Vishen Lakhiani argues that the modern education system is incomplete: while schools teach facts (math, history, geography), they rarely teach life skills that directly affect wellbeing and success. Using personal anecdotes about his son and his own college experience, he recommends adding subjects such as mindfulness/meditation, relationship and parenting skills, nutrition/exercise, productivity, goal-setting, self-empowerment, and entrepreneurship so people can lead "extraordinary lives." He frames this as a shift from fact-based teaching toward nurturing human potential and fulfillment.
Chapters
So my son Hayden has just turned six and soon in a few years, he's going to be starting high school. This has got me thinking a lot about the education system. See, when I went to high school, I spent a large amount of time studying subjects such as geography and math and history. And odds are Hayden will study these too. Now, these are important, yes, but the fact is Hayden's growing up in a different age. An age where people are walking around with an advanced computational device or the equivalent of the Encyclopedia Britannica on their smartphone. See, technology is allowing us to get access to more information at the touch of a button. So how should we change the education system to take advantage of this? What else should we be teaching in school? But what about subjects that help us with real issues we face in our day to day lives? How about parenting skills or relationship skills? Mindfulness practices. Learning to eat right. Learning that happiness is something that comes from within and not dependent on outside circumstances. What about the times you're stressed out because you can't seem to get enough work done and you wished you'd been taught better productivity skills or. Or you're down and wished you had learned to meditate to better control your emotions or feel concerned about your weight and wished you'd been taught to exercise and eat well. See, if you want to get good at math, you study math. You want to get good at science, you study science. And the same thing applies. If you want to get good at relationships, you study relationships. You want to get successful, you study success. These are the real world problems that can really hold us back in life and directly influence our happiness. And I think it's about time we made these skills more accessible to everyone. So when I think about the things that really helped me become who I am today, I wish I'd been exposed to these subjects at a much younger age. The importance of communication in making me a better partner and lover. The art of nurturing and empowering my son so I can be a better parent. The ability to empower my mind so that I can remain positive. Especially on those days I didn't feel like getting out of bed. What appreciating my body and eating right can do for my health and happiness. How to set goals and also the right type of goals so that you don't set yourself up for perpetual struggle. Empowering my mind so I don't let negativity, negative people or negative treatment define my self worth. How to be happy. Now, I'm not saying that school is unnecessary. What I'm saying is that it's incomplete and it doesn't stop at just high school. Think about your college. When I was studying at the University of Michigan, I ended up spending close to $100,000 on school fees. Do you know how much I remember from my four years in college? Very little. What I do remember about the education I received when I was younger was really the books that my father recommended to me. Books like the Silver Method for Meditation or Psycho Cybernetics by Maxwell Malk, which talked about self image or reading the biographies of great entrepreneurs. I must have read about 500 of these books when I was a kid. And they all had a common trend. It was all about growing yourself and learning new ways of looking at the world. I believe today what really brings you security, happiness and success is working on growing your potential. See, everyone who's brought into this world is born within them the power to do amazing things. But for 99% of us, we get beaten into mediocrity and we're never given the opportunity to achieve this. Education needs to shift from teaching us facts to teaching us how to live extraordinary lives. The other 1%. I'm not talking about the world's wealthiest people. I'm talking about the world's most fulfilled people. The people who are living their dreams, who are happy, who are giving back to the planet, who are living lives as truly great human beings. We believe education should be transformed. What would happen if everyone had access to the skills and knowledge for them to truly lead extraordinary lives? I'm talking teaching people the right mindset, Teaching people self empowerment, meditation, how to set and pursue the right goals, how to live a balanced life, how to increase your lifespan by treating your body better, self confidence, self esteem, self image, enhancing your intuition to make better decisions, entrepreneurship skills so you can be self reliant and self made. How to give back to the world, how to create great things, how to live a life that's truly extraordinary. This is what we're looking to shift.
