How Ending a 19-years Love Relationship Helped Me Grow | Vishen Lakhiani

We're talking about suffering. And I think I wouldn't do justice and I wouldn't be authentic if I didn't talk about some of the suffering that I've been going through. The last four months have been like the craziest months of my life. I don't know what the hell the universe is trying to teach me, but it's been freaking painful. In October, my parents home caught fire. I almost lost my mom and dad. They were rescued by firemen on the roof. And so the home is still being rebuilt and that was like scary and painful. And then a few weeks later I busted my knee and I'm now unable to run or jump. I've been in four months of physiotherapy, three more months to go. That was painful. But the hardest part is that I got my 19 year relationship ended. And I know that's a big shock to many people in Mindvalley because me and my now ex wife, close friend Christina, started the company together. So after being together for 19 years, we simply decided that our relationship was us living someone else's illusion. We realized that this idea that when you get married it should be forever is a societal construct. And there are certain cases where it doesn't matter. You can come together with someone and celebrate that time together and create great things and then choose to part ways still with love better as friends. I realized that my relationship was built on four pillars. There was the pillar of love, There was the pillar of friendship, the pillar of being co parents and the pillar of being co partners in a business. Like we literally started Mindvalley together when I was a meditation teacher in 2003. Christina was my girlfriend doing customer support and we started this company together. It was the two of us. And so we had those four pillars. But after 19 years being together and we celebrate those 19 years, we found that the pillar of love wasn't solid anymore. And we had tried to mend it. It turned out it wasn't meant to be. But we realized that if we stayed together and if that pillar completely collapsed, it would take down the other three pillars. So we decided to uncouple that pillar of love, but become better friends, better business partners, better parents. So we're becoming neighbors. She's probably like right now one of my closest friends and I am to her. We support each other in her careers. She's running mindvalley's divisions in the Russian speaking world. And she's an incredible woman and I love her dearly. And in fact what we found is that it was really interesting when we decoupled that pillar of love. The other three pillars just got so much stronger and our relationship became so much better. And we became so much better. But the scary part was having to explain that to the rest of the world. She has a mom who grew up in the former Soviet Union. So very traditional. My mom is Indian. So very traditional. In these cultures, marriage is like a big thing. And the end of a marriage is painful and it's considered failure. And this is why so many people, when they get a divorce, they end up feeling lousy about themselves. They end up feeling like they failed. But there are other models that I think are really relevant. Any of you heard of conscious uncoupling? Gwyneth Paltrow popularized it. So we decided to do a conscious uncoupling. And a conscious uncoupling simply means that we consciously decide to end our marriage. We did that by having a big party, invited 50 of our closest friends, my 11 year old son, my 5 year old daughter. They were the ring unbearers. So we took off our ring, gave it to my son, he put it in a velvet bag. I keep that ring. It's a prized possession. And we did it with joy. I wanted my kids to see people lit up and celebrating and happy. And my mom was there. It was harder for her. She was crying. But I wanted her to see that among my friends, which is a different generation, it's okay. And it doesn't mean that I failed or that she's failed or that the family has failed, but that this is part of life. And I value Christina because we built so much together. So I wanted to share that with you guys. And interestingly enough, Catherine Woodward Thomas, who wrote Conscious Uncoupling is right here in the front row. Catherine, would you stand please? Yeah. I. I just want to say, Katherine, Conscious Uncoupling is an incredible book. After I read it, I passed it on to many friends of mine who had ended relationships five, 10 years ago. And what they realized is that the relationships had ended badly and they were still holding on to pain. And this pain was affecting their future relationships. And reading that book, even though they were already uncoupled, helped them heal that pain. So I strongly recommend that book. Check out Conscious Uncoupling. It's a beautiful book and it gives you a new model for, for understanding love and understanding the world. Now what I'd like to do, if it's okay with you, is play a six minute video because I want to bring you into my world. So when we, me and Christina knew that we were going to uncouple, and we decided that we were going to celebrate one last Valentine's Day together. And then on February 15 this year, take off our rings. And so on Valentine's Day, we assembled the entire company and we shot with them six minutes what was happening. Because we wanted to make sure that our team members didn't feel that their jobs were threatened or that their world was going to come down. Because traditionally, when you go through a divorce, it is one of the single most stressful events in your life. It is so stressful that people break down, they are unable to work, CEOs suddenly are no longer able to function at their job, and we wanted them to know that this was okay. And we're doing a new model, with your permission, I'd like to play that video for you. This video is going to. Is going to bring up stuff for some of you. But again, remember, suffering is good, so if it brings up stuff, it's okay. But the main thing is I shared this video with Katherine, and she said, this is really beautiful vision. You should share this with other people because it helps show people a new meaning schema. Remember meaning schema? It's how we transform a new meaning schema of love and relationship. So this is the video of us explaining to our people for the first time. And they were surprised why we were going to have our last Valentine's Day. Okay, so me and Christina have been together for 19 years, pretty much the entire 21st century, because we started dating February 2000. So it's been 19 years. And we decided to make this our last Valentine's Day, which means tomorrow we officially formally end our marriage. And I know it might come as a shock to many of you because we co founded this company together, but we wanted to explain why. Firstly, it wasn't because of any, like, massive issue. We just spent so much time in personal growth, and it turns out that, you know, the love doesn't change. But the society's label of how that love should structure is what we want to reinvent. So we are moving from being partners in love as husband and wife to becoming co founders, friends, co parents of our children. I'm simply moving to the apartment below. Our kids are cool with it, we're cool with it, and we're not looking for condolences. Would you like to add anything?

