Vishen Lakhiani ON: How To Live From Intuition & Accessing Information Outside The Human Brain

You can order my new book 8 RULES OF LOVE at 8rulesoflove.com or at a retail store near you. You can also get the chance to see me live on my first ever world tour. This is a 90 minute interactive show where I will take you on a journey of finding, keeping and even letting go of love. Head to jayshettytour.com and find out if I'll be in a city near you. Thank you so much for all your support - I hope to see you soon. What makes certain companies world-changers? Jay Shetty and Vishen Lakhiani, founder and CEO of Mindvalley, talk about how positive change and organizational transformation from the top down makes all the difference. Lakhiani is passionate about seeing change in workplace culture. Watch the full episode to learn how the best-selling author and business coach helps bring transformation and intentionality to the systems and cultures of companies around the world. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Jay Shetty?

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• 0:44Jay Shetty?

  AG1 Next Gen meets 94% of nutrient requirements and it's clinically shown to enrich the gut microbiome. For a limited time, save 20% on your first subscription order of AG1 Next Gen or AG1 Pro at drinkag1.com/onpurpose. That's drinkag1.com/onpurpose. This episode is brought to you by AG1. Are you feeling September reset too? Shorter days, longer to-do lists, earlier alarms, all those routines you promised yourself you'd pick back up. It can feel like your whole life is recalibrating. And when everything around you is changing, it helps to have a few things you can rely on.

• 1:29Jay Shetty?

  AG1 Next Gen is one of those easy habits to keep. It's the clinically-backed, comprehensive daily health drink that supports your gut health, energy production, and foundational nutrition all in one scoop. AG1's ingredients are sourced from quality partners for absorption, potency, and nutrient density to deliver the foundational nutrition your body needs. And alongside a proper diet, AG1 Next Gen meets 94% of nutrient requirements and it's clinically shown to enrich the gut microbiome. For a limited time, save 20% on your first subscription order of AG1 Next Gen or AG1 Pro at drinkag1.com/onpurpose. That's drinkag1.com/onpurpose.

• 2:16Jay Shetty?

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• 3:00Jay Shetty?

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• 3:09Speaker 01

  That I need to help people at Nestle and at Coca-Cola shift their business practices because these companies are contributing to a massive health epidemic, the obesity epidemic, and also producing so much unnecessary pollution for the planet. And the people who work for these companies are good people, but they are in a state of denial. And my job is to help them wake up.

• 3:40Jay Shetty?

  Hey, everyone, welcome back to On Purpose, the number one health podcast in the world. Thanks to each and every single one of you who come every single week to listen, to learn, and to grow. And I am so excited to be talking to you today. I can't believe it, my new book, Eight Rules of Love, is out, and I cannot wait to share it with you. I am so, so excited for you to read this book, for you to listen to this book. I read the audiobook. If you haven't got it already, make sure you go to eightrulesoflove.com. It's dedicated to anyone who's trying to find, keep, or let go of love. So if you've got friends that are dating, broken up, or struggling with love, make sure you grab this book.

• 4:24Jay Shetty?

  And I'd love to invite you to come and see me. For my global tour, Love Rules. Go to jayshettytour.com to learn more information about tickets, VIP experiences and more. I can't wait to see you this year. Now, I'm always excited for our guest, but I'm especially excited when it's a very dear and close friend of mine. Today's guest, as you already know, is Vishen Lakhiani. Now Vishen and I met a couple of years ago, but I'd admired and followed his work for many years before that. So when we finally met, we really hit it off, we really connected, especially because we met at his incredible A-Fest festivals in Sardinia that year. So I was invited to speak. Me and Vishen spent a lot of quality time together.

• 5:06Jay Shetty?

  And since then, we've spent a lot of quality time together in LA and he's back here today. Now, for those of you who don't know, Vishen Lakhiani is one of today's most influential minds in the fields of personal growth and human consciousness. He's the founder and CEO of Mindvalley, the world's leading online personal growth education company, and behind several top-ranking health and wellness apps and many more to come. He's a New York Times bestselling author with several new books on the way. With an incredible passion and drive to unite humanity and challenge the status quo, he has built a movement of growth seekers spanning across 100 countries, engaging more than 12 million followers on social media

• 5:49Jay Shetty?

  and nearly half a million students online each year. Today, I'm excited to talk with him about making the workplace a better environment for all and his new book, The Buddha and the Badass: The Secret Spiritual Art of Succeeding at Work. Please welcome my friend and amazing thinker Vishen Lakhiani.

• 6:08Speaker 01

  Hey Jay, I've been listening to your podcast for the longest time. So it's such an honor to be on this show and I love, I love your work. I love your audience. So thank you for having me.

