311: Bending Reality with Vishen Lakhiani

Namaste, it's Sahara Rose. And welcome back to the Highest Self podcast, a place where we discuss what makes you your soul's highest evolvement. How is Butterfly August going for you? I told you a couple weeks ago on my solo cast that this would be the month that you really gain clarity on who it is that you seek to emerge as. You know, we've gone through so many shifts and realizations and fears and awakenings and all of the things this year, this incubator of 2020, and now it's really the time that we emerge out of it and decide what vibration, what energy, what expression am I going to emerge as. So what has shown up for you? I am curious. Let me know on Instagram. And for me, it has really been cultivating more of my feminine, of my dancer, of connecting to my heart, really resonating from that heart frequency. I'm someone who can definitely get lost in my work, having just finished writing Discover your Dharma, being so deeply in that process for the past year and, you know, creating all the content I create from the podcast to rose gold, goddesses, etc, and my intention is to really sink more into my dance and my feminine expression, particularly a style of dance called tribal fusion belly dance. And I have been doing it every single day, practicing. It is a spiritual practice for me. I am grateful to report that I have stuck to that. So I am always looking for the most incredible leaders and having them bring their perspective to the Highest Cell podcast. And Vishen Lakhiani is someone that I have been following for years and I was super excited to read his new book, the Buddha and the Badass, which recently became a number one New York Times bestseller, and to dive into his knowledge because I especially was curious about the more spiritual side of him. So you might know Vishen, you've probably seen his ads on YouTube or all over the place. He's the finder of Mind Valley, which is the biggest, you know, transformational course educational system around the world. They have courses on so many things and what they're so great at is taking personal development, making it very, very accessible just for the average person and in so many different facets of your life, from memory to meditation and so many things. So they kind of take spirituality, but like wrap it in this package that the average who's probably not like us, who's always talking about these things like that, that average person would understand. And also especially for men, if you have like a man in your life that you're like, oh, I would really love for them to get more in touch with themselves. Like Mind Valley is is that place. It's definitely speaks their language. So I was very curious to dive into the mind, the spiritual aspect of Vishen and that is exactly what we do in this episode. So we talk about what he was in his past lives and his experiences with that. What he sees happening for as we reemerge out of this coronavirus and what is coming next. How to bend reality, that concept of bending reality which he speaks about in his book, what that really Means. So I'm super excited to share his wisdom and work with all of you. He is one of the smartest people I know and I guarantee he will inspire you. So without further ado, let's welcome Vishen Lakhiani to the Higher Self Podcast. And before we get started, I'd love to share with you this special offer. Are you that person that all your friends and family members come to when they need wellness advice? Are you constantly looking up new ways to heal and balance your mind, body and spirit, including listening to this podcast? 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Purpose?

Well, if so, then I invite you to join us in Rose Gold Goddesses. Because this month we are diving deep into the energy of Lemuria, the ancient civilization based off of living a life of alignment with your true joy. In this two hour workshop, we dive deep into what the Lemorian frequency is all about. Connecting with the mermaid and dolphin energy. Why we need community more than ever and plenty of practices, rituals, journal, prompts and so much more. So you can finally make 2020 the year that you feel vibrant, radiant and full of passion to actually create what you were meant to do here on this planet and live your truth. Well, if this is resonating with you, then come join us in Rose Gold Goddesses. You are going to love this Lemuria Circle and the eleven other goddess circles we have done. You have access to all of them as soon as you join us in Rose Gold Goddesses. On top of that, you will be able to do my healing and embodiment through dance workshop. This is a three and a half hour workshop with spoken and actual follow along dance prompts you could do to connect to the healing energy of dance, to embody yourself, to release trauma and step into your most embodied, authentic version. We also have my awaken your powers masterclass with Shaman Durek, my Sex Money magic program with Alexandra Roxo and dozens of other workshops available for you as well. Soon as you join us in this community with 2000 other spiritual soul sisters, all committed to living a life of joy, truth, fun, radiance and Dharma. This is all available for you in Rose Gold Goddesses, my membership community and I am so excited to invite you inside. You can find more information atrosegold goddesses.com the link is in the show notes and I can't wait to meet you. Welcome Vision to the Highest Cell Podcast. It's so great to have you here.

Thank you Sahara. I've heard so much about you. I've been following you on Instagram, so it's a pleasure to be on your podcast.

Likewise. Same here. And I'm so excited to dive deep with you, especially with my audience who is so fascinated by all the concepts that you speak about. And the first question I'd love to ask you is what makes you your highest self?

Well, I think what makes Me, my highest self is being really aligned as much as I can to an understanding of why my soul chose this body, what I'm here to do, what resources are available to me, and then being clearly focused on what I believe is my soul mission and putting every other distraction on the side.

So beautifully said. And what I really admire about your work is you really bridge spirituality and non dualism and all of these concepts that could easily make someone just be like, yo, I'm tapping out of the system. I don't want to work. I just want to be. But you're also so entrenched in the creation process and really bringing solutions for people to build that bridge and help. You know, I just watched your recent Instagram video on how leaders create more unity, and you are a prime example of helping people build those pathways so we can have a more unified planet somewhat.