I really don't know what to add, but I know a lot of questions will be coming up. And if you have any questions, you are absolutely welcome. To come and ask us. When I shared with my parents and when I shared with people who take marriage purely traditionally, they have a lot of questions. They ask, what's the real reason? The real reason is that we think that we function much better as friends and partners in business and as parents, but we want to release each other for, you know, for love. We do love each other, but in a different way. We love as relatives, as people who have been together for a really long time. Vision is going to be my best friend for the rest of my life. I know that for a fact. And it's just functioning better for us this way. So the real reason is that we chose that as our path. There is no other reason. You might be trying to look for that, but there is no other reason. And that I know is going to be the biggest question because that's a question which I got from Hayden, which I got from my parents. And I know a lot of you might be wondering who did that?

No one.

We came to that together simultaneously. I can't even say whose idea it was. It just came to us naturally.

But I really appreciate everything that we created. And I don't even see the closure of this 19 years as something sad. In fact, I think I'm freaking proud that we've been together 19 years. That's two decades. And in that time, we created this company. We brought all of you guys together. We created two awesome children who we are bringing forth in the world. But she didn't. I just had fun helping out and. But I want to acknowledge Christina. For one thing. When I was homeless, literally sleeping on a couch because I had no money, I lost everything. I was broke. She was the person who believed in me most when. And so I wear the wedding ring. I've worn our wedding ring for 16 years. And this wedding ring, because we were so broke, this ring cost 19 bucks. It's a $19 ring. It's fake gold. We bought it from her.

It's not fake.

It's real gold. Yeah, but it's diluted with copper. But this $19 wedding ring is probably my most prized possession. I've lost it several times. That's true. Buying Thailand. You don't have to bring up this for me tomorrow. Today's the last Valentine's day. Tomorrow I officially take it off finger and I'm gonna put it in a very safe. So anyway, we are doing an unwedding ceremony on Saturday. And honestly, we invited our closest friends, who turns out is pretty much mindvalley people. Our apartment isn't very big. We couldn't invite the entire team because that would be awkward. And so we have about 50 of you joining us, and we're gonna say our closing vows then and then move into this new transition. So anyway, guys, don't, please don't freak out about this. And I know so many of us have, like, parental or society ingrained thoughts on the word divorce. That's not how we're looking to see it.