• 6:17Jay Shetty?

  No, thank you, man. This is, I can't believe, I said this to you outside, I can't believe this is the first time we're doing this.

• 6:22Speaker 01

  Right.

• 6:22Jay Shetty?

  But, but this is going to be the first of many. Like I said, I'd been following your work with Mindvalley for many, many years before. Been blown away by the community you've built, that the wonderful people I've connected with at Mindvalley. And obviously, Ervin Valencia is one of my closest friends and a big community member who is telling me to come to Mindvalley for so long. And so, yeah, you've just built a really special group of people.

• 6:46Speaker 01

  Thank you.

• 6:46Jay Shetty?

  It's amazing who you've attracted, so.

• 6:48Speaker 01

  Thank you, Jay.

• 6:49Jay Shetty?

  Yeah, thank you. Now, I want to dive straight in. We're going to talk about your new book today as well. But before we do that, I want people to learn more about you because I think you're a fascinating individual. You're always very good at putting the spotlight on to other people, but I think it's important that people get to learn about you too. So tell me about one of your favorite memories of growing up in Kuala Lumpur. Like, what was, you know, what's one of the biggest things that's still resonating?

• 7:11Speaker 01

  Well, Jay, you and I have a lot in common. So, growing up in Kuala Lumpur, I was a kid that was really insecure. I was pimply face and I, you know, I just had very low self-esteem. Now, what I did have as an advantage was a voracious appetite for reading. And my dad never went to university. He self-educated himself on personal growth books. So there was no internet at that time. We had like maybe three television channels. There was not much to keep you occupied, but I had my dad's bookshelf. I remember this white bookshelf filled with personal growth books. And I would spend so much of my free time just going through these books. At the age of 14, I discovered meditation and I started meditating three times a day.

• 7:54Speaker 01

  And then I started exploring other aspects of the human mind. I got fascinated by things such as intuition, being able to control my dreams. Then I got fascinated by concepts such as energy healing. When I was 17 years old, I taught myself creative visualization. I taught myself how to access deep states of meditation. And back then, I was having chronic skin disease. I was having, I was having pimples, right? And I remember teaching myself how to apply creative visualization and healing my skin in five weeks. Five years of skin disease healed in five weeks. And that gave me so much confidence in the power of the mind. I never stopped learning. So I continued investing in personal growth.

• 8:36Speaker 01

  Reading books, attending seminars, and finally, one day when I was twenty-six or twenty-five years old, I found myself in Silicon Valley. I graduated with a degree in electrical and computer engineering, and I went to Silicon Valley because I wanted to build software to bring people together in communities. But my timing sucked. First, the dot-com bubble burst, and then September eleven happened, and all of a sudden, I was out of a job. And so, the only job available was a dialing-for-dollars job. I had to pick up the phone, call up lawyers in Texas, and sell them on software. So here you have this Malaysian kid with a name Vishen Lakhiani, with a more Malaysianized accent back then, talking to these big Texan lawyers, and it was really tough.

• 9:21Speaker 01

  Firstly, I changed my name to Vincent Lakhiani. So they thought I was Italian, because nobody could pronounce Vishen. And I sucked, because I had no experience convincing lawyers to sell soft, to buy software. And when you call up busy lawyers in the middle of their workday, you hear more "F you," or "F you, kid," than you would ever expect. And I think one day, after the thirteen lawyer told me to "F off," I fell into a funk, and I decided that I needed to do something to bring myself out of this, like, this dark void where I felt like I was failing. And back then, Silicon Valley, the economy was so bad, if you didn't close the sale, you didn't get paid. I was running out of cash. So I went and I took a class on meditation and intuition.

• 10:06Speaker 01

  And I go back to San Francisco, and this newfound ability develops in me. So back then, we would check out the Yellow Pages from the public library. I would have to call every lawyer from A to Z. After going into this class on meditation, I was able to run my fingers down the phone book. And I want to ask that you and your audience keep an open mind. I could run my fingers down the phone book, get an impulse, and know exactly who to call. And instantly, I doubled my sales. Now, I have an engineering mind, so I had to test this. It was pure data. I doubled my sales. I started refining the technique. I doubled my sales again. I doubled my sales again. Next thing you know, at twenty-six, they make me Vice President of Sales.

• 10:49Speaker 01

  I'm sent to New York to set up their New York office. And again, I trust my intuition, and I find... An office in New York that is so stunningly beautiful and available for nothing. It is an office in Chelsea Market, the building that Google just bought last year for like two and a half billion. It's where YouTube Studios now is, but that was my office. So this intuition became this guiding light. And then intuition guided me to leave that company in eighteen months and to start my own. And I decided to become a meditation teacher. So for five years, I was teaching meditation and I was making very little money. And one day, I had an impulse to do something different, to start a festival. That was A-Fest. I quit meditation, I started A-Fest, that's how we connected.

