The Code of The Extraordinary Mind - I Love Marketing Episode #254

I'm dean jackson, he's joe polish, and this is the I love marketing podcast.

Hey, everybody, it's Dean Jackson and Joe.

Polish and we have a special guest with us, someone we've actually.

Returning guest.

Yeah, returning special guest. And his name is Vishen Lakhiani. And Vishen, where are you right now? You're on the other side of the world and we're, we're talking on all.

Kinds of different locations. Absolutely. I'm on the direct opposite end of the planet as you guys. I'm in Malaysia.

He's living in the future. It's tomorrow. Already there.

Yeah, exactly. That is pretty cool. Well, here, let me do the real quick bio for people that don't know who you are and then we'll get into what's going on and all the cool stuff we're going to talk about on this episode. So, Vishen Lakhiani is the founder and CEO of Mindvalley. It's a company that specializes in learning experience design, which publishes technology teachings by some of the very best authors in personal growth, well being, spirituality, productivity and more on cutting edge digital learning platforms and technology. He's also a member of the Transformational Leadership Council and he sits on the innovation board for XPRIZE Foundation. His book, the Code of the Extraordinary Mind, which is his new book, blends evolutionary biology and computational thinking and provides a new framework for identifying, questioning and redefining beliefs to understand and enhance the human self, drawing knowledge from some of the world's brightest minds, such as Elon Musk, Richard Branson, Peter Diamandis, Ken Wilber, Arianna Huffington, and more. So Vishen, like, who's the real Vishen if there wasn't a bio?

How would you explain yourself to people.

If you weren't joking and you were deadly serious and you had to actually have them know the essence of what.

Value you bring to the planet.

How would you describe what you do?

Well, you know, Joe, so firstly, I love that question. One of the things which I tried to do in this book is be really real and authentic. And most of my life, most of my life I've been struggling and that is part of the reason of how this book came to be. But if you want to know the real me, the real me I think was a guy who in 2002 had just graduated from the University of Michigan and decided that I wanted to move to Silicon Valley, start startups and get wealthy and get rich, only to fall flat in my and fail. Lose two startups, lose all my money, lose the dad, lose money, my dad lent to me and end up broke and sleeping on a couch because that was all I could rent and trying to figure out why life was so cruel to me. And it was from that low point in my life that I started getting online and googling and trying to, you know, I can't remember what I Googled. Maybe it was like how to succeed. Maybe it was how to start a company. Maybe it was why does light suck so fucking bad? With those searches I discovered. I discovered things such as meditation, such as mindfulness and being a computer engineer. Now I was a failed computer engineer. I got the degree, but the ideas, the software I tried to build just did not work. And I lost all my savings. But I had the mindset of a computer engineer. So I started taking a lot of these things and putting them together. I wasn't concerned with just buying into the hype behind, say, meditation. I wanted to understand how does it really work? How can you create a system around it? How can you make it replicable so everyone can apply it? And as I started applying this in my life, my life started growing and growing and growing. I mean, literally at that point, I was so broke. I was renting a two seater couch from a Berkeley college student. So I couldn't even sleep without my legs dangling off the edge. A couch was the entire, was my entire living space in Berkeley. And, you know, smoked a lot of weed to make that thing work and make it comfortable. It was Berkeley after all. But it was during this time of discovery, it was during this time of discovery that I started rising up. And what happened was I ended up getting a job, ended up getting so good at the job. So, for example, I combined, I got a job in sales. I was selling technology to law firms. And I figured out a way to combine my meditation and the tools I was learning with sales. So right off the bat, with no sales experience, I was able to become one of the top sales people in the company. In nine months from joining the company, I was made director of sales. I was sent to New York to start up the company's New York office. From there, I was able to get so good at what I did, I held down two jobs consecutively. Then I decided to quit and start my own company. That's how mindvalley gave birth. And then from mindvalley, I started starting multiple companies. Then festivals, apps, software, technology, now the book. But ultimately, I'm really that geek. I'm that geeky guy who graduated from University of Michigan and never had a girlfriend until I was 22, had huge self esteem issues. But I built myself up and this book is about what I learned building myself up. And that's why it's called the Code of the Extraordinary Mind. Because what I did was as I built up my companies, I got access to so many incredible minds. And as I interviewed them, I spoke to them with my computer engineering brain. I notice certain patterns and these patterns are what make up this 10 point code. Why is it that someone like Elon Musk or Richard Branson can do what they do even though they are cut from the same clock as we are? That's what I'm trying to unravel in this book. It's not just theory. I bring in some hardcore science, philosophy and practices that people can do to get to these levels.

Awesome.

Wow, Dean, I've got a whole slew of questions I could ask. Yeah, let's go easy ones to more difficult ones.

Before you ask those questions, I just want to give you a shout out. Okay. To everyone listening. So in this book, Joe played an important part. And so much so that Joe is mentioned in the book. And Joe has a special acknowledgment in the book along with other friends, mutual friends of ours such as JJ Virgin and all. And the part that Joe played is that many of the legendary people I interviewed in this book, I would not know if it wasn't for Joe Polish. So people such as Arianna Huffington, people such as Elon Musk. I got to ask Elon Musk a question. What led to that was a setup that Joe did. Richard Branson. Thanks to Joe. I got to ask Richard Branson. I got to spend close to like three hours with him, one on one, just understanding his mind. But that came from Joe. So Joe played a really crucial part in this book. And Joe, I just wanted to acknowledge you for that.

I appreciate it. Thank you very much.

We've done a lot of stuff here of how all of this was created and yeah, it's pretty awesome.

So I appreciate it.

So, I mean, yeah, I've got all.

Kinds of different things I can ask you about subjects of the books, related things about achievement and success and all that. I want to just have some basic ones that sound basic but they're really important and I like getting people's different perspectives on this. So what are the biggest mistakes that people are making when it comes to pursuing, you know, happiness and success and achievement? Because certainly you've had your own shit storms in your life and you've had ups and downs and you hang out with a lot of Very successful people. And your company is all about teaching people how to have more happiness and success. So what are some of the mistakes that people make when it comes to the pursuit of those things?

Ha.

