Vishen Lakhiani describes five emotional states people chase daily—focus/flow, calm/ease, bliss/happiness, intimacy/connection, and sleep—and argues these states arise from two interacting components: biochemistry (e.g., supplements) and learned emotion (how the brain interprets bodily signals). He illustrates with examples: using supplements and Oura tracking for sleep, cognitive behavioral therapy for insomnia, and a university GRE reappraisal study where reframing anxiety improved scores. He closes by inviting viewers to a free Mindvalley masterclass (guest: supplement scientist Sean Welts) presenting bioengineered molecules and tools to master these states.
Questions this video answers
Approximately 9% improvement (scores rose from around 710 to 770).
Sean Welts.
Completely free.
Chapters
There are five feelings that we want to feel every single day. And we go through relentless amounts of time and money to capture these feelings. The first, most important feeling is focus is flow. It's when you got to get work done and you want to be able to get your mind to fully focus on the task at hand. This is an important feeling. We often attempt to chase this with coffee. The second state we chase is the ability to just calm the down after a really crazy busy day at work. Some of us meditate, some of us go off for a long lunch break. We just need to reduce our stress levels and be able to sink into ease again. This is so important for creative thinking, for being able to access alpha states, for ideation. But for many people, this is hard. It is hard to calm down, then post work, especially on weekends. There's the chasing of bliss. This is where we socialize with friends, often with alcohol, just so we can feel happy and delighted again. Nothing wrong with chasing happiness, but for many of us, chasing happiness involves a lot of drinking. Then there's human connection. We chase intimacy. We chase connection on date nights when we're connecting with a loved one with a glass of wine. Intimacy is a beautiful state, but sometimes we need a little bit of help to really get there. Then there's sleep. Sleep can be a challenge for so many people. We chase sleep in countless, many ways. The worst of it, sleeping pills. Now, here's the thing you got to realize, when it comes to all of these states, two components are coming together inside us to decide the state that we're in. The first is biochemistry. I'll explain that in a moment. And the second is a concept called learned emotion, or basically how your brain cognitively interprets the feelings of what's going on inside your body. These two components, biochemistry and learned emotion, come together and you get a feeling. And feelings are important. By being able to manage your feelings, your emotions, you change the way you experience life. Those of you, for example, who follow the work of Esther Hicks and read about concepts like manifesting, might remember the scale of emotions, where the spiritual teacher Esther Hicks talks about how when you can elevate your emotions, you move towards a life where more of what you desire seems to come to you. But how do you elevate these emotions? Well, it's not just mental control, it's not just mastery, it's not meditating in an ashram for 20 years. The simplest way is biochemistry plus learned emotion. Come over here. Every single product that you see on this shelf is to help with sleep. These are all scientifically proven supplements that help one sleep. I've been testing all of these because sleep is so important to me. And with my Oura ring, I wanted to determine what supplementation creates the best sleep. But while supplements help, there's a second component that helps with sleep, and that is how your brain understands sleep. In the book say Goodbye to Insomnia, the author speaks about how cognitive behavioral theory, in six weeks can take someone who is a suffering insomniac and allow them to sleep again. Basically, sleep is not just a function of your biochemistry. It's a function of how your brain understands the concept of sleep. What are your beliefs about sleep? Even ideas such as, do you think you are sleeping well? Now, a lot of you have heard about the first component, supplementation, but you really gotta understand the concept of how mindset comes into play. I want to share with you this incredible study. This study has to do with stress. So a university researcher noticed that his college kids would experience the same biochemical reactions in their body, whether they were running onto a football field to play a game or about to sit for an exam. You know, you would get a little bit sweaty in your palms, your heart rate would start racing, you would feel a tenseness, your brain waves would move into beta. Same biochemistry, but in one situation, it's labeled excitement. In the other situation, it's labeled anxiety. So he decided to do an experiment. He had a group of students sitting for the GRE exam, and he made the students who were sitting for this exam read this note just before starting the exam. People think that feeling anxious while taking a standardized test will make them do poorly on the tests. However, recent research suggests that arousal doesn't hurt performance on these tests and can even help performance. People who feel anxious during a test might actually do better. This means that you shouldn't feel concerned if you do feel anxious while taking today's GRE test. If you find yourself feeling anxious, simply remind yourself that your arousal could be helping you do well. That's it. Turns out the people who read that Note, they did 9% better on the GRE. Their scores went up from around 710 to 770. All because of that note. Why? Because they learned to process what was going on in their mind in a different way. They learned a different way to understand their emotions. So if you find these ideas interesting, and if you want to know how to access those five states, I spoke about in the most effective way, using the right biochemistry, meaning the supplements that really work, including new bioengineered molecules, and some of the best tools for learned emotion. I would like to invite you to join me in a special masterclass that's going to be running shortly on mindvalley Completely free. I'll be bringing in as a guest supplement scientist Sean Welts and I'll be sharing a new solution from mindvalley that I've been working on with my team for the last three years to give people absolute mastery over their emotional states. This means focus on demand. It means being able to sleep well. It means being able to activate feelings of bliss without alcohol if that's what you want. It means being able to create greater feelings of intimacy with the man or woman that you love. And it even means being able to reduce anxiety and stress and be able to relax whenever you just need to calm down. So the date and time for the masterclass is in the link below this video. I hope to see you there. I think this is going to be absolutely mind blowing for many of you.
