Vishen Lakhiani - Letting go of Pain and Finding Forgiveness | Mental Health Podcast

Michael: Hey! What's up, Unbroken Nation. Hope that you're doing well wherever you are in the world today. I'm very excited to be back with you with another episode with the founder of Mind Valley and two-time New York times bestselling author, Vishen Lakhiani, my friend, how are you today?

Vishen: I'm doing amazing, Michael. Thank you for having me on your show.

Michael: Brother. It is such an honor. As someone who has consumed what I dare say, countless hours of Mindvalley and been deeply ingrained in what you've created over the years. It's an honor to have you here because I know that you have so much heart in your mission and what it is that you're trying to do and create transformation in the world. And I think that now more than ever, we're in a time where transformation is desperately, desperately needed. And so, I would love to just start and talk about the things that you're working on now and what your vision is for the future especially with the new book you have coming out here shortly in the six-phase meditation.

Vishen: Well, rather than talk about what I'm working on now, I wanna be able to add value to your audience. So, I wanna share some ideas, which are obsessing me right now. So, you were talking about transformation, right? So currently I'm doing this program, on Mindvalley by this Indian spiritual teacher called Mahatria. And he is followed by a lot of the Indian CEOs. So, he's a spiritual teacher with the big, big, funky hair or long beard but what's interesting about him is he speaks to CEOs and I was going through a really interesting time lately and there was this idea that he shared with me that I just wanted to share with your audience. Can I grab my notebook? Cause I please sketch this out in a really interesting way. Okay, so this antique looking book is my idea book. And I'm using this to put down ideas, I try to write them in big ways in a full page, in beautiful different market pens. So, when I have guest over at my house, they get to flip my little idea book and hopefully they can contribute an idea or take away an idea. So, one of the things that's really interesting to me right now is this quote by Mahatria. And when you mention transformation, it sparked this Mahatria said “the life of a legend is always in transition. Legendary people do not seek the feeling of being settled in life.”

He goes on to say this; “when your life is in constant tradition, yours is a life to watch. Legends live in transition. Key expands, growth needs, change, change needs transition. Transition is never comfortable. Therefore, there's no comfortable growth.”

So, why I found this really interesting is because I was going through some discomfort recently, various stuff, personal issues, health issues, business issues, all of a sudden, I'm trying to make this trip to burning, man. Okay. So, I'm about to head out, fly from Europe to gold burning. 10 days before the trip a cluster, fuck of everything comes together. Some business issues, some health issues, some personal issues. And I'm thinking, oh, for fuck’s sake now, seriously universe now. But then as I was listening to Mahatria and going through these, this program on Mindvalley, I began to understand why I asked for this. I want my life to be constantly in transition. I know this health issue is actually gonna make me healthier. I know this personal issue just made me stronger. I know this business issue, I'm gonna solve it and it's gonna make my business stronger. I wanna lead a legendary life, cuz I'm sure many of your people do as well. And these transitions are exactly what I need to keep moving forward.

So, you ask me, what am I focused on. As I go through experiences in life, where I find that there's a wisdom or there's an idea, or there's this form of spirituality that makes me feel more comfortable in my own skin. I want to get that out to more people. And so, my biggest obsession in life is building this platform called Mindvalley, which today is probably the biggest personal growth platform in the world and what we seek to do is to look at all of the things that regular education isn't teaching to get this out to millions of people. And so, you know, when we think about our lives, people don't wake up in a cold sweat or go through bouts of sadness because they forgot the position of Kenya on the map of Africa, or they forgot the year Napoleon tried to invade Russia. Nobody really gets stressed out because of this random stuff that we learned in our modern education system. But you know what really like hurts us? Dealing with sorrow, breakup, dealing with a glass ceiling over our head, health issues, dealing with waves of emotions that move us back and forth, dealing with someone we love who we feel that don't love us back as much. And education does absolutely jack shit for all of those things. Sorry. Am I allowed to curse in this podcast?

Michael: Dude, I literally hold the world record for the number of times. Fuck has been set on.

