it mean for your grandfather? What does it mean for you? Because that is one of the things you are. You're an entrepreneur. So what does it mean when we think about your grandfather? What does it mean when we think about you? Let's start there.

Okay. So my grandfather wasn't an entrepreneur. My grandfather was the general manager of a department store. He was never an entrepreneur. He didn't start his own business. My mother was a public school teacher. They had qualities that we might associate with entrepreneurs. They had drive.

My mom, for example, she saved up money to buy a house. Women were not allowed to like, it was frowned upon to buy a house at that time. She innovated in so many different ways as a school teacher. She became the number one school teacher in Malaysia, but she was a government employee. My grandfather worked for his older. cousin or brother. He was a general manager. He had no shares in the business. He wasn't an entrepreneur, but he was the general manager because he displayed certain traits that we might

otherwise associate with entrepreneurs. Okay, so hold on. So we're narrowing it down, though. So an entrepreneur typically we talk about is someone who do they own their own business? Do they have shares in a company? They have a new idea, their leaders? I think we can break it down into a couple of things, right? I think, well, firstly, like, I don't back away from saying it's a bullshit overused term. No, I'm happy to use it. I just want to use it right. Yeah. Yeah. So, I've been working on a map of human development. So basically, I'm a data geek. My background is electrical engineering and computer science. And because I'm in education, I've been mapping all of these things together. So I define entrepreneurship as the intersection of six qualities.

Okay. The first is influence, being able to influence people. The second, is impact, being able to generate an impact in the world. The third is leadership, vision, passion, and then business know-how. I actually think I define this in my book. Oh, yes, I have a section called definition of an entrepreneur. To me, the entrepreneur does not mean you're running a company. You can be working for a company or a part of a group like NASA and still have an entrepreneurship mindset. It means you're innovating, creating, honing your skills and contributing to the world and not nearly spinning the hamster wheel for a paycheck. Okay. So that's something, I do remember reading that. I didn't remember it saying this is the definition, which would have been helpful for me to dog ear. Dog ear a lot of other things. So it's a mindset. It's kind of a state of being. But still maybe don't go out with those guys if that's all they say that they do on the dating app.

So you want to hear something funny, like something really funny. So when you sign up to my platform, okay, you have to specify your job designation. So we use. the U.S. Census Burrough 2014 list of all jobs available in the world. Number one, that people choose as entrepreneur, as usual. Number two is startup is founder. And it's a disproportionately entrepreneur and founder. So the word is starting to mean less and less and less, because everyone just slaps that label on themselves. Right.

So if someone doesn't know who you are, what you do, or what your work is, How would you sum it up? So I would say I am a guy building an education platform for life skills. That's it. I think that's a better, a more apt description. I like that. Also a two-time New York Times bestselling author.

We just stick that in. Yeah, but that's something that my publicist tells me to add. You know, like anyone can be a, oh yeah, the other word that everybody misuses is bestselling author. Every freaking person and their dog is a bestselling author. you can write a book on Kindle in a niche, right? Like baking for poodles. And if your book hits number one, you're a bestselling author. True story. You may have the only book in the world on baking or poodles. I will say that I was very skeptical when I went to read the book because I don't know.

You can just stop with I was very skeptical and that would sum up a lot. No, but, you know, when I see the secret spiritual art of succeeding at work, I'm like, what does that mean? And when you read the, the introduction to the book, it's kind of like, he wants me to be a workaholic and be happy about it, but that's not what your book is about. And a lot of what I did get out of the book has to do

with a lot of what we talk about on Myambialics breakdown, which is kind of like, what does it practically mean to feel healthy, to feel whole, to feel aligned with what you need and what you want and make changes in your life to get there. So one of the

things that you talk about, and it's going to be a prickly word, is being unfuckwithable. And you, you kind of narrow it down to two components. Because, of course, first when I saw that, again, skeptical again, and I'm like, he just wants me to be mean. I don't want to be mean to people. That's not what it is. The two components of being unfuck with a bowl, you say, involve feeling you are enough and creating and envisioning your life as a unique masterpiece. Can you talk a bit about what that means? Let's say you're not an entrepreneur. Let's say you're just a human who's not an entrepreneur or you're an entrepreneur. What does that mean to be unfuck with a bull? So let's first cover the first point, right? Feeling you're enough.

It simply means you don't feel like you need to prove yourself or prove that you matter to anyone. So one of the people who influenced this thought in me is the late Morty Lefco. So Morty Lefco and his wife, Shelly Lefco, they were psychologists living in California. They developed something called the Lefco method. And it's a methodology of raising kids with powerful self-belief, kids who don't create meaning about the world, meaning that hold them back. Morty and Shelley's thesis is that the most important job of a parent is to, protect the beliefs of their children, to raise children who are not so poked with holes that say that they are not worthy or they are not pretty enough or they are not smart enough or they are not

tall enough that they have to compensate somehow as an adult. So the idea of being whole, of feeling that you are enough, this comes from the work of this psychologist, Maudi Letko. So that's the first piece. Let's talk about that piece. I don't know how to have that piece. meaning, you know, my organizing principles are such that I constantly, I mean, I think many of us have that. I constantly, like everything I do, it feels like I need to like prove, defend. Like how, I'm going to ask a very complicated question in a very simple way. How do I fix that? So there are many, many, many different ways, right? There are so many, so many methodology, so many theories. When I think about that, feeling enough,