I hope so. At least I try my best.

Yes, you're killing it. So right now we are at a time of a lot of chaos. And as you know and from your life experience, that's also a great time for opportunity. So can you share with us the opportunity you see in this moment for people to really step into their highest selves, their purposes, their dharmas?

Well, it depends on your worldview. Right. I believe that we are souls having a human experience mind. All my worldviews stem from that. Now I always, every morning when I wake up, remind myself that I am not human first. I am a soul experiencing the art of being human first. In short, this is like a game. It's a game of life. When you play a computer game, if everything is really easy, you get bored. And so the game needs a bit of a challenge. The game has levels, and every time you get to a level, the next level gets harder. If the next level did not get harder, the. The game would bore you out of your mind. I remember reading Neale Donald Walsh's work, Conversations with God. And in that beautiful book, he asks God, if heaven is so amazing, why is it that souls choose to come down to earth form? And God said something really funny. God said, well, can you imagine being in an orgasm that never ends? You would be going, oh, God, this is so good. Oh, my God. Oh, yes, yes, yes. And then one year later, you're probably going, yes, this is. But. Oh, God, can we stop now? Oh, God damn it, I can't. I need a break. Stop. Stop this. The orgasm wouldn't be an orgasm if it never ended. You get what I'm saying? And so the human experience is this Space where we are meant to challenge ourselves, to push, to go through some form of suffering so that we can grow as souls. Now, I believe souls are here for two reasons. The first is growth, to discover themselves, to grow, or as Neale Donald Walsh says, to remind yourself of who you really are. And the second reason souls are here is to recreate the movement towards unity. If souls are a fragment of a higher intelligence or a higher force, one of the best things that souls can do to discover themselves is to experience the human world, to go through trials and tribulations so they grow, but also as they go through this journey that we call life, to come closer and closer and closer towards unity. And so it's all a game, but the point of the game is two things. Grow and become the best damn soul having a human experience you can be. And number two, move yourself and everyone else towards a greater and greater unified whole. That's how I see the game. That's how I live my life. And everything I do is based on these two principles.

Thank you so much for sharing that. And I'm sure a lot of listeners are nodding along like, yep, I see it that way too. And you know, at times of a lot of suffering, you know, so. So much suffering. We just had the bomb in Beirut. And, you know, you look around the world and you're like, what is. You know, you could easily create the story that things are getting worse, suffering is increasing. We are in the most dualistic time than ever before. So what is your advice for someone who's kind of looking at the world around them and feeling almost like my purpose must not matter because the world is seeming like it's getting like a worse and worse place every single day.

Well, firstly, statistically, data, historically, the world is getting better and better. Yes, awful things do happen. This pandemic is awful, but again, it's not new. It happened in 1968. It lasted two years. I believe in 1968, about 100,000Americans died from the Hong Kong flu. And we survived and we got past it. And today, most people don't even remember 1968. The same is going to be true for this pandemic, at least I hope so. Now, of course, it's proving to be a lot worse, especially in America, because America is led by a madman, let's just be honest. But all of this is also an opportunity. The roomy said, oh, ye who cannot take a good rubber, how will you ever become a polished gem? There are so many opportunities for us as souls to discover transformation, to discover Just what our abilities are to grow and evolve. And there are so many opportunities for us as souls to move towards unity. Black Lives Matter was a movement towards unity. It was people of all cultures, all races, all religions standing up for black lives. That is unity. The MeToo movement, as people came together to unveil to the world a new way to treat women, was a move towards unity. The protest and the backlash against Trumpism is a movement towards unity. All of these things that you see happening in the world today is our souls collectively coming together towards unity. Unity is one of the highest ideals of advanced civilizations, of advanced species. And this is a really, really important journey that we need to go on. And so we are simultaneously witnessing two opportunities for us to evolve into our best selves. The first is to go through suffering, knowing that there is a light at that end of that tunnel, that that suffering is going to make you stronger. And the second is to go through division, knowing that we have a role to play to create a more unified planet for the next generation. Both of this make the game so much fun, but it's how you look at it. I've been broke. I've been homeless. I've had businesses fail. What people are experiencing right now I experienced in 2001 when I moved to Silicon Valley, the dot com bubble burst. I lost everything. I was renting a couch from a Berkeley college student because I couldn't afford rent. I crashed my car because I couldn't afford to fix the brakes. I owed money to the insurance company. I worked in a dead end job. I was struggling to survive. And it was one of the greatest damn growth periods of my life. And so there's something really important here. Suffering is suffering only when you choose to forget who you really are. In reality, when you go through suffering, there's always a light at the end of the tunnel. Do you know when you walk out of a gym, your body is basically worse off than when you started your workout? You've created micro tears in your muscle. You've probably caused a buildup of lactic acid. You feel crap, and you should. You've just slightly broken your body. You've put your body through suffering, but nobody steps out of a gym and goes, oh, oh my God, what did I do to myself? My legs hurt. They embrace that pain because they know that in 24 to 48 hours those muscle tears are going to rebuild and they're going to have more solid muscles, that their endurance is going to go up, that them pushing their heart is going to make their heart stronger. You walk out of a gym proud of yourself because you know that you just went through suffering. That's going to lead to a light at the end of the tunnel. Now, what if we can do that with the pandemic? What if we can do that with Trumpism? What if we can do that with. With the looming recession? That is the art, and that is what we are here to remember.

