Vishen Lakhiani warns about the "dark side of vision": when singular obsession with a goal (career, company, money) causes imbalance and harms health, relationships, and effectiveness. He illustrates this with Arianna Huffington's collapse and Elon Musk's extreme overwork, then shares his own breakdown (misaligned cofounder, a failed Groupon-clone startup) and recovery through Lifebook and adopting a 360° life vision covering multiple dimensions (health, relationships, meaning). The talk advocates crafting a personal, balanced, and uniquely yours vision rather than copying cultural expectations or the hustle myth.
Chapters
There's a dark side to vision, right? So we spoke about Elon Musk. Let's look at the dark side of Elon Musk. Arianna Huffington spoke about this. She wrote a book called Thrive. And she spoke about how at one point in her life she was working so hard. Ariana had built 100 million dollar valuation company, the Huffington Post. But she spoke about how one day she was walking back into her apartment in New York and she just collapsed from exhaustion, hit her head and pull. Her daughter had to call a doctor. And she realized that she was missing the point that she was sacrificing her health, sacrificing her functioning, her productivity because she had bought into the lie of overwork. And this lie, I call it the lie of hustle. The lie of hard work permeates so many people who are driven. Elon Musk two months ago gave a series of interviews in the New York Times. And, and he was very raw and honest. That's something I like about him. But he said brakes are for cars, not CEOs. And he also spoke about how he is going through excruciating pain right now as CEO of two companies. In fact, he had to step down as CEO as chairman of one company. He can't sleep without the drug Ambien. He sometimes has to work till 3am he has already gone through two divorces and it's taking a toll on him. And so people were accusing him last month of actually being unfit to lead these companies. This is the dark side of vision. It's when you have a singular obsession and everything else, your love, relationships, your health, your sleep, all starts falling apart. It is downright unhealthy, folks. Arianna Huffington wrote a letter to Elon Musk, an open letter. And this is what she advised him. She said because she had learned the lesson. As you told the New York Times, you've exhausted yourself working 120 hour weeks at the expense of seeing your children and your friends. You've had day long stretches where you shut yourself inside the Tesla factory and don't even go outside. You don't take vacations. There's no way you can connect with your amazing vision and creativity when you don't give yourself time to reconnect, not just with those you love, but also with yourself and your wisdom. That is the dark side. What's really cool to see Ariana like slap Elon like that. Now he said, look, I don't have time. He's wrong. He's a fucking genius, but he is so freaking wrong on this one, right? So this singular obsession can destroy us. And I've gone through it. Ten years ago as I had my wake up call from Bob Proctor and I started building Mindvalley, you know, that was the team I had. Look at me in that picture, okay? So Nika, you'll see Nika, she's also at a fest. But observe me and Nika and notice how I'm sitting. This was 10 years ago. So most of the people in that picture no longer work for mindvalley. A lot of them are still friends, they're doing great in other companies. But the two people who are here, me and Nika, observe what we look like in that picture. Nika's probably going to kill me for putting this up. And this is 10 years later, right? So this is when you are obsessed. If you look at that previous picture, that's when you are obsessed with just a singular focus. I was working hard at the expense of my health, at the expense of my friendships, at the expense of so many different things. And it wasn't just me, because people will follow the CEO. So if I'm doing these unhealthy practices, so are people on my team, right? But when you wake up, when you have this transformation, when you go from Elon Musk to Elon plus the wisdom of Ariana in that metaphor, you start opening yourself up to so much more. Now, the first aspect of the dark side of vision is this imbalance. But I want to tell you about another aspect. And that second aspect is cultural programming. The visions that we are pursuing, take, they don't come from us, they come from outside us. I became an engineer not because I wanted to be an engineer, it's because I'm an Indian male. And if you're an Indian immigrant, you learn very early in your family that your parents value education. You are going to come back with as all as, not 1B or 1C. And that there are only four options in your life. You become a doctor, an engineer, a lawyer, or a family embarrassment. So this picture, this picture is a picture which I sent my team. This again was maybe seven years or so. We are celebrating hitting our 2 million month, right? But that's actually