Why Personal Growth Doesn't Have To Be Painful | Vishen Lakhiani

How many of you here have had someone steal from you in the company? Good. I'm so glad I'm not alone. How many of you here have had a massive technological glitch that almost cost you a business? Thank you for not making me feel alone. And how many of you here have had difficulty making payroll for yourself or your team? This happens to all of us. And, you know, the funny thing is it kind of makes us like cockroaches. I think if you want to be a good entrepreneur, you got to be like a cockroach. You got to be comfortable crawling through a lot of shit and not getting killed. So I call this the cockroach theory of entrepreneurship. But there's another thing that's really cool about this. And Google, Google illustrated this. Google did a study, and I found this in a page of a book called Exponential Organizations by Salim Ismail. And Google found that its best people were not Ivy League graduates, but rather people who had experienced a big loss in their lives and had emerged from it transformed. According to Google, deep personal loss has resulted in employees who are more humble and open to listening and learning. And I think this actually applies to all of us, not just the people we hire. But when we go through shit, something shifts within us. I believe that the universe is benevolent. And I believe that what we often see as pain or struggle is. Is often the universe's way of waking us up to something that is our true potential or a path that we really need to go on. So let's come back to Michael Beckwith, because he was one of our speakers here at a fest. One of the biggest ideas I learned from Beckwith is this concept called Kensho vs Satori. Kensho says Michael Beckwith, is growth through pain. Satori says Michael Beckwith is growth through insight. So if you accept the mental model that you are a soul having a human experience, and that to make it fun, the soul forgets that it is truly a soul and puts you in this playground called Planet Earth. Then every now and then, the soul might need to autocorrect you, and it's going to autocorrect you in one of two ways. Kensho is autocorrection. True pain. You're not listening. You're stubborn. So the soul is like, okay, I'm going to smack you at the back of your head till you wake up. That is growth through pain. But there's also growth through insight. And insight is when you are listening. Insight is when you go through introspection. Insight is when you meditate. Insight is when you Learn to listen to your heart or intuition. And insight is what you call a satori moment. It's growth through awakening. So I wrote about this idea in my book because it was so insightful. And I drew this little diagram to illustrate what Michael Beckford said. Okay, you can see kensho moments, growth through temporary pain. They cause your life to dip, and the dip is painful, but there is a light at the end of the tunnel. And then there is growth through satori, or growth through insight. So I found this idea fascinating. The question is, how can we overcome the dips? How can we actually listen to our soul so it doesn't have to kick us on our butt and instead allow us to grow through introspection? True insight. True awakenings through Eureka moments. True aha moments. That is the question I want to talk about. Because this is a much more comfortable way of growth, wouldn't you agree? It doesn't require someone to steal from you. It doesn't require business failure. It doesn't require Exact Target as an email marketing software to collapse on you. And it allows you to. To grow in a more peaceful way. Now, to understand how to develop these satori moments, I realized that one of the best ways to avoid kensho is to understand the culturescape. The culturescape is a word I coined in my book, and it means the tangled web of beliefs, rituals, ideas that permeate the world. The culturescape is designed for human beings to make sense of a complex world. It tells us how to act, what to do, how to live our lives. It tells us what value systems to have. And it comes from fathers, mothers, teachers, preachers, organized religion, the media, politicians. The funny thing, though, about the culturescape is that while there are rules which are useful, for example, look two ways before crossing the street, or do a background check on your accountant before you hire her. It also comes with a lot of bullshit rules, or brules, as I refer to them. Bullshit rules are rules that we adopt to simplify our understanding of the world. But these are rules which are not necessarily true. Now, the question I want to pose for you is, what if very often the pain that we experience is our soul telling us that we are following a bullshit rule. And that was my insight, I think. I believe the more you separate yourself from the culturescape. Now, the culturescape has its purposes, right? You don't want to walk into a conference hall naked because you're a rule breaker. You were thinking about that, weren't you? But. But there are rules in the culturescape that make no sense. For example, I Recently dropped the title CEO because I found that that was a rule. But the problem with that rule is it required me to operate in a certain way that I felt was out