So beautifully said. Suffering is only suffering when you. When you forget yourself, your true essence. And I think what makes it difficult is when you're in the experience, it's always like when you're out of it, it's so easy to see, oh, that shaped me to be the person I am today. But when you're in it, I remember for myself in my more suffering years, I thought that there were certain people who made it out and had the success story, the Lisa Nichols of the world. And then there were the rest of us who never made it out. And what do you suggest for someone who right now is fully in it? Maybe they're just having a divorce, a job loss, something. What is a little mind shift they can just do at this moment to help bring that walking out of gym feeling into their life at this time?

So one of the best things you can do is to understand the difference between kensho and satori in Zen philosophy, as articulated by the Reverend Michael Beckwith. We grow through kensho, or growth through pain, or we grow through satori, or growth through insight. Most people, though, grow through pain. Our soul needs to slap us at the back of our head every now and then to wake us the fuck up so a business fails or we lose our job. And we learn from that. We learn how to work better. Someone breaks our heart. I mean, who hasn't had their heart broken at some point? And we learn from that. We learn to love better, to be, to show up as a better partner. We go through a divorce. We learn to rediscover ourselves, to channel love from within. We end up in hospital. We learn to take better care of our health. I've been through all of that, and I bet many people listening have, too. And I bet you in every case, it was a kensho moment, a moment of pain that you emerged better off. So that's the first way we grow. The second way we grow is through satori, or insight. Satori is that eureka moment in the bathtub. Satori is an intuitive impulse that comes to you when you're meditating. Satori is growth. When you're listening to your soul and your soul whispers to you and puts an idea in your head, and you come up with a new way of looking at the world. You grow in wisdom by going within. So you can choose to grow through kensho. You can choose to grow through satori. Now, the trick is to have contemplative practices, to go on spiritual journeys so that you give your soul more satori opportunities. You're giving your soul better access to your brain, to yourself. Every time you meditate, and that's probably one of the first things you got to do. Have a meditation, a contemplative practice. Every time you meditate, every time you journal, you give your soul a chance to speak up. And if you don't like a stubborn child, your soul is going to have to smack you and to grab your attention. But even when that happens, kensho has its place as well. Even when that happens, when you learn to embrace the suffering, in the words of Rumi, the wound is the part through which the light enters. When you learn that every time you go through that dark tunnel, you go into the state where you know there's something on the other end. Now, when I go through suffering, there's a part of me that's, oh, shit, not again. But there's a part of me that goes, gosh, I can't wait to see what's going to happen next. When you live like that, you become what I call unfuck, withable pain, inconvenience, failure doesn't touch you. At least it doesn't give you the negative emotional pull that it gives most people. You have made yourself unfuck, withable. That is part of the journey that is discovering your spiritual core.

Yes, I love that word, too. And that's it. We're constantly choosing, do we want to learn through suffering or do we want to learn through flow and moving towards that path that the universe is propelling us into. But sometimes we need to face those blockages, the karma, to bring us back into alignment. So I would be curious what your take is on past lives and whether you believe that our souls have actually incarnated in different human lifetimes before this.

