Young and Profiting with Hala Taha - Vishen Lakhiani: The Truth About Manifestation for Entrepreneurs | Mental Health | YAPClassic

Episode Date: June 20, 2025

Vishen Lakhiani was once an insecure teenager battling low self-esteem and severe acne, until he discovered the power of meditation, mindset training, and self-healing through the Silva Method. By rewiring his subconscious and embracing manifestation, Vishen transformed his mental health and became one of the most influential thought leaders in human consciousness. In this episode, Vishen uncovers the real science behind intuition, his six-phase meditation method, and how to master personal growth from the inside out. In this episode, Hala and Vishen will discuss: (00:00) Introduction (02:04) Rewiring Self-Image Through Mindset Training (10:03) Silva Method: Meditation for Wellness (11:37) Why Most Entrepreneurs Succeed After 38 (16:50) The Minimal Livable Income (MLI) for Success (28:00) Science Behind Intuitive Decision-Making (35:03) Law of Attraction vs. Law of Resonance (39:31) Four Levels of Personal Growth (51:21) Why Top CEOs Use Altered States Practices (54:56) Six Phase Meditation for Happiness Vishen Lakhiani is a bestselling author, entrepreneur, and pioneer in the ed-tech and personal growth space. He is the founder of Mindvalley, a global education platform with over 20 million students that delivers world-class training in mindfulness, wellness, spirituality, and mental health – at a fraction of traditional costs. Through Mindvalley and his transformational festival A-Fest, Vishen is redefining human education by focusing on holistic development, mindset, and conscious living. Sponsored By: Shopify - Start your $1/month trial at Shopify.com/profiting. Indeed - Get a $75 sponsored job credit to boost your job's visibility at Indeed.com/PROFITING Mercury - Streamline your banking and finances in one place. Learn more at mercury.com/profiting  OpenPhone - Get 20% off your first 6 months at OpenPhone.com/profiting. Bilt - Start paying rent through Bilt and take advantage of your Neighborhood Benefits by going to joinbilt.com/profiting. Airbnb - Find a co-host at airbnb.com/host Boulevard - Get 10% off your first year at joinblvd.com/profiting when you book a demo Resources Mentioned: Vishen’s Book, The 6 Phase Meditation Method: bit.ly/The6PhaseMeditationMethod  Vishen’s Website: www.vishen.com/ Think and Grow Rich by Napoleon Hill: bit.ly/Think_andGrowRich  Active Deals - youngandprofiting.com/deals       Key YAP Links Reviews - ratethispodcast.com/yap  Youtube - youtube.com/c/YoungandProfiting  LinkedIn - linkedin.com/in/htaha/  Instagram - instagram.com/yapwithhala/  Social + Podcast Services - yapmedia.com   Transcripts - youngandprofiting.com/episodes-new  Entrepreneurship, entrepreneurship podcast, Business, Business podcast, Self Improvement, Self-Improvement, Personal development, Starting a business, Strategy, Investing, Sales, Selling, Psychology, Productivity, Entrepreneurs, AI, Artificial Intelligence, Technology, Marketing, Negotiation, Money, Finance, Side hustle, Startup, Career, Leadership, Health, Growth mindset, Health, Psychology, Biohacking, Motivation, Productivity, Brain Health, Life Balance, Positivity, Sleep, Diet

Today's episode of Yap is sponsored in part by Airbnb, OpenPhone, Shopify, Mercury, Bilt, Indeed and Boulevard. As always, you can find all of our incredible deals in the show notes or at youngandprofiting.com slash deals. YapBam, if you think meditation is just about sitting still and zoning out, get ready to rethink everything. In this YAP Classic, we're revisiting one of my most powerful conversations with Vishen Lekyani, the visionary founder of Mindvalley and the author of the Six Phase Meditation

Method. Vishen went from struggling with low self-esteem to becoming a world-renowned leader in personal growth. His secret was unlocking the power of his mind through a structured meditation framework that rewired his thoughts, sharpened his intuition, and elevated his performance. In this conversation, Vishen breaks down why the law of attraction might be misleading you, the steps to develop intuitive clarity, and how to use his six-phase method to manifest with precision and purpose. This isn't about wishful thinking.

It's about building a system for success from the inside out. If you're ready to level up your mind and your life, this episode is for you. So let's dive right in. So, Vishen, like I mentioned, you are one of the biggest experts in the world in the field of human consciousness. So, I'd love to start off with how you first discovered the power of your mind. Digging around, I found out that you grew up in Malaysia and you were actually an insecure

and pimply kid. So, talk to us about that. Hala, that's me. You just brought that right out, calling me an insecure, pimply kid. To my surprise, I mean, now I feel like you're like on the cover of Max of Magazine and things like that. But when you first came into this world, it wasn't quite like that,

but you were able to kind of change even your physical representation in the world. So I'd love to understand how you discovered the power of your mind as a kid. It's not like I discovered it with one book, okay? Or I discovered it with one seminar. Rather, my dad had this, my dad never went to university, but he had this white bookshelf in our home

in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. And he would educate himself on books by Napoleon Hill, by Bob Proctor, by Jose Silva, about all of these legendary people from the 50s and 60s and 70s. And growing up in Malaysia, in the 80s, there was no internet. There were only three television channels, all of which served up the stupidest crap. So most of the time I had nothing to do. And what I ended up doing was browsing through my dad's bookshelves from the early age of 12 or 13. Now, I discovered books by Bob Proctor. I discovered books by Jose Silva. I discovered Napoleon Hill. Napoleon Hill became like a lifeline for me. I would read those books cover to cover, underlying everything. But while a lot of these books spoke about attitudes and mindset, the real magic came

from reading the book, Silver Mind Control by Jose Silva. Okay, so let's go back to that pimply kid. So Jose Silva, he developed a protocol for training people to access altered states of mind. Now today we know altered state training is everywhere. In Steven Kotler and Jamie Weal's book, Stealing Fire, they say the altered state economy is a trillion dollar economy. From CEOs to US military, people train in altered states for performance and so on.

