Hikmat Wehbi Podcast #202 Vishen Lakhiani ڤيشين لاخيانى

Yo, Mark nine. They really don't think we can keep doing this. Maybe I'll move this mic a little bit.

The breathing, the everything.

Yes. I like it.

You hear the breathing. Does this help in kind of meditation? I mean how is hearing. How is the voice will affect us in how we feel. Sometimes we use music.

That's true.

And. Or we listen.

Yeah.

To other people. You know, we have a good microphone so we can listen to each other.

I love the microphone. It's. And it's sure.

Yes, it's sure. SM7 Sure. I see they went viral after Pandemic. Everyone wants to start a podcast and they usure, right? Yes.

Amazing.

It's a beautiful name. Sure.

Yeah.

What are you sure about?

Right. The microphone.

Yes.

I like it.

And you Vishen, what are you sure about in life?

Are we recording? Have we started? I'm sure that life is going to be amazing.

Why do we always have the anxiety? And it's usually from the future. For me it's from the future, but it's always relate to the past.

Anxiety related to the past.

Anxiety is like the base of why you have anxiety is probably because you had an experience in the past where your childhood. But the anxiety comes is what's. We are always feared of. What's. What's things from the things that we don't know about. It's always we are. Have anxiety from the future.

Yeah. And your question is, why do we have anxiety from the future? For the future.

Because you said I'm sure it's going to be an exciting or an amazing future.

And that's because I don't have anxiety anymore. I did. I don't anymore. And you know why? I had a. I have a mentor. And I think one of the things I'm grateful for in my life is that I've been able to have really good mentors in life because of running Mindvalley and being able to work with so many amazing teachers and authors and inspiring individuals. And one of his mentors is this university professor called Sri Kumar Rao and he's this guy from India and he moves to the US and he becomes a famous university professor and he's teaching in Kellogg and Columbia University and people are lining up to get into his classes. You have to get on a wait list to go and study with this man. And so I approached this man, I had him do a program for Mindvalley and we became friends and we would talk a lot. And one of the things he told me is he said, you know, beliefs shape our world. What you believe about the world is going to be true for you, right? And we see this right now with medicine. If we believe something about our health, it impacts our health. We all know this. It's called a placebo effect. But I asked Sri Kumarao what is the most important belief, and he said the most important belief in his mind that any human being can have is the belief of a benevolent universe. And what he means by that is the belief that the universe or God is watching out for you. So if you believe in God, change that line to a benevolent God. That God of the universe is watching out for you, is protecting you. And anything that happens to you is happening not to you, but for you. There's a meaning for it. There's a reason for it.

Let's see.

I'll say it again. Sorry about that.

It's fine.

And that anything that's happening to you is happening for you, for a greater meaning. I have that belief. It didn't come easy. I didn't always have that belief, but I have that belief now. And I gotta say, it puts that anxiety away. I don't experience anxiety really for anything right now, even for my own debt.

You said always that the. The mind can change the body or can cure the body. And this is how you started, like in this journey.

Exactly. Right.

Is wherever you believe in, it actually can affect your life, your body, and can make a change.

Exactly, yeah.

And is it something that we have hope in things and then we manifest them and then they come to us and then our life will change? Or does it have a direct effect, really on ourselves?

So let me tell you the reality. Your mind has a greater impact on your body than many medicines that you take. And in some cases, a greater impact on your body than even intervention that involves surgery. So we've all heard of the placebo effect. You have a pain, a doctor gives you a pill. The pill is just water and sugar, but the pain goes away. Why? Because you believe the pill works. But our ability for our mind to impact our body is so, so, so powerful. It can also influence things that require surgery. So there was a famous study that the New York Times wrote about in 2013, a doctor called J.B. mosley. He was aware that many men, men over 50, go for surgery to remove arthritis pain in the knees. So he wanted to see is the surgery really causing the pain to go away? He had a theory, a radical theory, that the pain was going away because the men believed the surgery helped. But the surgery did nothing. So he did an experiment. He got 10 men. And he told them all they were going to get free surgery for arthritis of the knee. These were all veterans, US Veterans, meaning ex military soldiers. Eight of the men, they got a fake surgery, a sham surgery. So they put the men under anesthesia, they made little slits on their knee, they bandaged it up, they sewed it up. The men, they woke up, there was these cuts on their knee, there was bandages with blood. They were convinced they had the surgery. And two people actually had the real surgery for knee arthritis. After a month, every single one had their knees cured. The two people who had the surgery were cured. The eight people who had the fake surgery, they were also cured. And J.B. mosley's work, like, dazzled the medical community, because the medical community began to realize just how powerful the placebo effect is, our mind over our body. And now we see this in a stunning way. For example, I just read this study. You know, sometimes people get sick. You're in a hospital. This happened to my father recently, right? So my father was recovering from. From. From cancer. And I love my dad. And as he was recovering, he wasn't getting a chance to walk much, so his legs got weaker. And so after his recovery period, he couldn't walk very far because the muscles shrank. This happens to a lot of people, even happens to young people. But scientists studied the simple fact. People who were in bed, they would visualize themselves walking for a few minutes. And if they just visualize themselves walking, their muscle loss is 50% less. Can you imagine that? 50% less? Not from walking, from visualizing yourself walking. It shows just how powerful the mind is. Your mind can heal you of things that require surgery. Your mind can slow down illness, slow down things like muscle loss. Your mind has an amazing command over your body, and this is something everyone should realize. When you worry about becoming sick, you are actually more likely to become sick. You can. But if you believe you're going to be healthy, that your body heals itself, if you have a belief that you sleep well and your sleep is rejuvenating, you will actually experience the impact of better sleep. It turns out it gets crazier, Hikmah, it gets wilder. People who believe that they didn't get a good night's sleep, even if scientists studying them actually show that they slept well the next day, they won't perform well. If they had a bad night's sleep and you believe you had a good night's sleep the next day, you will perform well.

