The Barcelona Experiment: How Mindvalley Tried to Reinvent the University

Our modern education system has been a topic of debate for years, with popular critics claiming that the system was modelled on the interest and needs of the industrial age. With the rising cost of universities in many countries, many graduate with enormous debt or choosing not to pursue their higher education altogether. Many lucky enough to have access to education are still finding themselves opposing the system, claiming that it is heavily outdated and in need of reform. As founder of an online education platform called Mindvalley, Vishen Lakhiani has been looking at ways of accelerating human potential and personal growth, which he claims is lacking in education today.

The idea of the four year college to me is rubbish. It belongs in the trash bin of history. You cannot take a group of people who are 19 or 20 or 21 and put them in a bubble for four years and guess what? Four years. When they emerge from that bubble, the world has changed. The world is changing so fast that between 2016 and 2022, Singularity University says that we're going to see as much change as between 1900 and 2000. That change is accelerating. The data is showing that 45% of jobs today are going to disappear in 10 years. Gallup says that 54% of Americans dislike their jobs. So what kind of world are we building where our kids are having to spend so much money, especially in the US to get an education, only to go take a job that the majority of them dislike? The system is broken. Look at what's happening in America today, where education today has become such a for profit enterprise that young Americans start out their adult lives in massive debt for a bullshit piece of paper that very likely is going to mean nothing ten years from now. This is what we want to disrupt.

While I respect our educational system, I think that it's only, it only satisfies 40%, 30%, maybe on a good day, 50% of what our children need. And you know, some would argue that, well, it's not the job of the educational system to do it, that's the job of parents to do it. But I think parents only teach what they've been taught. You only repeat what you've learned. And I don't think there's any learning opportunity for our children that doesn't require a group of people, a village, a tribe. And so I think that there needs to be a space where teens, children and adults can go to. They need to learn ways in which they can enhance their life, not a particular intellect or a skill set. How to fix a car, how perform law, how to be a doctor. That's a skill set there's so much more to my life than my skill set.

I think in our education system we tend to train the brain but not the heart. So I think people are learning a lot of information, which of course to a certain extent is useful, but they're not learning how to expand their consciousness, they're not learning how to deal with emotions, they're not learning how to deal with stress. So I would say a holistic education is training in wisdom as well as knowledge.

School should teach people, children, how to cope with abandonment, how to cope with being lonely, how to make friends, how to socialize in real life. You know, there's a life outside of an online experience. I think we assume that socialization skill set, anger management skill sets, communication connection skill sets are just natural. And they're not.

A lot of parents.

That I talk to now.

They still don't fully understand that their kids actually probably will never drive a car. Cars will be driving themselves by the time they're 16, 18, and they won't be using things like fiat currency on a regular day to day basis. Nobody teaches us how to make our marriages thrive. Nobody teaches us how to raise kids properly. Nobody teaches us wisdom or mindfulness or how to take care of our bodies, or to live a life of longevity and health. To build conscious enterprises and businesses that are pushing humanity forward, to have solid friendships, to be kind. This is what we call transformational education. Now it occurred to us that old school colleges still had something really, really, really important going for them. See, online education is big. People talk about it, billion dollar companies are starting in online education. But online education is missing one of the key things that colleges, old fashioned colleges do so, so, so well. And that is they bring people together and they create community. And nothing in life contributes to greater levels of happiness and longevity as having a supportive community. You can look at the Harvard studies by Ed Diener which say that the single greatest thing that correlates to human happiness is the strength of your social connections. You can look at the blue zone studies that talk about places like Sardinia where people live into their hundreds. And you know what causes that? That longevity? It's community. Colleges do that so well. It's why when we graduate from college, we don't remember our classes or our teachers, but we remember the friendships, the dates, the people we connected with, the social outings. How could we as an online company bring that beautiful aspect of college to our students? That was what sparked 9 Valley U. What if in an age of mobility, what if we could create a new type of College that changes campuses every year. And thousands of people could come to these cities converted into campuses and actually form a community together.