there's a book that comes to mind. It's by a former U.S. military guy by the name of Kamal Ravikhan. The book is called Love Yourself Like Your Life Depended on It. And so I know what you're talking about because I felt that. And in the book, he suggests a number of really interesting exercises that actually generate self-love. So so many of us, we need to patch these holes by getting someone else to love us, to fall in love with us. And one of the most interesting exercises in the book, I don't want to give away the book, because it's like 83 pages. You can read it in an hour. But there was this one exercise that I started doing. And it's so bizarre, I just want your audience to have an open mind when I'm brushing my teeth. So when I was going through this, this, this low in my life and I just felt unworthy. I would do this exercise I learned from Ravi Khan. While I'm brushing my teeth in the morning, I would look at myself in the mirror, look at one eye, just one eyeball. I'd stare at my own eyeball in the mirror and I'd say, I love you. I love you. I would just repeat that to myself. It was interesting because in seven days, I pulled myself out of that funk. And every time I feel low, a quick repetition of that

gets me up again. Now, there is some signs for there. There's studies that have been done that show that when you look at another person, you stare at another person's eyeball for an extended amount of time. I think it's like a minute or so, you generate a strong amount of compassion and love for that person, even if it's a stranger. And I wonder if this could be the same thing when we are staring at our own eye in a mirror. But the point is, the solution to feeling self-love isn't going out there and treating yourself to a vacation.

It isn't going and hiring an expensive hypnotherapist. Sometimes it's something as simple as a brain hack that you can do for free by looking at a mirror. And that's what worked for me. So again, there are so many modalities out there, but I thought I would share that because it's so effective, simple, and free. Okay, I can't say I'm going to try it, but I hear you.

But I want to get to the second component also of being unfuck with a bowl. Hold on one sec. Just before you do, I don't want to skip over this because it's something that's almost never talked about. And if it's talked about, there's often a lot of stigma around it. You sort of, we sort of glazed over. You spoke that you had felt suicidal and you had had that experience in your life. Can you share a little bit about like where were you in your life?

how long did it last? Obviously, you talked about finding this book, which sounds like had a huge impact. But I just wanted, you know, if you're open to that, it's comfortable. So, I, I'll share something here that maybe people who have full of me may not really know. But in 2017, I decided to start an experimental education of school. So it was called Mind Valley University. and the idea was that parents who had kids, such as myself, we would all move to a city together, rent a co-working space, experience the culture of that city for one month, and we would come together to teach each other and teach each other's kids.

I underestimated how hard it was going to be. 300 people joined the experiment. We had something like 80-something kids there, tons of adults. We were renting a co-working space, and we were building a new type of education. educational and parenting system from scratch. I was under a lot of stress. I was funding it myself. I didn't have a large enough team. And something went off in my brain. The stress, the anxiety triggered something. Now, we know that a lot of negativity, a lot of negative emotions are psychological,

but they're also biochemical. For example, right? Serotonin, the mood drug that keeps us happy. serotonin is, we know today, 85% of serotonin comes from your gut. If you certainly change your diet and it affects your gut microbiome, it can affect your emotions. So the combination of stress, being in a new city with new food, being able to, you know, trying to ensure that this education system was going fine. We had a teacher quit on us because she got overstressed. All of these things started racking up and I started feeling suicidal.

I remember being at a party and I just didn't want to talk to anyone. I saw an open window and this crazy idea entered my head, jump. I cried myself to sleep on several nights and I couldn't tell anyone because I was meant to be the guy bringing all of these people together. It was maybe two weeks and I pulled myself out of it, but it was a horrible, dark, miserable time. You were in the perfect storm. Yeah. Yeah. So thank you for sharing that. I think that's really important also for people to know that even when, you know,

it looks like you have all the things. We still all have a human experience that can be very, very terrifying in our own brain. Let's get back to talking about becoming unfuck with a bowl. So the first component, we just kind of covered, right, feeling that you're enough. And the second component is creating your life as a unique masterpiece. What does that mean? So have you guys heard of Don Miguel Ruiz? He wrote this remarkable book called Mastery of Love. And then he wrote another book called The Four Agreements. So he's a Toltec writer. Talltec is a form of Mexican wisdom that comes from this group of people called the Toltecs. So Don Miguel Ruiz was speaking at one of my events and I had time to sit down with him and ask him some questions about his philosophy. His book, Mastery of Love and sorry, his book The Four Agreements, has stayed on the bestseller. list for 25 years.

That's different than one week cooking for poodles. Exactly. Exactly, right? So he said something really interesting. He said, Vision, Toltec means artist. The Toltec's were artists. Talltec wisdom essentially means this. You have one life to live.

Think of your life as your art, as a masterpiece. It doesn't matter what anybody else thinks. You decide where the blue is going to go. You decide that you want to put a, splash of red there. You decide that you want a yellow border. Nobody else gets to judge it. Your life is your life. You decide to live it the way you want to live it. So let's extrapolate that. So many of us as we step into the world as young adults, we don't create our own painting. We don't create our masterpiece. Rather, we are coming out, we're choosing to come out as

photocopies. We have photocopies of our parents' life, photocopies of our great-grandparents like photocopies of what our religion, our culture, our society, our media, our politicians tell us to be rather than truly create our own life. I was a photocopy. I grew up in an Indian family where education was considered paramount. My grandfather told me to become an engineer, so I did. I studied engineering at the University of Michigan. I got a job at Microsoft and 11 weeks into Microsoft. I quit because I was miserable. For five years, I'd been chasing a dream that was not my own. I was chasing my grandfather's dream and he had died. He had died seven years before. I was a photocopy. When I decided to live my own life, I went against the grain. I quit Microsoft. I joined a nonprofit, a nonprofit working on global peace by exchanging students across the world. I lived for under the poverty line in New York City, in a crummy, dirty apartment, but I got to travel. I got to see the world. I got to create my own life the way I wanted without judgment, without stigma. I later moved to Silicon Valley to start a company. that failed when the dot-com bubble burst, I decided to quit and become a meditation instructor.