And I believe, I believe in that. I especially, I believe, like, if if you kind of victimize yourself, if you always, like, think, oh, I'm going to get sick, you actually can get sick, right? You know, and then it's not only you can cure yourself if you believe that you can cure yourself, but you can get sick if you're always, you know, under that victim mentality, under that weakness that, that the world is against me and always that negative thinking it can actually bring. Right, you know, like weaknesses and sickness to you. To you.

Yeah. And so, so many people are crazy about biohacking. People are spending incredible amounts of money on highly expensive medical devices, on procedures. Is it the procedure or is it the fact that you are spending that money and you believe that the procedure works? In short, everything works if you believe it works. Your ancestors who worked with witch doctors, the witch doctors actually healed them, but it wasn't magic. It was because their minds believed it work. So you go and you buy this expensive biohacking device for maybe 10, $20,000. Is the device healing you or is it the belief that the device heals you? Right. And that's the fascinating thing about the world today. We're beginning to see just how powerful our minds are in impacting our body. Now, you want to know something really wild? Your mind can also impact another person's body. If I think positively of you and I send you good thoughts, your body will respond even if we are not in the same room, even if we are on different ends of the planet. So you want to hear another really radical study? Okay. Professor William Brought at the San Antonio Minds and Mind Science center did the study in the 1970s. So he took about 700 people. He divided them into two groups. He had one group in a room and they were receivers, and another group was in a room and they were senders. Now, the receivers were hooked up to 19 to machines that measured 19 different biological markers. Okay, so you're measuring skin resistance, you're measuring heart rate, you're measuring breathing rate, you're measuring stress level. That was for the receivers. The senders were in a separate room. The senders were paired up with the receiver. They couldn't see each other. They were in different rooms. And at a specific point, say 2:06pm, the senders were told, okay, think good thoughts about your partner, about your receiver. And they would think good thoughts. They would imagine they were sending energy. And at exactly that time, the receivers, they would see changes in the machines. Changes like things, for example, you know, when you are less stressed, you actually have. You have actually less skin resistance. So they would see that the biomarkers were showing that the person was getting more relaxed, that the person was getting less stressed, that their heart rate was becoming more healthy, that their breathing rate was slowing down when they were being beamed through time and space. These positive thoughts. Your mind doesn't just influence your body at a wider level. We are deeply connected, even if we are strangers. And your mind can influence someone else.

Oh, that's stunning. That's amazing. But to what level? We should be taking this as, as a rule to. In our life, you know, how much we have to follow the physics, we have to follow the medicine, we have to follow, you know, life, it's ups and downs. We have to drive our car.

Let's, let's talk about that. So firstly, you're speaking about it like it's something paranormal. No. Nassim Haramin, the physicist, said spirituality is nothing more than physics. We have yet to find an equation for. Does science know everything? No. Can science explain God? Can science explain why prayer sometimes heals people? Science cannot explain everything. But if we choose to live in a world where we refuse to accept anything that science can't explain, that's a bloody boring world. Now, I'm not saying ignore the science. And by the way, everything I cited is science. I told you about the, the arthritis of the knee study. That was science, Dr. J.B. mostly studied that. I'm even giving you the name of the scientist so you can look it up. The, the distance effect, okay? Influencing the biology of another person at a distance. I gave you the scientist name, Dr. J.B. mosley. There are books on this. You can read it up. This is science. So science can show that the phenomenon is real. Can science explain it? No. We have theories. But there are lots of things science can't explain we don't fully understand, but we know it's real. We don't fully understand string theory, but we kind of know. I mean, it's literally a theory. We don't really, really, really, really understand lots of things about the universe. We don't really understand the concept of scrotting a scat, but we know these things are real. So there's a difference between science showing it's real and we understanding how it works. Science is showing this is real. Science is showing intuition is real. Science is show mind, body healing effect is real. For example, no drug in America can be released unless it's tested against a placebo. Why? Because the placebo effect is real. But can we explain it? No. That's what we can't do. But Just because you can't explain something doesn't mean you can't use it. I mean think about your ancestors 500 years ago. We used the sun for navigation. We used the sun to grow food. We used the sun for warmth. Did anyone know what the sun was? No. They thought it was a giant orb of fire in the sky or the, the God Apollo racing across the sk. His chariot. They couldn't explain the sun, but they could use the sun. We can't explain mind body healing, but we can sure use it.

Yes, it's true in, in the practical world and especially let's say in the, in the corporate world.

Right.

I mean we struggle with this, you know, feelings how to use, how to be com. Compassionate with each other while the systematic corporate world or the, or the business doesn't allow that. It's just like they. It as a fashion or, or something that they going to put a flag that we are let's say empowering women or we are, we have a game room or a relaxing room in our. It's only big corporation that they start to put it and it's, you don't know how much it's like actually they believe in it or just it's a, it's something that they, you know, it's a quota. They have to do it in terms of like being nice with each other or having some more vacation to other people or you know, all, all these things. In the corporate world sometimes practically it doesn't work. What works for them is longer hours. What's worse for them is not true is, is that's what's been tested, you know. But the, the backlash and the fight of people asking we need to have more compassion. Women rights are actually helped in that like you know, we, we can't be 100 equal, equally treated as physically as, as we. As we are, but we should be equally treated.

Right?

In a different way and which opened the door that we need to be more compass. Compassion at work. I mean this is a practice that I do in my business.

Right.

But in the practical world how much we can implement all of this.