Vishen: We're get along right. Really? So, what I seek to do is to find the best teachers in the world who can help us become better humans. And I recruit them and we create the best courses in the world for all of these different dimensions of being human. We look at 12 unique dimensions and many of these teachers are my friends, I study with them, I learn with them, I meditate with them, I train in the gym with them and all I wanna do is really experience everything there is about being human. And I want to be able to become a better and better version of me. I wanna live a legendary life, a life that's constantly in transition. I ask for this, but I also wanna make all of this knowledge accessible to millions of people out there. So, that is my project, that is what I do, that is why I create festivals and I create apps and I created the Mindvalley platform and I write my books that's what drives everything I do. So, when you ask me, what is my latest project, it's still the same project I've been working on for 15 years, it's helping get the wisdom that humanity needs out to millions of people so we can lead better, more complete, more loving, more human, more peaceful lives because the modern education system completely utterly fails us on that.

Michael: Agreed. And I resonate with so much of that in my own journey and my mission being very similar in a different guise of ending generational trauma and abuse in my lifetime through education and information. Right. Because I had the same experience, you know, I go rewind my life back to high school. I didn't learn anything because I was struggling to survive real life, the streets, abuse, addiction, you know, people in my life who were hurting and imprisoned and a mother who was bipolar and locked up. And it's like, you know, you look at life through this scope of reality and it's like growing up in the westernized industrial system of education is bullshit because you've been spun this lie. Go to college, get the job, white picket fence, be massively in debt and hate your life all day long. And I remember the first time that I had come across you, it was an interview you had done with Tom Bilyeu. And I went down this rabbit hole of the things that you were talking about and what you created and I resonated with you for two really powerful reasons. One, is because I love the way that you think about the world and creating empowerment for people through education, because that's exactly what think unbroken is. And two, is cuz you curse all the time and I fucking love that and I think it's really important to be authentic.

Vishen: See, that's what happens when you live in New York. I started at Mindvalley in New York. It's to me it's not even cursing, it's the language, it's the flourishing of the English language, right? The curse, what we call curse words are basically one of the most, some of the most important words to express ourselves. I have an upcoming book called Unf*ckwithable.

Michael: Yeah, I love it. And I mean, I resonate with that so much because it's like, that is language is language and we apply meaning to the words that we use in our life. And for some people they will apply that meaning like, oh, this is the worst thing I've ever heard ever and other people will apply that meaning and just go, yeah, it's fine, it's just language. Right. And that had me thinking so much about this conversation with you and how we apply meaning to life. And I wrote down a phrase that you use that really for people who aren't paying attention to life, who aren't really present, who aren't looking at, what it is that we're building and creating, we get in this place where you and you, these were your words and I love them. And I apologize if I butcher them, but you said you can either hustle or you can surrender into your inner. And I think right now we live in this really strange world of hustle, culture of being an entrepreneur of wanting to have the next thing of cars and jets and Ferrari and clothes and it's just like, but wait a second, is that really what you want. And so, I'd love for you to talk about where you feel the life is as a human race and species around hustle culture, and this idea of like surrender?

Vishen: So, let me read you a poem. I have a mentor, a professor Freecom Marou, he teaches at Columbia London business school. He's a famous MBA professor. He's a teacher on Mindvalley and he teaches these MBA classes and there's a long line to get that the reason his classes are so popular is because he takes American and British MBA students and he teaches them the wisdom from ancient sages, Rumi, Riri Maharshi, and other sages long dead who have messages that are relevant in today's world. And one day during a particularly stressful day, I happened to be in a business meeting with Sri Kamar and he paused me and he said, vision, may I read you a poem. And this is the poem he read me. And this poem is from Rumi. I want to read it out to you because I think it may help give a different perspective to hustle culture.

So, Rumi says this;

“When I run after what I think I want, my days are a furnace of stress and anxiety. If I sit in my own place of patience, what I need flows to me and without pain. From this I understand that what I want also wants me is looking for me and attracting me. There is a great secret here for anyone who can grasp it.”

