From Ordinary to Extraordinary: The 5 Principles of true and lasting transformation

True success is not knowing what you're going to do next week. I started my career sitting cross legged. I'm a former meditation instructor. I started out as a VP in Silicon Valley, electrical engineering and computer science. But the stress of that day to day job caused me to break down. Long story short, I took a meditation class. It transformed me and I decided forget Silicon Valley, I want to teach meditation. So I quit my job as the vice president of a booming startup and became a meditation instructor. The problem is I was married at that time and I didn't get my wife's permission. And very rapidly our bank balance started collapsing. So I needed a way to turn this thing that I was into teaching meditation into a way to make money. Yes, but also reach more lives. And that's how mindvalley began. Now it's not been a quick journey. This journey has been almost 20 years. But in the course of the 20 years, with no venture capital, with no investors, with no bank loans, by really, really, really getting good at teaching, I was able to turn about $1,000 a month teaching meditation into a business that now generates close to 8 million a month. Transforming lives. And we did this from Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia and many of you I know are from developing countries and it's a lot more challenging there. And this is what I guess I'm most proud of. Now what I'm going to talk about is that art of changing lives. How did mindvalley become the world's biggest transformation platform? And we mean the world's biggest. We have 60 world class teachers teaching on Mindvalley. But there's a unique thing that we do that you can break down into a formula. And if you learn this formula, you can create a transformation in your audience. Even if you're entertaining or if you're teaching something as a fitness teacher or a coach, it's even more powerful. But when you can change a person's life, that is the ultimate flex. We are a transformation platform with many world class teachers teaching. But we don't just do media, we also focus on community now. But the third thing we do is we get results that stick. So you don't just get an idea and then forget about it. The idea sticks with you and it changes your life. If you go to our website, you will see there are 16,000 user submitted case studies. And that's just the people who bother to submit to our website. In the press, organically, people write about their MindValley transformation. Billboard magazine wrote about how the rapper Miguel meditates to mind meditation with his Entire crew. Before their concert, NFL Top 100 footballer Tony Gonzalez spoke about meditating to Mindvalley. Miss Universe 2014 spoke about how Mindvalley changed her life. And one of the most interesting case studies is this young 19 year old girl beat Serena Williams in the US Open. And when they asked her how she did it, Bianca Andreescu held up my book. This is what I mean by results that stick. Now, would you guys like to know the formula? Okay, first thing you got to know, you got to understand what is transformation. So now I'm going to get a little bit academic. I'm going to bring in research from the University of Toronto, combined with what I've discovered building this platform. So the first thing is this transformation is an irreversible shift to. Towards a greater understanding of the world. That's it. It's an irreversible shift. Once you learn the power of kindness, you don't go back, you don't revert to being an asshole. Right. Once you understand the importance of healthy eating and exercise, you don't revert back to your bad habits. True transformation is sticky. It's like the chewing gum at the bottom of your shoe. You cannot get it off you. Now let me give you an idea of a transformational shift that happened to me recently. And if you can create this type of shift with your audience, you build fans, loyalists, you change lives. So in my case, this is what happened. I was in Dubai around two and a half weeks ago, and a friend of a friend told me that I need to meet this man, and his name is Wayne, and he's literally a billionaire, and he lives at Princess Tower. And he took me out to his balcony and showed me the view. And that was the view I was looking at. My God, this was the most incredible apartment I'd ever been in. This is probably the most incredible view I've ever seen. I live in Thailand, Estonia, where the tallest building is like three stories high. It's a medieval city. But as Wayne was showing me this view, he transformed me in two minutes with the following conversation. Wayne said, vishen, you want to know what it takes to being a billionaire? And I said, what? And he says, Work 18 hours a week. So I'm like, what? And he goes, I mean that you must work 18 hours a week. You must figure out how to make your work so automatic that you only work six hours on Tuesday, six hours on Wednesday, six hours on Thursday, Monday and Friday must be free. So I was puzzled by this. It sounded counterintuitive because we always think These people work ridiculous amounts of hours. Then Wayne continued, he said, true success is not knowing what you're going to do next week. So I was confused by this. He said, if a friend calls me up and said, hey, come hang out with me in Tulum, I can say, no problem. I can hop on a plane Thursday night, be in Tulum, be back Monday night, and then get my work done on Tuesday. He said, true success is having that flexibility of life, is not having plans that lock you down. And if you can do that, you have so much freedom to think, to think big, to be creative, to think about how you can grow your business, but aim to work 18 hours a week. That conversation shifted me. In just a few minutes, I changed my worldview, and it was an irreversible shift. My goal right now is to work 18 hours a week. Now, this is deliberate transformation. It is very rare that we meet a sensei or a master or we read a book that causes this type of transformation. You see, for most people, transformation is messy and random. But here's the interesting thing, right? The best people in the world are people who often go through a transformation. This is an extract from a book called Exponential Organizations by by Salim Ismail. And Salim said Google did a study. And Google found that its best people were not STEM graduates. Rather, they were young people who went through a crisis, and this crisis made them transform. Maybe it was that they went through a divorce and then they understood truly how to be in a good relationship. Or maybe they went bankrupt, as I have been, and they then understood truly how to build a business. Or they ended up in hospital and then they understood truly how to nurture their health. For most people, transformation happens according to the University of Toronto in two ways. First is a disorienting dilemma. Something in your life messes you up. It's like the Rumi said, right? Oh ye, who cannot take a good rub. How will you ever become a polished gem? It is the rubbings of life. But the second thing is gradual accumulation of evolving meaning schema over time. And basically, that means occasional conversations with inspiring people who give you a taste of wisdom. So this is how most people transform. And as a result, for most people, transformation is slow. It's really, really, really slow. They grow slowly and they