Okay, so that's a really good question, right? It's a big question. So I'm going to give. I'm going to give a detailed methodical answer. Now, the first thing is, when you think of words like success, like happiness, those are actually nothing more than words. And these are words that have different meanings to different people depending on where in the culture scape they are born. Now that opens up another question. Culturescape. What is that? So the culturescape is that tangled mesh of human beliefs, ideologies, practices, habits, mythology, religion that we create as human beings. And the culturescape is actually a series of rules that we have in our head that get indoctrinated into us as we are born. See, human beings, because of the way our brains work, exist in two worlds. That's the physical world, right? We all know a stone is gray. We all know that water feels wet. But there's this mental world that we live in, this world of mythologies, practices, ideas and words. Words such as happiness, success, calorie meditation, God. None of these words are absolute truth. All of these words are relative truth. In other words, the first insight is that there is no one thing called God. There is no one thing called meditation. There is no one thing called happiness or called success. They mean different things to different people. But what we do is that to simplify our world, to simplify how we operate from the time we are kids and teenagers, we borrow the meanings from our parents. So our success isn't really our success. It is the definition of success that our preacher or our father or our teacher said we had to follow. Now, when we blindly follow, we lose the ability to understand that what we are following is a genuine rule, meaning absolute truth. Drink water because it's healthy or it's a brule. A brule B R U L E is a bullshit rule. A brule is a bullshit rule humanity creates to simplify their understanding of the world. And the world is filled with brules. And so most people live their life not chasing success or happiness, but chasing the brules behind success and happiness. Now, my example was when I graduated, I decided that I had to. Well, when I. When I went to school, I decided that I had to become a computer engineer. But where my heart really was, Joe was in business, was in photography, and was in theater and drama. But I couldn't because, you know, from what I heard from the culturescape, only losers got into acting. You could not make money if you became an actor or you became a photographer. Yeah, yeah, you know, you'd be a waiter in New York waiting for your first big break on Broadway. So I started doing acting and theater on the side. But really, the classes I was taking were computer engineering. I got decently good at it. When I graduated, I got a job at Microsoft. And the book tells a story about how I was at Bill Gates home. I was working for Microsoft. I was at Bill Gates home. I was one of the top 1% of computer engineering grads in the United States that got accepted. And I realized I freaking hated it. I absolutely hated my job. And so I quit. And I never programmed again. I quit. I just quit cold turkey. But what happened was I'd spent five years trying to get. Get to my dream working for Bill Gates. That was actually what I put down on. My goal is when I was 19 years old, work for Bill Gates, work at Microsoft. But 11 weeks after that, I decided it was a bullshit goal. It was a brule. And so this book is about learning. Are the goals that you're putting down really goals that you're taking on through reflection, through rational thought, through feeling how your heart feels? Or are you blindly following the bullshit rules of everyone else? So we teach a concept called means, goals and end goals, right? What most people set are means goals. Get a college degree, get good grades, do your lsat, so you become a lawyer so you can join a law firm. The problem with that is all of these goals have a. So at the end of them, do this so that. Do this so that. So the book talks about, or one of the chapters of the book talks about the idea of means, goals and end goals. Screw the means goals. Go straight for the end goals. The end goals are. I want a life where I get to live in a different country every two years. I want to wake up every day next to this beautiful woman that I love. I want to have the experience of raising two kids. I want to have the experience of owning a Tesla and being able to drive around the country unrestricted because my business gives me freedom. See, most people don't set goals like that. And that's the mistake. And so they end up trapped. They end up waking one day at the age of 40 wondering what the hell happened to my life. But when you discard the means goals and you go straight for the end goals, you also bypass the rules, the rules that say you got to get married, you got to get 2.5 kids, you got to earn a certain salary so you can be considered a success. And you start to instead live a life that truly speaks to your soul.

Wow. It's amazing. I mean, that whole. You talk about the brules, and I was thinking as you were saying, that how much of our. Everything we've become is environmental. I mean, you know, we're surrounded by inputs that create those kind of realities for us, I guess. And you're saying in the. An extraordinary mind recognizes that and is able to really take control and direct what you're actually thinking. We're seeing the brules for what they are, which is bullshit rules that other people have made up. And you're making your own rules. It's kind of. It's funny, you know, because I have my. I know I'm being successful when rules, if we, you know, thinking about that. And just like you said, it's like.

I developed those with the idea of.

Pushing the accelerator pedal and defining what does success look like for me. So I'll know it when I'm experiencing it. And so answering those questions, I know I'm being successful when I can wake up every day and say, what would I like to do today? That's. That's number one. I think that's such a powerful thing, being able to define it for yourself.

Thank you. Thank you, Dean. Thank you, Joe.

Let's go a little deeper with some of these things.

So.

You talked about the bullshit rules and where they come from. What questions can people ask to basically get themselves out of it? I mean, you kind of went into it a little bit, but I would. I think a lot of people are totally. I think that'll be a huge eye opener for people listening to this to really, you know, get that perspective and to really be able to identify it and live your own life. You know, I remember the Harry Brown book, you know, how I found freedom in an unfree world and how so many people basically live their lives for other people, not for themselves. But they don't even know how to even know that. They're not even aware of it. So how does one get to that awareness so you can get out of that trap?