the wrong motivation. Who gives a fuck if we hit 2 million? It's just a number. Today what we celebrate in our team is the number of students that we touch, the quality of our events, the quality of the products we get out there. Having the highest engagement rate learning platform in the world, creating revolutionary new things like Mindvalley University. But if I go Back seven years, cultural programming. It was causing me to add an overemphasis on money and career more than anything else. So my breakdown happened, and I went through a breakdown. My breakdown happened in 2010. In 2010, my business partner at that time and myself. So there were a couple of things we did wrong. The first thing that we did wrong is that my business partner and myself, his name was Mike, and we went to college together. We were friends in Michigan for many years, but we had different visions. And so the company had no vision. When two partners have different visions, whether it's in a marriage or a business, there is no vision for that family. There is no vision for that business. So Mindvalley became nothing more than a machine to just generate enough cash flow so that we could live our lives and do what really gave us meaning. So I actually had pretty much stepped out of Mindvalley. Now what was I doing that was giving me more meaning? I was experimenting with a different company, a fest. Right. So the first mistake was we didn't have an aligned vision. Ask yourself honestly, do you have an aligned vision with your business partner? Do you have. Do you have aligned vision with your life partner? And if you don't, that is a big warning sign. Now, the second thing is, as I started moving away from Mindvalley, cultural programming again infused me. And this time the cultural programming was that in 2010ish in Malaysia, there was a big startup boom. So people were starting companies, raising money, and I decided I wanted a piece of that. I wanted to start a startup. I wanted to raise money. So I came up with an idea. It was for a Groupon clone. Groupon had become the fastest growing company in the world at that time. I decided to clone it in Malaysia, found a business partner, found developers, got $2 million investment from Intel Venture Capital. I was written about in the press. I'm like, yes, I'm now a startup entrepreneur. Six months into it, I realized my life was miserable. I didn't like the team. I was not clicking with my partner. I hated my job. There was so much competition because seven other Groupon clones had started. And I started dreading what I was doing. So six months into it, I sold most of my shares and backed out. Now, why did I go down that stupid thing in the first place? It's because cultural programming, culture. I didn't have a vision for how I wanted to lead my life. I did not have what John Butcher calls a life vision. So I was just following what the other guy was doing. Raise money, start a Startup, try to sell it to an investor, and boom, you are that label that we define as successful. I want you to ask yourself this, are you in that trap? Are you running a business that you took on because everybody else is doing it? Are you in the business that you took on because you inherited it from your family? Do you secretly hate your job like I did? I'm so glad I quit that stupid idea. In six months, I lost a lot of money on it. I lost the respect of investors. I lost respect of some of my business partners. That's okay, because what happened was I started discovering a new way to set vision. Now, how that happened was this. I bumped into this guy, John Butcher. So a friend of mine told me I should really take this program called Lifebook. So I took Lifebook. And that's where another piece entered. You see, Bob Proctor had given me that first piece. Big. Like, don't play small, go big, right? But I was going big in one dimension, career and finance. And that's a tiny slice of what it means to be human. What John Butcher told me is, showed me is that there are 10 additional dimensions that you look at, right? I saw this picture of John and frankly, I got turned on. But this set another vision for me, right? So I realized that health, longevity, I didn't have goals for that, so I started doing that. And that was my health transformation in just two years. So I actually reversed my biological age by maybe between five and seven years. You can actually measure biological age. So I want you to know that this is a very important part of the process. This is not about becoming Elon Musk. Elon Musk is Elon Musk. You are you. You are who you are. And your vision has to be unique to you. And this is about getting you to think boldly, but not to start the next startup because you want to start the next startup because everybody else is doing it, or become the next best selling authority because everybody else is doing it. It's to figure out what is that unique vision that's emerging from you, what is that life that you want to lead. And then making that as bold and magnificent and 360 as you.