So again, let's look at science because there's this tendency in the world to say all of these is unscientific and this is rubbish. I can give you the science for all of this phenomenon. So let's break down what you're asking. You're asking about compassion at work and you're asking about the, the relationship between productivity and output at work. Okay, so let's look at productivity and output pre AI, Germans, okay? German people versus American people. Americans get on average two days off a year. It's pathetic. I don't know how you can, you can survive with just getting two weeks of holiday. Sorry, not two days, two weeks. Two weeks of holiday. A Germans get anywhere from four to six. Four to six weeks of holiday. German worker productivity pre age of AI was higher than American worker productivity. And German workers have better rights. Less hours, more holidays, their productivity is higher. This is the reality. Human beings are not pure input output machines. You cannot just push a human being to work non stop and say this is going to increase productivity. We are human for a reason. We are not robots. Now why I say pre AI is because with the advent of AI, different countries are seeing different changes in productivity based on how much they're using AI. Right. By the way, you know the country with the highest percentage of its population using AI right now, is it the uae? Not, it's Morocco. Morocco, you know, the second country, highest percentage of its population, India. So which is kind of crazy. So different countries have different AI adoption rates based on cultural attitudes and so on. I don't know what's up with Moroccans but they seem to really love AI. So if you take out AI, there is no relationship between the amount of holidays and productivity. Now obviously if you give someone six months of holidays we might see an adverse relationship. But I think American companies would do better if they gave their workers more time off. So that's one. Now we can go on to the other aspects. Compassion at work and the fluffy stuff at work. There's so much evidence that that actually matters. This is why more and more companies are doing it. If it didn't work, you wouldn't see Silicon Valley companies adopting these practices.

And I love the fact that you said being compassionate to other is actually not doing good for others. You're doing good for yourself. And, and the fact that you are treating other with, with, with love, with compassion is actually you are doing good things for you because it manifests itself and it returns back to you. And you gave an example, a beautiful example for the work in the, in the, in the restaurant that you tipped her. Although you didn't have a good service at that time, but you felt like, okay, I mean I have to tip her because she, she worked hard. Although I didn't get the result. But how, how do we get that.

For, for ourselves that that story went viral? I didn't tip the waitress because she worked hard. No, I tip the waitress because in my mind and how I see the world. We're all human beings. We're all deeply connected. And I could see that she was going through a really delicate situation. May I share the story for your audience that may not know it? So it's a story I wrote about my book, the Six Phase Meditation. And it has to do with compassion. I said that compassion is a muscle. We can train ourselves to be compassionate. The human mind is a really funny thing. We are extremely judgmental. We look at a human being, they do one thing wrong, and we label them right. So you see, you see a. A guy who is maybe grumpy, maybe he had an issue with his wife. Maybe, you know, his boss yelled at him, and he's just grumpy as he's ordering coffee. And you label him forever the grumpy man. But that's a really unfair of looking at human beings. We don't look at all of the other wonderful moments in this man's life. We look at a tiny slice, and that becomes the label. Now, I try to avoid that, and I think all of us should. So I was in a restaurant, and covet had just ended, and I went to a restaurant with a friend of mine, and everyone was rushing the restaurants because they had just opened. So I'm. We're there standing in line. It takes 20 minutes to get in. Now we get in. It takes another 10 minutes to sit down. Now we sit down and I order my usual omelette with. With, you know, with. With some sausage on the side and some avocado and a cup of coffee.

And.

And the waitress brings the coffee, but forgets to hand it to me. She puts it on the counter far away. And I'm sitting there craving my coffee, wishing I could, like, just grab that coffee. And finally, when I get the waiter's attention and she brings me the coffee, it's gone cold. And who wants cold coffee, right? So I have to ask for another cup. It takes another 20 minutes. Now I get my eggs. The avocado is missing. So it's a complete disaster. So at the end of it, we're about to leave, and I tip the waitress. This was in Europe. The bill was maybe €30. I tipped the waitress €50. So my friend asked me, what are you doing? She doesn't deserve that. The service was horrible. And I said, well, there's another way to look at it. And that is we just came out of COVID That waitress, she could be a mother. And maybe during COVID she didn't have a job. Maybe she didn't get paid. Her boss probably couldn't pay her because the restaurants couldn't open, and who knows how much she was suffering. And now she's finally back at work and she has to walk around with a mask. That must be so uncomfortable. While we didn't need a mask, she needed one. And she's dealing with this massive influx of customers, and the restaurant hasn't expanded their wait staff. It's not because she's incompetent. She's just busy. She's doing her best to serve all of these people who are trying to come to a restaurant because Covid just ended. And that's why I'm tipping her $50, because she's doing her best. And because we, after months and months and months of having to eat at home, we got to eat out. And who cares if the coffee was a little bit cold? Who cares if she skipped my avocado? We got to eat out after eight months. And that's pretty darn special. So you see the reframe. So when you stop judging people, you stop saying, oh, that waitress was lazy, but you try to put yourself in her shoes. People are predominantly good, or at least 99 of people are predominantly good. But we forget that and we label and we judge. And we do this not just for individuals. We do this for entire societies. We say French people are rude, you know, American people are loud. I don't know what are the, the judgments on Emirati people, but we judge, and that's a really not a good thing. So that's, that's how I like to view life. Now, I want to go back to something you said. You spoke about compassion at work. Is there evidence for that? May I share a really fascinating scientific study?

Yes, please.

Okay. And again, I'm citing the science because I can tell that you're a science based man and you want to hear the science.

I have compassion in my work. That's definitely. Yeah, yeah, it's something I, I, I believe in. I, but prove me. I mean, some people prove me wrong. I mean, prove me right because it's in the, in the practical world, how much it's effective and being compassionate or being really systematic.

