Why Your Surrounding Environment Is Crucial To Success | Vishen Lakhiani

In this deep dive session, we're going to help you design your life around being in beautiful, gorgeous, stunning, inspirational environments. See, when I was young, it was about the money. I remember graduating from college, my goal was money. I wanted $4,000 in my bank account. It sounds sad right now, but that was my target. But as I've grown older, I've noticed that it's never been about money targets. Rather, it's about the environments that money can buy you. Now, here's what I mean by this. It's about the home. It's about the car or lack of one. It's about the hotels you can stay in, the beach vacations you can have, flying business class. So I believe that when you design your goals around these environments and how they make you feel, it's far healthier than designing your life around an arbitrary number in your bank account. Because you could be. You could have that money, but you could be leading a horrible, lousy, miserable life in horrible environments that don't keep you happy. So to me, setting goals for environments is crucial. And I love being surrounded by beauty. And for me, living, working, and functioning in environments which are beautiful is so important. So I've always loved being at home and working from an office with great interior design. This is my home right now. You can see the red piano behind me. I have no idea how to play that. My wife wanted it. It's her piano, but we love it. It's a freaking red piano. And it's one of the things that has brought us so much happiness in our lives. My wife, who's right over there, is laughing as I talk about it. So I love setting goals for these type of things that make me happy. No one is saying you cannot set goals for things. What I'm saying is you want to make sure that. That the visions you're putting down in your three most important questions under environments are about the type of spaces and places and environments that you want to spend your life in. So first, let's talk about the brules of environments, and let's discard some of the brules. So as you go into this exercise, you can go in without being restricted by outdated beliefs. Now, one of the things is, I like objects, I like the red piano, I like my home. But you could live a life where you own little. The entrepreneur Derek Sievers is a famous minimalist. He writes about how he loves owning hardly more than a laptop and a smartphone and living in a rented apartment. He travels all around the world. He has supreme flexibility, but he dislikes racing, owning stuff. He is an advocate for the minimalist lifestyle, but if you think about it, Derek Sievers is still in beautiful environments. In one of his recent blog posts I was reading about, he spoke about riding a motorcycle through Vietnam. That's a gorgeous environment, a beautiful experience. But he said he refused to buy a motorcycle because that means owning more stuff. So you can be surrounded by beautiful environments as you're traveling. Why settle for three star hotels when you can set a vision to stay in five star hotels? But it doesn't necessarily mean that you have to own lots of stuff. You could live a minimalist lifestyle in a beautiful environment or have a lifestyle where you own beautiful things. Either way, it's about making sure that this world that you're functioning in is something that inspires you, sparks happiness, and helps you live the greatest life you can live. So here are a couple of questions you want to ask yourself when it comes to designing your life to be in beautiful environments. Think about where do you feel happiest? What types of situations places bring out the best in you? I love staying in good hotels because good hotels inspire me. Art inspires me. It makes me more creative. Think about Flying Economy versus Business Class I used to be the type of person who always thought business class was an absolute waste of money because I could pop a sleeping pill, sleep anyway, and get that damn flight over with. But I soon realized as I became more successful, that the extra hour or two I had in business class could allow me to write and my writing would pay for the ticket. And so I started flying business class because it actually ended up making me money because I could spend that time fully focused on my writing rather than passed out with sleeping pills in economy class. So when you start thinking about your environments this way, you start seeing how good environments can really contribute to your happiness, to your productivity. Another example, I found that spending money on a beautiful office was one of the smartest decisions I made. And some of my entrepreneur friends would say, well, why on earth would you do that? Why spend all that money turning Mindvalley into such a gorgeous place? You see, our office has won awards such as Inc. Magazine Top 10 Coolest Workplaces. But here's my logic. If I'm going to spend 70% of my waking hours at work, I want to work from a place that inspires me. And that beautiful office is something I get to share. So at an early part in my career, when I made my first million and I was thinking I could go splurge this on a luxury car. Or I could go splurge this in a beautiful office. The decision for me was easy. We decided to splurge it on a gorgeous office. Some might