Let me repeat. When I run, after what I think I want, my days are furnish of stress and anxiety, that's hustle culture. If I sit in my own place of patience, what I need flows to me and without pain that is surrender. And we'll come to that in a moment, that is one of the most powerful tools for actually creating change. From this I understand that what I want also wants me is looking for me and attracting me. There's a great secret here for anyone who can grasp it. So, we're gonna break this into three parts, right? The first part is basically a damnation of hustle, culture. Hustle culture is one of the worst things about the United States. America is a country and I love America. I'm heading and gonna spend the next one month in the U.S., don't get me wrong, I just got my equivalent of a U.S. residency, but for fuck's sake, America is a country based on a really awful algorithm that no longer should apply in the world and it's the algorithm of GDP above anything else. Even the reason our education system is broken is because in the 1920s, I think it was Calvin College, the president who said the role of education is to create cogs in the wheels of industry. It's all about output, output, output, and then somebody has to buy this output. And so, you are told you're not enough unless you have those headphones. You're not enough till you have this extra pair of sneakers. You're not enough unless you have a, not one, but two cars and a house with a garage. And this is one of the things that leads to hustle culture. But if I'm now living in Europe and it's very different, Europeans work way less than Americans significantly less. If you compare American worker productivity to German worker productivity, Germans get way more free time, they get way more maternity leave, they get way more holidays, they work less hours a week, but average worker productivity completely crushes Americans. If you look at healthcare, the average European lives two years longer than the average American hustle culture is a fucking disease, my friend. And it's ruining America, it's causing us to become sick, to become broken, it's causing us to create a consumerist culture that isn't good for the world. In the 1980s, the average American bought 12 new pieces of clothing a year. You know what it is today? 62, now it's up to all of us to change this. We need to move companies towards a four-and-a-half-day work week. We need to stop this idea and of celebrating 70 hours work weeks if you're a CEO. We do better when we give our body time to relax when we give our people, our employees, time to focus on their health and their wellbeing. We do better resignation when men and women have maternity and paternity leave that is 12 months to 18 months here in Estonia. So, my former wife was Estonian, we delivered our first baby here well, she delivered the baby, I basically watched you were the room, but it's 18 months maternity; 18 months. I was a struggling entrepreneur back then. If we didn't have that 18 months maternity leave it would've been really freaking tough. And the government basically helped pay for her salary because we needed two salaries to survive. And in America, it's two weeks, what the fuck is that? If you're lucky now, as a result, Estonia, which is where I'm at right now. Now has a higher concentration of entrepreneurs per capita than Silicon-valley, more BC money floating around per capita than Silicon Valley, where the most technologically advanced nation in the world. And still, you get 18 months paternity or maternity leave. It's rare for people to work more than 40 hours a week. People take four to six weeks’ vacation a year, all healthcare is paid for, is it's amazing. But in America, any of these changes are deemed socialism and Americans don't even fucking understand the word socialism. It's so crazy. You guys need, what is happening over here in Europe? Because Americans are killing themselves, slowly by surely true stress and overwork and killing the planet. If everybody lived like Americans, we would need four and a half planet earth to support our species.

Michael: Yeah. You know, one of the things that I'm always trying to come to is self-education and looking at life through the scope of a worldly ideal. And one of the greatest, and I encourage anyone listening to this, sell everything you own, pack your fucking bags, travel the world for two years. And that's what I did and I discovered things about myself, dude, I can't even begin to tell you. And the one thing that I came to realize was that America does have it wrong, we have been lied to. When I lived in Bali, I experienced people who dude, Balinese people take 700 vacation days a year, like it's incredible to me. And they're so peaceful and so kind and so loving and so community driven and so productive. Right. And so, I'm wondering, when we live in, especially people who are listening to this show, man, they have been through trauma, they have suffered, they have been through the depths of what humanity has to show them. And for many people, and I would include myself in this, initially I thought the solution was money and I went and I chased that. And you know, the singular thing I discovered is that not a one pair of shoes I ever bought made me love myself. Right.