Well, the answer is absolutely. Absolutely. I believe in past lives, and I believe in it because of the overwhelming scientific evidence, but we choose to ignore that. There's a famous book called the Conscious Universe By Dean Radden, PhD. Dean Radden did a meta analysis of all the scientific studies on extrasensory perception and other things that we sometimes label paranormal. And in the starting of the book, he did say, look, there's a lot of hocus there's a lot of like, BS out there, but there are four phenomenon that deserve greater scientific scrutiny. And among that four phenomenon were things such as astral projection. And reincarnation was one of it. The other one was like mind, body healing and intuition. Right? Reincarnation. There's a lot of evidence for it. Countless moments of children in particular, remembering their past lives. Now I believe in reincarnation and sometimes the soul chooses it. Sometimes the soul chooses it. Sometimes it's something that you got to heal. So I want to tell you a funny story. In November last year, I had an experience with, I guess what you could call karmic healing. So what happened was one of the teachers, so Mindvalley, for those of you who don't know me, I built one of the world's fastest growing personal growth companies, which is about to become the world's most advanced education technology company. We are just about everywhere working with major government organizations, with companies, and we bring, we're making personal growth mainstream now. One of our teachers is the legendary Marie Diamond. She's a European feng shui master and a spiritual teacher who works with energy. So Marie diamond was on stage at a mindvalley event in la and there was a major celebrity in the front row. And we had to create this whole, like, security experience so this guy could come sit in the front row and see Marie. He's a wonderful man, but I can't share his name. And so after she gave a talk, I turned to her and I'm like, wow, this, that was pretty huge. You had that massive singer there. Why is he such a fan? And she goes, oh, I'm his coach. And so I said, well, what do you coach him with? And she mentioned that she'd been coaching him with a form of karmic healing. In other words, healing the pain that he had gone through in past lives. And she said that through healing this, he had seen his, his songs explode on Spotify, he had signed new record deals, his career had just expanded. So I, I asked her, well, so you can see that in someone's energy? And she goes, yes. And I said, well, look at me. Like, like, what do you see? And she goes, oh, Vishen, do you really want to know? So I'm like, yes, because now I'm curious, right? And she says, you have issues with power. And I'm like, what do you mean? And she says, you give away your power. You have issues with power. And I go, I don't understand. She says, okay, here's what you have to do. You have to come and meet me in France, in the south of France. And so she said, find a date. Meet me in the south of France. Now several months later I happened to be asked to speak at the Global HR Summit which happens to be in the south of France, coincidentally about a 30 minute drive away from where Marie diamond lives. So that was a beautiful moment. So I showed up. This was like three months after we had had the conversation and Marie takes me on a journey and she unravels to me these past life situations I've had. Now Marie didn't know a lot about my past but she told me that in my past life I had two lives in France. And in both of these lives I served a master. And in both of these lives I was betrayed in some way by my master. I lost my family, I lost my wealth because of my dedication to protecting this master one she said I was a soldier in Napoleon's army. I knew Napoleon was going to lose when he attempted to invade Russia. So I fled the army and became a deserter. I couldn't go back to Paris. I left my children and my wife behind. I settled and in a nearby part of Russia which today is Estonia. It's interestingly where I am today. In another life I was part of the Cathars. I was the Duke of a place called Monsegur, protecting the Cathar queen. The Cathars were a religious sect that were prosecuted by the Christians. It was the first crusade against it happened in Europe and 200,000 Qatars were dead and I apparently was burned at the stake. Now what was really interesting about these past lives is that what Marie did not know is that obviously she knew I was, I'm an Indian, I'm of Indian heritage. I grew up in Malaysia, I was in America for about 10 years, but I've not until recently lived in Europe. Marie didn't know a lot about my history but as she told me about my past lives in France, there were some weird things that started to dawn on me. You see, when I was 12 years old as an Indian kid growing up in Malaysia, which is in Southeast Asia, for whatever reason I decided that. So I went to a British school because Malaysia was part of the British Empire. British in British history books they don't really talk much about Napoleon because the Brits hated Napoleon, right? And for some weird reason when I was 12 years old I went through my history book and I known about this character called Napoleon and I wanted to learn about him. This was pre Internet, there was no Internet. I went my History book. I couldn't find anything on Napoleon, so I traced down an encyclopedia. And again, because I was a kid, I didn't have a photocopy, access to a photocopy machine or a computer. I memorized word for word the chapter on Napoleon in this encyclopedia. I was 12 years old. My dad took me on a trip to Paris that year. And I remember walking down the street in Paris and my dad said, vision, Are you talking to yourself? I wasn't. I was reciting word for word the entire encyclopedic entry on Napoleon. Again, why, as a 12 year old kid was I obsessed with Napoleon? But it went, it went weirder. At 13, I decided to study French in Malaysia. I mean, no one speaks French in frickin Malaysia. I decided to learn French. French became my third language. I knew English, Malay and French. And I studied French for three years. I eventually forgot it all because nobody else spoke French. But this was the weird thing, an obsession with Napoleon when I was 12 years old, a desire to learn French. And then me here learning from Marie about my past lives in France. Now it turned out that I had karmic healing to do on those past lives. I had to forgive the deserter for deserting Napoleon. And because that created a weird dynamic on power, I had to forgive that part of me that was the Duke of Montague who was burnt at the stake for protecting the Queen that he served. And so as I did this forgiveness, something shifted in me. The first one month I felt nothing. But shortly thereafter, my entire dynamic of how I operated as a CEO began to change. The rules I set in my company began to change. The people I hung out with began to change. And what happened is that in a span of six months, I started to go through the biggest business success I'd ever gone through in my entire life. In my entire life. And it just exploded. And I can't share all the details, but I can tell you that in the next six months, mindvalley grew so massively, all of a sudden, investors came to us offering me hundreds of millions of dollars. The company went through its most amazing growth period. And my life has become, in six months, something that I thought would have taken me ten years to reach. So do I believe in past lives? I think I just answered it.

Thank you for sharing that powerful story. And I think so many of us can relate to as a child resonating so deeply with different cultures or historical periods or historical figures, et cetera. I've definitely had experiences like that as well. And. And then again bringing Back to your point of being souls in a human body, of you rehealing that whatever was happening, a karmic tie on a soul level actually shifted the current day reality you are in in ways that are, you know, completely unrelated. And it really brings it back to the concept you speak about in your book of being able to bend reality. And things don't have to go in this linear way that we're taught in school systems, you know, corporate ladders, etc, but sometimes something like a karmic healing can be that thing that can within six months shift things in a way that you would have never been able to create on your own.