of alignment. And it caused a rift between me and the people I lead that I felt was out of alignment. I decided to remove CEO from my title and just be founder. So brules often hold us back. And one of the big things I've been exploring in my life over the last one year is how many brules can I drop? How many brules no longer make sense to me? And so, you know, I changed the way we ran Mindvalley. I'm shifting the way a fest functions. Me and Christina had a conscious uncoupling. I'm trying to live life based on my own terms rather than what society says is an acceptable way. So in 2016, during this moment of great stress, I received an important phone call. And it was from this man, Sri Kumar Rao. He's actually going to be one of our lecturers at Mindvalley University. So he called me up, he's like, vishen, I noticed you've been really, really, really under a lot of stress, right? How can I serve you? And I said, and I spilled my heart out to him. I told him everything I was dealing with. And he said, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. I want to read you a poem. And I'm like, rao, I don't have time to listen to poetry. Like I'm fucking drowning here. And he goes, just listen to this poem. Okay, now I want you to listen to this poem. The beautiful thing about poetry is that great poetry is a really unique form of art. There's the scene from Bohemian Rhapsody where somebody asks Freddie Mercury, what do the lyrics of Bohemian Rhapsody mean? And he goes, it means anything the listener wants it to mean. That is the essence of poetry. What you're about to hear is a poem by Rumi, a 13th century Afghan refugee who was fleeing the Mongol invasion. And Rumi wrote some of the most profound works of poetry in the world. This is what Rao Srikumar Rao read to me over the phone that day. When I run after what I think I want, my days are a furnace of distress and anxiety. But if I sit in my own place of patience, what I need flows to me without any pain. From this I understand that what I want also wants me is looking for me and attracting me. There is a great secret in this for anyone who can grasp it. Let's go back to the first verse. When I run after what I think I want. What is it? That you think you want. Often these are elements of the culturescape, elements of human society that have told you you need to do this. You need the garage with two cars, the two kids. You need the title on your business card. You need the bank account with 100 grand in cash. But if you sit in your own place of patience, what I need flows to me and without any pain. Or in other words, without the kensho moment that is growth through pain. Now, when you can learn to get in this state, there's a great secret for anyone who can grasp it. Now, I didn't understand what the hell this poem was about because I was in a different state of mind when Sri Kumar Rao read it to me. But I want you to just reflect on that poem. So if we could just dim the lights and play some roomy reflection meditation music. I like to give our AV boys a challenge because they are so good at what they do. So I want 13th century Rumi Sufi reflection music. Now meditate on that poem. Close your eyes. Remember, each of you might interpret this in a different way. As you do, I'm going to read it out to you one more time. When I run after what I think I want, my days are a furnace of distress and anxiety. If I sit in my own place of patience, what I need flows to me and without any pain from this I understand that what I want also wants me, is looking for me and attracting me. There is a great secret in this for anyone who can grasp it. And you may open your eyes. I didn't understand what this poem meant back then, but today I think I do. And again, as your awareness grows, you're going to see more and more and more things into the wisdom of Rumi or any other piece of inspirational poetry you read. What I understood then was that I was operating from the do be mechanism. The culturescape says, do this to be this, do the college degree to be that. Do the job promotion to be this. Do the work as the engineer or the doctor, even if it doesn't light you up. Be this. It's the do be paradigm. What I realize is that you got to flip it around. What Rumi was talking about when he said, sit in my own place of patience, is that what I want comes to me and I understand that what I want wants me too. That is the be do paradigm. You be and you do what I believe Rumi was saying. And again, I can't get into the mind of a 13th century Afghan poetry, so I only have to assume here. But my interpretation is that What Rumi was really saying is that what you really want wants you too. Because what you really want versus what you think you want. What you really want comes from the soul. And what you really want, because your soul is part of this larger universe. It wants you too. And so don't tune in to the rules of the world that tell you who to be or what to want or what to do. Instead, be who you really are. Listen to that soul and know that what the soul wants, the universe wants you to have. Thank you for watching. Don't forget to hit the subscribe button. And one more tip. I do a lot of writing. Follow me on Instagram at Vision to get tons of new insights directly on Instagram. Sam.