But back then in the 60s and 70s, it was less known. So when people spoke about altered states, they were talking about meditation, they were talking about hypnotherapy, they were talking about biofeedback, early 1970s style biofeedback. Now that was what Jose Silva dabbled with. He found that using an electroencephalograph, an EEG machine, which you could strap to your skull, he could train people to go into levels of mind, the alpha and theta level of mind, where most people are semi-asleep, but he could keep them awake. And he noticed interesting faculties of mind developing. For example, when you're at alpha at the alpha level of mind where your brain is beating

at seven to 14 cycles per second. So usually right now, as we are talking, our brain's at the beta level, 14 to 21 cycles per second. But if we get a little bit relaxed through box breathing or through meditation, we go down to Alpha. Now at Alpha, interesting things happen. Not only are you more relaxed, but not only does stress disappear, but you seem to be able to program and command your body and your beliefs.

This is what Jose Silva found interesting. So at Alpha, he developed ways to program people. Like you would program a VCR back in the day, program people to give up addictions, program people to even heal their body. And one of the most interesting programming is programming the skin. So it turns out that of all the organs in the human body, the skin is that organ most susceptible to the human mind. Hypnotists can hypnotize someone and say, imagine you are on a beach and the sun is shining down on you and your skin is getting redder and redder with the sun.

And that person will actually tan somehow on command, tan on command. So when I started reading about Jose Silva's work and one of the things that Jose Silva would talk about is how in his classes he would hypnotize someone, pick up a marker and tell that person that marker was a red hot poker, put it on their skin and a burn bubble would form instantly. And then he would put his hand on the burn bubble and command it to heal and it would heal. Now, this may seem cruel in today's era, but I guess in the 1970s in Texas, that was

just how you educated people. So the skin is susceptible to the human mind. So this is what I did. Using a technique by Jose Silva, I decided to see if I could command my acne to disappear. So from the age of 13 onwards, I was cursed with that acne. Now I'm not using the word curse loosely.

It literally came from a belief. I remember I was 13 years old. I looked in the mirror one day and I saw a pimple. And this was, we had a little mirror in our dining room in my home in Malaysia and a well-meaning aunt came up to me and says, oh, you're a teenager now, you got your first pimple, it's going to get so much worse. And then she said something completely unscientific, but I believed it. She said, oh, and by the way, Vishen, you know, as a teenager, I also know you have dandruff. And what's going to happen now? And she proceeded to explain this to

me in her science, your dandruff is going to fall on your face and it's going to get infected and your dandruff is going to cause even more pimples to grow. So good luck, happy teenage hood. And I believe that. And the next thing you know, for year after year after year, my face is covered in pimples. I have no confidence in myself. In school, the bullies are calling me pimple face. I was afraid to even make friends or ask a girl out. My entire teenage life, I went out five times.

Five times, that's once a year. Wow. But when I was 17, after reading these books, it occurred to me, why can't I heal my skin? So I decided to practice the Silva Method techniques. I learned how to get myself into a rested state of mind, the alpha state. And then using a visualization model called the Three Scenes Protocol by Jose Silva, I would visualize my skin healing. And by the way, if you guys want to learn this, just Google vision, creative visualization

healing and you'll find it. I did a video on this. I put it up on YouTube because I felt it was my duty to share this with other people. And the Silva method, just so I can be open about this, 20 years later, I would acquire the rights to the Silva method and plug it into Mindvalley. So the official Silva method is now part of Mindvalley. But what happened is in five weeks, I healed my skin. In five weeks, I had five years of acne. It disappeared in five weeks. You can command your body to heal. Now,

when that happened, I asked myself, what else can I do? And the next thing I wanted to do was to compete at the US Open martial art taekwondo competition, taekwondo is Korean karate. So, I started practicing the same technique to train my skill as a martial artist. And I accomplished that. I ended up representing my country also at the age of 17 at the 1993 US Open Taekwondo Championships in the Colorado Springs Olympic Training Center. When I experienced that evidence that I could command my skin to heal, that I could qualify for the US Open, my life changed. And since then, no other form of education has mattered,

except the education of learning how to apply your mind to make your dreams into reality. And yes, I do have a degree in electrical engineering and computer science, that's how I built up Mindvalley, but nothing else I learned in university is comparable to the education I learned from those books on my father's bookshop. What a powerful story.

I love that. So something that I found interesting when I was researching is that you're of Indian descent, but you really aligned to the Silva method, which in your own words, you've said is like the text max of meditation, right? So curious to why you didn't really go with your ancestors way of meditation and Why you felt like you aligned to silver method? Well, well first let's explain Jose Silva He lived in in Nuevo Laredo, Mexico and Laredo, Texas. These are border towns So that's why I jokingly call it Tex-Mex meditation, but it is not the Taco Bell of meditation

It's more like the Chipotle of meditation. It's so delicious. It's so good. You want to just nibble on it every single day. So that's the Silva method. And I would later grow up and become a Silva method instructor, build a website to get people into my class, that website I called Mindvalley after Silva mind control. And that is how Mindvalley started. Today we are the world's biggest personal growth platform. And someday I believe we'll be the world's biggest education company. So why silver method over meditation from Hindu culture? Well, I still do practice meditation from Hindu culture. One of the books that has completely transformed my life. Now this was when I was 21 was autobiography by Yogi by Paramahansa Yogananda.

And my own meditation protocol, which I've now, which is the subject of my latest book, six phase meditation actually pulls from many different heritages. It pulls from Zen Roshi Buddhism. It pulls from loving kindness Buddhist concepts. It pulls from gratitude studies. It pulls from silva method. It pulls everything together into a daily practice called the Six Phase. Yeah.

So I want to back up a little bit, Vishen. I want to talk about your journey to America. We talked about how you grew up in Malaysia and you ended up coming to America when you were 26. You really had like a life altering situation that really set you off to your life's journey. That's how you ended up really going off and starting Mindvalley and all the cool things that you did. But I have a lot of young male listeners and a lot of them are not in a good place right now. They're still trying to find their way. And so I'd love to really unpack your story

and help them understand that you didn't start off just crushing it. So tell us about your journey to America and what happened. So in that scenario, based on what you told me, rather than me tell you about my journey, can I rather just give direct advice to your young male listeners? Yeah, why not?