The team tasked at pulling off this idea of a moving city campus are a selection of people from all over the world. They fly into Kuala Lumpur to meet after having worked virtually on the project over the last few months. Today at Mindvalley, we are planning for the interesting project that's happening in Barcelona in June. So our team works virtually, but we've come together to Kuala Lumpur to sit down for two days and really think about the next steps for making Barcelona happen.

Okay. And 1. Look at the cabinet. 2 and 3. So finally, after two months of us all working remotely, our whole team got together in Kuala Lumpur and this is the time that we need to really put things together for executing this new experiment. Like, we were given this project to build a brand new campus, which has never been done before. And so we were a little stressed and we were doing our best remotely. But at some point we all need to get together and this is this time where we're building the strategy, we're confirming the locations. And one of the most exciting things that have happened so far is we finally decided on the co working space, the hub, the one place where everybody's going to unite throughout that whole journey for the month.

So we finally have the co working space for Barcelona. It's called Beta House. It's in. What's the name of the area?

Gracia. Right?

Gracia. Gracia.

I remember just. Oh, that's a fantastic area.

So these are the venues that we're looking at. Like, nothing is. I haven't signed any contracts yet, but like, I will confirm BetterHelp this week. And this means that like, Barcelona is really hard. As an event planner, doing something as crazy as Barcelona is, it's really, really scary, but also very exciting. One of the main challenges that we have is really like finding all those locations because we want one central space for the entire group for the entire month. But the truth is we don't know how many people will actually show up. So it's very hard to find the perfect venue without knowing how big is the actual interest. Also, at first, this idea is very, very new and unique. It was a bit maybe hard to understand, like what's the scope of the event to start the actual planning process. So now we know what's happening and we have a clear vision and now it's way easier to put it all together. So this concept of Mind Valley University, true to mindvalley style, is unheard of. Mindvalley is a midwife to birthing new what some would call outrageous, what many would call necessary ways of being. So it's bold, I'm sure it's pricey, it's edgy, it has a lot of risk. But until you're willing to risk it all, you can never gain it all. If you want to gain big, you risk big. And so I've never heard of anything ever like mindvalley University, like learning for a month, a concentrated month in different countries all around the world, where you're submerged in another culture. So your compassion, your respect, your ownership, your defender of the world comes out, you know, and with every country you go to, you're just. You become that much more of a global student. Because I've always said I want to learn all around the world from the world. I just don't think you're going to get that in the classroom with a desk and God knows with a chalkboard in front of you with recess and lunch and a locker is just not enough. You can't give our children access to touch the world on their mobile devices and then they can never see the world. You can't do that. It's incongruent. And yet until something's born, that's all we'll have. And that's why Mindvalley University is timely and necessary. It's about creating the platform that delivers all the knowledge and the skills that we actually need in nowadays world and are not necessarily prioritized in traditional education systems. So MindValleyU is also serving the purpose of delivering this platform for people when they can get together in real life, really create those meaningful and deep connections between each other.

Starting something has a certain kind of quality to it. When you think you're doing it, you think, this is the hardest thing I've ever done, but actually a much more difficult thing is to make it sustainable and to continue to grow and learn.

Just a day away from the start of mindvalley U, the attendees from all over the world travel to the vibrant city of Barcelona. We meet Vishen on campus to find out how everything was going before the start of an exciting month ahead.

I'm on the rooftop now of Beta House, the co working space in Via Gracia, this beautiful little village within the city where we are bringing all of these people. I know as an entrepreneur, about half the ideas I start are going to fail. The other half may take off. I just want to be able to see lives change, to make an impact and I'm praying it works. For sure. We're going to lose money on this first investment. We have set a ceiling for how much I'm prepared to lose. But what will determine if this takes off or not is the reaction. The 300 people who are here, if they love this so much that they want to come back every year for the rest of their lives, that's what we're aiming for, right? So we're either gonna create something that's absolutely, incredibly great, that this becomes a new way of living and people come back every year, or we're not. And if it's not absolutely great, I'm killing it. It has to be absolutely great. People must love this. If it's just meh or if it's okay, I'm gonna kill this because I don't want to play with something unless it's really, really, really phenomenal. So we're either all in or we're all out. Fall down.