Right? Right, Absolutely.

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Right. So I believe that the world is an illusion. I think we have established that and I'm guessing many of your listeners do as well. The problem with many people who go deep into spirituality is that they fall into a trap. I call it the current reality trap. They live too much in the now and there's nothing wrong with that. But simply living in the now often takes away your ability to dream about the future. So I mentioned Two massive reasons. Our souls are here to push towards self growth and evolution and to push towards unity. But there's a third reason, and that is something I call envisioning. Our souls are here to build a better and better and better and better and better world. If our souls are particles of God and God is the great Creator, then we are mini creators. We are here to build companies, to write books, to create movements. All the great spiritual sages and saints of the past, according to philosopher Ken Wilber in a phenomenal essay called Egolessness, were not said Ken, feeble minded milquetoes. They will move us and shake us from bullwhips in the temple to subduing entire continents. They rattled the world with the force of their ego and instigated revolutions that lasted thousands of years. To be spiritual, we often think, is to do nothing but sit under a Bodhi tree. It's to go into endless introspection. To be spiritual is that it's to be in the moment, but it's also to have one foot in the future and to know that you are going to create a better world for all who follow. Muhammad conquered continents, Jesus started massive social movements and brought a bullwhip to the temple. The Buddha didn't just sit under a Bodhi tree. The Buddha protested against the unjust government of his time and stood up for the poor. To be spiritual is to not just be fully present, it is to be present in the future. And to bring that future into the present, it is to create. This is the act of envisioning. Now, when I talk about bending reality. Bending reality is an art form that I play with. As an entrepreneur. I have been meditating and bringing spirituality into my work so that as I create, as I build my companies, I'm able to do it in a way where the odd seem completely aligned in favor of me, where probability seems to bend towards me, where luck seems to be on my side, and where it almost seems as if what I touch is blessed by magic. And all of us can do that. And when you do that, life becomes easier. You succeed at your career, what you want to experience in the world comes to you. Synchronicities, coincidences, all manner of different gifts arrive at your doorstep. But there is something else you got to be moving towards. You got to have that vision for the future that you are pulling into the present. That could be a book or a podcast that inspires millions. It could be a new product that betters the world. It could be a way to save the environment. It could be a way to Bring unity into politics. You must have that as your compass, as your direction. The art of bending reality is to move beautifully towards that vision that compels you and to do it in a way with a grace, with a presence, with an ease of flow where it seems that reality bends in your favor.

I'm snapping along with you because I had that exact same realization you're speaking about being in. I lived in a spiritual community in Bali, and I was like, I feel like this is mental masturbation. That's what I was calling it of. Like, you feel so good and you're in a circle and you're at ecstatic dance, and then you're not doing anything. You're not creating everything. You're not sharing it with the rest of the world. And I think that especially when we first learn about spirituality and learn about operating from a soul level, it could be very easy to disconnect and get this feeling that, well, everyone, I figured it out, so everyone else should figure it out, too. So I love how you're sharing that. It's not, you know, Buddha didn't just sit for 40 days, then he went out there and brought about, you know, pathways towards alleviating suffering for the rest of the world. And then on the other hand, there's so many, which is, you know, the mainstream society, the culture scape that you speak about that has, you know, no sense of presence, no sense of operating from a soul level, karmic level, etc. So I think this new Earth is really going to be that balance and also dropping the shaming of thinking about the future. I think I remember in Bali, they called me Cerebral Sahara because I was always thinking, as if thinking was this horrible thing. You know, it's like, why are you doing so much? You should just be. So it's like finding that balance of being and doing and letting your doing be your meditation, letting it be your being.

That's great. Well, thank you for saying that.

Yes. And I think that, you know, creating companies like mindvalley are giving other people to tap into that and make that be their reality as well. So it's not just like, okay, I'm good. You guys figure it out. Being like, here's a community that we've already created and you get to be a part of. And I know you speak a lot about creating company culture, too, in your book, which I think right now a lot of people are feeling very disconnected from wherever they're working because they're working online. So how can we bring about company culture feeling like we're comrades on the same team. When we are all physically isolated, well.

You know, that is a very different conversation. And I would lie if I said I figured it all out. The pandemic is very, very, very new. There are still so many things that we are still trying to understand. I have 300 employees, and I had to change countries. Most of my team is in Malaysia, but the schools in Malaysia are closed. And my children, their mother is Estonian, so I moved to Estonia so that my kids can go to school here. And I'm adjusting. It's not easy. I'm staying in an Airbnb. I'm thousands of miles away from our office spaces in Malaysia. A lot of our staff no longer want to come to the office and are choosing to work from home. It's a wild ride. We're figuring it out. I wish I had the answers. I don't right now.