That's a really good question. So first you got to understand that brules come from five different sources. So brules, which are these bad ideas, ideas that have hit their expiration date that infect us come from five sources. The first is accidental indoctrination from our parents and our teachers when we are kids. You know, our parents, teachers have a Huge influence from, from on us. Like, I grew up in a culture where hard work was considered necessary for success. Hard work. So you know, my father, my grandfather, they are amazing men, but they worked really, really, really hard. And when I was a teenager, I worked at my dad's. My dad had a little factory where he would like import an export clothing. And I did this back breaking work. I would lift boxes, haul them in trucks. I was basically, you know, like working like a laborer during some of my teenage years. And so I grew up thinking that hard work equals success. And this is where that brule really held me down. If I wasn't working ridiculous hours, I felt like a failure. When I realized that this was a brule, it fundamentally changed my relationship with work. I realized I could work a decent amount of time and still get rich, and still make money and still have time to be a good father. So that's one example right now. Another example is from your culture, from your culture and your religion. A third example is from the media. You know, there's so much bullshit in advertising right now. Recently, for example, there was a new drug release that says it helps you sleep better. But in fact the drug when tested only adds an additional 16 minutes of sleep on average. However, the side effects can cause depression, can cause paranoia, can cause people to not be able to function at work, but nobody talks about that. So millions of Americans ended up buying this drug even though that the drug left them in a worse off state again because they bought into this bullshit idea from the media that we need this artificial substance in our body for us to sleep well. And then there are things such as social proof. I mean, as marketers, you guys know this, we blindly follow the herd because following the hurt makes life easier. We don't have to question, we can go on autopilot. And the fifth one is things that happen from a meaning making machine. A meaning making machine is this own internal mechanism that adds meaning to everything. You know, you go on a date with a girl and she doesn't call you back and you think, oh God, maybe she didn't like me. Maybe I don't dress well, maybe I'm not smart enough or good looking enough. Or maybe that joke doesn't fell flat. And then we carry this meaning with us. So the meaning making machine kicks off when someone we want love and appreciation from denies that to us. And we simplify what happens. We don't think, oh, maybe she lost the phone. Maybe, you know, maybe she, she just wasn't interested. And it says nothing about Me. But a meaning making machine kicks in. So these are the sources of rules right? Now these rules end up governing how we set goals. So even if you're not ambitious, trust me, you have goals. Your goal may be that you want to get that job frying fries at the local McDonald's, but still, it's a goal. You have these goals or these intentions. Now the thing is, what you want to do, to detach, detach from the rules is first to understand where they come from. So again, I'm going really fast here, but in the book we go more in detail. But the second thing you want to do is you want to start looking for your end goals. What are the end things that you knew if you were going to pick the bucket you would want it to be end things that you'd want to experience. Those are end goals. And you start making a list of your end goals. And I teach an exercise which has been picked up and it's now being used in schools and universities and businesses. And it's called the three Most Important Questions. And it says this, all end goals essentially fall into three buckets. The first bucket is experiences. So experiences are what makes our heart sing. It's what brings us joy. It's what is the whole point of being human? You know, having a night of mind blowing sex is an experience. That should be a goal. Being able to travel the world is experience. And experience could be bungee jumping or driving down a highway and that new Tesla Model S that you want to own. Or an experience could be the experience of building a business and launching something epic. So you go straight for the experiences. Now the second question you ask yourself to be that man or woman who can have all of these experiences. How should I grow? And then now you make a list of goals for growth. See, people forget that growth is a goal in itself. So, right, you want to run that business. Well, now you want to learn skills such as entrepreneurship, marketing, how to monetize product X. So you start making that list of how you want to grow. And this list can take into account things such as health and wellness, such as fitness, such as all of these other things. Now the final bucket is this. You know the experiences you want, you know that man or woman you want to grow into. Now you ask yourself, how can I contribute if I could be so lucky to be that man or woman, to have all of these different skills because I've grown? How can I share this with the rest of the world? And this third bucket is where you write down how you want to contribute. And this could be true, you know, running a podcast that millions listen to, and it helps shape their lives. It could be writing a book, it could be volunteerism. It could be donating to charity. It could be raising kids who are good children. And so when you think of your life this way, experiences growth, contribution, and you recognize that almost everyone else and you yourself are sometimes influenced by expired rules of the culturescape, what we call rules, you set yourself up to craft a life vision that's more aligned with who you are, how you can really be happy, and how you can really have fulfillment and how you can grow. The experiences give you happiness, the growth gives you meaning, it gives you fulfillment. And contribution gives you a mission, gives you fulfillment. So now you really end up with a life that is more towards extraordinary. And when you look at all of these extraordinary folks that I speak about in this book, almost every single one of them lead a life like that. At one point, they questioned the rules. They decided that they wanted to build something different. Elon Musk, for example. In a recent interview, someone asked him, what's it like running a business? And his response was, well, SpaceX is not a business. It's a group of people who have come together with a goal to make mankind an interplanetary species. I'm paraphrasing, of course, but I thought it was interesting that his goal was never to start a business. His goal was something completely different. Get mankind to Mars. You look at Richard Branson, similar. His goal was never, you know, I want to be a billionaire. His goal was to shake up the world and deliver happiness and meaning and create industries that shake up aging utility industries and transportation industries. And if you look at you, Joe, I'm sure you're the same way as well. I mean, you may have started out wanting to start a business so you could make money, but if you look at who you've become today, your life is so rich in experiences, in growth and contribution. In fact, you're often called one of the most generous people my friends know.

I would definitely. Compared to Dean, I would say that's true.

Dean, we have had enough time hanging out.

Vishen, I think we need to.

Let's intervene here with Joe and do a little engineering.

We can do that in a second. But no, that's an interesting perspective where you actually.

Because I've not thought too much.

Like, here we are doing podcast episodes to mostly entrepreneurs and people that are running companies or want to run businesses and learning about business strategies. And at the end of the day, I run A business because there's shit that just needs to get done. But it's really not because I had some real desire to run a company. My main focus right now is creating a platform to help people with addictions. And I use the Dan Sullivan. Who do you want to be a her to? In my world is I want to be a hero to entrepreneurs and I want to be a hero to addicts. But what I really want to do is reduce human suffering for people that really are out there just trying to, in some cases, in the worst states, just cope through life and function. And on the other end, people that are really trying to achieve and do great things, but they pay a price. And how do you help build a better entrepreneur, a better human?

So that's to.

That's a very interesting way of looking at that. So I appreciate that. Dean, why don't you say something really smart or ask him.

That's what I'm suggesting is maybe we could do some consciousness engineering for you. I love that word. Vishen, what do you. What do you mean by that? Consciousness engineering.