So today is a very exciting day for us Mind Valley youth. The city campus is kicking off finally in the beautiful city of Barcelona. We're here at this gorgeous restaurant. It's called Meramar. It's a panoramic restaurant. You can see a 360 view of the city. And we have all our Mind Value students right now coming to start this city campus that we are doing for the first time.

Welcome to orientation day. This is the first day of our Myvalue project, and we're really excited because we have about 300 people that are coming in and discovering exactly everything that's happening this month. One of the biggest challenges we've had when we were doing this is that there's so many things happening throughout this full month at Mindvalleyu. Most people are wondering, like, okay, when is everything happening? When is this? What do I do for that? And so what we've done is printed the whole agenda. We have a ton of people that are there to answer questions, interact with the guests, and it's amazing. We have a full three hours. Vishen is going to come and do a presentation as well. And we're going to have everyone get a chance to meet, greet, and see the co working space for the very first time. So what we have laid out is because we have these premium seminars that are happening in parallel to all these free workshops, people want to understand, like, what am I going to do for the weekend? Do I just want to take it easy? Do I want to participate in these advanced workshops? That's the beauty of Myvalue is there's so Much flexibility on how people can enjoy their experience here in Barcelona, that they get to pick and choose how to make it happen. So with the team, we're putting this all together and we're all going to be walking around, running around and, and we expect a bit of chaos. We actually don't know how many people are going to show up at the same time. And the co working space that we have, to be honest, has never actually facilitated more than about 120 people. And so with the fact that we're coming in 300, we know not everyone's coming at the same time, but if they do, we might be running in a bit of trouble. So we're going to see how this day unfolds. So far so good. We've seen the right number of people, everything's been going smoothly, but I expect we're going to have a few hiccups come in a couple hours to come. Beautiful orientation day. Welcome to my love you everyone. Why we do these days and why we bring so many cultures together in this, this arena. Personal growth. The most challenging thing we've been dealing with is so many people actually flew from around the world and didn't buy their ticket yet. And we're completely sold out for this first mindvalue. So we've been dealing with some people messaging us on email, sending us Facebook messengers, just reaching out and saying, listen, I just came from Australia, can I please have a ticket? So we've been scrambling because we're already at max capacity yet we have so many of our guests and community members that we need to create space for them. So we're trying to juggle this space. We know some of them are coming to the registration saying, yeah, I don't have a ticket yet, how do I get in? And we're going to deal with that as it unrolls.

Hello, I'm Hannah Honda. I am 19 years old. I'm in Mind Valley University. So when I was born, my parents searched all over the world for what kind of education they wanted me to take. And they found one in Boston. It was the Sudbury Valley School. And I went there for three years and there in that school there were no classrooms and there were no teachers. And it was an extremely unique education. My education was non teaching, was the true teaching. So growing up I was living in this very creative environment. And then I reached to the age 13, 14, 15, and then I started to wonder what was the value of college or university. So I started asking people, I started interviewing people, what was the best thing that you learned within a college or university. And I can tell you, Without a doubt, 90% of the people told me that it was people.

Question is, are our current society's metrics of success really making sense? We are told, be an entrepreneur. We are told, expand your bank balance. We are told that success is the title on your damn business card. What if success was really defined by this? How can we leave a positive mark on the planet for future generations? And how can we truly live while making this impact? Because, of course, I mean, if we're just pushing to create a better world, but we aren't truly living, we are trapped in our own version of the 9 to 5, then we have failed ourselves, we have failed our soul experience here as a human being.