Vishen: I love that you say. So, that was the first line of Rumi poem, right? I mean, we can go on for three hours talking about this one poem, but I hope I made that point clear. And if I'm speaking with passion, please know, sometimes Americans think that if you critique America, you're anti-American, that's the stupidest thing. And it's what, you know, like nationalist politicians make you do. I'm pointing this out because I love America. I'm cultural American, I started Mindvalley as an American company, but I see a country that's really pounding its people. Coming to Europe, I lived in America for 10 years. I've lived in Europe for two years; it's such a change and I would never want to go back to America. It's incredible, how living here, you truly flourish as a human being.

Michael: I have asked you this. Why do you think it's important for people to reduce their stress and to not hustle to work less, to have a more peaceful life, to have a more humanized experience. Why does that actually matter? Because you know, and I love Gary V., he's a great friend, right? And he's like hustle, hustle, hustle, and you hear this and, you know, it's like, but wait, really? Why?

Vishen: So, here's what Gary V's talking about. Gary V is not talking to people like us. Gary V is talking to teenagers who are hooked on video games and questioning or college kids, right? He's showing them how they can get on eBay and start making money, that's better than being hooked on video games. Gary V is not talking to people who are entrepreneurs, if you're an entrepreneur and you're still hustling, it's a stupid way of running your business because we are human beings. We are not horses. Horses are animals, animals produce output based on the work that they create. Human beings are not like that. We are not a medial farm worker plowing our field. Right? That's all based on physical output. Output comes from reflection, it comes from creativity, it comes from accessing flow states, it comes from learning to tap into intuition. It comes from collaboration and connection with other people. It comes from my emotional state and study after study, after study is showing that this is real. Look at all the studies happening in Europe and Japan right now with the four-and-a-half-hour work week, every single one of those studies shows that productivity goes up and the employees are happier. Look at the studies by Harvard University, particularly the psychologist, Shawn Achor, in his book, the happiness advantage. When people are happier, productivity goes through the roof. Look at the studies by Shaza Shain on the concept of Positivity Quotion if you give people more help teams have more positive moods and you do that by giving them enough time to deal with family issues by giving them managers who are truly empathetic to them, by giving them by not cracking a whip and making them pull all-nighters. The PQ of a team is the only thing that determines consistently the quality of a team's productivity. All of the studies are pointing to this yet, while this is true for many of us who are educated. I'd say the top 10% of Americans in terms of money, get this. The bottom 90% are being abused by a broken system. Look at what Amazon is doing to its workers. Right? Look at how so many Americans are having to have multiple jobs just to make ends meet. Look at the Republicans, voting down so many policies that could help make even things like the price of insulin fixed so we could afford it. So, there is a crazy fear towards these ideas and a lot of it comes from just honestly right-wing propaganda and the villainization of words like socialism. America needs to embody Europe's ideals so it's gonna get less behind left behind, that's where that comes from.

Michael: That makes perfect sense. And I think it'll give people the space to heal, to find to your words and thinking about this human copy machine that we become. It's like, you don't have to do that, but I think that people are so indoctrinated and for many from birth, because the way that I look at my life, vision, I should be dead or in jail period. Right? There's a 0, 0, 0 1% chance I'm having this conversation with you, I've been able to figure out how to navigate my mind to get here. And I think that most people get stuck in, you just use the word fear, and I think that's the perfect word, but I don't think it's fear of failure that people have. I think it's fear of success. I think people are so beaten down and downtrodden from the system, from the ideals of the world and we see celebrities, we see millionaires, we see even men and women like you, who are incredibly powerful and living into their vision. And we go, that's not for me.