even say over the top, because that was something we could share with 40 plus employees every single day. So when you think about these goals, think about how you can create environments, Live in environments that can make you happy, that can contribute to your productivity and your wellbeing, and that you can also share. And now let's get into the exercise. So I'm going to give you three minutes and let's get started. Take out your pen and paper and let's start writing this down. Think about how you want to travel. Not just where you're traveling to. You've hopefully filled that in through adventures, but how you want to travel. Economy or business class, the hotels you want to be in, the tours you want to take. Think about the things in life that matter to you. If you don't own a car and want to rent one, what type of car would it be? If you own a car, what type of car would you buy? Think about your home. Think about the beautiful things you might want to have in your home. I strongly recommend red pianos. It's just a thing. Think about what beautiful things you might have in your life that excite you, that make you happy. You might also write down the type of clothes you want to wear, maybe shoes or a watch. All of that is okay. Think about environments that you can share with others. Maybe an office space or a home that you'd be sharing with your future or your current family members. Think about environments that you can create yourself. Perhaps art projects on your wall, a do it yourself style table that you might build for your office or your home. Think about your neighborhood, your community. Is there any way you can make that environment happier and better for you? Or move to a neighborhood or an environment that's happy or better for you? Again, remember, you don't have to know the answers. You don't have to have to worry about money. You're writing this down as a dream, as a goal. Write down the environments you want to be in if money was not a limiting factor. I had a friend in LA who wrote down that she wanted to live in a beautiful home by the sea. And there was no way she could have been able to afford it because she was broke. What happened was at a point party, she bumped into a woman who was the caretaker of a gorgeous home in the Pacific Palisades, a beautiful Moroccan home. And that woman was lonely and needed a Flatmate. And my friend got that opportunity. She ended up living in a gorgeous home without having to pay any rent, just as long as she could feed the capuchin monkeys on the grounds. So sometimes we don't know how we're going to find ourselves in these beautiful environments, but it shouldn't stop us from writing them down and dreaming. So make a list of what the colors, the vibe, the texture, the environment would be in that home or homes you want to live in. Think about environments in other countries you might want to visit. And time is up. We're done. So that's it. You've dived deep and you've expanded your vision for your environment. Now, just a couple of tips. My favorite book on environments, a book that completely changed me, was the work of Marie Hondo. As I'm filming this video, Marie Hondo's book is number one and number two on the New York Times. The first book is called the Magic of Tidying Up. The second book is called Spark Joy and Spark Joy and the Magic of Tidying up are really about making sure your environments are clean. It was funny. I read that book, the Magic of Tidying up on a plane ride a couple of weeks back. I came back, redid my entire closet, and ended up tossing out two giant garbage bags of crap. And if you look at my closet now, it's just so beautifully laid out and it sparks joy. That's Marie Hondo's word. Things about your environment should spark joy, and if it doesn't, get rid of it. Spark Joy is her second book. It's the sequel. So if you're looking for a book that will help you think about beautiful environments, I strongly recommend the work of Marie Hondo. And don't forget, as you build up the list of the environments you want to be in, you don't always have to know how you're going to get there. Some of these things might seem far ahead for you right now. Just like at one point when I was first starting out, this is what my office looked like. But I set a goal to have one of the most beautiful offices in the world. And this is what my office looks like now. This was the diner where our developers had their food. You'll see the table in the background of this picture with three in one Nescafe coffee satchels on it. This is the diner we have now. This picture is where we've had our first team retreat. It was in an island called Tioman. Just a few of us, we stayed in huts that were $10 a night. Now, when I have team retreats, we sometimes get to stay in the most luxury locations. When I have a fest, I we rent islands. Now when I was starting out, I had no idea how I was going to upgrade these environments, but the dreams were still there. And I've always found that when you start dreaming this way, sometimes we don't know how it happens, but it happens. And the right opportunities and insights and money come to us together. Stair so the main thing is trust in the ability of your extraordinary mind to help figure out how the path is going to unfold. But don't stop dreaming about these gorgeous environments that you want to be in.