• 11:34Speaker 01

  And then I had another impulse to start an app and start a company, and that became Mindvalley. And now this intuition keeps growing and growing and growing and growing, and I'm guided by this intuition. And so it's helped me become extremely successful. I now have three hundred employees building so many different apps and ideas, but so many of these are coming through intuition. And my biggest project right now is bringing intuition into the schooling system and into businesses. I can, we in ten years are going to see CEOs and executives globally, listening to the still inner voice within. And when you tap into that, your whole worldview changes. You realize you're so deeply connected to life, the earth, to other people.

• 12:18Speaker 01

  And, and it's remarkable what it does. And you start taking the right action to heal the world. Intuition guides you towards unity and towards healing the planet. So that is my obsession right now.

• 12:31Jay Shetty?

  I love that, man. That was amazing. That, yeah, no, incredible. And when I hear the word, and I know you too, for so many people, and the way you describe it, you're data-driven, you're someone who likes science, but also likes breaking the boundaries of science and looking beyond. You know, I feel we're both people who like to mesh together the two worlds, often seen as polar opposites of science and spirituality, or intuition and insight, or data and desire. But we try and bring it together. Tell me how you've been able to break down intuition for people who go, oh yeah, like that works for you, like, or you, maybe you've got some woo-woo spiritual stuff.

• 13:13Jay Shetty?

  How have you been able to speak to, and I know you already do this, you speak to CEOs, you speak to business leaders, you speak to celebrities. How are you able to make it feel real to them?

• 13:21Speaker 01

  Well, one of the first things is that there was a famous study done by Professor John Michalaski of the Newark College of Engineering. Now, I know you love science, your audience loves science, so let's talk science. What Michalaski found, and he wrote a book called Executive ESP, he found that CEOs who test high on intuition test, they actually have a higher, they have better results with their company based on profitability. But they are also CEOs who test against, they test negative on intuition test. I don't mean, I don't mean that they don't have intuition, they have negative intuition. In other words, they are supposed to guess, okay, so negative intuition is you're supposed to guess a coin flip, right? And, you know, even if you're a random person or a machine with no intuition, you're gonna

• 14:06Speaker 01

  guess heads or tails 50% of the time. These CEOs were people who had such low self-esteem, they were second guessing themselves. So they were guessing wrong more frequently. It's as if their mind was self sabotaging. And the self sabotage correlated with lower profitability. So not only does it show that if you are intuitive, you have better success in life, but there's also this concept of intuitive self sabotage, where you are choosing not to listen to your intuition, because there's something in you that's telling you to sabotage yourself, and this leads to lower profitability growth. So this study was really fascinating. Now, there are other studies that measure the impact of intuition, and studies that measure the impact of, of your mind healing another person.

• 14:51Speaker 01

  And these studies are showing that without a doubt, these things are real. Intuition is not only real, but it's something that everybody has. The ability of, for your mind to heal another person, or to accelerate their healing, is real, even in untrained observers. In one study by William Broad, San Antonio Mind Science Center, okay, they hook up people to an EDR device, electrodermal resistance. Now, when electrodermal resistance measures,

• 15:21Speaker 01

  Sweat, basically. So the more you're sweating, the more anxiety you're feeling, the lower your resistance. But conversely, if you are peaceful, the there's less sweat, the higher your resistance. Now, what they found is that in fifty seven percent of the population, if there is a person, an untrained person who's paired with you and told, "Okay, think about Jay at this specific time, 1:53 PM. Think about Jay and send him positive thoughts." In fifty seven percent of the population, the person who's receiving you, if you're Jay and you're hooked up to an EDR, electrodermal resistance, it will show that your body is changing. You're becoming more peaceful. Now, and this is for an untrained meditator. Imagine if you were actually trained.

• 16:04Speaker 01

  So, science is showing that we, at a fundamental level, are deeply connected. But we're not just connected with each other, we're connected with a higher intelligence. And this is the source of so much insight. Steve Jobs, who built the most valuable company in the world, famously said, "Listen to your heart and intuition. Somehow, they already know who you are to become." And if you read Steve Jobs' biography by Walter Isaacson, you know, Isaacson literally writes, "Steve Jobs believed in prana, or an intuitive way of living in the world." That, Isaacson suggests, Steve developed from his journeys in India, much as you.

• 16:44Jay Shetty?