So mindvalleyu is an experiment that we tried for the very first time in Barcelona this year, where we bring together a community of people from all over the world to come together to interact, learn, grow, inspire each other. We've had workshops every day, speakers from all over the world sharing their knowledge, tools, resources and socials and connecting. And it's really become. It's really become a family facilitator, a good speaker. You don't ask your audience to do anything that you're not willing to do first. So the ambition and the concept behind this project is huge. We're reinventing people's way of learning, of the concept of a university, of the life skills that we're acquiring in life, of community living. And from a logistical standpoint, being part of the events team, we had such a massive undertaking to plan a month worth of content and different workshops happening every single day, a different premium seminar every single day, flying in speakers from all over the world, having a co working space with hundreds of people working out of it. It was really a huge undertaking and one that we're quite proud of. So one of the really unique things about this program is that we've catered it for all ages, from little children to adults and everything in between. One of the beautiful things about this community is that we have such a wealth of talent and knowledge within it. So we're drawing on each other's skills to teach what we're best at and what we're passionate about and what we know. And so we really have people that are coming from different respective areas. Hi, I'm Jenny Harlan Khan and I'm here running alongside my Valley U, A kids education program.

My name's Chad Myers and I've been an educator for almost 25 years. I come from the United States and From Michigan actually. And I'm the head educator in this program. And it's an experiment alongside mindvalley U, which I know this is an experiment that Vishen had created. And so we thought, why not do the same with the kids?

So we've got two age groups happening. We've got under nine, so it goes from five to nine and then nine actually up to 17. We have a 17 year old. And what's beautiful is that the 17 year olds are helping the younger kids, but they all seem to be getting something out of it. So I wasn't sure whether those age scoots would work, but it seems to be, seems to be working. So in the curriculum we're trying to cover topics that aren't covered in the school traditional system. So I mean we've got all sorts. We've got yoga, we've got energy work, we've got kids learning how their mind works. We've got sessions on empowerment and self confidence, we've got field trips. We went to the science museum last week. They're going to be learning about the Catalan culture this afternoon in Park Guell. You know, we've got children from so many different countries here, so we're learning about each other and you know, where everyone's coming from. But it's really focusing on the personal. That's, you know, on how they connect to each other and connect to themselves and how they show up in the world and having them know that they're whole and complete as they are. So all of our work is based around that which I feel gets a little lost in the traditional system.

Yeah, I've been in education now for 25 years. Started in inner city schools and one of the things that I noticed right away there was a poverty of relationships.

That's amazing.

And everybody ready? Whoa, that was great. Okay, now you're ready to go. The kids were desiring that relationship with me and I was more concerned about the curriculum. But I switched real fast and once I developed those relationships, I could teach them anything. So we created like a learning community and we would like there might be 35 kids and we would all help each other get the work done and then we would head outside and just play. The kids know, they already know what they need and we should be asking them more what they need instead of us telling them what they need. I literally worked in the ghetto. I worked in the hood. From there I moved into more suburban settings and worked in public education. Met actually Jenny Harlan Kahn, who kind of helped create this vision together with me Jenny and I just kept chatting overseas. And so finally she said, are we gonna do this or not? And I said, yes.

