Vishen LakhianiFounder of Mindvalley | NYT Bestselling Author | Transforming Lives Globally

The most important belief @vishenlakhiani @hikmatwehbipodcast

7 Mar 2025 · 1 min

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1:07

Vishen Lakhiani recounts advice from his mentor, Professor Sri Kumar Rao, arguing that beliefs shape experience and that the single most important belief is in a "benevolent universe" (that the universe/God is watching out for you). He says adopting this belief removed his anxiety — including fear of death — and cites Rao's background teaching at Kellogg and Columbia as context for Rao's credibility.

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Why do we always have the anxiety? I don't anymore. And you know why? I have a mentor. And one of these mentors is this university professor called Sri Kumar Rao. And he's this guy from India and he moves to the US and he becomes a famous university professor. And he's teaching in Kellogg and Columbia University. And people are lining up to get into his classes. And one of the things he told me is he said, you know, beliefs shape our world. What you believe about the world is going to be true for you, right? And we see this right now with medicine. If we believe something about our health, it impacts our health. We all know this. It's called a placebo effect. But I asked Rikumar Rao what is the most important belief and he said the most important belief in his mind that any human being can have is the belief of a benevolent universe. And what he means by that is the belief that the universe or God is watching out for you. So if you believe that God of the universe is watching out for you, is protecting you, and anything that happens to you is happening not to you, but for you, I have that belief. It didn't come easy. I didn't always have that belief. But I have that belief now. And I got to say, it puts that anxiety away. I don't experience anxiety really for anything right now, even for my own death.