  Yeah, absolutely. And I love that book. It's right on there behind this big light.

• 16:47Speaker 01

  Beautiful book.

• 16:47Jay Shetty?

  It is such a brilliant book. And I love what you're speaking about here. And I'm so glad that I asked you that question, because I know you know all the answers. It's great. But I love hearing it from that perspective, because I feel that we live in a world that is scared to almost tap into its own intuition. We're scared, and that's why we're living based on the past. Like, data can only show you the past, and you can have a forecast. But the way you speak about intuition, and what you were showing with me when you first came in today after your incredible meetings that you've been having, and the experience that you just had, the intuition is such an internal guide, that it's helping you create and build the new, not just forecast based on what you've learned in the past. So it's fascinating, man. And I want to dive into it more as we talk about.

• 17:31Jay Shetty?

  The workplace, but recently you've been making a lot of videos about farmer companies, about food companies.

• 17:38Speaker 01

  Right.

• 17:38Jay Shetty?

  And I respect you so much and I appreciate you for for someone who wants companies to learn about being better workplace environments, you're also challenging them.

• 17:48Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 17:48Jay Shetty?

  Based on their advertising, based on what they put in their products. And I think it's really bold and I I really admire it and respect it. Tell us about what about these companies is really burning you right now.

• 17:59Speaker 01

  So what I do, well, personally, nothing is burning me. It's just a fun project, but it's an important project. I listen to the universe and I ask the universe, how can I serve the greater unfolding of humanity? So the universe sends me downloads. So um and these download comes in many interesting ways. So for example, we know, science knows. So again, I have a degree in electrical engineering and computer science. Everything I talk about, I need to find the science, right? But science says and science knows that we can alter our brainwave frequency through pharmacology, ayahuasca, um um other other types of of pharmacology. We can we can also shift our brainwave frequencies through neuro training and through meditation. Meditation is, of course, the safest and the best mode.

• 18:44Speaker 01

  So I was a meditation teacher, so I really got to go deep in that. But I also do neuro training with our mutual friend, Dave Asprey. And I participate in plant medicine ceremonies. I just got back from an ayahuasca trip. Now, when you do this right, you can actually tap into what is called the theta level of mind. The theta level of mind is that level of mind where insights come to you. You're tapped into something else. Most people, they go into theta when they are falling asleep and they have dreams. And dreams can be a powerful source of intuition. So many great discoveries came in dreams. The sewing machine was invented in a dream. Robbie Williams, the famous singer, said his song Better Man came to him in a dream where where John Lennon came up to him and gave him the lyrics for that song.

• 19:28Speaker 01

  So there are all of these fascinating stories of dreams. But what if we can access that state at will and channel new ideas? Tesla did this. There's a movie right now out about Nikola Tesla, Edison and George Westinghouse. It's called The Current Wars. Amazing movies, right? Starring Benedict Cumberbatch and Tom Holland. And, and in that movie, there's a scene where Tesla invents a moto completely in his head. And George Westinghouse goes to him and said, "Well, you, you created this, this new AC moto in your head. How do I know it's going to work?" And Tesla says, "Of course it's gonna work. I, I tested it in my head. I created it in my head. If it works in my head, it's gonna work in the real world."

• 20:10Speaker 01

  That moto went on to change America. And as to reason, Elon Musk named his car Tesla, right? But Tesla could do this. Many great inventors could do this. There's a story of Edison, Tesla's rival. And the story is that Edison would hold a metal ball in his hand. And Edison was famous for his, his evening naps. So he would, sorry, his afternoon naps, he would sleep, hold a metal ball in his hand. And as he drifts off into sleep, his hand would obviously drop. And the ball would hit a plate on the ground, jolting him out of sleep. Now, what was Edison doing? Well, when you sleep and you take a nap, you're going to the theta level of mind. Edison famously said, "Ideas come from space. It's hard to believe, but it's true. Ideas come from out of space."

• 20:52Speaker 01

  Edison had something like 2,000 patents to his name. Tesla changed the future of humanity. These men had accessed the knowledge outside the human brain. It's time all of us learn to tap into this. So, back to your question. When I ask myself and I ask the universe, "What is it that I need to be doing?", I listen. And I make a commitment to act on the insights. This is key. Now firstly, how do you listen? Meditationism is cool. Neurotraining is really cool, but it's expensive. One of the ways I also do, I, I also use, and this is not for everyone, and you must be doing it in a safe space, is plant medicine. I did an Ayahuasca ceremony recently on, on, on Sunday, actually,

• 21:36Speaker 01

  which is just three days ago. And for seven hours straight, I got a download on the new app that I'm going to build. And this, and it, and it's so counterintuitive to anything that my engineering mind would have come up with. I literally saw the UX screens. I literally saw the copy. I saw how to make education cheaper. I saw instances of why I shouldn't use existing technologies because they were bad for humankind. So for example, on this app, The insights were so clear. It showed me the login screen. And it showed that, you know, in most apps you can login using Google and Facebook. In this, in this dream, this ayahuasca experience, I saw the login screen for this app. In fact, I showed the entire workings of it. But the login screen was really curious.