So forget my journey. My journey is my journey. You are gonna have your own journey. My journey is meaningless to you and I don't need to talk about my journey. Rather, what I wanna talk about is what happened to me and what I figured out when I was young that helped me build a business

where I could support myself. Okay, so I tried to break it down into a couple of different principles. And the first thing to know is this. If you're young, you are blessed with youth. Most people only figure it out at the age of 38. So I want you to know, even if you're 32 right now and you haven't figured it out and you are still living paycheck to paycheck, or you still are at a job you dread, you're still young.

Okay? Most people figure it out at 38. I figured it out at 39. It was only at 39 that I was done with going through cycles where the company would boom and then would go be in a bankruptcy, where I had predictable income. I only figured it out at 39. So I just want everyone here to know that whatever standard you may be holding yourself up to because it's easy to look at a Mark Zuckerberg and go, wow, this guy became a billionaire at 25 or Kendall Jenner. No, those are anomalies. Most people, including myself, only figure it out at 38. Now I believe you can accelerate figuring it out by remembering a few principles.

Okay, now the first principle is this, you must, must, must, must, must know your minimal livable income, your MLI. That's a word I coined. Your MLI is the minimum amount that you need to survive, lead a decent, healthy life. Once you know your MLI, all your decisions on starting your business, okay, need to basically revolve around how can you cover your MLI. And knowing your MLI will also let you know when you can safely quit whatever day job you have, if you're not loving it. So in my case, I worked for a company that had really bad culture. It was

seriously bad. I mean, we had office politics. There was racism in the office. I was a person of Indian origin working in this office in New York. And I remember just experiencing horrendous culture, horrendous racism, but I couldn't quit. I couldn't quit because I needed the salary. And I had a girlfriend who was European. We lived together. And because she was European, she couldn't legally work in the US. So I had to earn enough money for both of us.

Now here's the thing, back then in New York, this was maybe 2002, 2003, I was earning $7,500 a month. That's a pretty decent salary. Rent was $2,800. We couldn't afford $2,800 on rent, so we had a two-bedroom apartment. We lived in one bedroom and I had a close friend living in the other bedroom. We didn't even have privacy. But this is what I knew. My minimal livable income for me and my girlfriend was $4,000 a month, four grand. Four grand means we could afford to pay our share of the rent for that shared apartment. We could

afford cable bills. We could afford Netflix. This is back when Netflix was CDs that they shipped to you. We could afford to eat out at could afford Netflix. This is back when Netflix was CDs that they shipped to you. We could afford to eat out at a decent street side, New York restaurant. I could go out to for bar nights once a week with my friends. I could eat a subway sandwich for lunch. I could eat a White Castle for dinner. Don't judge me. And I could have Starbucks for breakfast.

$4,000 a month. Now, because I knew that I could set my mind on a goal. How could I make $4,000 a month? So the first thing I did is I got qualified as a meditation instructor. Now I could teach a class on meditation in New York. I could buy advertisements on Google AdWords, have people call me on the phone, and then I would pick up the phone and I would talk to them about the meditation class and half of them would sign up on a $300 class. They would pay me via PayPal. And by doing this, I was able to generate an extra $1,000 a month or so in profit. That's not bad. Remember,

I needed $4,000. Now I was at $1,000. So now I needed to do something else. I needed another form of passive income, $3,000. That was the gap I needed to fill. So the first lesson is here. Once you know your MLI, you can focus like a laser on climbing towards your MLI. That little meditation class, I thought it once every two months, I made $2,000 profit. So that's 1,000 a month. But guess what? It meant I only had to work for two days every two months to hit 25% of my MLI. That's pretty damn good. Right?

Yeah. Okay. Now the next thing is when you take a baby step, a beautiful thing happens. Napoleon Hill in his book, Think and Grow Rich said, if you don't know how to start your entrepreneurial journey, if you don't know your path to riches, just guess, take a baby step. Baby steps don't know how to start your entrepreneurial journey, if you don't know your path to riches, just guess. Take a baby step. Baby steps don't have to be accurate, but baby steps show intention. And one baby step may send you in the wrong direction, but guess what? You will learn, you will autocorrect. But take that step.

The first baby step was teaching meditation classes. The second baby step was I bought a domain, mindvalley.com. The third baby step was I taught myself how to build a webpage and I started building a website for my meditation classes. And you know what? Not a single person bought anything, but I took a next baby step. I figured out how to use Google AdWords and drive people to my, to my webpage. And again, not a single person bought, but I took another baby step.

And this baby step is I bought a book on email auto responders. And this time, rather than come to the web bitch and try to sell them in the meditation class, I said, give me your email address and I'll send you a nine part lesson series on how to get meditation right. That's it. And all of a sudden, people started signing up. Now I had an email list. Then from the email list, I would introduce them to my classes.

Now my classes were selling out. My first month with this model, I lost 300 bucks on Google AdWords. My second month, I lost 800 bucks. My third month, I was making $4 a day. So $4 a day isn't much, but it started scaling. It went from $4 a day, which is, what is that? Four times 30, about 120 bucks a month to $12 a day. Back then I had to count it in dollars per day, but soon it hit 3,000 a month. And that's when, so I started this in January,

it was November. Remember, just before Thanksgiving 2003, I hit that number of 4,000 a month. And that's when I went to my boss and I quit. I lovingly quit. I said, Hey, I appreciate you. Love you for everything you've taught me, but this culture isn't for me. I want to do my own thing. I quit. And he's like, what are you going to do?

I'm like, I'm going to teach meditation. He's like, there's no money in that. I'm like, I don't know. Let's see. I love it. And I went and now we'm going to teach meditation. He's like, there's no money in that. I'm like, I don't know. Let's see. I love it. And I went, and now we come to the next lesson. If you do what you love, your odds of success are going to multiply. But again, you can't be stupid about it. You got to, I like the Japanese model of Iki guy.

You must find something you love, but it must be something that you are truly good at. If, if I love teaching meditation, but I sucked at it, wasn't going to make money. If you love creating photography, but you suck at it, I wasn't going to make money. If you love creating photography but you suck at it, you're not going to make money. And the third thing is this, it must be able to make you money. So find what you love, what you can be good at, and what can make you money. So I found all three. I love teaching meditation. I was good at it and it could make me money.