I was embarrassed to tell my friends because they were all doctors and engineers. They had jobs, and I was making shit money teaching meditation, but I loved what I did. Again, I decided to paint and create my own masterpiece. Now, I believe that when you take that path, it's going to get tough in the beginning. Because you are not painting within the lines. You're not coloring by numbers. You've got to figure everything out on your own. But when it clicks, I believe you can be healthier, wealthier, more successful than people who come out of the human photocopy machine. But I believe we can apply this, not just to our careers, but to the way we love, the way we raise kids, the way we choose to live in the world. There are so many examples. And I always think

it's so important to celebrate people who are living like this. Have you heard of the holistic psychologist, that Instagram account? So there is this remarkable woman. And her Instagram account is called the holistic psychologist, and it's got like three million followers. And she, Nicola Pera, and she also expressed shock that because of her decision, 18,000 people unfolded her on Instagram. Basically, she posted the picture of her lover.

So Nicole is a woman. Her lover is a woman. that she's not in love with a single woman. She's in love with two. She is part of a couple. A thruple. A trouble. A trouble, right?

And it's so beautiful. When you see this picture, it's so beautiful. But it's so alien to people who have been following the human photocopy machine of how love should work. 18,000 people unfolded her. She expressed some surprise on that, but she didn't really care because she knows what she's worth. She's living her life based on her rules in terms of what makes her happy.

And I think this, she is one of the most unfuck-wit-bletable people I know. So part of the sort of journey to not only becoming unfuck-withable, but kind of having that success, and I'm using success with a capital S, not just to mean like financial success, but you talk about the three most important questions. And they have to do with experiences, growth, and what your contribution is. Can you speak a little bit about these three most important questions? Okay, absolutely. So the three MIQ is a methodology that I put out in the world for free, like in 2011.

I released some YouTube videos on it. And it really caught on the American Management Association, tweeted it, and then it just went everywhere. So the three MIQ basically is a methodology that says this. I produced it based on my own learnings. It's the idea that so many people, especially in the most, in the developed world, get confused by the idea of means goals versus end goals. So a means goal is what we often think we are chasing. But in reality, it is a means to an end. So let me give you an example. America has 5% of the world's population, but 70% of the world's lawyers. 70%

Right. So many American kids graduate from law school because they want to become lawyers. And there was a huge acceleration in this after television shows like LA law and Ali McDill. You guys remember those shows? But here's the funny thing. If you are a female lawyer in America, your odds of being clinically depressed are 50%. 50% of female lawyers in America are clinically depressed. Yet millions of women decide to become lawyers. And the odds are very similar for men. I think for men, it may be like, four. 40, 45%. The odds are very similar for men. Millions of men decide to become lawyers. How many kids grow up going, I want to be that, and point to a job that is a 50% rate of clinical depression. Now, I used to work in the legal industry. When I lost my Silicon Valley company, I got employed in telemarketing, and I had to sell software to law firms. And we were trained to get lawyers to break down on the phone about how miserable their lives were. and to sell them the software to manage their law firms. That was actually how we were trained.

Why? Because so many lawyers lead miserable lives. But why do people do that? It's because they're confusing two things. They're confusing the means with the end. They think becoming a lawyer is an end goal. It's not. It's a means goal.

If you really ask people, why do you want to be a lawyer? They go, so I have enough money to live in Washington, D.C. or this other city I want to live in so that people respect me. so I can operate my own firm and employ people so that I can fight for justice. But there are other ways to fight for justice. There are other ways to own a penthouse in D.C. There are other ways to gain respect. There are other ways to employ people.

These are the end goals. This is what you're really chasing for. Now, you can extrapolate this idea. We confuse means goals and end goals, and we have created a society where we are constantly chasing a means rather than chasing the end. But the problem with means goals is it's like chasing me. the horizon, you never, ever, ever get to the horizon. It's always like miles ahead of you. And so we got to train people to make that distinction. End goals are not things that the

education system prepares you for. And goals are the ultimate joys in life, cradling your new baby in your arms, studying something that you're really passionate about. Like you did, Mayam, when you decided to go back to university and get your PhD, end goals are expressing yourself creatively, creating art, not so that you can sell it as an NFT, but just because you love creating your art, no matter how ugly the outside world thinks it is. N goals are waking up every day next to someone you love. These are all the end goals, but we don't set goals for them. We set goals for the GPA, the LSA, the grad school we want to go to. It's a messed up way of living. It puts us on the human hamster wheel. So the three most important questions first. You understand the difference between

means goals and end goals, and then you go straight for the end goal. So end goals fall into three buckets. The first is experiences. Being able to spend a month motorcycling across the roads of South America. That is an incredible experience. Being able to go and explore the coast of Tuscany, being able to really, really, really study and go deep into astronomy, being able to write a book about a subject that you're really passionate about, not for the money, but just because the act of writing fills you with joy. These are all end goals related to experiences. But the second question is this. You've got to ask yourself, how do I need to grow to be the man or woman who has these experiences? So you want to ride a motorcycle through South America? Well, good. Maybe you've got

to learn how to ride a motorcycle. You've got to figure out how to earn some passive income so you can have money for that trip. And you've got to learn Spanish. Those are three ways to grow. So you now make a list of how you want to grow. And then the third column is this question, if you were that man or woman who had all these experiences, who has grown to that level, how then do you contribute to others? Because you see, real happiness, every study says that real happiness is fulfillment. And fulfillment comes from contribution. So how could you contribute to others? could you find a way to volunteer, to serve, to create something that might inspire? And so people do this exercise.