• 22:20Speaker 01

  Google and Facebook were crossed out. And I asked, I asked this thing I was plugged into, why? And it said, don't sync with Google or Facebook. Because this app needs to keep user data private. You do not want your user data sold to advertising companies. Because the world has too many people who buy things which they do not need. Leading to this, this consumerism, which is afflicting the planet. And you want your app to start to take a stand for a simpler world. Where we are not seduced to buy stuff we don't need. But we are, in a more compassionate way, helping heal the planet. So again, I thought that insight was so profound.

• 23:01Speaker 01

  Because in my engineering mind, everyone in my team would go for a Google or Facebook login. But this is how nuanced these insights can be. They come from seemingly nowhere, but they are so specific. So anyway, I now tap into these altered states to build businesses. So, and if people think this is crazy, consider the fact that Mindvalley, we hit seventy-five million in revenue with zero venture funding. Zero venture funding. That is really, really, really rare. And one of the reasons we were able to do this is listening to intuition. So my book, Buddha and the Badass, which is coming out soon, is about this. It's about how we think that when we're on a job, right?

• 23:44Speaker 01

  When we're at work, it's about productivity. It's about this and that. It's about all of these strategies. And all of those have a place, that's good. But the ultimate thing is, you want to be hyperproductive. You learn to listen to that voice within, listen to your soul, tap into the universe. And you now are taking deliberate, correct action to making the world better. The reason I'm standing up to health food companies is because in addition to building my company, I'm getting a download that I need to help people at Nestle and at Coca-Cola shift their business practices. Because these companies are contributing to a massive health epidemic.

• 24:24Speaker 01

  The obesity epidemic and also producing so much unnecessary pollution for the planet. And the people who work for these companies are good people, but they are in a state of denial. And my job is to help them wake up.

• 24:40Jay Shetty?

  This episode is brought to you by Whole Foods Market. If you're talking about quality food, you can't forget Whole Foods Market, who've been holding themselves to the highest standards since they opened in 1980. That means you'll see thousands of organic products across their stores, from the produce department to the aisles. It also means you'll never see certain ingredients. They've banned artificial sweeteners and colors, high fructose corn syrup and more, so you can shop with peace of mind. Shop Whole Foods Market in-store or online. This episode is brought to you by State Farm. We talk a lot about intentional decision-making, and that extends to the practical stuff too, like making sure your coverage actually works for your life.

• 25:24Jay Shetty?

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• 26:09Jay Shetty?

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• 26:55Jay Shetty?

  Beautiful man, that's amazing. When you're talking about the walking inside organizations and talking about how we're obsessed with productivity. But actually, you're saying that people living from their intuition, finding space is going to be much more powerful. Tell us about the role that's going to play in how organizations are led. Because the question I ask is, is that a practice that you think everyone can develop to the?

• 27:27Speaker 01

  Absolutely, absolutely. So firstly, one of the things I'm a hard advocate of is the idea that hard work is a lie. Hard work is great if you have never learned how to tap into your mind, if you've never learned to meditate. But when you get to a level where you're tapping into your inner resources, you do not want to practice hard work. You want to practice stillness. You want to practice being able to tap in and download ideas and to take smart action towards these ideas. You become, as what Isaacson called Steve Jobs, a magician genius. Isaacson said Jobs's ideas were so, so brilliant, so revolutionary.

• 28:10Speaker 01

  They seem to come, you know, from, from magic. I mean, like, think about what he did for Apple. Now, when Apple kicked Steve Jobs out, that company went into a massive decline. When they brought Steve back in 1997, we saw what happened. The iMac, then the iPod, then the iPhone. It was this incredible, like, like, list of innovations. But that was coming because Jobs, he wasn't the hardest worker. There are so many hardworking CEOs. Jobs was able to do something that most human beings cannot do. But if you study Jobs, you will notice. His favorite book was not a book on business. It was Autobiography of a Yogi by Paramahansa Yogananda.