So there's, there's a difference. You can be compassionate and you can be strict. I'm compassionate but strict. That means I can, I will reprimand an employee of mine, and I did once, for not following process and making repeated mistakes and putting her on, on notice that if she repeated the mistake, she would lose her job. But a few weeks later, the employee was involved in a car Accident while on vacation, not even in a different country. And she didn't have personal insurance. And I was in a different country. And I called up my father and my father wired all the money she needed for her medical bills and we never asked for that money back. That is strict but compassionate. Nobody knows about that. I didn't get any favorable employee reviews about that. But that is what we mean by strict but compassionate. They're two completely different things. Now, again, let's talk about the evidence for this in the workplace. I was interviewing Sean Acre, the Harvard researcher, okay? And Sean Acre, he studies happiness and how happiness actually boosts productivity. And there are again, numerous studies of this. Doctors primed to be happy are 19% better at making diagnoses positive. Salespeople are 55% better at closing a sale. So Sean Acher did this experiment. He was invited to a company. I believe it was somewhere in Omaha. I remember the CEO of the company's name, Gary Baker. And Sean said Gary was a numbers guy. Gary told me, I don't believe in this fluffy crap, okay, but you do what you need to do, improve the culture of my company. So Sean created this one protocol. He said, I want all the employees to do this. Before you start work at 9am in the morning, take out your iPhone and set a timer for two minutes. In that two minutes, write a letter of appreciation to one of your co workers. You could say, hey, John, you know that presentation you did yesterday? Amazing research. And I love that you prepare so well and you're so good at speaking. Two minutes. Shawn Acha said, if it's less than two minutes, it feels, you know, it. It doesn't feel serious. If it's more than two minutes, it's too much work. So two minutes. So they had all the employees do this in. Things started changing so fast. This company was doing 650 million in revenue. In 18 months, revenue shot up to 950 million. The number of applications that they were getting from people who wanted to be new employees went up 270%. Google flew down to see what they were doing. And Gary Baker, he would now take, according to Sean Achor, his salespeople off the sales flow to do a little circle of appreciation. All because of showing appreciation. Now, why does this work? I think there are so many different theories. Everyone wants to feel appreciated. Everyone wants to feel acknowledged. It seems that when we feel compassion from our co workers, when we feel happy and appreciation makes us happy, our productivity goes up. So many theories, we can't really explain why, but we know it works.

Okay. I'm gonna be a little bit tough on you, so I like tough.

Go ahead.

Okay. And we have people who needs hope in their life and then especially in business and they struggle in their life in general. It's either because life is tough anyway.

Right.

On everybody. And they are more compassion and they are more soft and tender and they have, they have also traumas that they been through and kind of these words resonate with them so much and they feel like this is the only cure or way or, or the, the they're gonna reach their goal through that three, through these theories and these words. But the people who are good at it is somebody like you who's professional in that. And somehow it's like, you know, it's like who, who needs the gym? Usually the, the, the trainer, he doesn't need a gym because he's the most fit person and who needs a gym is the person who actually struggling from, from overweight. And, and they need a gym and they need to move. But these two people feeds each other. But they, it's always who's winning is the. I don't know how to explain it. You get my point?

I think what you're saying is that they are people who are very compassionate.

Yeah, very compassionate.

That life isn't working out for them.

Exactly.

Right, Exactly.

And, and so the people who are gravitating towards these words are mainly people who needs it the most, but they are not the most successful in, in achieving their goals in general.

Sometimes. Sometimes. So I, I want to state what I believe is a commonly mistaken belief. Right. So firstly, no one is saying that you just have to be nice to succeed in the world. There's a difference between being nice and being compassionate. Compassionate means you understand, you understand that we are deeply connected species. You understand that not everyone may be as privileged at you. People have different backgrounds, different economic backgrounds. They, they might even be. Be. Be coming from different circumstances. Maybe they were abused as a child. Maybe they went through a devastating breakup. Maybe they have some type of non neurotypical brain condition and they perceive the world differently. You got to understand that understanding that I believe makes you a better person. Because human beings, in a way, we are like ants. We are a social creature. You take a human being and you make him live by himself in a forest and he goes insane. We are ants. We live within a society. And for society to be cohesive, we must be compassionate with each other. But if you look at ants, ants have their regiments. They have their roles. They have, they are, they are their duties. They work together, but they know what their duties are. Right? So people who are compassionate but they are flip floppy, they don't have clarity on their goals, they don't have clarity in what they're trying to build. They may suffer. You need both. Now in my writings I call this the merger of the Buddha and the badass. The Buddha. And this is not a religious term, it's an archetype. It's the spiritual core. The badass is the entrepreneur, the hustler, the builder, the creator, the person creating things. You have to have both. But there's a great dogma in spirituality that says that to be spiritual you have to be all squishy and gooey and soft and calm and just rooted in the present. That is not true. Ken Wilber, who's one of the most cited academic of our time, a dear friend of mine and a teacher on mindvalley, wrote a famous essay called egolessness. And the essay actually says, your ego is good. Don't give up your ego. And he says this in the essay, I quote him verbatim. The great spiritual sages of the world, from Moses to Jesus to Padma Sambhava, were not feeble minded muktos. They were movers and shakers who rattled the world with the force of their ambition and ego. From bullwhips in a temple to subduing entire continents, they created revolutions that lasted centuries. Think about the great spiritual teachers. You follow Buddha, Was he just meditating under a Bodhi tree? No, he instigated a social revolution. Jesus. Jesus was a badass. He brought a bullwhip to a temple. Moses, he helped his people flee the Egyptians, Muhammad. Muhammad conquered so much territory in such a short amount of time that the Roman empire was completely dazzled. Yet all of these spiritual teachers were deeply rooted in their spiritual being. They were spiritual badasses. They were compassionate, they were kind. Look at their sayings, read their books. They were all deeply loving, compassionate individuals. But they also stood up for their beliefs. They stood up for their people and they led. And they were badasses. That is who we want to model.

So you can be both, you're saying?