Once you find that, my God, the wheels of motion start kicking in. That little business went from 4,000 a month to eventually it became a business that hit a hundred million in revenue a year with no VC funding. Now that took, by the way, that number, it took 20 years, 20 years from the time I quit my job to have a business, which I, I, me and my employees own all of it. So we have no VCs. It's just me and my employees. Every single person working at my company owns a piece of the business. And that business has a hundred million in revenue, but it took 20 years, but you just keep innovating and innovating and

innovating. And what I'm proud of is that I still love that business because I pick something I truly love doing. I love teaching meditation. My newest book is on meditation. It's 20 years later and I still love this subject. I love exploring the human mind. I would do this even if I didn't get paid for it. But remember the humble stop.

It all started with me calculating my minimal livable income, taking a baby step, getting qualified and teaching a meditation class, figuring out my first passive income, teaching meditation. Then my second passive income, a website that could recruit people into the seminars. The third passive income was I started selling CDs on the website. The fourth passive income, I thought, well, you know, I'm only teaching in New York. What about teachers in Columbus, Ohio or Silicon Valley? What if I list their classes?

I help them fill their classes and I take 20%. You see, it starts building up. But today more than ever, it is easy to build a business. The main message is know your minimal liveable income. Focus on that. And bit by bit, climb your way to that level. Once you hit that minimal liveable income, you can quit your job and you can dive into your business and that's when it's going to start taking off.

But before you hit your minimal livable income, it does help to have a steady paying job. In fact, a study shows, the study was in the book Breakthrough Company, that people who start a company while having a steady paying job are 30% more likely to succeed. Don't just quit your job cold turkey. I built my little meditation business on nights and weekends. Hey, Yafgang. I'm so excited to tell you about Boulevard, a platform that's absolutely transforming the self-care industry. I can't tell you how many times I've tried to book a facial or hair appointment and guys that's pretty often only to get stalled by an outdating booking system. It turns me off

so bad as a customer and as somebody who's built a business from the ground up I know how important every client interaction is. If I'm having a hard time booking I feel like I won't like the service that I'm gonna get and first impressions matter. It's so important to make sure that you have an easy way to schedule appointments. That's why I highly recommend Boulevard. If you're running a self-care business, whether it's a salon, med spa, or barber shop, you know that creating exceptional client experiences is everything. Boulevard is truly the gold standard when it comes to software for self-care businesses. This isn't just another booking system. It's a world-class technology with a personal touch

built specifically for appointment-based businesses like yours. Think of it as the apple of scheduling software, sleek, intuitive, and powerful. With Boulevard, you get effortless online booking, built-in payments, appointment reminders, personalized client profiles, smart marketing tools, detailed reporting, and so much more all in one easy-to-use platform. See why top beauty and wellness brands are switching to Boulevard to empower their teams and grow their businesses. Right now, Boulevard is offering new customers 10% off your first-year subscription when you go to joinblvd.com slash profiting to book a demo. Again, that's join J-O-I-N-B-L-V-D dot com slash profiting to book a demo and get 10%

off your first-year subscription. That's joinblvd.com slash profiting to book a demo and get 10% off your first year subscription. That's joinblvd.com slash profiting. This episode of Young and Profiting is brought to you by Mercury, the modern business banking experience that has truly changed how I manage our finances at YAP Media. Running a business means juggling a million things,

and for a while, banking felt like something I just couldn't keep up with. I'm not a finance person. And I remember how frustrating it was dealing with all these complicated systems, hidden fees, and how long it took to just do simple things like sending money or tracking our spending. It was definitely not ideal for me

and I was wasting a lot of time. Switching to Mercury has changed everything. Mercury is a go-to banking product for over 200,000 startups, small businesses, and e-commerce brands. It's designed with a sleek interface and transparent pricing. No hidden fees, making it simple to manage your banking capital and credit all in one place. I log into Mercury every single day. With Mercury, you can accept payments, send invoices, and pay vendors, plus enjoy free domestic and international USD wire transfers. You also get instant access to virtual credit cards that you can track and lock to specific merchants, earning you 1.5 cash back on every

purchase. Mercury streamlines your banking and finances in one place so you can focus on growing your online business. Mercury is a technology company, not a bank. Check show notes for details. Deposit $5,000 or spend $5,000 using your Mercury credit card within your first 90 days to earn $250 or do both for $500 in total rewards. Learn more at mercury.com slash profiting. That's mercury.com slash profiting.

Mercury is a financial technology company, not an FDIC insured bank banking services provided by choice financial group column NA and of all bank and trust members FDIC. The IO card is issued by Patriot Bank member FDIC pursuant to a license for MasterCard. Learn more about cash back working capital loans provided by Mercury Lending LLC and MLS ID 2606284. Yeah, fam, in this world of entrepreneurship, timing is everything, especially when it comes to hiring.

One bad hire can set you back weeks, while the right one can take your business to the next level. That's why finding the right people quickly starts with indeed. When it comes to hiring, Indeed is all you need. Stop struggling to get your job post seen on all these different job sites

because Indeed sponsored posts help you stand out and hire fast. With sponsored jobs, your post jumps to the top of the page for your relevant candidates. So you reach the people you want faster. And it makes a huge difference. According to Indeed data, sponsored jobs posted directly on Indeed have 45% more applications than non-sponsored jobs. One of the things I love

about Indeed is that it makes hiring so fast because I get quality matches instead of wasting time going through unqualified resumes or scheduling interviews with people who just aren't the right fit. I really wish I had used Indeed earlier because it would have saved me so much time with my hiring process and so much stress. Plus, with Indeed Sponsored jobs, there's no monthly subscriptions, no long-term contracts, and you only pay for results. How fast is Indeed? In the minute we've been talking, 23 hires were made on Indeed according to Indeed data worldwide. There's no need to wait any longer. Speed up your hiring right now with Indeed.

And listeners of this show will get a $75 sponsored job credit to get your job more visibility at indeed.com slash profiting. Just go to indeed.com slash profiting right now and support our show by saying you heard about Indeed on this podcast. That's indeed.com slash profiting. Terms and conditions apply.