They come up with a list of experiences, how they want to grow, to be able to be the man or woman who can have that experiences, and how they want to contribute once they've gotten there. And it's been a really, really, really effective methodology. It's been used in schools in Mexico, Canada, the U.S., India, in companies around around the world. And what we encourage people to do is to stick this on your wall. Three columns, three lists, just stick it on your wall as a way to ensure that you're truly following your heart, that you're creating a life that is a tall tech masterpiece. Now, in many companies,

all their employees do this and stick it on one giant wall. So employees can see each other's three MIQs and then they can co-elevate and support each other. This happened in my company. We have a giant, giant, giant board with something like 200, 3MIQs. And one day, a woman got there. She really wanted to hike the Himalayas. So she read everyone else's 3MIQ, and she found four other people who had written down, visit Bhutan or Tibet or hike the Himalayas. And she got them all together, and five of them saved up money and went on a trip to

Base Camp 1 in Everest. And so that is the magic that happens when we start really. really applying the 3MIQ, chasing end goals and not means goals, and then collaborating with others to make our visions come true together. I love that. Not only do I think that's beautiful, the way that you're one of the most articulate people I think I've ever spoken to, like it's exceptional. So the way that you encapsulate that it makes a lot of sense.

I think it will resonate with a lot of people. again, just being this person right now, I'm going to be this person. I'm just like, here it comes. Here it comes. I'm going to devil's advocate it. How do you make a living? Like, how am I going to, how is just to live my life? Like, how am I going to pay my rent? Like, I really want to meet someone. And how am I going to do that? And like, you know, my parents won't support me anymore. And like, I don't have the money and blah, blah, blah. Like, what do I do with my apartment and blah, blah, blah. And also, like, I'm depressed and like, blah, blah. You know, this sounds amazing and incredible. And I know so many people and I mentor, you know,

I mentor some women who are younger and in the phase of life where they could do this, you know. But it's like, yeah, like, how do you make it happen? Like, bam, ma, ma, man, I can't do it. What do you say to those people? Right. So we got to go deeper, right? So firstly, when you're creating the 3MIQ, you rarely put money on it. This doesn't mean that money doesn't matter.

You rarely put money on it. The reason is because money is very frequently a means goal. And so it doesn't mean that you're not getting a job. What you're doing is you are setting a goal for your mind on the type of life experience that you want. You might, for example, as an experience, but I want to work in a place where I truly have deep friendships with my coworkers, where I feel appreciated by my boss. But so you are creating these non-negotiables. And this is very healthy. When you job hunt, you are less likely to end up in something that's going to make you miserable.

The 3MIQ is based on some science. And the science is basically this. So Sean Acre of Harvard University, he said that happiness is the fuel that helps us get to our goal. We actually think it's the opposite. We think when we hit our goal, then we become happy. The 3MIQ and Harvard research is both saying that happiness is the fuel to get to. us to our goal. So if our goal is to make money, my goal is to succeed in a career, yes,

but you've got to protect your happiness first. So here's the data. Sean Acre published multiple studies. He found that salespeople who are optimists are 55% better at closing deals, doctors who are happy, 19% better at diagnoses, students who are happy, do better at their job. Now, his work was taken further by Shajad Shamin in his book, a positivity quotient, PQ. and what they found is that happiness, when you have an entire team that's happy,

that is the single best predictor of success for that team. So when you're doing the 3MIQ, you're basically short-cutting happiness. You're deciding what are the non-negotiables that are going to keep me happy. And when you, it may mean that it may take you a few weeks longer to find that job, but when you find that job, happiness is rocket fuel. You're more likely to thrive, to succeed, to see your income grow, to thrive, succeed and see your income grow and see that money come in. So the money isn't out of the equation, but you don't set money as the goal.

If you set money as the goal, you end up chasing some, chasing a BS structure. Alan Watts has this quote, which I really love, and I think you'll like this, mine. He says, if you say that getting the money is the most important thing, you'll spend your life completely wasting your time. You'll be doing things you don't like doing in order to go on living. That is, to go on doing things you don't like doing, which is stupid. I do like that. I'd also say that sometimes when you have to start to set these goals before some doors open for you.

If you're totally lost, if you're not sure what you want to pursue and you're only going towards end goals or sorry, means goals, you don't, a lot of things can be. locked for you and it's like getting yourself centered, clear. And, you know, that sounds, oh, if I'm struggling right now, I get clear and things work out. But it really does change your perception of opportunity and what you're seeing open up in front of you. Exactly. Exactly. So in our brain, okay? So again, some people say, oh, it's the law of attraction. It's that stuff I learn in the secret. If you believe in that, that's great. But in our brain, there is something called a reticular activating system, the RAS. It is the part of the brain that allowed us to become civilized. It's the part of the brain that allowed the hunter to hunt the bison,

the the gatherer to seek out the berries. It's the goal-seeking mechanism of your brain. And when you do an exercise like the 3M.IQ, when you write down your goals, your subconscious, the part of your brain that we are not consciously aware of is seeking out these opportunities. You're more alert to these opportunities. One of the techniques that you talk about is, and you talk about this kind of especially with the people that you work with, is a two-minute appreciation technique. And I wonder if you could talk a little bit about that. You know, a lot of people do a gratitude list, you know, kind of like first thing in the morning or they, you know, use a basis of gratitude. But I like this two-minute appreciation technique. And I wonder if you could kind of walk us through it. Maybe Jonathan and I'll try it later. This is actually from Sean Acre. He is the Harvard psychologist I told you about. I interviewed him for my podcast, and he shared this insane study that blew my mind.