Hold this down. Just relax. So my son was in private school actually, and he was so interested in sort of questioning the teachers and asking new things and sort of expanding the questions, you know, and sort of challenging what was going on because he was so curious, inquisitive, and he's really sort of an exact person. And sadly, the teachers didn't really see that as a gift. In fact, I spoke to them many times and said, you know, this is challenging as a child. There's an adult that's really going to serve him. And they both just told me, no, it wasn't going to work out. They didn't like it. He needed to change. And sadly, their answer for that was medication. They really actually told me that unless I was prepared to medicate him, he wasn't welcome back in the school. And as a private school, they had that opportunity. So my option was to put him in public school, which at that time I didn't also feel was a good fit for him. There's just so many things happening in the public school system that I just didn't feel comfortable with either. So the answer for me was I was going to take my kids traveling for a year and just figure it out, work it out, try homeschooling, try a different type of school, try world schooling, try this program and see if their education could grow in a different kind of way other than traditional school. Hi, I'm Sonia Choquette and I am here in Barcelona about to teach a workshop on the importance of intuition in your life. Today, I am so impressed with this idea because as an intuitive person, I'm working with people and consulting people, people all the time in every walk of life, and they don't have the skills, the training, the consciousness that's current with the way the world is going right now. And so Mindvalley is addressing that by helping everybody get up to speed. I'm just thrilled to be able to be part of this. I think what we should be learning in school is really accentuating what a child's gift is. I mean, each and every child is so unique. I think the education is system is too busy putting kids in boxes and putting kids in classifications so that they fit and they go and they become something that's in a box. And what is in a box is so not what this generation is into. And I think the education system really needs to adapt and change to what does this child love? What is this child's gifts, where are they going to excel in and how can we empower them to excel in that area Instead of asking and hammering them down, you know, squash that down so you can be better over here because this is what this box entails and these are all the little boxes you have to fill. And I think it's really sad when kids are so good in one area and maybe they're not so good in another and we're really shaming them and blaming them that they don't get what's over here because they're over here. I raised my girls traveling and taking them out of school. School ultimately homeschooled my second child because she was so invested in continuing to travel instead of being in a traditional classroom. But what I've seen is it was worth the fight because the classrooms haven't kept up with the world. Our world is changing too fast and it's, it's a global world now, not a linear isolated world. I am convinced the experience really empowered them to respond to the world today.

Breathe out deep through the mouth 365.

Days a year for the rest of your life.

Inc.

Does make your six page story about sure. And that's okay if you don't have one. I have many clients who have kids getting out of college now who are completely saddled with enormous debt. And yet the kids graduating have no real skill or experience in how to become real entrepreneurs, creators, contributors in the world. So they're frustrated and feel like, what was this for? So this kind of a university is very relevant and can empower you. If nothing else, it'll fill in the blanks. But I actually am so confident that this is a good idea. It can replace the traditional education because it's not a useful education anymore in most cases. As the days progress with the continuous learnings and workshops, the attendees appear to be bonding while also immersing themselves in life outside the classroom.

Sam.

From dance classes to Catalan's music and cultural festivals to sightseeing and excursions, the past two weeks have proven to be busy for attendees. With the campus attracting other innovators in the field, we start the conversation on what education needs to be for the future.