So one of the ideas in the book, one of the rules, is the idea of consciousness engineering. And it is a concept that I created to accelerate my own personal growth. So, of course, you know, being in the personal growth industry, working with so many authors, and I don't get to consume all of the stuff that's out there. So I wanted to figure out an optimized way for learning. And that's something I teach in the book. It's basically thinking of the human consciousness as a machine, as a computer. So I asked myself, how do we grow, right? And I realized it's two things. We grow through our beliefs and we grow through systems. So. So let's imagine a computer. If you have a computer and you want to upgrade your computer, the first thing you might do is you might swap in or swap out the hardware, right? You might upgrade your monitor or get a better keyboard or mouse. And if you compare that to a human being, your hardware are your beliefs. It's your beliefs about the world. Now, the funny thing is what you believe about the world tends to be true for you. I'm not. You know, here's an example. There was this group of. Of scientists who wanted to study hotel mates. They were wondering, why is it that hotel mates have these busy jobs that are mostly clinically obese? So this hotel and actually a sham. In other words, what they wanted to do was really implant a belief in these hotel mates, how many stairs they were climbing every day. How many mattresses they were flipping over, and then they would put them at the end of the study. You know, Matilda, based on what you're telling me, you must be really fit, because I give them that. And you are way above the center of disease controls. The CDC's recommended for daily exercise. Boy, you must be healthy. Now, they came back 30 days later and they found that with no additional change in the maid's behavior, simply developing the belief that their lifestyles were healthy, they went back 30 days later, all of these maids had lost weight, their cholesterol count had gone down, all because a new belief had been implanted in their head. Right? So that's the idea of swapping beliefs. So the first principle of consciousness engineering is that your beliefs are like hardware. Your beliefs are not you, but they make you you. Now that's a big difference for people because when your beliefs are not you, what it means is you can discard irrational beliefs, you can discard bullshit beliefs from religion or culture or that you got indoctrinated with, and you can take on positive beliefs. So that's the first idea now. And now the second idea is systems for living. So systems are what we do on a day to day basis to improve ourselves. So just like you can get your computer to upgrade by downloading new apps, we can upgrade ourselves by downloading new systems. New systems for exercise, for nutrition, mindfulness, for meditation, for even things such as marketing. So the book gives a framework for identifying the right beliefs and then how to install them, and then identifying upgraded systems and how to install these. And that's where we go into consciousness engineering. Now when you do this, everything else you learn, you learn at an accelerated pace. So what I wanted to do was design this book in a way where after you read this book, every other how to or personal growth book you read, you can absorb that knowledge faster because we have given you, we've given you a learning methodology that all these other ideas can cling to.

So let me see if I'm following here. So anything that you want to engineer, any sort of change or any improved upgrade, as you call it, we want to start with examining the beliefs that we have right now that are creating the result that we're getting. And then we want to upgrade to what would we have to believe to get the results that we really want. It's kind of interesting because I imagine the way you've been describing the book, that's what you're actually getting to the root of with the people that you've been able to Spend time with and understand what are their beliefs about the. The common things that were the areas of our life that we want to upgrade. Is that kind of what you said?

Absolutely. Right. So when I interviewed a lot of people for this book, you see, most biographies, I read a ton of biographies. And I can tell you that about half the biographies that I read suck. They absolutely freaking suck. And the reason is because they turn into textbooks or history books. Trying to explain, he did. He did this, then he did this. But that's not how you learn, right? So when I interview people, good biography that say, Elon Musk believes about life and the world.

Okay. By the way, Vision, we'll need to have you say that thing about Elon Musk again because you disappeared for a.

Second, and I want to just. How about if I hang up and call back? Yeah, yeah, do that.

Okay, let's try it.

While we're doing that meeting, Dean will talk about you.

Yeah, yeah, we'll talk all about him. Can you believe it? You can't even afford a nice phone line to get into the. Dallas here.

He's actually, you know, he's on site. Yeah.

Can you hear me now?

There we go.

He's back.

Dean said about you when you're gone, he said, he goes, you know, that he can't even afford a good phone line. I mean, what's.

And I was like, very hurtful. That's funny. Well, welcome back.

Yeah, exactly. Right. So when you read a good biography, what you want to do is you want to. What you're searching for other person's beliefs. What is it that, say, Elon Musk believes about life, about the world, about business, about himself, about his identity? And then what are his practices that he puts into place? Practices such as how does he hire, how does he fire, how does he identify what ideas to pursue, what ideas to reject? So in all the interviews I did for this book, I take that approach when I'm interviewing someone legendary, like, say, Ken Wilber, who's that phenomenal philosopher. Right. I try to understand what is it that beliefs about the world, what are these beliefs that we can model, too? And then what are his systems? What are his practices that he puts into place? And what are the most useful practices that we can borrow? So I interview people like Dave Asprey, like JJ Virgin, Michael Beckwith, as well as people like Richard Branson. And what I try to do is understand them from their beliefs and their practices point of view. So when you understand this, it becomes much easier for you to learn from someone Else and model a great thinker.

I always love to hear people's stories about the, you know, vector changing things that sometimes you have just like a moment of clarity. You have an insight. You have something that. That shifted a belief, because I think you have an awareness when. When a belief shifts. And that's fascinating. So I'm excited to. To read this.

Ah, thank you.

As you should be.

Dean.

Well, you know, you mentioned what. What is your favorite book? Biography, or a couple of them, since you mentioned them. Which ones have really impacted you the most?

Well, okay, so most biographies, like I said, I found disappointing, but there is one biography. I have it on my. On my table right now. It's called Losing My Virginity, and it's by Richard Branson. Right. I thought that was a really good biography. Now, the reason for that is because Branson actually openly. He wrote it. It was an autobiography. So he talks about his beliefs, he talks about. And he doesn't know. I mean, he's. I think Branson is someone who is unconsciously competent. He's incredibly good at what he does. But, you know, Joe, you and I have been there on his island with him, and I remember asking him these things. He's not consciously aware of why he's good at what he does. And so that is the best biography I've read. Now, here's the interesting story, right? Losing my Virginity is not just the best biography. It also happens to be my favorite book in the world. My favorite book in the area of business and marketing, probably in all areas. And on one particular night on Necker Island, I was there with you and Janik and a few of our mutual friends. So everyone had left the party or was passed out drunk somewhere, and my wife and I were sitting with Branson, and I actually happened to talk to him and share some of these ideas with him. I shared with him my theories on how he did what he did and what made him extraordinary. And he turned to me and he said, you ought to write a book. And I was thinking, no way. Wait. My favorite author just told me I should write a book because he found this idea interesting. And that was the spot that made me write this book. Three years later, this book was delivered. And because I never thought I had it in me. I mean, I was an entrepreneur, right? But I never thought of myself as a writer. And so Branson was really that little spark that led to this book being created. And that's why it's called the Code of the Extraordinary Mind.