So he was working with a company, and he decided to help change the culture of the company. I believe it was trying to find the company name. It's in my book. He went to the CEO, and he said, look, I want you to do this exercise with your managers. Basically, he said, when they start work, before they do anything, They need to set a timer for two minutes, and in that two minutes, write an email of appreciation or send a Slack message or a WhatsApp of appreciation to someone else in the company. It has to be precisely two minutes.

If it's less than two, then it's too short. If it's more than two, it's going to take up too much time and people won't do it. He called it the two-minute appreciation exercise. Basically, everyone in the company had to appreciate someone else for two minutes. This company was at 650 million in revenue. and they were plateauing. In 18 months, they soared to 950 million in revenue. The number of people applying to join the company went up 237%.

Google flew down to see what they were doing. But what else was going on? Was it just the two-minute appreciation? So the, I'm trying to remember the name of the company. It's in my book. I'm scrolling through the pages right now. But yes, it was. It was that two-minute appreciation.

Now, the CEO of the company did go a little bit further. He would pull people off the sales floor once a day for another two to five minutes and just help have them appreciate each other. But appreciation became a key part of the DNA of the company. And it caused performance to soar. It was nationwide insurance, right? Nationwide insurance, right. So that's the two minute appreciation exercise. Again, it's not from me. I mentioned it in my book, but it comes from Sean Acre. Okay. So the last thing I want to talk about is, I think, really one of the most power components of the book. And I really do recommend that people, you know, buy this book instead of just

going by literally the limited amount of time we have with you. But you have a five-part personal transformation technique. And I've read a lot of books. I've read a lot of self-help books. I've read a lot of all kinds of books. And, you know, there's always like this thing that they tell you that you're like, this is really good, I'm going to say. So I'm reading the book and I'm like, sleep. Okay, fine. Everybody needs more sleep. Fine.

Fine. And then number two is meditation. And I was like, well, I already like this list more because you just put meditation really high up on the list, meaning this really held my kind of engagement and my interest in the approach that you have, you know? And so that's kind of the second part. And then I was sort of surprised. Like I was going on this journey with you and I was like, exercise.

Like, why is he telling me? And then I was like, you know what, Ma'am? Because it matters. And I'm a scientist. And I know that placing this as a priority, it means a lot. It's not about how you look. It's not even just how about how you feel. It's about the time that it takes, the commitment it takes,

the discipline it takes to say it's a priority to me. to move my body and move things through my body. And then the same thing with eating fasting supplements. And I have a lot of opinions about fasting and about supplements and about, you know, a lot of the kind of commercialization of this stuff. And also with the sensitivity to people with eating disorders and things like that. But again, like you said, in terms of like, oh, what you eat really does make a difference. This is something Jonathan's been teaching me.

One of the things I'm most grateful to Jonathan for really educating me about. And then the last one really threw me for a loop, this notion of speed learning. And the first thing I realized is like, I think I'm a speed learner. Jonathan, I'm a speed learner. I joke, you put the pages of the book into the robot and she just like processes them at an unbelievable speed. So I thought that was such an interesting component because like all these things, I was like, maybe this guy really has figured it out. So I'm rubbing, I'm rubbing my hands and bleep it. Can I go deeper in each of these five things?

Because they all sound so obvious, but there's a counter-truth. I was just literally giving like the headlines because I wanted to set it up. So let's go and, you know, I want to be, you know, respectful of your time. But let's go, let's go one by one. And if you could give us kind of like. I want to push some buttons here. So let's talk about sleep, okay? Sleep.

Okay. So the American idea of work and sleep is so fucked up. We need to be more like the French. I'm a big advocate of four-day work weeks and capping working hours to 35 hours a week. It is ridiculous that we overwork people to the point of bad health because of this bullshit idea called GDP, which was created in the 1940s as a really random arbitrary way of measuring the happiness and the success of a nation. We are chasing a stupid means goal.

So again, in my company, we don't have early morning meetings. of morning huddle, we'll start at around 10 or 11 a.m. Because we want to give people the opportunity to feed to sleep. The key idea here is that you've got to protect your sleep. Like after 8 p.m., I'm a busy guy, but after 8 p.m., I just switch off work. I'll be on Netflix. I'll read. I'll go out with friends. But sleep is the one thing that has to be non-negotiable. You've got to get your requisite hours of sleep. And you can optimize sleep. There are many different things you can take. Magnesium glycinate is an incredible safe supplement. that helps you sleep, 5-HDP in the morning, incredible for sleep.

There's a whole list of sleep supplements that you can look at. Now, number two is the six-phase meditation. Not meditation, but the six-phase. So people confuse meditation. They think it's about just clearing your mind, focusing on your breath. But what happens is many of these practices really don't create the benefits they claim. FMRI scans have gotten so much more developed. we can see the impact that various meditation protocols have on the brain.

Now, the six phase is a meditation process I design based on what science is saying works. And you go through six mental modalities, compassion, gratitude, forgiveness, future dreaming, visualizing your perfect day, and then the blessing. The blessing is where you bring in your religious tradition, whether it's Muslim or Jewish or Christian, into your meditation. Right. Now, everything there is rooted in science. And this actually creates the benefits.

of meditation that you read about in all of these, these, these, um, scientific journals, but you, but meditation is not just focusing on your breath or trying to clear your mind. That's the reason why many people who try meditation immediately give up because they are chasing this BS idea of meditating like a hermit when they should be meditating the way science says you should. And also I just, before you get into point three, I do want to note that you don't have to be a religious person to meditate. No, no, no, no, no.

That last phase can take other forms. I just wanted to include that. It can take other forms. Yeah, yeah. But the fact that the matter is, most people in the world today are religious, and I wanted to create a modality that respected that. Right, okay, sorry, point three.

