The Surest Way To Happiness | Vishen Lakhiani

I'm here in an empty room and if you were to zoom out and see what I'm seeing right now, it kind of looks like we are in a spaceship from Star Trek. Remember the Borg spaceships in Star Trek? That's what this place reminds me of. But this place is really special. Here in Estonia. It's called the Cauldron. It's an old Soviet era factory that's being converted in 72 hours into an epic party place for Mindvalley U. Mindvalue is this insane experiment that we decided to pursue to see if we could get thousands of people to move to a city together with their kids, inform a community on the spot. A community dedicated to transformational learning, having a lot of fun, cultural diversity, and basically creating a new type of university. You know why this is important? Harvard did a study once to identify what causes happiness. And they looked at all of these different elements to see if it correlated with happiness. And what they found is that happiness didn't come from money or the best weather or having a great job. Rather, it came from one thing. There was one thing that had a 0.7 correlation with happiness. And can you guess what it was? It was simply the strength of your social connections. What this means is that what truly makes us happy is having good connections with the people around us. Our kids, our parents, our lovers, our friends, our co workers. That is what simply leads to human happiness. Mindvalley youy is designed to make people transform, but not just transform in terms of their self and their understanding of the world. It's designed to make them transform in terms of as a human being, having a heart to heart connection with other human beings. Because that is what truly makes us feel happy. And this is more important than ever in the world today. Because today in the western world, there's an epidemic of loneliness. With Instagram, with Facebook. We are lonelier than ever. In fact, science is showing that loneliness is up 300%. And get this guys. According to the Harvard Business Review, loneliness is as bad for your health as smoking 15 cigarettes a day. It is worse for your health than obesity. Yet we are lonelier than ever. Why is the Mindvalley team investing so so much effort converting this place into a beautiful party happening in 72 hours? It's because we connect deeply with people when we have shared moments of awe. And we want to make this place awe inspiring? Because the greatest gift we can give to students, because the greatest gift you can give yourself is to nurture the strength of your human connection. So ask yourself, how can you nurture the connections you have with the people around you. Your family, your friends, your co workers. Because remember this. The surest path to happiness is the strength of your social connections.