Vishen Lakhiani burned out launching Mindvalley University in Barcelona, hospitalized with bronchitis and depression. He realized the problem wasn't overwork but his personal capacity ceiling. Through meditation, coaching, and biohacking, he raised his capacity and learned to pursue big projects without collapsing.
Chapters
So a couple of months ago, I shared a picture on Facebook, this picture that had many of you writing to me to ask me if I was okay and to ask me what happened. Right. So let me tell you the background behind this picture and the key lesson here because it's fascinating and I learned something so new about the world and how we operate as human beings. What happened was that last year I decided to take on a massive project. I decided to launch my own university. We called it mindvalleyu. And it was happening in Barcelona. And it was a massive project. It ended up being very successful. But in the process of doing it, I hit a really low point in my life. I basically started burning out. And the result of that was shocking to me. I understood the negative effects of stress. What I did not understand is that when you put yourself through incredible stress and burnout, it affects every dimension of your being. I felt sick. I had to be admitted to hospital. While in Barcelona, I developed bronchitis that stayed with me for three weeks. I couldn't carry a normal conversation without coughing. I would wake up some mornings in this horrible depression feeling just absolutely miserable and lousy and oddly enough, so painful that I felt I didn't deserve to live. I don't know where all of these dark emotions were coming from. I don't know where this burnout was coming from. But it was scary, it was frustrating, and it was in the middle of the singular most important project I ever tried to take on. But that's not what I wanted to share with you. What I wanted to share with you is what I learned from it. See, what I learned was very interesting. A lot of people told me, vishen, look, you gotta slow down, you gotta relax. And for a while I thought that was the answer. But then I realized that it wasn't actually about slowing down. It wasn't actually about relaxing. It was about something completely different. The idea of your personal ceiling. It was the idea that all of us can choose to take on really big things, right? But there is this ceiling, there's this inhibitor to what we're able to do at our current state of growth. And people will tell you, you know, maybe you want to relax, maybe you want to slow down, but that's not actually the answer because there are people who break through that ceiling and are able to tackle immense things in the world. The likes of Elon Musk, the people you read about who are starting game changing companies. Well, I wanted to figure out, how could I continue changing global education, continue pushing forward to create my own university without getting sick, without burnout. And I realized that there are simple, direct ways to do this. But you got to ignore the conventional advice and you instead got to look to lift your ceiling. So after that experience in Barcelona, I went through a period of intense self study. I escaped to a meditation retreat. I tried acupuncture to heal the back pain that had started coming back to me. Because of all of that stress, I hired a coach to help me out with a couple of deep understandings. I worked with a neuroscientist. I tried everything from working with biohacking to working with the Wim Hof method to going through a series of MindValley programs, all to upgrade my level of capacity. But when that happened, I realized I'd broken through a barrier. And so the idea is this. If you're trying to do something incredible in the world, right, and you feel you're starting to burn out, it's often not about slowing down. If what you're doing is so important that you need to push it through that the world needs to see it, there are other ways to bring it forward without collapsing, to bring it forth while being in a state of joy, to bring it forward while being able to almost make it come to you effortlessly. But it has to do with being able to raise that ceiling. And what I learned is slightly unconventional to most personal growth, but I'd like to teach it to you. So if you find this topic interesting, if you're one of the people who wrote to me saying, hey, you want to know what is the ending of that story? What did I learn from all of these methodologies I dove into in the summer of last year? And what have I learned from it? Well, join me on this masterclass that I'm going to be doing on mindvalley on how to accelerate your growth. I needed to apply this to my own life so I can take Mindvalley youy and the other massive projects we're doing at mindvalley to fruition. And I want to do it while having a lot of fun, without burning out and working a set number of hours. And you can do it too. But you got to learn to lift that ceiling to grow your capacity. Join me in this masterclass. I can't wait to share these ideas with you.