Of course you have to be both.

So you can be a politician. You know who's badass as you using this term.

Exactly. But still compassionate.

Yeah, you can prison 1 million person, but be compassionate to a young child who needs help.

Well, when I say badass, I don't mean imprison 1 million people. Why would you do that unless there was a reason for it? I mean badass as in being able to go against societal expectations, being able to make difficult decisions. So, again, let's look at the science. Right? So there's a really interesting phenomenon that I think is worth talking about, since your audience is 90% woman. I believe women make better political leaders. And I want to state the scientific evidence why. Let's look at evolution. So I was just interviewing a doctor by the name of Dr. Mindy Peltz, and we were speaking about a theory called the grandmother. The grandmother hypothesis, right? And it states this. Menopause is a construct of evolution for a very unique purpose. Do you know? Okay, we are mammals. Do you know? Very, very, very few mammals actually experience menopause. It's human beings, orcas and pilot whales. That's it. Human beings, orcas and pilot whales, some say elephants experience it, but it's only a few creatures. And the one thing that all of these mammals have is they are deeply intelligent and they communicate with each other. Whale songs, Whales communicate over the distances of the sea. Human beings, we have our language. So why is it that when animals get more intelligent, menopause happens. Right? And again, for the men who are listening, menopause simply means that at a certain point in a woman's life, she's unable to conceive, she's unable to make babies. Well, the theory is this, at a certain point, evolution said, okay, woman, your job is no longer to make babies. We're going to put a stop there because making babies, if you're an animal, if you're a human 20,000 years ago is risky. You could die. We're going to put a stop there because we need you to be alive. Now, evolution didn't do that for men. Men can continue making babies until they die. Sperm quality can go down if you're, like, you know, over 70, but theoretically, you can still ejaculate. Why did evolution stop women from making babies? Evolution was inventing grandmothers because grandmothers were designed to stay alive to keep the wisdom of the tribe. Remember, evolution primarily happened before the advent of writing. The wisdom, whether it's making fire, knowing what berry to eat, knowing how to nurse an injured child. That knowledge had to be locked up somewhere, and it was locked up in the brain of the elder woman. But it gets even more intriguing when a woman goes through menopause. Her brain literally changes. She becomes more compassionate, more loving. She becomes. She develops a greater sense of empathy, but she also develops a. An irreverence. In other words, she's. I don't care what everybody thinks. I'm Going to do what is right. Evolution was not just inventing grandmothers for knowledge capture. They were inventing women as leaders. I believe you go back thousands of years, tens of thousands of years, woman led human society. Now is there evidence for it in modern times? Well, during the pandemic, something really interesting happened. Harvard did a study on female politicians. And in fact I was noticing something similar and I commissioned my team to do a similar study. Both studies showed the same thing. Covid was a really interesting experiment. Right. Countries had to shut down and the job of all politicians was keeping people alive and prevent spread of this disease while creating as minimal damage to the economy as possible using an index such as the Return to Normalcy index. Some countries like Malaysia, horrible. Malaysia was bottom of the G50 in the Return to Normalcy index. But some countries like New Zealand did astoundingly well. Now what was the common factor among the countries that did astoundingly well? Women leaders. If you take all the countries and everyone is having a similar problem, Covid, the primary problem, women leaders outperform men like crazy. Now what's this? Because of the grandmother hypothesis and the unique advantages of a woman's brain? I believe so. It's not popular to say that, but I believe that when it comes to politics, women do better because government and business are different. I know people like Elon Musk said let me control the government. No, I don't think Elon Musk truly understands the, the, the, the, the reason for governance. Politicians are. Companies are designed for ruthless efficiency. Governments are designed not for ruthless efficiency, but to give everyone, everyone an equal footing. Right. So if you're sick, you don't have to go bankrupt. So if you happen to be a different skin color, your life isn't going to suck. And for that particular utility of governance, I think women make better leaders. And so that is why I believe that compassion is so important. And in our political leaders especially, compassion is an advantage.

And I believe women are stronger in taking decision not to stay in a place where they are not comfortable in. And Corona, you gave an example in Corona. Corona is like show them. An example is like there is a disaster but I'm still here and nothing happened.

Right.

So why don't I look for a better opportunity in my life? And that's why they can be leaders or they can change their work or, or they can divorce or take a different decisions.

Yeah.

So men are more focused on doing the, the job and accepting more. Whether it's harder or it's tougher or it's Mentally tougher. They will say, okay, I don't want to, you know, nag about mental things and. And about my. How I'm happy. You know, it's more of how I'm making money, how I'm provider. But the women are more, like, caring on that part.

Yeah.

Do you have more women audience as well?

My audience on Mindvalley is approximately 60 to 65% women.

The. I think men needs more as well, because I believe women are more aware.

Right.

Of spiritualities, of taking care of probably. I mean, you correct me if wrong, but they do more yoga, they do more meditation. So probably men needs it more than men these days.

Well, definitely men need balance in their lives as well. Right. I think when it comes to male to. To men as well, men are not having an easy time, and that's definitely something worth talking about. Why did Trump win? Trump won because if you look at the Democratic Party, they're all about. They're all about minorities, they're all about rights of women, they're all about LGBT rights. But white men are suffering. Their income is going down. More and more of them are having to live with their parents. They're having. Economic injustice has happened to them, and no one is talking about that. So men really need support. And our world as it's constructed right now doesn't really help men as much as it should. Men are blamed for a lot of things that they don't deserve to be blamed for.

Okay. Does the woman need to wear the trouser? Okay, so be a leader.

So what I think you're asking is, do women need to play masculine, Masculine in the workplace?

Yes.