Hiring Indeed is all you need. Yeah, I completely agree. I grew my Yap media, social media agency, my podcast, everything was is all you need. Yeah, I completely agree. I grew my Yap Media social media agency, my podcast. Everything was as a side hustle. I used to work in corporate and that's the smartest way to do it. And I feel like you just gave such good practical advice and I love how it wasn't just about like affirmations

and wishing and hoping, like it's real action. But part of that action, correct me if I'm wrong, Vishen, is really following your intuition, right? You keep talking about baby steps, but how do you know what steps to take? It's really about following your gut, trusting your intuition. Can you talk to us about that?

Well, intuition, I believe, is, there was a study done. So let's talk about science, right? Because I know your audience, and as soon as you start talking about intuition, half of them are going to go, intuition, that BS. So there's science that actually shows there is a faculty within our minds that seems to allow us to perceive information outside our physical brains. We don't really understand how it works.

If you want to look up the science, the Gansfield test studies of the University of Edinburgh, for example, they found that in situations where people should be able to guess the probability of an outcome by 25%, if you could get that person into a rested state, right, like in a sensory deprivation chamber, the actual correct guessing rate was 33%. That's huge. You're going from one in four to one in three, but you can't explain how that guessing is happening. Now, another example is this. Professor John Mihalaski

at the Newark College of Engineering did a study on CEOs and intuition, and he found that there's a correlation. CEOs who perform better in intuition tests also deliver more profits to their company. So firstly, what you think about intuition or not, there's something to it. Napoleon Hill, in fact, the guy whom I quoted earlier when we spoke about baby steps, didn't

just speak about the practical aspects of growing a business like baby steps. In his book, Think and Grow Rich, he spoke about a concept called vibes. Vibes. And if you listen to what he says, he's speaking about intuition. He said, the most successful man I interviewed had learned to resonate their rate of thought at a different level, to pull in ideas, insights beyond the ordinary rate of thought. Yeah.

That's a paraphrase of a quote from Napoleon Hill. So there is something there. And by the way, this quality of intuition is accelerated when you have a meditation practice. Yeah. So again, I think my listeners are beginners at this. So I think what would be helpful is to understand right brain and left brain thinking, and then also to understand what does intuition actually feel like.

So a good way to start is to develop a meditation practice, the six phase meditation. It's a book, it's 13 bucks on Amazon. If not, just you can listen to the guided meditation, Six-Phase, directly on the Mindvalley app. It's free. So download the Mindvalley app, create an account. You don't have to pay a thing. When you go to click on programs, and you will notice that the Six-Phase program, I recently made it completely free because I wanted to give it as a tool to entrepreneurs. Go to the program and you will learn. I will guide you over six days on how to enhance your states of awareness, how to access deep states of mind, how to increase

your creativity and intuition. Okay, so it's there. I also teach you the exact creative visualization protocol I use to heal my skin and qualify for the US Open. You can use that protocol to build your business as well to put you in the right frame of mind as an entrepreneur. Everything in that is science-based. Okay? So go and check that out. Now, there are two types of intuition. One is a gut hunch.

You're trying to decide between two people to call because you have a sales call, you have limited time, and you just sense that this call is going to go better. Listen to that sense. So after my first Silva class, the person who was teaching me Silva, when I turned 27, I moved to Silicon Valley. And at that point, I could afford to attend the Silva class. So I remember flying to LA to take a class by the Silva method. And Jose Silva, the founder had died in 1999. So this was way, way past that. This was maybe 2002. But this instructor was a pharmaceutical sales rep who had learned, I believe, from Jose. And she showed me how to use intuition to close sales. And the tactic was really interesting. You get into a restful state of mind, a meditative

state of mind. As I said, intuition emerges when you are in a rested state. Now, back then, we used the Yellow Pages. So in my sales job, I have to call lawyers from A to Z in San Antonio, Texas. First a lawyer like Abernathy, and then Arzu, and so on. Then you go all the way down. Rather than just call, I would get into a rested state, imagine as if I could run my finger down the phone book. All of this is just imagination. As I was running my finger down a name that I was meant to call, where the odds of

closing the sale were higher because this lawyer needed that service, I would just imagine that that name would light up. So I'd run my finger down the phone book and then, oh, that letter, you feel like you're playing a game. And I would only call those lawyers. Now, my facilitator said, listen, just test this out. Just test out the names that you feel you have a hunch to call and tell me if your sales track record increases.

Here's the crazy part. As soon as I tried this technique, instantly my sales doubled. Sales don't just double overnight. It doubled and it stayed at that level. There is something to it. So I had a thousand names in the yellow page that I couldn't possibly like cold call everyone but from cold calling the names and these were cold calls that I felt an impulse on my sales literally doubled. Now how do you explain that? The thing is science can't explain that but studies are showing that there is a

correlation between this quality that we call intuition and business success. Yeah something that I thought was really interesting when I was studying your work is this idea of negative intuition and how a lot of leaders actually don't follow their gut and it can cause some problems. Can you talk to us about that? So negative intuition,

this is from Professor John Mihalaski, Newark College of Engineering. The book that this is from is called Executive ESP. So one thing about me is I know what I'm saying may be controversial to some, so I'm always going to start scientific studies and give you the places where you can go and dig in and research, okay? Executive ESP. What John Mihalaski found is that if you give the CEOs four cards and they have to guess what's on the card, a circle or a triangle or a square, typically there are some CEOs who guess way above the 25% rate of probability.

These CEOs, he deemed them as high intuition. And he also found that high intuition correlated with higher profitability in the company. Now, interestingly enough, there were CEOs who, while you should be guessing 25% correct, they were guessing less, 19, 21, 22% correct. This is weird. It's like they are unlucky. So even the odds of probability were against them. It turned out these CEOs were having the worst profitability in their company. So it seems to be that there are people who are actually second guessing their intuition.