See, that's what I'm talking about. Right there. I mean that, that's what I just said. If we were, if we were writing your biography right now, that is what I call a vector changing moment. And you could see you had a belief that shifted in that instant. If the author of the my favorite book in the world is telling me that I should write a book, you just birthed a new belief that said I should write a book.

That's.

See, that's.

Absolutely, absolutely, absolutely. And that was what encouraged me. And then he told this. So I asked him that, Richard, surely it took you a really long time to write. Losing my virginity. And he said no. And then he shared with me his system and he said, I'll connect you to the right people who helped me with this. And so now I had the system as well. And I. And when I understood how he wrote the book, I realized it was possible for me as well. Right. So my belief changed and then I got endowed with a system.

That's great.

Yeah, that's a trip.

That's trip.

Well, okay, well, let's talk about, let's talk about systems then. Just like, I mean, how do you think about systems? Because describe your company, mindvalley, for people that are not aware of it. I mean, we did a whole episode with you where we talked about culture and about hiring people and about all kinds of various stuff. But give us an update on what mindvalley looks like right now and then love to get your perspective on systems because I'm sure you have a lot of perspective on this.

Sure. So what mindvalley does is we publish these really high end personal growth courses with best selling authors, people like J.J. bergen, Marissa Peer, Lisa Nichols and Harv Eker and so on. So we publish these really high end courses, but what we try to do is do them in a really gorgeously elegant way. Our customer support has been ranked top 10 in the world by. Nice reply. Our technology is just stunningly beautiful. So we do it in a way that makes learning an art form. And that's something we're really proud of. We employ over 150 people right now, 40 people just in customer support. And we have this fanatical fan base that comes back and learns from us and takes these courses with us on an annual basis. Okay, cool, cool.

And how have you set up, I mean, how do you think about automating and systemizing that company? So for people listening, what could they learn from you on that? And obviously anything in the book that applies to this, please talk about it.

Sure. Well, so if we're Talking about systems for running a business. Some of the most useful ones that I came across at mindvalley, for example, is our system for hiring. So we get. Because we're stuck in Malaysia, right. And it's not Kuala Lumpur. I'm here because this is where I was born. And at a certain point when I started Mindvalley, I started it in New York. But what happened is I lost my US visa. It is really, really, really hard for many foreign entrepreneurs to actually establish a business in the US So I lost my US visa. I had to go back to Malaysia. And here I had this company that was based in New York. It had mostly an American clientele and all my partners were American. And I was kicked out. I had to start off from scratch in the other part of the world. So I came up with a system and that system was, how can I get the best talent here? Because Malaysia itself can have a bit of a talent void. The company has huge. The country has huge brain drain. And that system was to design a culture that would be so attractive that people from around the world who were looking for a different opportunity for work would be drawn to us. So we marketed our culture in a really unique way. If you go to mindvalue.com careers, you'll see how we market our culture. You'll see that we write a manifesto, nine things about work that we want to disrupt and this manifesto. And again, I won't go into detail because you can see it@mindvalley.com career. It's a good blueprint anyone can use for their business. It helped us attract so many people that to this day, we have 40 different nationalities working from our office.

Wow. Wow, that's cool. All in. All in Malaysia.

All In Malaysia, yeah. 40 different nationalities, 40 different passport holders. And so the advantage of that is that I get to actually attract great talent from all around the world. I'm not limited to just one geographic location.

Well, I remember Vishen, we had a conversation about. About your office environment. And last time we spoke, you had built a steampunk sort of office environment before you had ever hired any. Any engineers, I guess is who you were trying to attract with it. But talk a little bit about that because I love to get the update on that and hear the thinking behind it.

Well, well, so now. So what I did was so. So this is going slightly off the book, but no, that experiment actually failed. So what happened was I built this office. Yeah, it failed. And I want to confess that I built this gorgeous office and I decided that I love Steampunk, you know, and maybe it came from going to Burning man or whatever, but I love steampunk design. So I built this gorgeous office, really expensive, crazy cool looking, designed in the most amazing steampunk design. Like, seriously one of the most beautiful steampunk offices out there. And this became Mindvalley technology. It's where we wanted to put our developers. But in the end it turned out that we didn't take into account designing for human beings who sit for 10 hours coding. So our developers were not too happy about the table layouts, the light, the chairs. So now we are building a new office for developers. This time I let them design the office. I learned my lesson and they're actually moving to a new office next month in the steampunk office. So we have other teams in the company that cannot wait to get there. But yeah, that was a failed experiment. I thought, wow, all programmers are going to freaking love working from this place. Turned out no.

You know.

Entrepreneurs make stupid decisions based on their ego. And I think that that was one that's.

Well, there you go. So you could say you were focused on the means goal there. Your means goal was to develop this office, but the end goal was to really get the developers.

So you had to start with the end goal. Yeah, if I started with the end goal, I would have done some research in designing offices for developers.

Mmm, smart.

Wow.

Well, yeah.

You know, sometimes entrepreneurs make stupid decisions based on ego or in cases like Dean, sometimes you just make stupid decisions out of just lack of intelligence. Sorry, I can't help myself. I mean, it's the comic relief for this, for this podcast.

Indeed.

Well, let's, let's. In your book, you have the story three step method for upgrading your system for living that you talk about in the book. Go a little deeper with that.