So from my part, when I say I don't see it as an end of something, I would like to quote this lady, I don't remember her name, but the one who wrote that book that you gave me, she said that we should not appreciate the value of a relationship by the time that it has lasted. We should see the value of a relationship, but by what kind of transformation has happened to the people throughout this relationship. So I would say that in the 16 years together, about 19 years together, we probably have lived a few lifetimes of a lot of traditional couples who don't have the bloody courage to just say that it's ended. So I don't see it as an end of something.

This.

The 16 years that we were as a family, they're still there. Nothing changed. We are just releasing one part of our relationship which stopped working. So I'm not losing anything. So I'm gaining the person who is going to be so much closer to me for the rest of my life. And I'm just releasing one part of this relationship which is stopped working. And it just happens sometimes. So we don't see it as an ending. We see it as a beginning of a new face.

And we wanted to celebrate one last Valentine's Day together before we decided to do this. So thank you for stepping into that world and thank you, Catherine, for providing to people like me a framework, a conscious uncoupling that we can refer to. I hope maybe that video might help shed the light that love is a lot deeper and a more complex thing than what society says it should be. It's funny, we decide that love is when we make an oath to someone, get the government involved, sign papers, but really it can be multidimensional. And all we did was move the love around into different areas. But those two rules, those two rules have helped me even as I went through this form of suffering. The first thing I do is I ask myself, what can I learn from this? How can I grow? How will this increase my rate of self evolution? So I started reading books on relationships and love so I can be better for the Future. And then the second thing is, how can I serve the world better? To get my mind off what might sometimes be pain, I think about, how can I make other people happy? While I'm working on my growth, how can I serve the world? So I'm traveling more, I'm speaking more. I've decided to. I have more free time on my hands right now. I've decided to write a book. Write a book every year and dedicate more time to my kids as well. And I know what you guys are thinking as well. You're probably wondering. Christina mentioned in that video that I lost my wedding ring in a strip club in Thailand. Can I just. Even though this might be appropriate, could I just clear the air on that one? She was with me in that strip club. We were just exploring the streets of Pattaya, and I know I was going really deep. I just want to get shallow for a moment. We were exploring the streets of Pattaya, and we were in the strip club, and we were just curious, but it was so shady. And I have this weird habit where when I'm nervous, I play with my ring. I move it back and forth, back and forth, back and forth on my finger. And before I could fully put it on my finger, a ping pong ball hit me on the face. No, wait, wait, wait. It's not what you think. It's not what you think. They were a group of American sailors in the bar. They had brought ping pong balls, and they were tossing it around. It was these ones. So this sailor stands up and says, hey, buddy, toss that ball back to me. So I pick up the ping pong ball and I toss it, not realizing that my ring goes flying with the ball. And so I go back to do my awkward, like, worried move with my ring, and I realize, wait, the ring is not in the finger. So I'm like, oh, shit. So I then pretend I drop a pen. Christina's next to me, and I'm on the ground trying to find this mysterious pen so that she wouldn't realize I dropped the ring. And I'm frantically going, where the hell did this ring roll to the ground? Is so disgusting. You wouldn't believe it. And then all of a sudden, I see this pair of legs. So I stand up, and there's this naked stripper in front of me holding up my ring. And she goes, hello, sir. You trying to marry me? The ring flew off my finger, hit her on the chest while she was in the center. And fortunately, she was. She was cool enough to pick it up and bring it back to me, and I had to explain that to Christina. So, anyway, that's the Thai strip club story. You see why I didn't want this recorded. So anyway, I feel like when I get too deep and spiritual, I just feel weird about it, and I got to come back to talking about strip clubs and. And ping pong balls. So thank you, everyone. I hope you enjoyed that story. I'm here for the next two days, and I'll see many of you guys at the Mingla tonight and have a wonderful reunion. Sam.