grow painfully. As influencers, you can serve the world by helping your audience transform without the pain and without the randomness. So here's how you do it. To understand this, you got to understand how good teachers teach. Okay? So good teachers, all the great teachers that I bring to mindvalley, from sadhguru to Jim Kwik to Marisa Peer to programs like wildfit and Lifebook all do two things. They introduce what I call new models of reality. New models of reality that disrupt an outdated paradigm and give you a new belief about how the world works. But the second thing they do is they give you daily habits. These are called systems for living. You know, brushing your teeth is a system for living. Doing morning exercise is a system for living. My conversation with Wayne, it was a model of reality because he disrupted my paradigm that it was hard work that was going to make me a billionaire. It was a system of living if he showed me how to automate my time, which he did not do. So I still got to have a talk with little talk with him. But. But that's my quest. Right now I'm trying to figure out the exact systems of living on how to automate my time. Now here's example from a very popular Talk on the Mindvalley channel. So Mindvalley Talks is a YouTube channel and we have long form talks, like one hour long stage presentations. Now here, this is Jim Kwik. This Talk has had 14 million views. You see what he's saying over there? Creativity is not something you have, it's something you do. That's a model of reality. He's giving people a new belief system around creativity. Now this is a system of living. He's teaching people an exercise to improve brain cognition. You guys get the difference now. So you must do both. Weak teachers will do only one. They will only teach you the exercise, but they don't give you the belief. Or they give you the belief, but they don't tell you how to enact that belief. You must do both. Okay, so that's the first tip. Now the second tip is how do you do both in the most effective way? And this is a model that we use when we design courses. So maybe you are teaching a course on teachable or maybe you are trying to create a long form video to transform a life. Or you're trying to create a video that can change and rally people around a course. These five tips will have you, will help you. So the five tips are this Critical reflection, critical study and writing, social discourse, rate of application, altered states. These are five ways to create transformation in a human being. And I have 3 minutes and 36 seconds left. So we're going to go super fast. So I really hope you guys are genius or you guys write really fast. The first one is this critical reflection. It turned out according to the university of Toronto. This is the number one thing that creates transformation. So in academic theory, meaning making process, which allows you to scaffold larger frames of reference with which to extract more meaningful and useful interpretations from the same experience. You guys got that? Absolutely not. So let me tell you, reflection is this. Reflection is. If me as a teacher ask you the following question. What is the biggest aha you got from yesterday? That's reflection. That's not enough. Critical reflection is this. What have you realized you've been missing or doing wrong since yesterday? Critical reflection. So when you teach, when you do a video, you ask the person to self disrupt what they believe the world was about? A critical reflection. So one of the things, one of my critical reflections, and I was talking to Beer Biceps. I was listening to him talk and I was trying to cut down on the number of podcast episodes I was doing. And Beer Biceps said something really interesting. When he's doing a podcast, he isn't just creating content. It's like reading a book. He's learning and he's creating content and ideas that he's going to be able to bring to his audience six months down the road. And that made me realize, wow, maybe I shouldn't be cutting down my podcast. Maybe that was a wrong decision. That's critical reflection. Can you create that in your audience? Okay, now the second one is critical study and writing. This is the most common. This is what happens when you watch a TED Talk. It's what happens when you are, when you are watching a mindvalley video, when you are watching. When you're reading a book. This is where storytelling style, hooks, etc. All come in. Okay, so all of you guys who are content creators have your own tools that you use. My favorite in terms of this is something called show me. Don't tell me. This is where I actually use objects to make a point. So in my country of Malaysia, Nestle is a horrible company that puts out really awful advertising inducing young Malaysians to eat lots of sugar. This is why Malaysia is the fattest country in Asia. So I once created a video where I took a can of Nestle's Milo and I wanted to show how much of this can was filled with sugar. It was right there on the ingredients list, 40%. But people didn't get it. So the show me, don't tell me technique means rather than me say it, I took a blue marker and I colored 40% of the can in blue. This video went viral. 50 million views. It blew up among Asian WhatsApp groups. Because if you're Asian. You know, every family has, like, three WhatsApp groups. And it became the biggest story in Malaysia, and I almost got sued, but the end result was Nestle lost its health certification for Milo in Australia and New Zealand. They could no longer say that this was healthy. But it all started because of show me. Don't tell me. I showed. I visually demonstrated it. Okay, now the next one. Social discourse. Social discourse is when you bring people together for community. So we built a simple app where our community can come and share notes. You can use Facebook for this. We even do, like, real world, real world things where our community comes together in cities. Number four is rate of application. Rate of application means when you learn something, you do it. So back to the story of that billionaire, Wayne. Remember what he said? If I'm invited to go somewhere, I can just say yes and fly out. On Thursday night, as I was sitting with Wayne well into midnight, he said, you know, I got to fly to Istanbul in two days. And then he looked at me and I'm like, maybe I'll come with you. That is rate of application. He told me to keep my Friday free, and I did. I flew to Istanbul with him, and there I just met the most amazing people. When you learn something, act on it immediately. And when you teach your students, get them to act on it immediately. So those are four. The final one, very, very simple. Altered states. This is where you bring in meditation, you bring in breath work, you bring in any type of thing that lets you talk to your subconscious. I did a podcast interview with with the founder of GoDaddy, and he spoke about how altered state training, in his case, it was psychedelics. I do not recommend you recommend that, but it helped him recover from 50 years of PTSD in three days. But anyone, if you're an exercise instructor, if you are teaching even creativity, you can use meditations, hypnotherapy, breath work, any type of subconscious training to change people from the inside. This is really the secret of designing powerful transformations for your audience. Because remember, true influencers don't just get views. They create better humans. Thank you, Sam.