Go ahead. Okay, now we go to number three. Number three is optimized exercise. All right. Now, so this is going to be, people are going to hate me for saying this. If you're training for a marathon, you're destroying your body,

running and jogging is not exercise. It's negative exercise. You are fucking up your skeletal structure. And very likely you are going to be burning off your type 2 muscle fiber and putting yourself in and reducing your metabolic rate so that the only way you can stay slim is to continue the stupid practice of jogging. You're going to lose 18,000 followers right now. The human body was not made for jogging. If you want to go deeper into the science, study the work of Dr. Doug McGuff, who wrote the book, Body by Science. jogging is negative exercise. So what is, and this is why if you actually look at the bodies of marathon runners, they are not, they age faster. They are not the most perfect bodies.

A lot of other things that we think are healthy are not. Keto diets, new research by Viome just shows that if you're on a keto diet, you're accelerating your aging, not healthy. So it turns out, okay, that 87% of American women have the wrong ideas of exercise. They pursue endurance, jogging, going on a treadmill, not realizing that what they are doing in those scenarios is burning off muscle fiber. You get real skinny. You look real skinny.

You get real skinny and you lower your metabolic rate. And so if you suddenly eat too much and stop exercising because you have an injury, you are going to start, you're not going to have the metabolic rate to tolerate that food. The optimal form of exercise is high. intensity interval training or weight training. Exercises that build up musculature. Now here's the crazy thing. This does not mean going to a gym for hours every week. It only requires 30 minutes a week of gym time. 30 minutes a week. That's it. I exercise 30 to 40 minutes a week. That is all. We have done studies on U.S. military members. We have done studies on hundreds of people around the world. 30 minutes a week. High intensity

interval training with or without gym equipment, but basically using weights. And there are five exercises that Dr. Doug McGuff recommends creates incredible changes in your body without destroying your type 2 muscle fiber. What we're talking about here is super slow strength training. The exercise routine is five to six exercises. Each exercise is done for precisely 60 seconds. That's it. So you're in and out of the gym in 15 minutes. You do that twice a week. That's 30 minutes a week of exercise. So after you turn 30, you're going to start losing about 1% of your musculature every year. And so this starts accelerating.

So what happens is by the time you're 70, you've lost so much muscle and your bones have gotten thinner. The number one cause of accidental death for Americans 70 and over is falling down because they've lost musculature. But guess how much exercise it takes to reverse psychopenia to ensure that you're not losing that 1% of muscle every year? year and becoming weaker and weaker. I'm not doing that math.

You do the math. It's two hours a year. What? Yeah. So if you basically just spend January working out 30 minutes a week in January, you reverse psychophenia for the year. Wow. Go to the fourth point.

I want to go on the fourth point. You're doing great. Okay. Okay. I just get so excited about this. Okay. Optimize eating, fasting, and supplements. So basically, the U.S. Congress issued an alert.

that the nutritional content of food in America was nowhere at the level it needs to be. There's a diet need to supplement or we're going to see a massive decrease in health. Can you guess the year that alert was made? 1970. 1932. 1932. And it's gotten worse and worse and worse and worse and worse because of mass farming. Mass farming and also a tremendous amount of government role

in what we farm and how, what to do with it, where to put it, and where the lobbyists are for the Food and Drug Administration. Yeah, the American diet is so unhealthy that at this point, you can analyze blood samples of the population and figure out who is American because of the presence of high fructose corn syrup in the bloodstream. We're made of corn, essentially, in all of the least healthy ways. What people don't understand is that when you try and change your diet in America,

the fillers, the binders, the crackers that you have, getting rid of the oils, the fructose, it's like you almost have to say you cannot eat out anymore. It's that extreme. Yeah. And that's why supplements are so necessary, right? Okay. So speed learning, this is a big one for me. I'm so excited. I learned this. I learned it from Jim Quick. Full disclosure, he's now on Mind Valley. He's a Mind Valley author, but his program, super reading. We sampled about a thousand people who had gone through the program. the average reading speed increase in 21 days, 20 minutes a day, 21 days is 270%. The idea is not just like, oh, you should read faster. The idea is that one of the most beautiful things about being able to read faster is the amount

of things, not only that you can learn, but the things that you can experience, you know, I didn't really get into reading until I was 15 or 16. And then I just could not stop. I could not stop going other places. you know, Gabriel Garcia-Marquez and Sartre and, you know, like all of the novels that I read, just all the things, it's experience, it adds to your life. It's enjoyable. It's a lost art. So like that's also something that really appealed to me, not just the ability to like learn faster, but to experience more faster.

Right. Exactly. Experience more faster. So speed reading is one aspect of speed learning. There are other aspects to it. I invented a tool and I put it up on the web for free. all, it's on insights.mindvalue.com, perfectly free, but it is a group note-taking utility that applies a model called Zettelcastin notetaking, which allows you to rapidly pull together

notes, tag them to different books, different movies, different programs online, and then decide what you're going to share, how to organize them, how to sort them. And that's why when you're interviewing me, I can pull up so much data because I'm on my insights page right now. So again, And it's just something worth looking at if you find, if you're the type of geek like me who finds this interesting. Jonathan has one more question. I have one more question. And then we'll let you go.