• 28:54Speaker 01

  It was a book on the concept that our minds are tapped into a higher power. We can download insights and we can shift the fabric of the world. Now, when I started doing this through my meditation, I started using the term bending reality. When Steve Jobs' biography came out, I noticed that Walter Isaacson used the word bend reality in addition to Steve Jobs three times in that book. Jobs could bend reality. Many other, if highly effective, people can do it. You do it. When your videos go viral, it's not just because you have a mathematical formula nailed. You are able to... There's an energy about you that goes in your videos, that goes in your podcasts.

• 29:36Speaker 01

  It is not something that can be measured, but there's something about you where you are shifting outcomes in reality. Now, people can learn this. So, as I've started going into this field, I started studying with Chinese masters, with all of these different spiritual teachers across the world, and I found that I could increase my hit rate, not just in terms of ideas, but in terms of outcomes at work, and move incredibly fast and create all of these amazing things. And the better and better and better I got at it, the better I could shift the fabric of reality. My first book, The Code of the Extraordinary Mind. So, let me give you an idea of how this happened. In August 2017, I was in neuro training.

• 30:20Speaker 01

  So, I had my brain hooked up to machines and I was learning how to access the delta level of mind. The delta level of mind is what is associated with shifting the fabric of reality, right? So, I was teaching myself how to access the delta level of mind. And when you're able to access the state, you feel as if you're plugged in and you're able to download information really fast. And then you also get this knowing confidence that you can shift things. You can shift the energy patterns of the world and make things happen. So, one of the things that I set as an intention was that I want my book, The Code of the Extraordinary Mind, to reach a higher audience. Now, the book had been out for about one year. Three weeks later, I'm sitting at my desktop and I get this intuition. Check your book on Amazon. I'm like, what? Because if you're an author, once you get a book out, you do not want to check it on Amazon. You don't want to read every review.

• 31:05Speaker 01

  You don't care where the book is, you know? Like, screw that, you're done. But I checked my book on Amazon and I saw the book was number two, not in its category. It was number two on Amazon. And the day before, it was number one on Amazon. This was September seventeen, twenty seventeen or so. My book, for no reason, I don't even understand how, hit number one on Amazon. I became the number two author in the world, ahead of Tolkien and J.K. Rowling and Hillary Clinton, whose book had come out that same week. And I was like, what on earth is going on? And then the book rapidly fell, then it hit number one again. It hit number one five, five times that year. But I don't know what happened, but I know I set an intention

• 31:48Speaker 01

  and something shifted beyond me, something that I couldn't influence with hard work alone. And the book shot up. And now I've started trying to understand how to do that more and more and more. So my new book, The Buddha and the Badass, tries to break that down into a series of patents and ideas that people can follow. It's not all metaphysics. In fact, I rarely talk about metaphysics in the book. I talk about practical ideas that you can bring into business. For example, and that can create this type of like boost in what you're seeking to do in the world and how to do it for good.

• 32:26Jay Shetty?

  Amazing. Yeah, I remember Walter Isaacson calling it reality distortion field.

• 32:30Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 32:31Jay Shetty?

  So what Steve Jobs had was the ability to distort reality, bend reality, because he was able to look beyond the edge, or what everyone else thinks is the edge. And what you're saying to me fascinates me because I, and I'm, I don't even say this often, I probably have never said it on the podcast. I'm feeling such a creative energy right now, that my mind just wants to write down a ton of ideas that I've just had in the last ten minutes of listening to you. Like, the amount of creative energy that I'm feeling right now between us is so high that I literally want to get a pen and paper and just scribble down a ton of great ideas I've just had. And, and that's what's so beautiful about what you're trying to share. And, and that's what I like about the question you asked in your meditation.

• 33:16Jay Shetty?

  And in my book, Think Like a Monk, I talk a lot about question meditations. And I talk about how a lot of the questions we ask the universe are not questions, they're demands. A lot of our questions are actually like, why is this happening to me? That's not a question, that's a demand.

• 33:31Speaker 01

  Right.

• 33:32Jay Shetty?

  When you say things like, I don't deserve this, or I don't understand why you did this to me or took this away. That's not a question. A real question is an innocent request. A real question is a sincere, genuine request, which is what you have to be radiant and serve the planet. And this question meditation, so often we feel that meditations are to give us the answer, but actually meditations are to ask the question.

• 33:58Speaker 01

  Exactly.

• 33:59Jay Shetty?

  And then wait for the answer. Whereas we're sitting there for 20 minutes going, where's the answer, where's the answer, where's the answer? That's another question. When you ask a real question and you feel that question and you mean it, then the answer will come from the Amazon order going up or this person that you meet. Or it comes from so many different places.