Three step method for upgrading your system for living. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay, so one of the things we talk about in the book is how to identify new systems. Okay, so the problem with most people is the systems that we have learned to live life with are often so outdated. Think about the idea of calories, for example. Okay, so calories is a bullshit model. It just doesn't make any sense. I mean, Joe, you and I have a mutual friend, J.J. bergen, right? J.J. bhagwan always says your body is not an intake in out machine. It's a chemistry lab. It's not about calories. It's not about how much you eat. It's about you combine. Okay, so calories is one bullshit model, yet 90% plus of the world today who is trying to lose weight relies on this outdated model. Now here's another one. One hour long fitness classes such as aerobics classes. And why is it that we spend an hour doing aerobics when certain studies, for example, Tabata, that trainer from Japan, found that you could get the same benefits in just eight minutes if you do the right eight minute exercise. Yet people go for hour long sessions in the gym. Why is that? Well, it's because gym instructors are paid by these. So the longer you spend with them, the more they. So it wasn't based on how your muscles or your fitness grows, but this whole way of compensating gym instructors. Now when you start to realize that many of the systems you follow are just bs, you open yourself up to discover new systems. Okay, so that's the first step. The first step is discovery. It's knowing that all of our systems, from how we make love, to how we raise our kids, to how we eat, to how we exercise, to how we check email, can all be improved. So I love discovery. And that's why most of the books I read tend to be nonfiction. Books on how to better manage my time, how to be better at relationships, how to raise my kids better. I'm constantly learning because these systems allow me to grow. And an interesting study on multi, multi, multi millionaires, the world's richest people, found that almost exclusively they read nonfiction how to books. Almost exclusively. That is what we mean by discovery. So in my book, I recommend 12 different areas of your life to look at. Now, these 12 areas are partially inspired by John Butcher's lifebook. You and I both know John pretty well. So I recommend 12 areas and then I give people a way to discover systems for these areas. Systems to improve your environment. Systems to improve your health and fitness, to improve your parenting, to improve your love life. Okay, so that's discovery. Now step two is your refresh rate. Your refresh rate is how fast you're refreshing the systems. So here's what I do. In my company, we have a refresh model that looks like this every first Friday of the month. There's no work. Everybody spends that day learning. So if you're on customer support the first Friday of every month, you don't have to work, you don't have to attend any meetings. But what we want you to do is to read books or innovate on how you do customer support. Because if we don't give people that space to learn, they end up blindly following a system and ignoring newer systems. Newer, better Ways of doing things that might emerge. So I do this in my life as well. I go to the gym, but sometimes during my regular gym schedule, I do not go to the gym. Instead, I get online and I read articles on new ways of exercise. I look at new apps for exercise. That's called a refresh. So the idea here is you create a block of time where you step back from your regular system and you learn how to improve your system. So that's refresh rate. Now the third one, the third thing is called set points. Set points are benchmarks that help you know that you're on the right track. So most people set goals, right, and goals are nice, but you also need something called set points. Set points prevent you from slipping. So, you know, at a certain age, many of us can do maybe 20, 30 push ups when we are young, but as we get older, our bodies get weaker and we can no longer do as much. But we don't realize this. We are like frogs. We are like that frog in pot where the temperature is slowly being turned up, but because it's changing at such a miniscule rate, the frog doesn't realize it and eventually gets burnt to a crisp. So what we do is with set points, you test yourself. So for example, every week I test the number of push ups I can do and it has to be 50. If I cannot do 50 push ups, it means I've slipped. And so I enact what is called a set point correction procedure, which is a simple two day diet hack and a two day exercise hack to get me back to 50, because I want to get to, I want to be 100 years old and still be able to do 50 push ups. Okay, so when you have set points, you stop yourself from slipping. You can actually slow down your aging, keep your productivity at its peak, you can keep your memory at its top levels, keep your brain healthy, and you slow down the inevitable effects of aging as it has on all these different aspects of your life. So again, stay conscious that new systems are emerging. Keep discovering them. Number two, set up a time where you can refresh your system. That's called your refresh rate. And third, measure how you're doing using set points.

Well, that's fascinating.

I had a friend, Vishen, who for almost 20 years now has kept himself in a band of weight between 188 and 192. By measuring every day he weighs himself. And if he's 188 or 189, he's green light for the day. And he can eat what he wants. If he's 190 or 191, it's yellow light and he's, you know, slows down. If he's 192, that's red light. And he has to go all the way back to 188 again before he's drooping, green lighted. And he's kept himself never had to lose more than £5 over that 20 years.

That's great. That's a system. One thing I did for that is my belt is my belt size. So I have one belt. I've had that belt for 10 years. It's the belt I wear with jeans. And I am able to buckle it up at the last buckle. But if any time I can't use my usual buckle, I know I put on too much weight and I enact a correction procedure which for me is a low carb diet and frequency gym. So, you know, these things are so important and that's how you stay stable. The majority of men and women will put on weight as they get older, but they do not need to, they do not have to. The problem is we accept it as being normal and so we allow it to happen. But when you set up a system, you prevent that from taking place.

Yeah, fascinating.

There's so many things we could ask you, but we're on a be limited on time. We can go on for another freaking hour. But I want to you have. Chapter nine of the book is titled Be unfuck with the Bowl. What does it mean to be unfuck with a bull?

So. So, Joe, I was waiting for you to ask this, right? So waiting because that whole chapter, Be Unfuck with the Bull, that was inspired by a text message you sent me as I mentioned, as I mentioned earlier. So what happened, guys, is that Joe, me, a few other people went for this thing called 40 years of Zen. It's a biohacking meditation experience designed by a couple of scientists promoted by Dave Asprey. And we spent like, I forget, six or seven days in a lab, in a chamber with our brains hooked up to all of these machines measuring, training, how to use our brain waves. And the whole point of it is to make you really calm, to make you a more forgiving person, to make you more balanced in how you see yourself. And it works. You know, when I got out of there, I was so, I felt so much calmer. I was able to forgive people in the past who had wronged me, grudges I'd been carrying for a long time. And I remember a couple of days after that, Joe sent us all. We had a WhatsApp group and Joe sent us all this little image that he found on the Internet and it said unfuck withable. And then it defined the word. Unfuck withable is when you're truly at peace with yourself and in touch with yourself and nothing anyone says or does bothers you and no negativity can touch you. I'll say that again. When you're truly at peace and touch with yourself, nothing anyone says or does bothers you and no negativity can touch you. So we all got a good lap out of that 10 text message. And five months later, when I was writing this book, I was looking for a word, a word that would describe this particular chapter, which was based on my experiences with Joe at 40 years of Zen. And I remembered his text and I thought be unfuckwithable would be a perfect name for this, this chapter. So thank you for that, Joe.