Vishen: Exactly. Now, let's talk about that because this whole fear of success being is another aspect of American culture that we need to demolish. You see Americans primarily measure success by one metric career. Career and money is a reflection of that. One of the models that we use at Mindvalley is life book. Life book is started by John and Missy Butcher, they're the co-founders alongside me of life book. And in life book, we look at 12 different metrics for measuring human growth. There's an assessment you can take online if you wanna know the 12 metrics, it's life.mindvalley.com, but the assessment helps you see that your life is actually 12 dimensions. There's your emotional state, your character, your parenting, your love relationship, money, career, your life vision, all of these different things are important, but the American and the global education system focuses on one thing only career. And then society makes us focus, get obsessed with another thing, which is money but a lot of the other aspects are forgotten. So, Michael Blackwood, have you heard of Michael Blackwood? Okay. Rev. Michael Blackwood talks about the concept of mature wanting and immature wanting. Most people have what is called immature wanting that means what they want out of life is not, what's really coming from the soul. It's coming from media, from television, from advertisements, from stuff they see on Instagram, I want that bikini body, I want that pair of sneakers, but that is not true wanting, that's immature wanting it's programmed straight in your brain. And you know what most immature wanting is programmed from advertising. Now mature wanting is a reflection of your soul. Mature wanting is wanting to be a father and experience caressing your newborn baby boy in your arms. Mature wanting is wanting to wake up every day, feeling blessed for the woman or man sleeping next to you. Mature wanting is wanting to be able to ride a bicycle in a field with friends or family. Mature wanting are these moments that give us exceptional pleasure, happiness, joy, fulfillment very often they involve other people, they involve community, they involve reflection, they involve human connection but a lot of that can't be monetized. And so, you don't see ads. There are no advertisements that tell you to meditate every day, or to do a gratitude practice or to spend time walking with your kid in a park. And this is the second line of what Rumi is saying. If I sit in my own place of patience, what I need flows to me and without pain, what you need is often not what you want, what you want is drilled into you. It's not from you, it's from the 3000 pieces of advertising that your mind is exposed to every single day if you live in America. What Rumi is saying is when you sit in your own place of patience, meditation, reflection, journaling, what you truly need flows to you without the pain. From this I understand that what I want also wants me is looking for me and attracting me.

Now let's talk about that final line, right? At this point, your wanting becomes mature wanting it's wanting from the soul and that did what you want from the soul also wants you back. So, let me explain this, this is really interesting. I was interviewing Matthew McConaughey for my podcast and Matthew McConaughey was speaking about manifesting. And one of the things he said is “the target attracts the arrow.” Let me repeat that, the target attracts the arrow. What I took that to believe? To mean is this, the universe or whatever you wanna call it, God, Jesus, whatever has intentions that it wants to see reflected within humanity. And the universe will go in whisper to you and the universe will say, Hey Michael, here's an idea for a book, those whispers are breadcrumbs towards your mission. When you sit still, you hear the whisper, we call it intuition, we call it divine guidance, we call it channeling. But those whispers point you to that, which you should create the companies to build the inspiration, to create maybe. Even the woman you should pursue and date those whispers but the universe doesn't play favorites. If you don't address those whispers, the universe will just go and whisper it to someone else. And so that's what McConaughey means by the target attracts the arrow. There's a target out there that's desiring to manifest itself in the world. You are the arrow. If you are able to sit still and listen to the whispers, that target out there brings you towards it without pain. And you feel like life is flowing, it's helping you flow towards your goals without the pain. This is what Rumi meant by there's a great secret here for anyone who can grasp it.

Michael: One of the things I'm curious about, and I hear this and it's beautiful. Like in real time, I'm thinking through so many of these things that have happened and transpired in my life through getting Grant Cardone as a business partner, through having Tom Bilyeu as a mentor through learning ungodly amounts of information through Mindvalley and just always visioning the things that I believe that I can have through the truth of my heart. And coming to the conclusion that our brain is effectively lying to us. Right. Because it is so inundated with all the advertisements, all the information of the world that says, get this, do that be this. Vishen, let let's rewind for a moment here. I look at what you've built in Mind Valley and it's arguably, I hate to use the word impossible, but until you're in it, and you're actually creating the structures of it from the outside perspective, looking in, you go, that's fucking damn near impossible. How do you do that? And I think that is the way that people think about life in general, they kind of sit and they go, yeah, I believe that I could have that. But it's probably impossible and it's not for me. How do you get to that place to allow that to exist without pain?