• 34:16Speaker 01

  And you hit on a really powerful idea, which I'd like to share with your audience. So this is a technique, okay? So this technique is a technique that I write about in my book. This is actually in chapter nine of the book Buddha and the Badass. Now, the technique is this. It's about asking the right questions. But the questions have assumption that the outcome is clear. So here's an example. So every morning I start my day by asking myself something like 27 questions every single day. And it's the same question. The first question was inspired by Tony Robbins Netflix special. It was an affirmation I saw Tony do. And the question is this. Why do I have avalanches of abundance flowing down on me

• 34:57Speaker 01

  so that all my dreams, desires and intentions can come true? Another question I ask myself is, why do I have the fit muscular body of an athlete? And by the way, since I started asking that question, I've been getting healthier and healthier. If you Google me or look at my Instagram, you'll see that between 2016 and 2019, I've been getting younger and healthier. I've also lost a ton of weight, right? So you can reverse aging. Another question I ask myself is, why do I have such a great relationship with my children? Yet another question is, why am I a billionaire, creating a company that's touching a billion lives and changing the face of humanity? Another question I ask myself is why do I have fifty million books sold and ten New York Times

• 35:39Speaker 01

  bestsellers? So you can ask yourself any of these questions, but what you do not want to do is affirmations. There's a difference. If you say, I am healthy and fit, there's a little voice in your head that's gonna go, no, you're not. You ate that pizza last night, Patso, right? Because we all have self doubts. So you wanna hijack your subconscious, you wanna trick your subconscious by assuming the truth. So you say, why do I have the fit, healthy body of an athlete? Because that makes it very visceral, very real. Now, you're not saying you have it, you're asking why you have it. But that word pattern creates a switch in your subconscious

• 36:21Speaker 01

  where there is no denial, where your inner securities doesn't pop out. But what will start to happen is your subconscious will try to find a way to get you there. And you will start noticing synchronicities, coincidences, the right people, the right books coming into your life. So you can create any type of question like this. I learned it from a spiritual teacher on Mindvalley called Christy Marie Sheldon. The technique is called, um, identity statements or lofty questions.

• 36:46Jay Shetty?

  Yeah, I prefer, I definitely feel that because I think right now there is such a confusion around manifestation.

• 36:55Speaker 01

  Right.

• 36:56Jay Shetty?

  And when I hear you talk about this, it doesn't sound like the confused version of manifestation, right? Like the difference between manifesting effectively.

• 37:07Speaker 01

  Right.

• 37:07Jay Shetty?

  And then wishing is so great. Tell us about the way you see them as different.

• 37:12Speaker 01

  So, so one of the things I do at Mindvalley and is I work with so many great teachers around the world, right? You're one of the great teachers that have been on our platform. In fact, you won an award, which I see directly behind you, Mindvalley Speaker of the Year, because you are, Jay was our highest rated speaker in all of 2019. So, so thank you for that.

• 37:30Jay Shetty?

  Thank you, man.

• 37:31Speaker 01

  So, as I listen to all of these other speakers, what I do is I integrate ideas. And I always

• 37:38Speaker 01

  love sharing the wisdom from my teachers. So one of my teachers is the Reverend Michael Beckwith, who lives here in LA. And he explained a concept to me once. We were having breakfast in Portugal at AFest, and he said, The universe doesn't give you what you want. The universe gives you who you are. People misunderstand that. They think the law of attraction is being obsessed with what you want. But no, if you want something, it doesn't mean you're gonna get it. The universe will reflect to you what you are. And Beckwood calls this the law of resonance, resonance. So you gotta become that which you seek to be. Now, lofty questions works because it's actually getting you there. So when you ask a question such as, why do I have the fit muscular body of an athlete?

• 38:21Speaker 01

  You're tricking your subconscious by shifting your identity. And you will find that the universe will start to reflect that. If you ask yourself a question, why am I so kind and compassionate to everyone around me? Or why do I only eat healthy foods? Or why am I so brilliant at being an entrepreneur? You're shifting your identity at a fundamental level, almost like self-hypnosis. And the universe will start to reflect that. And your life will start accelerating and changing at a really rapid pace. This is actually the most effective manifesting technique I know. But if you sit down and you hope and you hope and you hope and you and you try to focus your mind on one thing over and over and over and over and over again, doesn't mean you're gonna get that. Because the universe doesn't give you what you want or what you crave.

• 39:05Speaker 01

  It gives you that which you are.

• 39:07Jay Shetty?

  Yeah, that's beautiful. And it's all about being, not wanting. So much of manifesting today has become about wanting, wishing, wanting, wishing, wanting, wishing. And then you end up waiting

• 39:16Speaker 01

  Exactly.