No. No. And I think this is actually a big misconception. So I was speaking at the World Government Summit here in Dubai in 2022, and this was the subject of my speech. It was why women need to understand that there are certain feminine qualities as CEOs, as founders, that give them an edge. It doesn't mean don't follow anything guys do. Right. Masculine and feminine are different ways of perceiving the world, but they are also simplistic. Simplistic archetypes. But feminine leadership has a lot of advantages that we are only beginning to see. So first, we got to understand that the world of work emerged after World War II primarily from the U.S. which won World War II. And the way we design work, the 9 to 5, the corporate hierarchy is very much modeled after the U.S. military, because what happened is you have all of these ex soldiers come back and they start companies, and so they model what they know the hierarchy of the military, which was predominantly men in World War II. So our corporate hierarchies until recently have been very male dominated and designed for men. Now, women have different, different schedules. Women have different ways of viewing work. And it's only recently that we're beginning to see the advantages. So, for example, feminine qualities are more nurturing. Feminine qualities are more democratic. Women are more likely to create a consensus and listen to everyone in the group before making a decision. Feminine qualities are more empathy. Women listen better than men. Now, all of these are scientifically proven through different studies. I'm not just making a label. I'm not saying women are this and men are that. These are scientific qualities because our brains are different. For example, if you look at SAT scores and MAP scores for SATs, and in 19 out of 20 countries, men do better than women in math. But in the vast majority of countries, women do better than men in verbal, in communication, right? This is why women often do really, really, really well in jobs which are related to nurture, to care, to communication. Men do really, really, really well in jobs related to science and engineering. So let's go back to feminine qualities. Here's one study. Gallup did a poll of 10 million employees, and they asked the employees a simple question. Does my supervisor or manager care for me as a person? Okay, supervisor, manager. Now, employees who said, yes, my supervisor cares for me as a person. And that's a very feminine quality. Nurturing, caring. They were the most engaged at work. They contributed more to, to profitability per employee. They stayed longer in the companies. They rated their companies higher. All of these good things corresponding to one question they felt cared for. Earlier, I cited the Sean Acre study on appreciation at work. How one company increased its revenues by almost 50% by implementing a culture of recognition and appreciation. Two minutes a day. That too is a feminine quality. Empathy, listening, appreciation, nurturing. All of these are feminine qualities. Women need to bring this in the workplace. Don't walk into a workplace and try to model your male boss when you graduated school. I mean, maybe he had some good qualities, but feminine qualities really, really, really have a huge advantage in work today. And when you can balance both masculine qualities, precision, directions, logic, and the feminine quality, intuition, empathy, you gain an advantage. Now, here's another crazy study which I think is worth talking about. Professor John Mihalaski of the Newark College of Engineering did a study on CEOs and intuition. So we often think of women's intuition. Women are, in most cases, seen as being more intuitive than men. Have there been any Studies that show that women are more intuitive, I don't know. But women intuition is a more feminine thing. So perhaps Professor Mihalaski does this study and he has five cards and the CEOs have to guess which card he's holding up. So the odds of guessing correctly are 20%. Now what he found is some CEOs are guessing 23, 24, 25% accurate. They were using their intuition and this and these CEOs, they tended to have higher profitability in their companies. Right. So this shows that there's a correlation between intuition and profitability. And women do intuition better. So this is another feminine quality that you don't want to tune out. Feminine qualities have an incredible advantage in the workplace. And women, more women should be aware of this, recognize this and know that they don't have to wear the pants in a workplace and be mentioned. They should be women. The world needs that more.

Great. Another question which everyone asks and especially it's a, it's a kind of debate or discussion. We had it a lot. I. I've been interviewing Love is Blind Habibi and it's a show in Netflix and all the topics they were like about men being the provider woman wants to work or doesn't want to work. And that debate, whenever a woman says like, I want to have a man who just provides me all the luxury in life and I don't want to work. Although that's. This is against feminists. At the same time, a lot of people agrees on that. A lot of women were agreeing on, on that topic. So. And then if there is a man say that, you know, I will take care about you, I'll take care about everything. And. But you need to slightly. I want to direct the, let's say that company that it's called our home. It's sometimes seen as a toxic masculinity in, in, in one place and another it's seen as a like, oh, he's great, he's a masculine man and we love him. So it's really. You don't know where to draw the line. And there's very different opinions on, on that set and different cultures.

Right.

You know, in, in the Arab world is more leaning like woman likes to be more looking for a provider in, in general, I don't want to generalize, you know, but it's mostly like that in, in Europe, maybe they are looking for a different. Where do we draw the line?

Well, firstly, everything that you said is a matter of personal choice. I know men who are stay at home fathers while the mother is working and bringing in most of the money. That's okay. Who are we to judge? I know women who don't want to work. They want to stay at home, they want to run the house, take care of the kids, and take care of their husbands. And they are incredible women. Who are we to judge? Everyone should have a right to create their relationships whichever way they want without needing to worry about what fits the societal trend. Now among men. I remember having this debate with men. I know, what's the ideal type of woman to marry? The muse or the entrepreneur? Okay, now, both of these are different types, archetypes of women. And of course, there's everything in between, but we are simplifying it. So I have a friend, he's built a company that has done 10 billion in revenue. His partner, whom he's been with for over 30 years. Okay, five kids, 30 years, three decades. They have the most incredible love life. They are still, like, in the honeymoon period. And she says, vision. It's because she is my muse. I do the work, okay? My job is to wake up in the morning and run the company and make things happen. Her job is to take care of our, our, our, our family. But I could never have built my company to billions in sales if I didn't have her by my side. She is 50% of all the success of my company because she nurtures me. She gives me fuel. She's my muse. She inspires me. Now, this couple, so cute, this guy. They are now, you know, they're older now. Now they're in their 60s. They're retiring, and he's. They're retiring in Hawaii, and he's building a house which faces the direction of the sun so that on his wife's body birthday, the sun is exactly, exactly like where it needs to be to create this gorgeous panorama of the house. That's love, and that's the muse relationship. Now, there are other types of relationship where, like, I enjoy being with women who are entrepreneurs, whom I can discuss ideas. That excites me. I find that sexy. Discussing ideas, talking about new technologies. I like that type of woman. I love nurturing my woman. I want to be nurtured by my woman. But at the same time, I'm attracted to women who are entrepreneurs and building something. So I'm attracted more to the entrepreneur archetype. And that's my choice. No matter what choice you pick, pick one that works for you. And again, there is no right answer. And your choices might vary depending on the stage of relationship you're in. So I think it's so dumb, so absolutely dumb to force men or women to fit into one box.