Vishen: So,the thing you gotta do is you gotta first, so again, the assessment, I mentioned this life.mindvalley.com. You wanna be able to understand where in life you might be falling behind because here's the great secret. If of the 12 categories of life, if you are falling short in any of these categories, it's gonna affect the business that you're trying to build.

Michael: And what defines falling short?

Vishen: So, let's say you are not in the best help that is gonna slow you down. If just one of those categories is broken, it's gonna slow you down. Let's say you are failing in terms of your goals for your sense of emotional mastery that's gonna slow you down. You're gonna be in stress. You're gonna be in worry. You're gonna be in anxiety. We know why emotions matter. If you are failing in your relationship, that's gonna really drag you down, man, being with the wrong person. So, you wanna be an entrepreneur, you gotta master the act of life and you gotta be balanced in all of these areas. Now, how do you do that? You gotta create a life vision. One of the things we do at Mindvalley through our subsidy rebrand life book is we get people to create a really hyper detailed 100-page life vision of their life in all of these 12 categories.

Now, when you start working on your business, your business doesn't own you, own the business, you are loyal to one thing, the container that is the vision for your most amazing life. The business is nothing more than a vehicle. Your business is nothing more than a vehicle for you to learn, to grow and to move you towards your vision. But the business is not the visions. Morale says the biggest mistake we make in MBA programs in America, Stanford, Harvard, all of this is that they don't teach consciousness in business. And I asked him, what do you mean by they don't teach consciousness? He goes, firstly, don't misunderstand me. I'm not saying ethics. Ethics is everywhere now, since the Enron scandal. Consciousness, is this consciousness, is that the most important aspect of your life, is are you growing? Are you learning? Are you growing and you can expand that growing in all of these categories, that is the most important thing. How fast are you growing?

The most important thing is not your business and actually it's not your spouse, it's not your children, your business, your spouse, your children are nothing more than vehicles to accelerate your growth, but we flip it around. And so, we hustle, hustle, hustle, because we have to hit these business goals. No, your business is nothing more than a gym, just like a gym is a gym. A gym is a tool you use to refine your body. A business is a tool you use to refine your ability to create, but your business is never the goal. If you want to be a legend, let's go back to the quote I shared earlier is to lead a life where you're constantly transitioning from an uncomfortable state to an even more comfortable state and that transition its growth. It's growing, growing, growing in all the 12 categories of life. Growing yourself as a parent. Do you have kids?

Michael: No.

Vishen: Someday I bet you will, and you want to be the best father you can be. Growing yourself as a lover. Are you in a relationship?

Michael: No.

Vishen: Someday, you will be, and you want to be the best damn man to your beloved. Growing yourself in your body, ensuring that your body is constantly getting better and better and better. Growing yourself in your emotional state so you can master bliss. Growing yourself in your character so you have integrity, so you have value, so, you're on point. Growing yourself in terms of your intellectual capabilities, your ability to learn, to read to study, all of these things are really important, this is the point of life. And so, the mistake we made is that we think the business matters. No, the business matters no more than a gym membership. The business is nothing more than the best vehicle for your personal growth. And I hope you create a big business because the big year business, the faster you're gonna grow, you're gonna grow as a leader, you're gonna grow as a creator and so on. Right? So, you want to build a business.