And we can't explain it. We don't know why, but have negative intuition. But don't worry about that. Typically, I don't believe anyone has negative intuition. And we can't explain it. We don't know why, but have negative intuition. But don't worry about that. Typically, I don't believe anyone has negative intuition. I believe what rather happens is that we second guess ourselves. There is some part of ourselves where maybe we have self-doubt or it's some childhood trauma, but we are second guessing ourselves. And that can be a mistake. Yeah, 100%. We've got to trust our gut and not self-sabotage. So I want to dig into your six phase meditation. A few more questions,

just because you've got so much interesting stuff out there that I want to talk about. I've heard you say that the concept of manifestation and the law of attraction, a lot of people get it all wrong. They think it's about wishing for what they want. And in a recent interview, I heard you say that the universe does not give you what you want,

it gives you what you are. And I thought this was like such a powerful concept that I really want my listeners to understand. So why is that? Why doesn't it give you what you want, but the universe gives you what you are? So that quote came from an interview I did with the Reverend Michael Beckwith.

He is an incredible spiritual teacher and he was in the movie The Secret. So interestingly enough, Reverend Beckwith, he has been in more documentary films than any other spiritual teacher alive today. The guy is just a visionary. And one day he was speaking at an event I was putting on in Portugal and I happened to catch him for breakfast and I said, hey, Michael, you were in that movie, The Secret, like 20 years back, based on what you've learned over the last two decades, is there anything

that you would say differently to your audience? And he goes, absolutely, Vishen. I would tell people that the law of attraction is bunk. I'm like, what? He goes, the universe doesn't give you what you want. Rather, the universe will give you who you are. And he says, this is the law of resonance. And this is what I want people to understand.

And what he means by that is that if you want to be a successful entrepreneur, deep inside, you need to believe, you need to act, you need to have the habits of a successful entrepreneur. The universe gives you what you are. Remember I told you the story about that aunt who made me believe that my skin was going to break out in pimples and it did? Well, in science, this is called a placebo effect. What we believe about our bodies actually manifests within our bodies. This is another example. I believed from that day onwards that I was a teenager that was going to be cursed with pimples. I didn't want it, but I believed I was that person. The universe gave me what I believed, who I believed I was. When I believed that I could heal my skin, the universe gave me

what made reality who I believed I was, a person who I could heal my skin. This is why we sometimes get what we don't want. This is why the law of attraction is not really something I talk about, but the law of resonance, what you believe you are, you get. And so the trick is to learn how to slowly by slowly improve the quality of your beliefs, to develop healthier and healthier and healthier beliefs layered upon healthy beliefs. And what you start seeing is that your life expands

in accordance with these beliefs. Yeah, it's so interesting. And I feel like this is such a great segue into your four levels of personal growth because essentially meditation and the law of attraction and manifesting, it's all personal growth, right? It's all self-improvement in a way. So I'd love to understand the four levels of personal growth and why you can't just like start off at like the highest level.

So different people at different levels, right, in their personal growth. Just like if you want to teach someone financial independence, the way you teach someone who is in debt and wants to get out of debt is different from how you teach someone who has a million dollars and wants to learn how to grow that million dollars. So it's the same with personal growth. At the lowest level, you have people at victim mentality. Now, I doubt anyone listening to this podcast is at victim mentality because people at victim mentality don't invest in their growth. They believe the world is horrible and life is unfair, and they continue toil and struggle.

That's victim mentality. The world is happening to them. They are a victim of circumstance. At a certain point, you get to level two. Level two is where you understand that to some degree, you can control the world. You can set goals and you can move towards those goals. You can decide, for example, I want to take care of my body. I'm going to embrace my body. I'm going to set a goal to go to the gym twice a week. And you can commit to that and do that. And to some degree, you have control over that aspect of your life.

So people who listen to podcasts, people who embrace personal growth tend to be at level two and higher. That's why you're listening to this podcast, right? Because you know that there's something here you're going to learn that's going to further give you control over your life. Now at level three, it gets even more interesting. At level three, you start understanding that it's not just that you can control the world. At level three, you start understanding that to some degree, you are part of this larger

world. You're not just moving towards goals, but there are faculties within you, the faculties of intuition, the faculties of understanding the law of resonance, the faculties of intuition, the faculties of understanding the law of resonance, the faculties of being able to access altered states of mind. You start understanding that all of these are open to you and you are not just physical, but there's a world inside you. So it's not just that the world is outside you, the world is inside you. My protocol to six-phase meditation is based on this concept.

It's teaching you what is called a psycho spiritual transcendent technique that takes you to transcend means to get out of the physical world, but go inside the world, to go inside you. You learn how to hack your feelings of bliss, how to hack gratitude, how to elevate compassion, how to forgive, how to visualize your goals. All of these are happening at level three. You understand that there's a world inside you that you can master. And at level four, level four, very few people get to.

Level four is the God mind. Level four is where the outside world and the inner world is all one and you can manipulate reality. This is Neo from the matrix. This is Jesus Christ. This is Paramahansa Yogananda. There are very few people at level four. Level four is the God mind.

So I was gonna ask you if you think you're at level four, but I doubt it. No, I'm not at level four. No, no, no. But I'm at level three. I'm at level three. Most people think they're level three, but they're probably,

and that probably means that most people are not a level three if you're at a level three. So let me tell you, Michael Beckwith, to go back to that wonderful man, he said something. He says, when you give people a map like this, it's very useful because once you have a map, you can navigate better. Right? So hopefully this map lets you navigate where you are. But here's the thing. People, Michael Beckwith also says this, Ken Wilber says the same thing. Most people

overestimate themselves by one level. So if you think you're at like a level 3.5, you're probably at level 3.5, you're probably at level 2.5. Yeah. If you think you're at level three, you're most likely at level two because there's so much depth to how, how much you can dive into this, these philosophies.

