5 Principles (Proven by Science) That Instantly Boost Your Performance at Work | Vishen Lakhiani

Have you ever wondered, is there some sort of science that would give you the answer on what exactly you need to do at work to get recognized, to get that next raise, to climb up in terms of your level in a company, to even give your best work to the world if you work for yourself? Well, there is a lot of science on this. And one of the foremost thinkers I pay attention to when I'm trying to understand how to give my best at work is a guy by the name of Steven Kotler. Perhaps you've heard of him. He wrote some of the most significant books of the last seven years, including Abundance, Bold, Rise of Superman, and Stealing Fire. Steven Kotler has been studying for years and years to try to understand scientifically what it takes to be the best you can at your work. And there are five things that he looks at. Now. His newest work where he integrates these five elements is called the Habit of Ferocity. We're so excited because we're going to be bringing this to mindvalley. But what I want to do in this video is share with you really quickly the five principles of the Habit of Ferocity that you can integrate in your company and in your life this week itself that will change the way you function at work. So the first one is motivation. Then there's flow, risk taking, learning, and grit. Now, the first thing I want you to understand is that the word ferocity may seem fierce, it may seem aggressive. That is not what Stephen is talking about. Rather, when you embrace the habit of ferocity, all it means is that you are fierce towards your goals, but you're doing it in a state of ease and flow and gentleness, where it's almost as if it's a beautiful dance. So what are the five qualities of the Habit of Ferocity? Well, the first one is motivation. Now, motivation comes from knowing purpose. So if you wanted to rapidly boost motivation in any company and get people more engaged in what they do, more excited about their job, and this applies to you as well. Here's a simple hack that Steven Kotler and Daniel Pink speak about, and it's called Reminding yourself of the Big Purpose. So here's what we do at Mindvalley. One of the fastest ways to remind you of your purpose is to ensure that you that you are paying attention to how you change customer lives. So many people who work in larger companies are not directly in touch with the customer, and so they may be doing great work, but they don't see those lives changed. One of the things we do is we have a person within Mindvalley. Her name is Marta and her full time job is to be a tribe storyteller. Marta travels around the world, films stories of our customers, puts them on a YouTube channel called the Mindvalley Tribe. And you know what, these stories don't just inspire other customers, primarily they serve inspire our team. At every weekly company gathering, Marta is the first person on stage sharing stories and slides of how we changed our customers lives. Now can you do this in your work? If you do, what you're gonna see is a big rise in motivation. Now the second is a term called flow. Now flow is a really powerful idea that brings out the best in you. But here's what Kotler says. To get in a state of flow, you gotta have a challenge that's slightly above your skill level. If the challenge is too high, you feel anxiety. If the challenge is too low, you get bored. The optimal amount of challenge above your skill level according to Kotler is 4%. So how do we put ourselves in flow? Simple. You give yourself a goal that is slightly beyond what you know right now. So many people set goals based on who they are right now and what they know right now. The problem is that leads to stagnation. You want to set your goal for what you are going to learn, who you are going to be. A classic example of how we do it here in Mindvalley is this amazing woman, Ola. Ola is someone who organizes our events all around the world. But what's unique about her is every time she nails the formula for an event and she makes it successful and almost automated, she sets her sights on putting on an event in a new country and in a new region. Even though she knows she might fail now by giving herself such a challenge, she is continuously excited about her job. And best of all, she pushes herself to get keep growing and growing and growing. Now the third element is risk taking. Risk taking is really interesting within our company. What we do for risk taking is to ensure that everyone who's leading a team sets a goal for the year that they know they have a 50% chance of failing at. So let's think about this for a moment. You're not just setting goals that you are aiming to hit. You're setting at least one out of four goals that must have a 50% chance of failing. Failing. And if you are not failing, you're probably not thinking big enough. You're probably not taking enough risk. A classic example here is Clement, who works at Mindvalley. Clemen looks at potential ideas for new experimental apps that we can launch. He's working on one right now. It may take off and be huge. It could also likely fail. But it doesn't matter. His job is to take that risk. And there is no punishment, there's no dishonor. If you fail, you celebrate that failure and what you learned, and you move on. So risk taking is an essential part of the habit of ferocity. The fourth concept is rapid learning. It means constantly making yourself learn to become a better and better and better human being. One of the most beautiful things I've seen in terms of learning is a guy in our company called K. Mingalani. So while holding down an important job at Mindvalley, he was dashing off on weekends to university to study for his emba. And he became the youngest person in his class to finish that emba. And when he completed and got that degree, he brings it back into the company. And every few weeks or so, he holds classes for everyone else in the company to teach them what he learned in his emba. Not only is he learning, but everyone else is learning. Not surprisingly, he's had an incredible trajectory in the company and become one of our most valuable people. And finally, perseverance. Or as Kotler calls it, grit. So grit is one of the things that we often forgot that we need to as a peak performer. When you're trying to do something big, there are going to be road bumps on the way. So how do you overcome those road bumps? There are numerous ways. One of the things that we do here is the practice of gratitude. So our learning experience design team is constantly looking at creating the best learning systems in the world. We want to have the world's greatest learning platforms. Now, that is not an easy task. And when you're working with so many different technologies and authors, you hit road bumps. It can get stressful. So what the team does is that every morning before they start their day, they get on slack and they share what they're grateful for. Everybody celebrates one tiny aspect of their life that lit them up. And by sharing it with everyone else, they light up the rest of the team. This gives fuel. Gratitude gives fuel to give you more grit and passionate perseverance. So those five ideas, when you put them together, give you a recipe for the habit of ferocity. I hope you saw some value in them, and I tried to give you really simple, tangible examples so that you can bring this into your workplace and your company as soon as this week. But if you want to go further, if you want to really master the habit of ferocity, check out the new masterclass that I just filmed with Steven Kotner. It's absolutely free, it's brilliant, it's hilarious, and I think you're going to get a ton out of it, Sam.