So, when I started Mindvalley, my focus was never to build a billion-dollar company although, one thing I'm proud of is that there was just a report by HSBC bank and I think Pricewaterhousecoopers, and they declared us as the next potential unicorn. But that was never the goal, the goal was I wanted to find really cool wisdom that I enjoyed learning and helped get it out to more people. And as I was figuring out how to get it out to more people, I had to grow myself, it became my vehicle for growth. I had to learn to speak. I was super shy. I had to learn to write, I had to learn marketing to build a website. I had to learn coding. First two years, it was just me, no employees, now we have about 450 employees. And now, as I've gotten to that stage where the business is moving along, I'm trying to give myself a new challenge. And that challenge is this, so I met a billionaire in Dubai recently, his name is Wayne Boss. In the year 2000 Wayne Boss was recognized as one of the top 100 people in technology, I believe by the world economic forum, Wayne's a billionaire and I was visiting him in his beautiful apartment, overlooking the Palm Humira in Dubai and Wayne turned to me, I was there looking at the most gorgeous view I've ever seen. You could see the entire Palm Islands in Dubai. And Wayne said you wanna know what it takes to be a billionaire? Okay. Now I want you guys to pay attention to this, right? Cause this is really cool, but again, it sums up what I'm saying. He said work 21 hours a week. So, I'm like what? He says, work 21 hours a week. I'm like, what do you mean? He goes, look, you wanna be a billionaire, create your life so you only work Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, no more than seven hours, that's 21. Keep Mondays completely free. Keep Fridays completely free. If a friend calls you up and says, Hey, wanna come by London for my birthday on Saturday, say, no problem. Fly out Thursday night or Friday morning, be back Monday evening for your Workday on Tuesday. You want to be a billionaire. If you're an entrepreneur, figure out how to run your business on 21 hours a week. So, that's my new quest, that's what I'm trying to figure out right now. Now, I met Wayne in February and I started putting pieces together, started investing and bringing in top tier talent. So, I could offload certain things I was doing. I invested in no quote software, like air table to automate the business. And it worked because very, very, very rapidly, a new, as I freed up this time, I was able to think to develop and I just launched a new company that's coming up right now. It's a new company that's gonna be attached to Mindvalley. And I think it's gonna be as big as Mindvalley, but it's gonna take three years and not 15 years. So, when we are able to give ourselves that space to sit in our own place of patience, to be able to have the freedom, to experience life rather than hustle, hustle, hustle, the money will come to you in bigger quantities than you ever imagined.

Michael: How do you get into that place within yourself, where you can access and assess your truth. Like is that through meditation? Is that journaling. So, talk to me your process?

Vishen: So, my process is the six phase meditation method, that's how I sit in my place of silence. Meditation is a huge part of it. The book is coming out September 20th, My Penguin Random House. And the six based meditation method is a, so I've been in the meditation field for since, it's going into two decades now, it's 19 years and eight months I've been in the field of meditation, 19 years, eight months ago, I became a meditation instructor. I quit Silicon Valley to become a meditation instructor. The six-space meditation is designed for entrepreneurs, it's designed for people who wanna change the world while constantly growing and improving themselves. And you go through six particular mental scripts in your mind that are proven to shift the way you show up in the world. To give you the right emotional states, the right levels of concussion and kindness towards others and yourself to make you unfuckwithable so, that negativity can't touch you, to teach you how to visualize your visions to a degree where they manifest, where they're more likely to manifest how to command your perfect day and how to connect with a higher power.

These are the six phases and, in the book, we go super deep at these phases and I give people the protocol. And then the book comes with a free app that actually trains you on it. It's at mindvalley.com/6. So just mindvalley.com/6. So, yeah, I encourage your users to go in and grab that book, the six phase meditation method, but that is how I sit in my place of patience and how I'm able to build the company I have, which I'm really proud of working, way less than many what societies would predict I have to work.

Michael: Yeah. I love that. And I think one of the phases that you talk about, which I think is particularly important and I don't wanna go into every phase ‘cause I really want to encourage people to read this book because Vishen I'll tell you if I know anything to be true about you, it's that the way that you deliver value to the world is second to none. And so, I'm going to encourage people to get the book, but I want give them some breadcrumbs here. And I want to talk about this concept of forgiveness in this meditation process.

Vishen: So, forgiveness is the act of letting go of any negative charge we have towards any person, towards ourselves or towards any event. And it's the ultimate form of activating your inner superpower. Studies are showing that forgiveness, when you practice forgiveness, your body changes you literally vertical jump improves, endurance improves, sleep improves, heart health improves, your longevity actually improves in other words, forgiveness, reverses, aging it's fascinating, but they measure this by looking at Telomere length.