My name is John Stewart. I'm based in Byron Bay. My name is Phil Moore and I've been in a forest. My name is Gordy Bal. I'm a serial entrepreneur and founder of an organization. I'm Vishen Lakhiani. I'm the founder of Mindvalley. What are the aspects of the traditional education system that you find we should keep as we reinvent the education for the future? Well, my first response would be there's very little. So I guess that's why I'm occupying a new paradigm. I think one thing that really works in the current education system, it's community. Like, if you speak to most people, what is the greatest thing they experience in college? It's the friendships, it's the community, it's the connections. I don't remember a thing I learned in classes. I started a company with my dorm mate, the very first guy I bumped into when I as a freshman walked into my dormitory. And that's the most powerful thing about education, which I think we should keep. But here's the problem, right? Schools emphasize the learning, they emphasize the classroom, they emphasize the grades. They do very little to emphasize the community. Rather, they outsource community to student organizations. I think also what's key to note is, you know, you look at the origin especially of the American education system is John D. Rockefeller was part of the General Education Fund that started this education. And he himself said, I want a nation of workers, not a nation of thinkers. So if you look at the system right now, it's like, okay, you go for 18 years and you're told to learn this specific information. After that you go another four years, you get $100,000 in debt, and then you end up working for somebody for the rest of your life. Where's happiness in that? Where's fulfillment? Where do you discover purpose? So for me, I might sound a little bit jaded. I wouldn't keep anything of the current school system. Well, you're direct. Someone else want to take the next question? What are the aspects of the traditional education system that we should stop practicing? Are we going to have fun with that one? Yeah. Yeah. Well, I think stop this fear and intimidation and this ridicule and all of those things. We should stop hiring teachers that are not passionate and that don't care. I'd come at it also from, I'm going to support the teachers. So I'm going to say you've got to come at it from the teaching side too, where this system is about recall, which is the lowest form of thinking. So, you know, now we've actually improved that because we've highlighted there's high stake testing internationally. So we've got the tims, we've got the pisa, and so now countries are judged. So when countries get judged, governments make sure that their schools get judged. So we get league tables. So the whole focus on, on Teaching now is about teaching to the test. And the other side is, you know, I think we'll agree we've got a system that can be improved and become more progressive. But what we're doing is we're just plugging more things onto it. So teachers just feeling inundated with another thing coming, another great idea. Here's another thing expected of me. And so the curriculum's just getting full and the teachers are feeling overburdened. Whereas what I want to do is say, let's just build a new car. Why keep plugging things on? Let's just stop and let's not say, here's a system, let's think of something alternate. Let's stop and say, what's progressive? How can we create something brand new where the best information, the best ideas, the best teachers, the best sense of community can be grown from the ground up? And that, I think is what's exciting for me. What should we stop? So one of the things I think we should stop is this whole idea that kids have to go down these linear job roles, right? So we ask, you know, we like, for example, I thought I wanted to be an engineer because I thought that was the option out there. Engineer, lawyer, in Indian families. If you're not one of that, you're basically a family embarrassment. What if there was new models where we simply allowed kids to discover what value they want to give the world and then let them identify how they could do it? For example, if you ask someone who says they want to be a doctor, really maybe what they want to do is heal. But you don't have to be a doctor for that. You could go into alternative healing. You could be a health coach, you could be a doctor, you could be a nurse. But there are so many different ways to heal that we force kids to take standardized tests so they could pass hurdle after hurdle after hurdle to get into these jobs. And often they end up in these jobs and the rest of their life is depressing. 50% of lawyers in America are clinically depressed. And these kids have spent 10 years of their life training up and working hard to go into a job because society says coming out of law school, highest paid salaries for any graduate degree. But it doesn't say that you're going to be clinically depressed. 50% chance, I would say that fear based education, which is what we had, because you're going to be ranked and you're going to compete and you're going to be judged whether you want to, and you're going to be led to Believe that the smartest kid in the school is the valedictorian and the world will lay down at their feet. Why we need to reorganize school is because this idea that has so come from America and was so important at one point of individuality has to start expanding. Yes, be the best person you can be, but the reason you have to be the best person you can be is so you can give thought and give your gifts to the world and make our human race the best it can be. That's why we have to reform schools, so that the kids can extend their sympathy beyond their tribe, beyond their nation, to all people in the world, and then make decisions to based on this idea. And the first thing we do in orientation here is we talk about the philosophies of Ken Wilber, Barbara Marx Hubbard, Charles Darwin, who in 1872 wrote about diffusion of sympathy and how man's natural state is to extend his sympathy to wider and wider circles until it encompasses all sentient beings. Right. And we tell people here, respect your country, your culture, that's great. But here we are as the human race, and everything you're going to learn here are tools to help you push the human race forward. It's so exciting. It is exciting because everybody's sharing a view of expanding education to actually be a care base and support, you know, my kids are going to have a great world.

Can I do a quick recap on the feedback survey?

Yes.

The feedback so far has been just incredible. I mean, this is the whole reason we're already thinking we need to do this again next year and we need to make it bigger and better.

Let's start with this side.

I think this whole experience is creating like such a mixed level of bonding for our team. There's been so much stress. I know that some of us can shed a tear at times, but I think whenever we can see someone's not quite themselves, there's been so much love going around. It's really cool. I think it's been up and down and everything in between, but it's been a beautiful experience and journey. Okay, so it's week almost week three now.

Yeah.

How are you feeling?