Jonathan, go. So in your book, you talk about always thinking 10 years into the future. When I say that, my, what do you say? I roll my eyes. There's nothing to say. My eyes do the talking. And I use the example of in 2003, 2004, even 2006, if you were to jump forward 10 years and talk about the ubiquity of cell phone use and sleeping with tiny computers and waking up in the

middle of the night to play video games. Not that anyone here does that at all. Not that anyone puts on meditations of monks chanting at 4 a.m. I mean, we'll talk a whole thing, I think, about getting phones out of the bedroom. But if you didn't think 10 years into the future, or you did, and you tried to tell people what would happen, people would think that you were absolutely crazy. And yet the world changed so rapidly, and now that's the new normal. The way that the world, world is going to change in the next 10 years is going to be even more drastic than that. And so not thinking about that in my perspective is absolutely a detriment to mental health, while also understanding that we have to stay present in our daily lives and be focused.

But to not know where the world is going, I think, is a blind spot. So what's your perspective on 10 years in the future thinking? So there are two aspects to why we've got to be thinking 10 years into the future, right? So the first one is Peter, I'm Anvis. He's the founder of the X-Price Foundation. They're the ones that basically bought private space travel to life. He's the guy

who often goes uncredited. But the Virgin Galactic launch, that was because of him. He, in 1999, created the XPRIZE, which created private space travel. So he's a futurist. And I saw him speak once, and he said something that blew my mind that also scared the be Jesus out of me.

He said, between 2000 and 2016, the world So the world saw as much innovation as between 1900 and 2000. We're now going to see as much innovation as 100 years between 2016 and 2022. Now, when I saw him speak, it was 2016. And he said, we're then going to see 100 years of innovation between 2022 and 2026. In short, it's increasing at an exponential rate.

You guys are stressing me out. I know. It is stressful. It is, it is stressful. And in my defense. in my defense. And then I'll ask my last question. Then I do want to let you go. You've been with us so long. I appreciate it. Part of my concern with people who are so future thinking is that I believe that that is something that you do when your house is in order. Meaning, your house needs to be in a certain

amount of order to be able to have that foundation to then be projecting forward. And so I'm not saying that as an admonishment. I'm not saying that as a judgment. But I get worried when I speak to people who are more concerned about what might happen or what could happen rather than making sure that the foundation is in place to be able to make anything happen. Does that make sense? No, I completely get you. You got to get the foundation in place. The human being, I believe, the fully realized human being has one foot in the present and one foot in the future. I have one final question for you.

I guess my question is, you know, you have so much drive and you're so passionate. Like, is there another side to you that's, you know, like more vulnerable and more? I mean, I'm sure, I mean, I find you very playful, but I am curious if you're like, this is how we do this relationship. Number one, we wake up. We do a meditation. We love each other. Then we have sex.

The sex last 16 minutes. Then we take our supplements. That's right. Take our supplements. Then we have to refuel because we lost. our tree, we'll bring that tree back. If something's not working, we make a chart, we make a pyramid. I'm on the bottom of the pyramid, you're on the top of the pyramid, children in the middle pyramid. You didn't get enough sleep. We're getting divorced. I am not answering that question

about my relationship or my sex life. No, no, no, no, no, no. I'm not trying to be salacious here. What I'm asking about is I'm curious how you take this, you know, into an aspect of our existence that is also incredibly important, incredibly spiritual, and also a source of tremendous joy. Like, I have to tell you, and I don't mean to embarrass Jonathan, I feel like you could put me and Jonathan in almost any situation in the world, and that's the person I want to conquer the world with. You could give us no money. You could give us all the money. You could drop us anywhere, anywhere in the world. Pick a place. And then, That's the person that I want on my side, by my side.

I want to fight with that person. I want to fight through things. I want to change the world. I want to make things. Like that's my person. And that feels more important than, I mean, just about anything, you know? I mean, obviously my children, myself, my relationship with my kids, my family. But like, where does that fall for you?

Like, is that a high priority for you? Or are you happy in your work? And it's kind of like that would be nice. Like, is there a part of you that needs to be cuddled? Like, that's what I'm curious about. Well, there's definitely a part of me that needs to be cuddled. I love cuddling. But the fact is, I was right now, while being, while romance is important to me, sex is important

to me, being with the right person is important to me. I wasn't a relationship for 17. I was married for 17 years. And I had two kids. I still have two kids last. I checked. And so I'm in an error of life where different things are important. Right now my health is important. Right now being the best dad I can be is important. Finding the one and getting married again is not as important to me. Although I value sex. I value romance. I value being with

someone really, really, really amazing whom I enjoy being with. I'll give you one piece of advice. If they say they're an entrepreneur, don't go on that date. We do a rapid fire before we let you go. Is that cool? Okay. Absolutely. Okay, let me just pull them up. Here's rapid fire with Vishen Lakiani.

Did I do it? My God, you actually pronounced my name perfectly. Well, that's lovely. Okay. Here we go. What was your mother right about? Oh, what was my mother right about? Public speaking.

My mother trained me to, my mother was really into drama and theater. And I was so shy and she got me on stage and she got me speaking. And that has been so useful right now, especially being on this interview. Amazing. What was your father right about? My father is the one who encouraged me to be an entrepreneur. We'll consider him right about that. Location in the world that promotes your best mental health.

Oh, wow. If I had to pick one right now, Santorini Greece. Wow. Yeah. It's the water. It's the beauty of the space. It's the mysticism there. It's the food, the fish.

It's the wine, the alcohol. I'm fantasizing right now, but it's getting really cold here in Estonia. I'm thinking about escaping to Greece. Okay, Santorini. Do you have one mantra that's your favorite? I have a mantra that a mentor of mine, Bob Proctor. It's a quote by him. It's been the quote on my Facebook page for the last 12 years at this point.