Forgiveness, though it's hard to do, and I've gone into deep study of it. There's an eight-step process that I outline in the book that basically allows you to forgive everyone in the past who has hurt you. Keep in mind forgiveness is different from pardoning. If you've been raped, if you've been abused, you're not pardoning that; that person needs to be dealt with by the law. But you are forgiving, which means that you are seeing that they are a broken individual and some shit happened to them. Hurt people, hurt people that cause them to do what they did to you. But as long as you carry that agony, that pain, you are going to keep yourself trapped.

When Nelson Mandela walked outta prison, after 27 years, he said he knew he would still be a caged man unless he forgave his jailers. And so, he invited them to break bread with him, that's why Nelson Mandela is a freaking legend for.

Forgiveness is the ultimate superpower.

Now, when you can learn to forgive people who have hurt you, learn to forgive yourself and learn to forgive events that you don't like. So, events would be okay, something like September 11, right? Forgive an event that caused you all your people incredible stress. It doesn't mean that you are saying that the assholes who did that are okay, it simply means that you're no longer gonna let your hatred for them walk with you. Your life starts magnifying in amazing ways, manifesting goes up, intuition goes up, these are harder to measure by science, right? But everyone, I know who's been practicing this report incredible, mysterious, powerful thing happening when they bring in the practice of forgiveness. This is why it's phase three of the six phase.

Michael: And I think I won't put them in any order, particularly from my end, but I think arguably the most important, right. Because it's that humanity that you instill in yourself and in the world through forgiveness. And you and I have something really interesting and common, I heard you recently talking about this experience you had in the mirror, looking at yourself, telling you I love you. No questions asked. Dude, the hardest thing I've ever done in my life, it might have actually been like 2015 for me so we're very close to that same window. Was to stand in front of that mirror and say, I love you. Right. And to me that was a place of forgiveness also. And just being like, no matter what we've been through, no matter the things that we have done the past is the past, it cannot define us. We must let go. We must choose to live in the now and live in the ability that we have to show up in our full self. And in that to simply recognize like self-love internally is going to be projected into the world and reciprocated back to you in these really powerful ways. And so, before I ask you my last question, I have one other, what role has self-love played in your life?

Vishen: So, there was a time when I had difficulties with self-love. There was a book I read in 2014 and that's where that mirror exercise. And to me, it's very important to cite the author that gave me the inspiration, right? This particular author was Kamal Ravikant and the book was called love yourself like your life depended on it, it's a book on self-love, it's only 83 pages, really fast read, but there was an exercise he prescribed there, which involves you looking at yourself in the mirror, focusing on one eye and repeating the words I love you as you're brushing your teeth in the morning. It is amazing how much of a powerful hack this is and how it completely expands feelings of love in your heart. It's such a powerful exercise.

Michael: Yeah. It's beautiful. And it’s transformative, right? And I think it'd be hard pressed to find anyone who won't struggle with that initially, but the more that you do at the greater impact that it has. Vishen, my friend, this conversation's been incredible for ask the last, last question. Right? Can you please tell everyone where they can find you?

Vishen: You can find me on Instagram @vishen. Please follow me on Instagram. I love my fans and of course my company is Mindvalley, go check out mindvalley.com maybe I'll see you as a member.

Michael: Yeah. Brilliant. My last question for you, my friend, what does it mean to you to be unbroken?

Vishen: I believe that we break ourselves when we have issues with ourself. I'm so happy that you asked about forgiveness and I see why this was the most important phase for you. To be unbroken means to completely forgive yourself for all the mistakes you've made in the past, that's the most important thing. Other people not liking you, not as bad as an issue as you feeling that you carry the burden of some past. To be truly able to forgive yourself, to be able to see that younger version of you and stand tall as an older brother or sister towards that younger version of you. And to be able to completely forgive that is what it means to be unbroken.

Michael: Goosebumps, my friend could not agree more. Thank you so much for being here.

Unbroken Nation. Thank you so much for listening.

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My friends, Be Unbroken.

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