Yes, I think we're all learning through zoom parties and slack chats of trying to figure it out. But, you know, as I was reading it, I'm like, how can I create more. More of this company culture as we're isolated? So as you get more insights, please share it on your socials, because we're all. We're all waiting for it. And another thing that you talk about is not falling into the trap of working so hard and feeling like you need to work so hard to, you know, get to where you want to be in life. So how can we actually create progress, go towards that, you know, that North Star that we have, while not losing complete balance of other areas in our lives, even though we feel like to get there, we need to, you know, cut ourselves off from our social lives, exercise, et cetera. How do we. Is it possible even to stay in balance when you're pursuing a big goal like writing a book, et cetera?

It is absolutely possible to stay in balance, but you got to go to a level where balance isn't even necessary. Now, what I mean by this is, in our education system, the reason this whole conversation on balance comes up in the first place is because the American education system is badly tilted towards overwork. So I'm now living in Europe, and I can tell you, over here, people really get balanced. The quality of life is so much better. People really get balance. And the economies here are rated more competitive than the United States. I'm in Estonia. Just short distance away is Finland. Finland, I believe, is the most competitive country in the world. And one of the unique things I notice about Europe is that nobody, literally the only People I talk about here with balance are the Americans and the American expats that I meet over here, you know, here in my office, when someone, let's say a woman or a man, needs to go on maternity or paternity leave, it's 18 months paid for by the government and the company. And that's such a good thing. People have a chance to heal, people have a chance to recover, people have a chance to give their best selves to their kids. In the U.S. what do you get, like two weeks here today? Two of my key employees went on a two week holiday. They did enough overtime because the law here says, okay, you work 40 hours a week and that's it. Anything above you can claim overtime. So they're using their overtime, they're taking the summer off so they can rejuvenate, so they can get healthy. And I know when they come back, they're going to be hyper performance at work. I see that over here all the time. People understand that to give your best at work, to create incredible new things, you have to be taking care of your soul, of your mind, of your body. Estonia, which is where I'm in right now, I'm looking, as I'm giving you this interview, I'm looking out into the streets of Tallinn and it's beautiful. People are in cafes, people are walking, having a stroll, drinking wine outdoors. Yet this city, and it looks like no one is working, but this city has the highest number of startups per capita. The entrepreneurial momentum here is huge. Every single day I meet people with genius ideas in cafes, I get business pitches. In this tiny city of 400,000 people, they are four, four unicorn companies. That means $4 billion tech startups. Can you believe that? Yet everyone here is so healthy. You do not see, literally, if you see an obese person in Tallinn, Estonia, they stand out. In the US it's often the opposite. And that's because the American way of life is broken. And that's why we have this conversation of balance. Now don't get me wrong, I am American at my core. I lived in the United States. I'm the CEO of an American company. I love frickin America. But if we don't face reality, American America, our way of life, the way we design work, is fundamentally flawed. Now here's how we have to rejig it. Here's how we have to reinvent it. The first step is a concept called lifebook. Lifebook is an idea created by two remarkable American entrepreneurs, John and Missy Butcher. They're the founders of Multiple companies, including a massive doll company called Precious Moments. I learned about Lifebook when I attended a seminar by them 12 years ago. Today I license Lifebook. So it's part of mindvalley. Full disclosure. It is one of the most important programs you can take in your life. Mindvalley.com lifebook now what you do in Lifebook is John and Missy guide you at looking at through your life through 12 dimensions. Most Americans learn to look at their life and set goals only on career, career and finance. Career and finance. They forget that there are 10 other dimensions of life. We got to pay attention to our relationships, our body, our spirituality, our intellectual life, our character, our persistent emotional states. There are multiple other categories and then they guide you through a process to question the conventional rules of society and create a new vision for your life in each of these categories. That's the Lifebook process. So when you take Lifebook, you end up with a 75 page book of your life, a 75 page manual of what your life should look like. And this is one of the first steps to bending reality. When you start creating this manual, when you go so deep into crafting a detailed, well rounded vision of your life, you end up living a life that seems blessed by magic. Now the problem is some people can succeed at their career, but they have ruined relationships or their health isn't working for them. Or some people could be big on spirituality, but they could be broke. We all know those people. But what if you can truly crush it at all 12 areas of life? Balance is no longer an issue. Work, play, they all become one. And you call it living. This is how masters truly live. Now Lifebook is you can take it free. Payment is actually, it's actually a program with an optional payment. If you can't afford it, you don't have to pay. Mindvalley.com lifebook go through the process. It's a $500 deposit and one in three people at the end of it, they take their money back. They're allowed to because we want to make it affordable to people in China, to people in India. So definitely check it out. It changed my life and now I work with John and this is one of the many world class programs that Mindvalley brings to the world. When. So look, I don't like to give simplistic answers to questions such as how do we have balance? Because often those questions stem from a worldview or a way of living that you don't have to have applied to you in the first place. You can transcend that and that's what I'm trying to say. Transcend the conventional model of work culture, of American work culture. Embrace Lifebook. Look at your life from 12 dimensions, and then watch yourself bend reality.