I want to go home. It's. It's. No, I'm saying that in jest, of course, but I look forward to being back in my bed, to having my regular routine. Been here now for five weeks, even though for the students who are here, it's three weeks. But I can honestly say that this is the singular toughest thing I've ever had. To do as an entrepreneur in 12 freaking years. The singular toughest thing, I wasn't expecting to get as little sleep. I wasn't expecting to not even have time to check email. I have 800 emails piling up or check Slack. It's a good thing. It's because we're seeing so many people shift, so many teenagers, so many kids, so many parents, so many lives shift that we're inspired to give it our best. Like, I really want to just sit back and enjoy the city and take some time to go see some museums with my kid. There's no free time because so many things are bubbling up. One of the most interesting things is that we plan for, say, you know, 20 different events, 20, maybe 40 different events in the course of, like, four weeks that has swelled to over a hundred. Because what we are finding that's really unique is it's like Burning Man. The people who are here are building upon the system. So more and more and more and more and more of events and networking and masterminds and speeches and trainings are just emerging. And our team, which is so understaffed right now, is just scrambling to make it work. And we realized that pretty much to run this, we need a team about three to four times the size. And so even me, like, I wanted to just come here and have a good time, and I'm not able to. The bad thing is this is ridiculously so much tougher than I thought. The good thing is it's tougher because we're seeing. We're seeing incredible. An incredible impact on people, and we can't stop. We got to take this further. We got to expand this. We got to figure out how to go from 300 people to a thousand next year, and then eventually 10,000 and then 40,000. 40,000 is the number that's in my head because when I went to the University of Michigan, we have 40,000 students. And I think if we want to really make a dent, we got to be able to impact 40,000 students a year. So it's going to be a challenging next couple of years. And I got to figure out how to create some balance right now because I've never been this stressed out and overworked. But what's driving us is what we are hearing is the feedback. So it's good, it's bad, but it's exciting either way.

For that, we have invited a local entrance. So we created this agenda, this schedule based on, I mean, what we thought people would be interested in doing and how much free time we thought People would have. And then before we knew it, this first week, people have been coming up to us and asking to do workshops. They've been facilitating their own workshops outside of the co working space. It's been incredible. We've had workshops on, you know, free flow dance, how to invest in bitcoin, to scaling up your business. Like so many incredible. So much incredible content taught by tribe.

Company earns $5 million in profit.

We pay you back. It's while nobody notices, right? None of us are ninja moves. I think some of the attendees feel, you know, they plan things outside of our agenda so, you know, they feel like they're missing out if they're not going to be there on time. But I think for the majority of people, they're just so happy to have even more and more content that they can, you know, and opportunities to connect. Like, we've been finding that a lot of our tribe have actually been facilitating sessions outside of the space. So they've been doing, you know, yoga in the park on the weekends or having potluck dinners at their house. And they've just been having these really incredible mastermind, you know, meals around the table. It's really exciting for me to see that within one day. I've been to most of the workshops every day that I say I don't want to do one. I look at what it's about and I say, well, I have to go.

I'm here. Why would I miss it?

So I've been to most of them and I love that there's such a variety. I have to say, one of the most powerful ones is the one that my mom did with her friend Nina. And, you know, it really just what they did is they went really well. They created the space for people to go deep for themselves. So it really took on a personal growth aspect which I do think is missing in school, is actually learning about ourselves, who we are, who we want to be, what are our aspirations, what are our fears. That's such a big element to growing and creating businesses or becoming who we want to be in the world. So maybe I'm biased, but I did love that one the most.

I think the team couldn't have come up with a better city. It's just an amazing inaugural city for the program. The quality of people that I've met here at mindvalley is actually mind blowing. We can use movement to help us with that process.

I grew up on a farm from.

Eight and a half to 17 years old. I battled with my father virtually every day. My education Never helped me figure out what I really want to do.

And never. I never experienced that there would even.

Be space for a conversation like that. And every time I had a conversation with that, there was some kind of a pressure in the background that I should figure something out. I never experienced that people would be okay with me not knowing. It's not about them, it's about you. Are you being the most magnificent version of yourself you ever dreamt possible? Are you showing up as the grandest.

Me I can even think of? Mindvalley U was so attractive to me because my kids know that, you know, their mom isn't normal. So for me it was beautiful that my kids got to see other parents who were just living this extraordinary life too. There's lots of other parents in this program who are doing unique and different things with their kids. Where we're from, we're the only ones doing that. So my kids always feel like we're weird, but when they come here, they feel like, wow, everybody else is weird. Well, I've met people from all over.