That's so great. And what have you, what have you found that that allows you to get into that state? Because certainly, you know, we're not there all the time. And most people, they, if, you know, they only get there in doses when, you know, all kinds of things are set up in their life that allow them to, you know, to be, be there. So what, what are some of the rituals and practices and things that you recommend?

Well, well, there are three things, right? The first one we already spoke of, the first one is forgiveness. It's being able to move into states of extreme forgiveness. This has been scientifically studied. Like forgiveness can make people do better on tests such as vertical jumps. It actually improves your endurance. It improves. It releases stress and anxiety. So forgiveness is one. When you learn how to truly forgive your past, you take a step towards becoming more unprofitable. Number one is the practice of mindfulness. Mindfulness, meaning specific mindfulness techniques that help you instantly eliminate stress or anxiety when you feel this coming onto you. And the third one is self love. The third one is having enough internal love for yourself that you do not have that neediness or feeling to need love from someone else. Now, when you combine all three, you, you, but you need all three. When you combine all three, you get to be in the state that I call unfucked with the love.

Yeah, that's great. That's great.

So what have you found that all extraordinary people have in common?

Well, that is actually in chapter 10 of the book. Right. So parts one to part 10 is really like a blueprint. I tried to look at extraordinary minds and try to reduce them to LEGO bricks. And if you connect these bricks together, you gain that ability as well. Right? But one of the most important bricks, Joe, and this is what I talk about in chapter 10, is that they all, they all have a quest. They all, every single one of them have a quest. They have something in the world that they want to change, that they want to shift. And it's not about them. They feel a call to do that. You have that. You want to do that with addiction. You want to help people truly understand and move away from addiction. Elon Musk wants to help the environment and get us on Mars. Everyone has that thing that they want to shift. It could be waking people up, it could be improving the state of parenting, it could be saving the environment. But all of them have that quest and that quest drives them and it obsesses them. Yet we don't really get trained to think that way conventionally. Kids in school are asked, what do you want to be when you grow up? That's a bullshit question. What you really want to ask kids, if you want your kids to be extraordinary, to ask them, where in the world.

Wait, say that one more time. We got that static again, right at.

The most important moment.

Yeah.

So what I was saying is many kids, we ask them, what do you want to be when you grow up? That's a bull question. It sets up people for living a life of rules. A better question is, what mark do you want to leave in the world when you grow up? And that sets you up to actually seeking a career, a business, joining a company that helps you fulfill this quest. And that's the common thread I noticed between everyone I interview. They have this quest, this thing in the world that they want to shift. That's fascinating.

Yeah.

I mean.

There was a 10 year old gal that basically opened up the TED conference, the most recent one this year in Vancouver, the main TED conference, Aishita, she is from India and I did a short video with her that I put on Facebook and she said, don't ask your kid, she's 10 years old, she said, don't ask your kids what they want to be. What do they want to do when they grow up? Ask them, what do you want to do right now? You know, like, what are you doing that? I thought it was, it was just like, it was cool being a 10 year old girl, you know, saying this, not just, you know, some adult. And you're right. I mean the way that we actually are conditioned from the early in our Lives have so much to do with how, you know, people, you know, play out. And frankly, most people, I don't think, really enjoy what they do. Most people hate their jobs. And most people aren't pursuing, you know, dreams. Many people are miserable. And there's, there's reasons for that and there are ways to, you know, definitely shift that. And you learn that. We learn that as adults because of, through the experiences. So, you know, what can we. What can we pass on to anyone that's listening that can, you know, not have to go through some of the mistakes and some of the pain? Which brings me to a question of where, where is mistakes and failure and all of that necessary? And what I mean by that is a lot of entrepreneurs say be will, you know, be willing to fail. You have to fail in order to have a lot of success. And certainly you're going to make a shit ton of mistakes going through life anyway. I mean, however, I'm not one of those people that hold up. Failure is like a badge of honor that, you know, like, well, you know, failure, you know, just fail. Because that's how you, you know, move forward. I mean, I think going through life minimizing, you know, tripping yourself up is. Is, you know, just a more enjoyable way to go through life. So do you have any sort of perspective on, like, what sort of pain.

Is youthful, what sort of.

Versus, you know, just you're fucking up all the time?

Yeah, absolutely.

So.

So when it. So when it comes to failure, there's a lot of noise in the background. Yeah.

Dean, what are you doing, man? Potato chips back here. What the hell?

No.

You'Re just sitting. Yeah, it's weird.

Yeah.

Sitting here quiet.

It's like a.

There's like a poltergeist in the. In the. You know what? You know whose fault it's freaking?

Google's fault.

It's Google.

That's it.

That's what I think it is. Yeah, we're.

I mean, Microsoft, Skype, they're being evil.

But I think it's Google that's getting into Skype right now and messing with.

Mm, okay. Sorry.

Let's go.

So, in terms of failure. Well, it all depends on how you view it, right? So you can lead two kinds of lives. You can leave, you can legalize that face, or you can lead a life that is thrilling and exciting. And it means that sometimes you're going to fail. But from each of these failures, you will learn and you will bounce back up. It all depends on how you view failure. So we talk about that. Actually heavily in the book. And the conversation in the book at least starts with this question that I asked Elon Musk. And you were there, Joe, when he answered it. And one of the things he said is, I have a high tolerance for failure. Right. And what we teach you in the book is how to develop that tolerance because you will fail. But there are two things that you can understand. And these ideas come from Michael Beckwith, who's the. Who teaches at the Agape Spiritual center in Los Angeles. He says we can learn from kensho or we can learn from satori. So kensho is learning from pain. Satori is learning from inside. But either way, it's both learning. So, for example, you try to start a business and you fail. Well, that's kensho. You learn from that. Your next business, it could be a lot more successful. You certainly find yourself in an accident and you end up in hospital. But when you get out, you have a greater appreciation for your health and your body. That's kensho. You've learned from pain, but you can also learn from satori. Satori is a more pleasurable kind of learning. Satori is learning from insight. It's learning from awakenings. Satori is when you learn from reading a biography or reading a book like this or getting on a podcast or getting some insight, little pieces of ideas that eventually coalesce. Then, boom, you become a new person. So the idea is not so much that you can get rid of all pain, because pain is Nothing more than 10 show. It is a learning experience. It's the world kicking your butt to reorient you to a right direction. And when you take on that philosophy, two things happen. Number one, you understand that failure isn't really failure. Like, I don't call failure failure. I literally just call it, oh, God, I just had a kensho moment. And secondly, you can also understand that when you put yourself in the right states, and I share some of these states of living, in the book, you can reduce the kensho and move to satori, because you move yourself to the possibility of awakening rather than failing. The insights and the tips come to you from awakening, from inspiration, from connections, from people you meet. So when I view failure like that, and so in my life, you know, there really is no such concept as failure. Now, a business may fail, I may lose money, but it's never failure. It's just part of this beautiful adventure called life. And it's thrilling and exciting, and it's always still getting me towards my quest. Yeah.