It's true. Who we are to judge, and that's the right thing. And each person has his own views, his own taste and his own, like, what he's looking or she's looking for. And this will bring another question, how we can attract love and attract our partner.

Oh, that's interesting question.

What, what, what can we do? Because like, I know we get distracted in, in life and especially men, they get distracted looking for a job and this and they miss opportunity on the way. They miss looking at themselves, what they want from inside and, and they, they miss the opportunity to, to find the partner.

It's a, it's a very lonely time for many people, right? People are getting married later and later. Fewer and fewer people are finding partners until they're much older, like in their 30s. And everyone's complaining about it. Now the first thing is stop freaking complaining about it because your mind creates your reality. What you complain about, you amplify. What you praise or what you appreciate, appreciates. So first, first advice would be this. Recognize that the world is changing. Do you know today in America, and I'm speaking America, because statistics are often most readily available for America. But what applies to America tends to be trends that affect the rest of the world. Today, if you go back to your parents generation, most people met through religious events like church or prayer, or they met through college or they met in the company. Today, 62% of married couples in America met online. Right? And online is a polite way of saying dating apps. And so firstly, get on a dating app. A lot of dating apps right now are awful and they're all about squeezing money out of you. My, the founder of Tinder is a friend of mine and he sold Tinder and the guys who bought it. It's all about squeezing money out of you. But there are many other apps that maybe are a little bit more, more, more useful. So use the apps. Reality is, two thirds of modern relationships are coming from these apps. So who are we to say I'm not going to use a dating app. Now the second thing is this, this whole idea about soul mates is bs. I don't buy that. I don't buy the you complete me thing. Rather, I think our goal as a human being is to work on ourselves to be the best human being we can be, because we will attract someone who's at our level. And if your level right now is low, that means you, you're broke, you're in bad health. You don't have discipline, you don't have ambitions. You're more likely to attract someone of that sort. We attract like, attracts like. That's not a metaphysical statement. That is just how attraction works. You attracted to people at your level. But all of us have our own responsibility in our hand. We can climb up that level. We can learn to take care of our bodies. We can learn to create goals. We can invest in self improvement. The whole mindvalley philosophy. Spend 20 minutes a day, every day, making yourself a better human. And this adds up as you focus on yourself, as you get better and better and better, you're able to access a larger and larger and larger percentage of the dating pool. So the more you climb up, the easier it gets. The easier it gets, the easier it gets. This applies to men and women. And so I don't believe we should be obsessed with finding the right partner. Definitely get in the dating app. Use it. Like, don't. Don't say dating apps are bad or I don't want to go on dates. Go on many dates. Think of it as a learning experience. Your attitude and the date really matters. But focus on improving yourself so the quality of the dates you're getting gets better and better and better. And I believe eventually, inevitably, you will find someone. But you got to work at it just like you got to work at everything else.

That's great. Work on yourself. Does that has to do with manifestation as well? Can we manifest.

So.

So relationship?

Yes.

I don't know.

100. Okay. So I have a friend, Catherine Woodward Thomas. She wrote the book Calling in the One. Okay. The official program for Calling in the One is part of mindvalley. So Catherine claims that with the right mindset. So she takes you through a program. It's 49 days, and you, every day you're doing something, a form of forgiveness. You're focusing on your goals. And she says you manifest a relationship in 49 days. So here's a crazy story. We had a girl in our team. Her name is Osteya. She was working on the videos of this program. But as she's working and editing the video, she's also listening to the program. Before the end of 49 days, she meets a guy, moves in with him. Now they're married, Right? So this type of philosophy works. Now, is it magic? Is it manifesting? Or is it simply the fact that you're working on all those broken parts of you, maybe from bad relationships in the past that are holding you back? Maybe it's that I don't know, but I have seen over and over and over again this happen.

I 100% believe in this. And I believe that if you don't love that person, that person doesn't love you. So sometimes you actually want to go and have a date with that person, but you're not convinced from inside because you're not ready. And you just want it for the. For the shape of it, for the image of it, or for just doing it. So you're not ready. You did not prepare yourself and you did not, like, open your feelings. You just want to date a nice person or a beautiful person, and then it doesn't work.

And you know how you know, you know how you know if you're dating the right person? I. I think there's a French philosopher. I can't remember his name, but he said this. He said. He said true love is really rare. Rare. It's really, really, really rare. But to know true love, it's when you're away from that person and you're away from that person and you grow fonder for them. An immature love, when you're away from that person, you drift away from them. True love is really, really, really rare. But if you can find someone and when you're away from them, you do everything you can to want to be back with them. You will travel across the oceans. You miss them. But if you're with someone and you're away from them, you're like, wow, this actually feels pretty good. Maybe it isn't true love. Now again, that's some dead French guy who said that. I'm not saying it's rooted in science, but I think that's a pretty interesting measure.

Yes. Last question. Unless you want to say anything else.

No, whatever. You want marriage, Right?

Okay. So love is. We all need love and we all need family.