The world doing amazing things and I finally feel like I've met people that are on the same level as me. Like not just business wise, but with.

The values they have, the beliefs they.

Have and the lifestyles they live. It finally feels like I'm not weird. But this is. We can be all weird together or normal.

The big aha moment for me was in a conversation with someone and I, I was thinking about it back home in the different places I've lived, people look at me and they say, oh, there goes Journey with her crazy life. There she goes traveling and doing these projects and I'm like that person that does this thing out there. Whereas here I'm normal. And it's just, it feels so nice to just be surrounded with people who get me. You serve, you exchange, you meet people, you gather together, you blend in. It's unity. And this is what I am learning about yourself, you're learning about your life. You cannot compare what we were learning here with school. It's so much different. If there is a reputation of this community, it is to be inspired. Inspired and your eyes open up to the possibilities. And it has fully met that expectation. Just meeting amazing, amazing people that you know that are heartwarming.

I had a feeling that that's what I was getting involved in when I left Vancouver, but I had no idea to what level it would affect me and my spirit.

How we gather together, how we learn, how we exchange. We don't have that in school. We are combined with each other. One day I'm going to look at the back of my life and I know already mindvalleyu at that time, Barcelona, that's one of the like just before I die. Yes. Mind value was going to be like.

One part of it. Yeah. I was never taught to dream past.

My corporate career job. And the takeaway from this event is it validates all these different learning methods and avenues of inquiry for life and designing your own life. And the people here.

I can see.

Are contributing to my future self and we're all contributing to each other. Quick 60 second share. What were you dealing with really fast? What did you learn? One of the biggest things for me was connecting with people. Before I came here, I was a total mess.

Seeing the teenagers being impacted, that that was a big deal.

I always thought that you had to be just okay in life and you had to follow a middle path and never stray. But today I learned that you're never ever going to be in the middle. You have your good side and you have your negative top side and you have to embrace both because you're always going to have both. But then once you raise them, you get to choose which way you want to be.

We only have one life and life is too short to live it while holding anger from the past. Because I was so insecure as a teenager and I wish I had something like that. I mean, we had teens. We had one teen who came here and said that he felt that he didn't matter in the world, that if, if he disappeared tomorrow, no one, not even his parents, would care. And he thought, look, I'm just going to come to Barcelona and see what happens. And he came and it was such a shift that he knows how important it is. And here's what we realized. We realized that what causes that shift, what gets someone to get out of their self esteem issue, get out of their depression, get out of these dark thoughts, is understanding that they are not alone. That there are other people like them who feel the same way. And it's being in a space where you can connect with these people and know that they genuinely care about you, you care about them. And that care is created from these beautiful experiences where we bring people together. Whether it's an experience of awe because you're learning from someone, or an experience of discovery because you're exploring Barcelona. This turned out that it was meant to be an education experience. But what we're finding is that the greatest thing that's causing the shifts in people is the fact that they are Discovering that they are never going to be lonely again. People are going back, but what they say are five, sometimes 10 best friends in the world whom they cannot wait to see again. That is what changes it. I wish it could say it's Mindvalley's great curriculum. It's not. Our curriculum is awesome, our events are awesome. But it's the people here connecting with other people here that cause us that shift.

I think the idea and the concept behind Mindvalue is such an interesting one. I love the idea of us redefining education and really looking at the. The life skills are important for us to have as individuals, as a community, as friends in our relationships, in our daily lives. Everyone deserves to have the opportunity to learn from different parts of the world, to be able to get in touch with their own creative self and work on their dreams and aspirations. Surrounded by like minded people. The purpose is to really take it to the level where we collaborate and co create this also with the cities and the countries so they would become part of that future education.

You realize that in collaboration, the synergy of coming together, that's where the power.

Of our species lies. I think the potential of it is huge and really excited to see where it goes.

Sa.