Don't ask if you always. worthy for your goals. Ask if your goals are worthy of you. Oh, I love that. I love that in the book. Very nice. Who's your best spiritual teacher or who has been your best spiritual teacher? So many, so many being, you know, running mind value, I meet so many incredible spiritual teachers. And I trained with so many shamans and spiritual teachers. I'm reluctant to say who's the best, but I'll rattle off like five or seven names. I just don't want to put any one person on a pinnacle. Is that okay? Yeah. You want me to rattle off? Sure.

Okay. Marie Diamond, Marie Diamond, Dr. Barry Mogherlan, Sric Kumar Rao, the Reverend Michael Beckwith, Alan Watts. Let's see, Marissa Peir. There have been so many incredible influences. Emily Fletcher, these are all people I've studied in the past two to three months. They're all Mind Valley teachers. Awesome. Who are you most competitive with? So I don't really like being in a competitive state. I don't think it's healthy. I think it's dysfunctional. So I don't really, I know this is not what an investor or something wants to hear, but I don't really think of competition that way. If there's another company trying to do what we're doing, spreading enlightened ideas, helping make the world healthier, we don't see them as our competitor.

We see them as a potential collaborator because we have a similar mission. So because of that, I never really feel that energy of competition. I just think it's destructive and unhealthy. What's been your moment of best intuition? When I was writing the Buddha and the Badass, the book wasn't meant to be Buddha and the Badass. I was asked to write a book on company culture. And somewhere in August 2019, I decided,

I don't want to write a book in company culture. I want to write a book on, I just felt dread about writing this book in company culture. And so I changed the book midstream. My editor fortunately trusted me. I literally scrapped the initial graph, changed the book midstream. and then the pandemic hit, and nobody gave a damn about company culture.

But the Buddha and the badass, that hit number one on the Wall Street journey. Amazing. That's great. Thank you so much for being with us. This has been really, really wonderful. And we'd love to have you back again, maybe even for a little tit. A couple more tidbits from you because you have so many, so many wonderful things to share. Thank you so much. Thank you. You got to love yourself like your life depends on it, them.

I mean, it's like talking to him is like, here's the 86 other books that I have to read. to be like him. There's a lot of books on the list that I wrote down during that interview. I need to become a speed learner just so I could catch up with all the books. He told me I need to read. That's my strategy. I'm going to go take the gym quick course. How do you have the time to be like him if you sleep eight hours? The other thing about like the becoming unfuckable with. Unfuckwithable. Unfuckwithable, which is much better actually. It's basically grow your roots deep. Well, I mean, if you look at the being unfuck with a bowl as two parts, you know, love yourself and then see your life as a masterpiece, yeah, I guess. Deep roots, don't get blown over by other people's expectations.

I think this is really hard for people. The not being coming out of the cookie cutter. And I think it's better now than ever before because we have more models of people who do things differently. I think a lot of people will really resonate with him. but I think that there's a lot of people who won't, meaning, there are some people who are just like, I just want to do my job and, like, go home and watch TV and, like, hang out with my friends.

And, you know, I think it takes different types, you know. And I think that, you know, if you look at sort of, yeah, what has built this country, this world, it's, you know, sometimes we have to lay pipe. And I think that's the thing also is that, like, for a lot of young people and a lot of people, people, people who are not young, just like for a lot of people, this notion of like being a trailblazer and being a pioneer and being an entrepreneur is like, not everybody has the resources literally to do that, you know, practically or emotionally.

So it's great that people like him exist and it's the people like him, you know, and like the Bill Gates is and I don't know, all the other people. It's just, this very foreign part like of the world for me is like this kind of thinking. Like, I've never lived in court. I lived in academia, you know, like, I, I, this whole world is very different to me. Did you hear that message saying that you shouldn't, like, work for a company and get a paycheck and then sort of have other things in your life? No, it's just like, you know, I have to say that, like, the time in my life when I felt most free was when I was in college. And I didn't have kids. And I didn't have a mortgage.

And it was just like, you know, me and Mike, And yeah, we backpacked through Europe for five weeks, and it was an unbelievable experience. And it's one that I hope my children have, like, to just, like, have that time to just, like, be free and do whatever you want. But, yeah, I have a very old fashioned and probably, you know, outdated notion of, like, then you got to, like, figure out what you're going to do and you got to go to school and you got to become something and not be supported by your parents. And, you know, all those things. like, I don't know. I mean, I do. I feel very, I feel very out of touch with this kind of thinking.

It's like, he's so excited and he's so passionate. And, you know, I don't always have that. I don't see those two things as being, like, divergent from each other. Right. I don't see that, like, you have to figure out your life out and support yourself different than you want to support yourself in a way that you're not miserable. Totally. Totally. And that you're utilizing the best aspects of your skill set. And you're not necessarily punching the clock from nine to five every single day with two weeks vacation. Because a lot of different people, like a lot of companies now are competing to hire people based on lifestyle, even as a teacher. Like you get a certain amount of time off and people choose that for that benefit. There's teachers who are teaching at different types of schools, alternative schools and different styles of education.

I think there's more opportunity to do even the same jobs differently. now than there ever has been before. What happened in your nervous system when he told you that in the next like six years there's going to be a hundred years of innovation? I fell asleep. I fell asleep with my eyes open. That's what happened. You just went catatonic. You went in a comatose state for a second.

My brain said, we don't do this information. I'm thinking about lunch. But I really did like the idea of kind of, you know, working smarter, whether it's with your food, whether it's with your meditation. I mean, I love that. He's done a lot of the hard work. And I really, I very highly recommend the Buddha and the badass, this secret spiritual art of succeeding at work. I think that's it from the future,

from our future breakdown to the one we hope you never have. We'll see you next time. It's my ambiolyx breakdown. She's going to break it down for you. She's got a neuroscience PhD or two. One fiction. And now she's going to break.