Yeah. So it's really interesting for level three, I listened to you on, I listened to like 10 interviews to prepare for this interview. I always do that., I listen to like 10 interviews to prepare for this interview. I always do that. And I heard you talking about how level three, actually the universe with little of your control

will destroy parts of your life in order to achieve what you actually want. So for example, I saw this in my journey. I've been podcasting for four and a half years. Everything in the last five years has changed. My relationship changed, my friends changed, my career obviously changed. And a lot of it, I felt like I had very little control over it. I had this goal and then the universe would just destruct anything in

my way of getting that goal. Right. So I'd love to understand if you believe that, do you believe that the universe destroys things that will get in your way towards your goals if you really believe in and want it? Let me tell you what I was talking about. I was talking about an idea I coined in my first book, The Code of the Extraordinary Mind,

the idea of the beautiful destruction. And the beautiful destruction is this, okay? So again, this is an imaginary exercise. There's no scientific evidence for this, but play along with me. There are two parts to you. There's your soul, and then there's your conscious mind. And very often, your soul has made, imagine that before you were born, okay, if you believe in life after death, or life before birth, before you were born,

imagine if your soul decided that there were certain things you had to experience in this life, that there was this business that you were meant to start, that there was this woman or man that you were meant to fall in love with and make beautiful babies with, that there was this city you were meant to live in. Okay, now in your conscious life, you get pulled in different directions through the pushes and tussles of culture and beliefs and religions and race and education and media. You end up in a different city from the city where the love of your life is living. You end up in a different field from the field in which you're supposed to build a world-changing business. It is at these moments, I believe, that the soul will launch into what I call the beautiful

destruction. It will destroy an aspect of your life. You can move to that new city. You can move into that new relationship. You can move into that new career path where what you're meant to experience is going to experience. I've seen the beautiful destruction happen so many times. The beautiful destruction sometimes is the universe messing up our life so that we can move on to something greater. We end up in hospital with a health issue, but from that, we change the way we take care of our body.

We go through bankruptcy in business A, but that gives us the launch pad to launch business B, which is the business that changes the world. We have the person we are in love with break our heart. But this beautiful destruction causes us to find the person that we are meant to marry and be in love with for the next 50 years. So this beautiful destruction happens all through life. And I think there's a beauty in viewing life like it because every time something bad happens,

you don't necessarily see that it's a bad thing. Rather the question you ask yourself is not why is this happening to me, but why is this happening for me? Hey, yeah fam, let's talk about being smart with money. And I mean really smart. If you're a renter, you should absolutely be taking advantage of built. Think about it.

We're already racking up points on groceries, travel, dining out, and basically everything we spend our money on. So why aren't we earning points on one of our biggest monthly expenses? Rent, of course. That's where most people are missing out big time. So why aren't we earning points on one of our biggest monthly expenses? Rent of course! That's where most people are missing out big time. With BILT, paying rent finally pays off, and I'm here for it. There's no cost to join, and just by paying rent, you unlock flexible points that can

be transferred to your favorite hotels and airlines, a future rent payment, your next lift ride, and so much more. When you pay rent through BILT, you unlock two powerful benefits. First, you earn one of the industry's most valuable points on rent every month. No matter where you live or who your landlord is, your rent now works for you. Second, you gain access to exclusive neighborhood benefits in your city. BILT's neighborhood benefits are things like extra points on dining out, complimentary post-workout shakes, free mats or towels at your favorite fitness studios, and unique

experiences that only Build members can access. And when you're ready to travel, Build points can be converted to your favorite miles and hotel points around the world, meaning your rent can literally take you places. So if you're not earning points on rent, my question is, what are you waiting for? Start paying rent through Build and take advantage of your neighborhood benefits by going to joinbilt.com slash profiting. That's J-O-I-N-B-I-L-T dot com slash profiting. Make sure you use our URL so they know that we sent you.

Again, that's joinbilt B-I-L-T dot com slash profiting to sign up to BILT Hello, young and profiters. If you've ever shopped online, you probably found something you loved and you added it to your cart, and then you totally bailed at checkout. And that's why I get excited when I see that purple shop pay button at checkout because it makes buying so effortless. You can just buy with a click. But what you might not know is that that button is the telltale sign that the store is powered by Shopify. And there's so many good reasons why successful businesses use Shopify.

Shopify isn't just only about creating an amazing online store, an amazing shopping experience. They are the number one converting checkout in the industry. It's no wonder that 10% of all e-commerce in the US is powered by Shopify, from household names like Mattel and Gymshark to brands just getting started, like maybe your new brand. What makes Shopify stand out is how it lets you tackle all the important tasks in one place from inventory to payments to analytics and so much more. Now we've been using Shopify at YAP Media for years now, maybe four years, and I would never switch platforms

because it's got so many built-in tools. Social media and email campaigns are there. I can set up chat functionality. You can do anything with Shopify. They've also got global selling tools that help you reach customers in over 150 countries. And if you have an in-person physical store, they've got an award-winning point of sale.

And so your online and offline sales are in one place, giving you a seamless experience and view of your business. With 99.99% uptime and the best converting checkout on the planet, you'll never miss a sale again with Shopify. Stop seeing carts going abandoned and turn those sales into $1 per month trial period and start selling today at Shopify.com slash profiting. That's Shopify.com slash profiting. Again, Shopify.com slash profiting.

Yeah, that's such a better way to approach things. And I felt that with my own life. Almost every single negative rejection or failure always has a silver lining, right? You always learn from it and things always get better as a result and kind of redirects where you actually need to go. So one more super interesting idea from level three that I've heard you talk about, and definitely don't want to misquote you, but I know that Edison said, ideas come from space, right? He's literally said this. And I find it really fascinating to think that ideas can come from outside

your mind and that you can actually get ideas from the universe, so to speak. And so I'd love to hear your thoughts on that. Well again, this is philosophy. This is not science, right? Intuition has been proven by science, but we don't know is it coming from outside our mind or is there some form of information transfer? If you guys actually Google that, the Nobel Prize was just issued for the idea of non-locality. If you want to really go down the rabbit hole, go read about non-locality in physics. But the universe is a lot more complex and weird than we tend to think. What we learn about physics doubles every seven years.

And I believe that our brains can receive information from outside our brains. So when we're in a meditative state of mind, some people say it's not really intuition. It's just that your brain is processing differently. Ideas, buried memories are emerging, but I've seen situations where, especially in studies like with Mihailovski, with the Gansfield test experiments, where stuff that your brain shouldn't know, like what is on the other side of that card, stuff that your brain shouldn't know seems to come to you. We can't explain it, but that could be a form of new physics. I remember that the physicist Nassim Haramin said, spirituality is nothing more

than physics we have yet to find an equation for. And aren't there a lot of like CEOs and innovators who have said that they feel like they've gotten ideas from the universe from space? Yeah, pretty much like every major Silicon Valley CEO I know right now, if I can be really honest, every major Silicon Valley CEO, I live in Estonia, every Estonian CEO, I'm in Dubai right now, every freaking Dubai billionaire and CEO I hang out with, every single one has an altered state practice. So what are altered state practices? There are four things.