But no, I don't think we all need love. Well, we all. Love is a. Is a natural human condition. One can gain it for themselves. You don't need someone else to love you and you. Certainly not everyone needs a family. We need people around us. We don't need kids necessarily. We don't need family. We need people who, who we can have tight social friends with. Friends.

Yeah, that's a new. That's a, That's a relief for a lot of people that we don't need the kids. Okay, that's great. Because I want to ask you how difficult. I mean, it's complicated to have a family. It's complicated to, to have a forever marriage life. It's something that you need to keep on investing in your life, right. To make it happen.

Right. It is complicated.

I mean, I had the bad experience.

So yeah, I've been through a divorce as well. But I'm very close friends with my ex wife. We were together for 19 years. And no one is saying it's easy, right? But the thing to understand is that here's why it's complicated. It's because we've created the society where there is this rubbish rule that love has to be forever. No, love is not forever. The average American, and again I mentioned, I'm quoting Americans because that's where we have the stats, right? The average American will be in three meaningful relationships in their lifetime. Now what this means is you're going to die with one person, but you're going to have two breakups. You're going to have twice as many breakups as the person you're going to be with. But are those breakups bad? If you go through life knowing I'm going to be with three people and if you're with someone, maybe a college love or an early love and you break up, it's okay, odds are you're on the right track. There's two more coming your way. You see the breakup we've created all of these movies, all of these stories, all of this drama around the breakup. We have even that word break. No, it's a gentle parting when two people are no longer having as much fun as they want with each other. When two people are no longer growing together, you should be breaking up to release both of you. One of the most dangerous vows we make is that vow, which I believe is rubbish. Till death do us part. No, you should never make that vow. You should promise to be with someone as long as you're growing together, as long as you're happy together, as long as you can truly support each other. As long as you wake up and you. And there are going to be days when you're like, oh God, this person irritates me. But as long as you are growing together, I think that's the measure. You're good. But at a certain point you feel you want to break up or you want to change the relationship structure. Maybe you want to go for ethical non monogamy. No one's to judge. There's nothing wrong with that. So we have to stop seeing breakups or divorces as a bad thing. So much of the stress and trauma that people have through breakups is self inflicted because they have been trained to see it as a bad thing. When it is not. Remember that quote I started this interview with from Sri Kumar Rao? Believe in a benevolent universe. Everything that happens to you is happening for you, not to you. The breakup is for you. Because maybe you had to learn something and you're going to be even an even more amazing partner to your next love. When you understand that breakups are not a bad thing. Love is not as dramatic and life is so much more beautiful because we're going to have, you know, three, at least on average, three great people enter our lives and journey with us for a moment. And I think that's a really beautiful way to look at it.

Yes, it's true. Vishen, I really enjoyed talking to you. I really enjoyed so many new and revolutionary words that you said. Really?

Thank you.

I mean, changed a lot my. My perspective in many things, especially breakup. Thanks a lot. And I heard you're living in Dubai, which is great. I didn't know that. What are your plans in general?

Well, I'm looking to create the world's biggest event for mind, body, soul, relationships and the human experience. And it's happening in Dubai. Gen 10, 11, 12. It's called future Human. And. And if you let me to, I'd love to share a little bit about it.

Yes, go ahead.

So Future Human is designed to look at the most important things we need to learn as human beings that are unconventional, that the world doesn't teach us, that we need to thrive in this rapidly changing world because the world is changing fast, societal patterns are changing, AI is changing, the way we work is changing. Future Human explores that. And we bring in the most amazing teachers. I've curated every single teacher with my team. Marissa Pier, Stephen Bartlett, all of these incredible names. Now, day one is about work. And you're going to learn all of these different things to help improve your work so you can save one day a week from how to optimize your brain with new biochemistry, to the thought patterns around what's happening at work, to some of the unconventional beliefs like what we've been sharing here too, how to introduce and think about AI. Day two is about longevity. Literally, we're about to hit longevity, a world where you can live forever. It's called reaching longevity, Escape velocity. But the problem is, while it's very possible that you could live to be three, four, five, even a thousand, you can't really halt aging. You can't hit pause on aging. Today we can slow down aging by about 40% so you can age six years. For a normal person aging 10 years, that's what the best biohackers are getting. But how do you get there? How do you age only six years for a normal 10 years, right? We look at these topics and you're going to get the right exercise regimen, the right food regimen. We're bringing in some of the best speakers on health, such as Dave Asprey, who's the father of biohacking. And day three is my favorite. Day three is all about manifesting. It's how to take the ideas in your mind and fine tune your mind to such precision that you're a spiritual badass and you can move towards your ideas with freedom. And then around all of these incredible topics and incredible teachers is a layer of community. We are releasing an app that will understand you and introduce you to maybe your new best friends or even, even your next soulmate.

I want to say that.

So that's, that's what we're building. Four things. Master work, master your body, master manifesting, and gain some interesting new people in your life. So it's happening January 10th, 11th, 12th at the Expo center. And everything we do at my company is really unique. For example, our app is so good, it is the world's, one of the world's best apps for changing human lives. So good that Apple just selected it and it's in 200,000 Apple stores around the world. If you go to the Apple Store even in Dubai mall and you open up an iPad there, you will see our app on the, on the iPad pre installed by, by Apple. So if we're so good at building these things, imagine the event. The event is. It's like the Apple of events. If Apple could create an event, it's this. And that's what we're excited to bring to Dubai. This event is going to grow to maybe 50,000 people every year. It's going to be one of the most popular events in Dubai. But I want to invite your audience to come at year one and experience it.

Amazing. Can't wait to see it.

Thank you.

And also happy birthday.

Happy birthday.

It's coming soon.

Oh yeah, yeah, yeah. I'm turning 49. Thank you for reminding me.

I'm about your age. So happy birthday and thanks a lot and congratulations on all this work.

Thank you.

Thank you, man. Thanks.