Vishen Lakhiani argues that language shapes what we see. The Himba tribe has multiple words for green but no word for blue; Russian speakers have two words for blue. Learning richer vocabularies in any domain, from exercise to meditation, trains you to notice finer details.
Chapters
I want you to look at the circle of green squares and tell me, can you spot which square stands out from the others? Odds are you can, because there's one square here with a tiny difference in its shade of green. But most human beings can spot it. That is, unless you belong to the Himba tribe of Namibia. You see, in the Himba language, there are 19 words for the color green. And scientists studying the Himba found that the Himba could easily see which square stood out, because since they had 19 words for the color green, their eyes were able to perceive nuances of green that most people can't see. But here's the curious thing. Scientists showed the Himba people this particular circle with one square that we perceive as blue. The Himba, you see, have no word for the color blue. They could not spot the blue square, which is really interesting. The Himba, with no word for color blue, couldn't see that blue square. And that leads to the question, do we only see things if we have a word for it? This question has been really intriguing to me. I dug up some other research. I found that Russian speakers are better at spotting the differences in shades of blue than English speakers, because in Russian, there are two words for the color blue. In English, we just say blue, but in Russian, there's koloboi and sini. Please don't get mad at me if I mispronounce that. I'm not a Russian speaker. But Russians have two words for the color blue. And in studies, Russian speakers are roughly 5 to 6% better at sporting different shades of blue than English speakers. Which means that when we have a richer vocabulary, we're able to see more nuance and we're able to perceive the world in a different way. In the 80s, for example, right, people thought of exercise as being good. Today, our knowledge of exercise is so much deeper. We. We know that there's high intensity interval training. There is yoga, there is aerobics, there's Zumba. There are so many different types of exercise, and all of them have their different pros and cons. And depending on what result you want, you would go into a specific form of exercise. Likewise, we used to have one word for meditation. Today, there are so many different forms of meditation. There's the six phase meditation, there's active meditation, passive meditation, the silver method. Each one has a different nuance. When we learn nuances, when we improve our vocabulary, we're able to perceive the world in different ways. We show up better in the world, and we have an advantage in the world that's the key thing. The question is, how do you collect more words? How do you see nuance? Well, I do it by talking to leading thinkers in the world and understanding how their unique vocabularies of how they perceive the world. And when I learn their vocabularies, when I learn the nuances they see the words they have, it enriches my experience of the world. And I'm able to show up differently, take better decisions and reach my goal faster because I have more clarity, more vision, more nuance. This is part of a philosophy I call Consciousness Engineering. It is the the act of rapidly studying major thinkers out there, descrambling what they are saying and incorporating their learnings into your being. This is one of the reasons why I'm able to work with so many different personal growth teachers and integrate knowledge and pull things together and write books like the Code of the Extraordinary Mind or the Buddha and the Badass, or start massive companies like mindvalley. It is the integration. You can do the same. And if you want to learn my method of learning, join me in this masterclass this week on mindvalley, completely free. It's called Consciousness Engineering. And what you're going to learn is how to develop the nuances in terms of your perception of every dimension of human development so that you can make the best decisions for your growth. I'll see you in this masterclass.