Meditation is the first one, and that is the best one. The second one is neuro training, where you actually go into laboratories where they strap electrodes to your brain and they help put you into altered states. The third one is plant medicine. Ayahuasca, psilocybin are very common. And the fourth one is breath work. Every single CEO I know has an altered state practice. I'm telling you the most successful people in the world are doing it. In fact, John Butcher, who's one of the most successful American CEOs I know, he's the guy behind the precious moments brand. John has seven companies under his belt right now.

He said any CEO does not have an altered state practice is at a competitive disadvantage and it is these altered state practices where insights, where intuitions, where ideas come from, Even CEOs who say they don't believe in intuition have an altered state practice. Let me give you an example. I had Tom Bilyeu of Impact Theory interview me, right? And he says, I don't believe in intuition. To me, everything has to be proven by science. So I gave him the science and I said, go look it up. But Tom Bilyeu does do this. He has a meditation practice where he sits down and he just lets ideas form in his head. He calls it thinkitation. And very often from his thinkitation practices, incredible

new ideas form. I mean, Tommy Liu is a genius. He's started so many different companies in web three and in media, but it's coming to him when he sits still and goes into an altered state. The only difference is I believe that some of these ideas are coming from outside the faculties of our brain. He believes it's coming from your inner state. That's it. We don't have to argue about that to use it. We don't have to understand how it works to actually start utilizing these practices in

our life. It's so interesting. I love this topic. So you have a new book that was released earlier this year, The Six-Phase Meditation Method, The Proven Technique to Supercharge Your Mind, manifest your goals and make magic in minutes a day. So I think that you made this for high performers, right? Because a lot of high performers have a hard time meditating, including myself.

I've had many meditation experts on the show. It's really hard for me to get into a meditation practice, even though I consider myself pretty spiritual and successful, it's hard for me to meditate. So why is meditation, why is it so hard for high performers? So every high performer I know meditates. The problem is the ones who are doing it well are applying what is called active meditation.

They're using meditation to solve problems, to visualize their projects, to come up with ideas. The ones who are struggling are confused because they think meditation is just focusing on your breath, clearing your mind and trying to remove all thought. That's mindfulness, but it's different. So there's passive meditation and active meditation. If you're an entrepreneur, odds are passive meditation bugs the hell out of you because your brain is constantly racing. Well, then don't do passive meditation. It's like you not liking yoga and saying all exercise sucks.

I will never go to a gym. I will never lift weights because I tried moving my body once in these stretchy positions and it wasn't for me. So there are two types of meditation, passive or hermetic meditation. This is useful if you're the type that can actually still your mind. Most entrepreneurs can. And then active meditation, this is from people like Jose Silva, like myself. And active meditation is about turning problems into projects, about facing the world head on, building, creating, like seeing and visualizing your goals, crushing it in life and

in sales. That's the meditation that entrepreneurs should be doing. Now, when you do the sixth phase, you're going into active meditation, but it's done in such a way where you also get the benefits of passive meditation, which are primarily bliss, blissfulness, compassion and attitudes of forgiveness. Got it. So I know that you break down sixth phase meditation into two chunks or pillars, right? So you have the pillar of happiness and the pillar of vision. Why don't we start with the pillar of happiness? What's incorporated in that?

Okay, so phase one has to do with compassion. Okay, compassion is a superpower. Phase two has to do with bliss, happiness. Phase three is applying forgiveness to make you unfuckwithable. And unfuckwithable simply means that negativity can't touch you and you are forgiving of negativity in the past. These three are all about the present. Then you go to the future.

And the future of phase four is about seeing your life three years out. Phase five is about commanding your perfect day. And phase six is about asking for a blessing or support from whatever higher power you believe in. Got it. And it sounds simple, but you can go really deep into it. And when you master it, it completely changes the way you show up. So the six-phase has been used by sports stars, by athletes. There are so many crazy stories about the six-phase out there. One entrepreneur, he is the founder of Bella and Duke, the dog food company.

He approached me at a conference in London and he said, he's doing the six-phase for four years, and it helped him take Bella and Duke to $100 million in sales. And he said it's because all of these practices, they tied so well to his business. For example, the compassion practice, he said, made him create a really loving, loving office space where people could bring their pets, their dogs to the office space. And all of this, he said, transformed him. And he says he credited it partially with helping him take his dog food brand against the odds to a hundred million in revenue.

Wow. I know that with your visualization part or the vision part of the six phase meditation, you recommend to really focus on the next three years. And I thought that was really fascinating. Why three years? Bill Gates, Bill Gates, who was actually my former boss, love him or hate him. I think the man is wonderful. Bill Gates said we tend to overestimate what we can do in one year and underestimate what we can do in three. By focusing on a three-year time horizon,

you give yourself more space to really dream, to really, really, really look at what you want to create in your life. Yeah. So where can people learn more about the six-phase meditation? What are the best ways? Well, get the book, a six phase meditation method. The book is wonderful and you can get the app free on them on mind Valley, download the mind Valley app and then go to programs and you'll find the six face. Perfect. Awesome. I'll stick all of those links in the show notes. Yeah. Bam. All right. So vision at the end of the show, we asked two questions, then we do something fun at the end of the year with them.

So the first one is, what is one actionable thing my young and profitors can do today to become more profiting tomorrow? Figure out your MLI. Very good. And what is your secret to profiting in life? Making sure that you've designed your life in such a way where you feel happy and blissful every day,

and the people around you feel happy and blissful every day and the people around you feel happy and blissful because they are around you. Awesome. Vishen, it was so lovely to talk to you. I feel like our listeners learned so much from you. I'm gonna stick all of your important links in the show notes so they can find you, follow you, get your book. Thank you so much for joining us on Young and Profiting Podcast. Thank you, Hala. Thank you for this wonderful conversation. I appreciate the amount of work and diligence you did in actually researching your guests. That is rare in the podcast world

today and kudos to you for doing it. Thank you so much. I appreciate it. Take care. Bye. you