Awesome.

Awesome. Well, Dean, do you have any other Questions for Vishen. Because what I want to do, I want to give people an opportunity to. I know you're a great marketer, so you have a site set up for the book and people can purchase the book. But I want to see if there's any particular areas that you think would be really useful for people to hear that we did not cover and if there's any questions that we should have asked you that we did not ask you.

Well, actually, yeah, there's one thing you could say. You could ask me this actually. Why don't I just tell you rather than ask you to ask me and then I tell you. So one of the things I'm most excited about the book, right. Well, firstly, it's a really good book. It's written to be. I believe a best selling book doesn't happen from fancy marketing, it happens from a book being genuinely good. So people tell their friends about it. Right. And that's what I'm aiming for here. But one of the things I'm doing with this book is this is one of the most technologically integrated books in publishing history because I'm also launching a company to help books become more interactive. And this is the first book that is coming out with this platform. So from the book you can connect to a community where all the readers of the book can interact with each other and the author. You can connect to a platform where you, you can dive deeper into the interviews, into the videos, and learn from many of the people that I interviewed for this book. And so this whole thing creates a whole different level of integration with the book. The book comes with its own app, the book comes with its own community and it just allows the learning to go in a whole new beautiful way. You can choose to read the book in one setting or you could actually spend 12 weeks going through an entire course and retraining methodology for life that comes with the program, all on your mobile phone.

That's cool.

I mean, you've really thought this through. I mean, I will give you a lot of credit. I mean, we interview a lot of people on different books and we're obviously big promoters and endorsers of people reading and learning because, you know, all of us have had single books and many books change our lives and they always do and they always will depending on what you read and what you do with what it is you read. But you've really put a lot of thought and a lot of work into writing and creating this book. And that in and of itself is a lesson in organizing your thinking. And your knowledge and your strategies and delivering it in a way to where it's most useful for people. So what do you. What do you believe will happen for someone that reads your book and really takes on and goes through it the way that you just described? I mean, what sort of benefits will happen in their life?

Well, firstly, I don't like calling this a personal growth book. It's more of a personal disruption book. This book is designed to challenge how you live life. It's going to make you question your business, question your goals, question your relationships, question your religion, question your spirituality. It's going to make you ask questions. And therefore, this book can be an uncomfortable read for some people. But that's by design. I didn't write this book so everyone would love it. I wrote this book so that you will either love it or you will hate it, but you won't be empathetic to it. Because we grow through love. True insight, through inspiration. Or we grow when someone kicks our ass, but we don't grow when there's no emotion aroused. Emotion aroused. So this is a book designed for love or for hate. Either way, it will disrupt certain ways in which you view the world and set you on the path to more beautiful, amazing ways of living. Awesome.

Awesome.

So, Dean, anything else?

Yeah, I'm.

I'm just very excited that I was able to convince Vishen to release the book on my birthday. So May 10th is when. When everybody can get the book and celebrate my birthday in remembrance.

Yeah.

I love such a phenomenal podcast and, you know, I really don't get to acknowledge Dean enough. So I thought this would be the ultimate way.

I appreciate it.

I really do.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And also send it out to all of your closest friends and family on your birthday.

Yes, exactly.

That's a great idea.

If you really want to be caring to people that you know in your life, that's exactly what you're going to do. You're going to pre order and just have it automatically set up so all your friends instantly get a copy.

So, Vish, what is.

What is.

Go ahead, say that again. We're having that. That whole like the we can't hear your voice thing for a sec.

They will never forget your birthday again. Imagine that, Dean. May 10th.

Perfect.

So Vishen, the website is the code C O, D e, the code xmind.com. when they go there, what do they get? Yes, say it again. Say the URL again. So everyone's crystal clear.

The code. The code X mind. The code X mind. Or you can just get it from Amazon. Right. But if you, I mean, you can order it from either spot. The code xmind is where you can order the book or Amazon. Either way, when you get the book, the book gives you instructions and how to integrate with all the technology. It's all in the opening introduction.

Now that's crazy.

Awesome.

I'm very.

Yeah.

You know, I always say vision, that there's two types of books. There's. There's book reports where people are regurgitating things they've researched about a topic by reading other books. And then there are field reports. And that's what this really is. Somebody who's been out in the field and reporting on what people are doing to actually get results. So I always really look forward to reading books like that.

Thank you, Dean. That's a really, really good quote.

Yeah. And so any famous last words, Vishen?

No, that's it, guys. Thank you so much for having me. I always enjoy these shows and the humor and the ridiculousness that ensures.

Yes, exactly.

Thank you.

And for everyone, give us your comments on Ilove marketing.com Share this episode with anyone. If you haven't subscribed to I love Marketing, please go ahead and subscribe. We will put the links in the show notes on I love Marketing. And the website is the codexmind.com and the book is the code of the extraordinary Mind. Vishen Lakhiani. Thank you, Vishen. Have a good day. It's a night for us. So wherever you're at in the world, make it a great week and get Vishen's book and we'll talk to you next time on I love Marketing.

Thank you.

Thank you, guys.