Vishen Lakhiani argues that learning facts is temporary, but transformation changes how you see the world. He says traditional education focuses on memorization and grades, while real change comes from disorienting moments or accumulated meaning. His company MindValley works with schools like Finland's and companies like Google to teach for transformation, not just test scores.
Questions this video answers
University of Michigan.
About 200 to 700 Finnish students.
80%.
Chapters
So I was really, really grateful to have a mom who was a public school teacher, because she instilled in me the love for learning. And I did well as a student. I would go to school, I would get good grades. Having a mom as a teacher meant you could not slack on your homework. So good grades were, like, really important to me. But most of what I learned in school, I later forgot. Most of what I learned in university, at the University of Michigan, I later forgot. That is learning. Learning is temporary. You, you can learn facts, you can learn figures, but you forget them. Transformation, on the other hand, is beyond learning. Transformation is what is missing from our education system. Transformation is the idea that you start seeing the world in a radically different way. Transformation is going from the beliefs of your religion or your culture or the beliefs instilled in you by your parents and then realizing that there are other ways of viewing the world. And the unique thing about transformation is that once your mind expands, it can never again shrink to its original size. Once you understand that aging is optional, you can never again go back to the old you. Once you understand that you can succeed in life through love and compassion, you can never again go back to greed. Once you understand that love can be painful, but it's part of the journey, and it's one of the most fulfilling things a human being can experience. You never again fear relationships. And so Transformation is what MindValley is about. Transformation is what we're trying to get in schooling systems and now companies around the world. And so, thanks to this community that has been so engrossed in transformation, going through our programs on the MindValley app, we are slowly through you guys, being pulled in different businesses and companies. A couple of mindvalley reunion students last year from Finland pulled us into schools in Finland. So some 200 to 700 Finnish students took Jim Quick's quest, and we found that six months later, 80% of them saw a persistent grade increase. Thanks to other people in this room. We got invited to speak at Google. We just got invited to speak at Microsoft, and to bring our programs into these companies. And what we're really trying to do here is patch that gap in the education system that emphasized learning and standardized testing and certificates, rather than truly teaching us how to see the world in a unique way. So you got to understand, schools can teach you biology, but they can teach you to basically live to be 150 by slowing down aging. Schools can teach you. They can teach you values in some way, but they can't teach you to truly tap into your Spiritual core. And really that is what we are seeking to do at this event and through the mindvalley system. So how do you spark transformation? The funny thing is this, right? Transformation is initiated by two things. So for most people in the world, transformation comes through cause number one, a disorienting dilemma. Which means, bam, life comes and hits you, you go bankrupt, but through that you learn what to do to make your next business success. You end up in hospital, but through that you learn how to take better care of your health. That is transformation through pain. But there's also transformation through what is called gradual accumulation of evolving meaning schema. And that sounds so boring, but it basically means this. You start seeing the world in a new way because of the people you meet, because of the books you read, autobiographies, curated communities like this spark the second type of transformation. It's slower. It's slower, but it's a lot more beautiful. It's a lot more joyous. Now the problem though, is that both these forms of transformation don't happen at a rapid pace. Most people go through suffering to transform. And most people, their evolving meaning schema, their visions, their worldviews evolve very, very, very slowly because they are stuck with the same community. They're stuck in that same city. So here's what it looks like when you put it together. First, the disorienting dilemma. Right? The roomy said wound is the place where the light enters. And I love that quote. The disorienting dilemma is what all of us experience in our life that forces us to grow. Rumi also said, you who cannot take a good rub, how will you ever become a polished gem? Isn't that beautiful? So the disorienting dilemma is a really, really, really powerful idea. So powerful that Google did a study and they found this. So this is an extract from a book called Exponential Organizations. And it says Google recently demonstrated that its best employees were not Ivy League students, but rather young people who had experienced a big loss in their lives and had been able to transform that experience to into growth. According to Google, deep personal loss has resulted in employees who are more humble and open to listening and learning. That's crazy, right? Google literally found that when you go that their employees who are the best employees are ones who have gone through some form of suffering. How many of you here can recognize that idea of suffering because you've gone through it and you've emerged from that fire as a better person. So congratulations, turns out it's part of life. And now you're eligible for Google. So the second thing is evolve, meaning schema over time. So evolve, meaning schema over time is what personal growth is about. Evolved, meaning schema over time means that we are engaged in this process of growing and evolving ourselves. But when you put them both together, for the average person, transformation is unpredictable and slow because we have to wait for that suffering. Or it's slow because we are developing this evolved meaning schema in a slow accumulation over time. Our goal is to accelerate that, to get you guys to make that leap. That's why you're here. That's what this event is about. It's about making a rapid leap into transformation. So what I want to share with you are these two rules. But to understand these rules, we must give you a roadmap. Roadmaps are really beautiful because they show you how to get to where you want to go faster. And the roadmap we're going to use is this idea from Abraham Maslow. Any of you guys familiar with this? So Maslow created this pyramid called the Pyramid of Human Needs. And the yellow line points to love and belonging. All of us need love and belonging. We need our tribes, we need our societies, we need our family. We need to feel like we are part of something bigger. But once you have that fulfilled, once you are no longer lonely, your needs evolve. The next need that we go to is esteem. Esteem is really interesting. Esteem is what our education system is educating us to do. Esteem is when you care about your career progression, you care about that fancy car. You care about recognition from your boss. You care about looking really good in Lululemon yoga pants. That's esteem. Now the funny thing is most people, because our society hardwires into this. Most people, when they go through personal growth, it is esteem that they are looking for. But here's the thing. When you start going deeper and deeper and deeper into personal growth, it's no longer about your yoga ass or your promotion or about the recognition. You get to something called self actualization. This is where the magic happens. Self actualization is the idea that you grow for the sake of growth. It is your growth that motivates you, not external validation. This is where we want to take people. This is where you want to take your children. Not growing for someone else's opinion. Growing because as a soul, you know that the human experience is here. We are here in human bodies to learn and to grow. But there's a level above this. So the funny thing is, when Abraham Maslow first published a pyramid, he stopped at self actualization. Later, he went back to his work and said he missed a level. And that level is is what we call self transcendence. Self transcendence. I want you to take a moment and try to guess what you think this is. Okay. Self transcendence is the idea that you go beyond yourself, that your growth is important. Yes. But you're going to use that growth. You're going to use that fit body, that incredible mind, those connections you have that powerful cognitive ability to put together ideas, to go forth and fit, fix the world. Self transcendence is a really powerful idea. It means that we are not here just to be our best selves. We are here to be our best selves and fix the world. Fix the world around you so that our children inherit a better world than what we did. This is what mindvalley is about.