Yes. I think it is so important to even have that vision of what it is that we're going for. And so many of us, I think, feel resistance to writing it down because we're like, oh, what's the point? It feels so far away. It feels like it's never going to happen. So what's the point? It's in my head, right? So what do you do to actually get those? Let's say you write down, you know, I live on a beach and I have a million dollars in the bank account. All of these things that want. Then how do you go about making that actually, like, step by step become your reality?

So the first thing is, it's not just about writing down, I live in the beach. I have a million dollars in my bank account. No. For every goal that you put down, there are different nuances. There are four questions you have to answer. So let's say now, by the way, there's a free class on Lifebook. For those of you who are listening, go to mindvalley.com lifebook Sign up for the pre masterclass, and John and Missy will guide you through the process. Now, the first question is, why do I want this? So when you set, for example, your vision for your relationships, why do you want to be in love with someone special? Why do you want to marry? Why do you want to be single and dating? You first answer your why. The next thing is you address your beliefs. You go deep into a form of critical reflection, and you identify what you truly believe about love. It's important to know and have awareness of your beliefs because your beliefs will shape your experience of reality. Do you believe that love is painful? Do you believe that there's a soulmate out there for you? Do you believe that you need someone to love you? Do you believe that love can be generated just as powerfully from within? So, again, the first question is the why. The second question is the belief. The third question is the vision. Most people go straight to the vision, but that's a mistake. The vision is, now, how do you want your love life to show up? Who would you be with? What type of person would they be? What would you do together? What vacations would you take? How would he or she treat you? How would he or she support your career? How would you support theirs? You go deep into the vision, and then the final Question is the strategy. The strategy is, what are you going to do to make this happen? This is where you put down your action plan to find that love of your life, your action plan to be in that ideal relationship. And so when you put all four of these together and when you go through the Lifebook process, it's almost about three and a half hours per category. That's how long it takes, right? So it's a deep dive. And then lifebookers, they're all connected on an app, and they all share strategies and advice with each other. And LifeBook is part of the larger MindValley ecosystem. Once you're in MindValley, like, your life just transforms because we have. MindValley is the collection of all the best personal growth programs in the world, all connected to each other. So once you get in mindvalley, you cannot help but see every aspect of your life transform. So that's how the whole process works. But the Lifebook is simply that. But from there, everything starts unfolding.

That is so awesome. I'm so excited to try. And do you find that people should. Should focus on, you know, a certain area of their life that they know they need help? Let's say, for example, they're very into spirituality, but their financial abundance. Life is. Is not quite in that level that they want yet. Do you think they should take, like a year to just dive into business and learn about that and just focus on that? Or do you think it should still be simultaneous with, you know, learning about everything else?

So everything has to be simultaneous. Now, one of the first things you gotta do is you got to have a way to measure your current state. So when it comes to personal growth, you cannot. You have to be well rounded. You cannot be in incredible health, but be broke. You cannot have an incredible relationship with your partner, but have a sucky relationship with your kids and have a low degree of emotional awareness. So one of the things that we did with Lifebook is we created a simple self assessment. It takes 22 minutes, and it shows you on the. It sort of gives you a score of where you are thriving and where you could focus on where you need to grow. So it's free. It's at life.mindvalley.com life.mindvalley.com Take the free assessment. It's 22 minutes, and you will start to see how you can make your life well rounded. And then once you have this awareness, you now have an idea of what books you should be taking, what programs you should be listening to, who you should be following because you know the area of your life that you are actually falling behind relative to the rest of the population. And it is an assessment designed to ensure that all areas of your life are thriving.

Yes, I love that so much. And you know, so many times I've gone back at just my journals and looked at things that felt like these, like lofty dreams and ambitions and being in the experience now. So I think it's so important to have things written so then you can actually go back and have gratitude for where you are. And I think because we as humans love to constantly progress and move forward and grow, it's hard for us to be happy where we are while also reaching for the future. I really love your seven step meditation that you teach and how it has these different elements to it. Can you share a little bit more about what that is?

Well, it's called the six phase meditation. There are six steps, not seven. So the six phase meditation has become really popular with American Spirit. It's been written about in Billboard and New York Times. It's completely free. Get it at mindvalley.com learn-meditation okay, so what the six phase does is it combines spirituality with modern science and teaches you a phased form of meditation. When 15 minutes. You do six different practices that basically put you in the optimal state for happiness, for bliss and for manifesting. The first is a practice to increase your level of compassion. The second is a practice of gratitude. The third is a practice of forgiveness. All of these are focused on present state. Remember, many spiritual people want to be blissful in the present. Great. The first three phases are about the present. The next three phases go beyond where many meditations stop. And that is where we get you envisioning the future. Phase four, you see your life three years ahead. Phase five, you'd see what you're going to do today for that three year vision to take hold. And phase six is where you ask for support from a higher power. So the six phase meditation puts you in an optimal state to really nurture your spiritual core and live life in a way where things move in your favor and you are able to bend reality.

So good. I've done it before and I absolutely love it. And I love how it integrates that. What can I do today for that future and balancing that long term, short term vision, Right?

Absolutely.

And I would love to know what is your vision for the future? What's your vision that you see humanity moving into and what is your vision for yourself?

Very good question. Well, mind is focused on two things right now. So on the surface, we are a personal growth company. Nope, that's only on the surface. What we're actually building is the world's most advanced education system. We're building a layer, a tech layer across the entire planet that is designed to bring out the best of our species. Now the vision, what we are aiming for, our 20 year vision, is this. Step number one, make humankind net positive to nature. What this means is that for every year human beings are on the planet, the planet gets better off. Off, not worse off. Today we are negative to nature. For every year we exist, nature suffers. We need to be integrated in a better way with the planet so that for every year humans are on this planet, all 10 billion of us, which is the peak number we are going to hit, Earth gets better off. The second thing is to bring forth, and this, some people are going to disagree with me, but that's only because they're looking at it from the current reality. I'm looking 20 years ahead. The second pillar is to bring about Earth Identity. What this means is to ensure that every human being on this planet sees themselves as a member of Planet Earth first, a member of their country second. When we colonize other planets, it shouldn't be the American flag on those rockets. It should be the Earth flag. So a kid in Mexico or a kid in Afghanistan or a kid in Thailand can look up and go, I belong the American flag. And any other flag that took part in that rocket, probably be hundreds. Secondary Earth Identity is essential. Right now. Most people would disagree with me on this one, and that's okay. But Earth Identity was predicted by Charles Darwin in 1872. I believe part of my sole mission is to bring it forth. Because only when we get to Earth Identity can we create a world where we don't waste trillions upon trillions of dollars on bullshit weapons of war to defend ourselves from each other. When the real enemy might be a pandemic or it might be politicians like Trump who arouse fear. Or it might be the fact that we have billions of people homeless and hungry and we pretend that they don't exist. That is what Earth Identity does. Mindvalley is a Trojan horse. What we are doing is embedding these ideas into our curriculum. Our curriculum is going to be everywhere. Your children will go to schools powered by Mindvalley. Your governments will be powered by mindvalley. Future companies will have Mindvalley for all their employees. That's where I'm playing. But the reason I'm doing all of this is for those two reasons. If we don't change the story of our species and the trajectory of humankind, we are done for. And so this vision is so important to me. This is what I'm obsessed with.

I gave me chills just hearing that, because it's exactly what we need. And it's also so inspiring to hear someone really claim, you know, claim their. Their sovereignty and their power and their abilities. And it inspires all of us to think so big. And also, you know, there's a sense of. Of comfort to know that there are people playing at this level who want what's best for humanity, because I think we constantly hear about the mega corporations this and that, but they don't have that same agenda. So thank you for stepping up into your dharma, for having that vision. We need it on all levels, from our school system to our government to our interpersonal relations. And I am excited to see this world unfold and this be a regular part of our lives where we're really asking ourselves how we're here to serve and then going out there and doing the thing.

Thank you.

Yes. So where can listeners connect with you further? Get your new book, the Buddha and the Badass. And of course, I will have the links for Mindvalley, but any place that you suggest that they start there, the.

Best place is just to go to mindvalley.com. all the information you need is over there. They can also follow me on Instagram. Vishen V I S H E N Perfect. I'm extremely active on Instagram.

Yes. I love all of your IGTVs and the insights that you share there. They are super badass. And thank you for incarnating on this planet at the same time of all of us and being that bridge and being that Trojan horse and making the world a better place.

Thank you. I appreciate that.

Sahara, thanks so much for being on. How wonderful was that episode. Vishen is so intelligent, and it was such an honor to have him here. So keep anchoring into what that butterfly you is, who it is you seek to emerge as, what practices resonate with you, what outfits you would wear, what music you would listen to, what intentions you would have, who you would surround yourself with, what education you'll be taking with you. Get to create that. You get to choose that. So when we say you choose your reality or your reality is a response of all of these micro decisions that you make on a daily basis.

So.

So choose them. And I'm not gonna say choose them wisely, because I feel like that puts some pressure on us, but choose with your heart. Listen to what your heart is guiding you to. Because your heart is naturally wise. It's in fact much wiser than your mind. So let your heart guide the way and you will always find your way to your Dharma if you loved this episode, I would love to send you a free gift which is the first half of my unreleased book book Eat Right for your Mind Body Type. This is a different book than Eat Feel Fresh, my first book ever which is not released anywhere and I am gifting it exclusively to those who leave a review of my podcast in the itunes store. So all you gotta do is head over to itunes where you may be listening to this podcast and leave a review, take a screenshot that you've left it and email it over to me@saharaetfeelfresh.com Again that's Sahara S A H A R A at e f feel fresh.com and I will send you back the first half of my unreleased book Eat Right for your mind body Type which goes all into Ayurveda, doshas, plant based nutrition, body types, all of the things in a really fun and engaging way. So this is my gift to you for free for supporting the podcast. Every single review I personally read. It really helps the podcast be listened to by more people so we can raise the vibration vibration of the planet together and I am so grateful to have you on this journey. Thank you so much for listening and I'll see you on the next episode. Namaste.

Sam.