• 39:16Jay Shetty?

  forever, instead of becoming and being, which is what's really missing. And so tell us about the biggest mistakes that companies are making right now in the way they function with their employees. In the book, The Buddha and the Badass, that's what it's defined to help people create. Because people don't, so there's two types of people. One that believe they want to have purposeful careers. And the others that are like, uh, it doesn't matter, right? It's like, why should work be meaningful? Why should work be purposeful? Now, I know when I worked at Accenture, where I had an incredible career. I went in two years at Accenture. I went from being a new graduate hire to being the number one social media person globally out of 500,000 people. Where I was working alongside our C-suite across the world

• 40:01Jay Shetty?

  in building our social media innovation department. Now, I don't think that happened apart from anything, apart from intuition.

• 40:09Jay Shetty?

  Confidence in my strengths and abilities and the ability to find what was going to make the impact rather than getting lost in trying to prove myself. Now, that came with certain costs too, because I also had people in the company who were threatened by that or wanted to take that away. But it also came with champions and cheerleaders

• 40:28Speaker 01

  Right.

• 40:28Jay Shetty?

  of people in the company who wanted to support it. So, how are you seeing companies stopping or blocking people from living the way you're suggesting?

• 40:37Speaker 01

  Right, so there are a couple of things, right? And in The Buddha and the Badass, the first part of the book is really on self-discovery. So you identify your value system. And I use a concept called soul print. What are the values that your soul embedded in you that you have yet to fully express? Because you're not living your own life, you're living the life that the media, the politicians, that the world tells you you have to be. So first, you've got to identify your soul print. Once you identify your soul print, and there's a technique for this, you become magnetic, because now your soul is shining. True. In fact, you know, when people do ayahuasca, one of the first, most important questions you can ask yourself is reunite me with my soul at all cost.

• 41:18Speaker 01

  So many people do not live a life aligned with their soul print. Just like you have a fingerprint, we all have a unique soul print. Okay, so the first thing is, it's getting really clear on who you are. And every single one of us is here as a soul, having a human experience for a specific reason. But we forget that, we ignore that. We don't live our life, we live other people's lives. We imitate cultures, traditions, religions, the lives of our parents, rather than fully becoming who we are meant to be. So that's the first one. Now, the second part is this, if you're working in a team in a company, you want to figure out how to create the environment around you and your team so that you can be the best expression of that.

• 42:02Speaker 01

  So now, it's a four-step formula, and I won't go into too much detail, but one of it is knowing your mission, having a mission. So, and if you work, if you run a company, you want to ensure that the company's mission is super clear to everyone. The second thing is making time for personal growth. Personal growth should be your number one thing. So, in my company, I tell everyone who joins the company that their personal growth is the number one thing. In fact, the first thing I do with every new person who joins Mindvalley is I take them out for lunch and I coach them on their personal growth. I make them do an exercise where they identify how they want to grow, who they want to be, and I recommend what books to read, what, what, we even provide coaches for people and so on.

• 42:47Speaker 01

  Now, the third thing is, is creating community. So, community helps us grow, it helps us connect. So, it's how can you create a structure within your organization where close friendships and trust can form? So, there's a whole art to this, to creating community. And the fourth one is creating significance, giving people a way to be powerful, to do powerful things in the world. So, that formula transforms teams, transforms companies. And then the final part of the book, what I talk about is taking that power and giving it rocket fuel so people can go out there and truly change the world.

• 43:28Speaker 01

  And there I talk about a concept called the unified brain, how to connect with other minds in a really rapid way, how to come up with bold visions and become completely fearless and immune to failure. And finally, how to start rewiring your belief system. So, you start believing that you can do bigger and bigger and bigger things, thus activating the law of resonance and causing the universe to bend reality in your favor. So, there's a whole concept to this. And the funny thing is, right, when people hear about a book, especially with the title The Buddha and the Badass, they think, you know, this sounds really spiritual. Yes, it is, but I can tell you that we have currently close to 10 Fortune 100 companies applying these ideas.

• 44:13Speaker 01

  10, that's 10% of the Fortune 100. And it's growing and growing and growing and growing. Every single day, a new company signs up with Mindvalley to bring these ideas to their workforce. Because what happens is an employee of this company is following me or following Mindvalley at @vision or @mindvalley on Instagram. They hear these ideas, it changes their lives, and then they bring it to their company. So, this is going mainstream. I predict by 2030, intuition.

• 44:41Speaker 01

  Applied at work will be one of the hottest trends in business. By 2035, in companies, you will learn how to shift the fabric of reality. By 2040, companies like Coca-Cola and Nestle, and companies which are creating crap-tastic products that have no business getting into a human body, will either see their stock price completely plummet, or these companies will implode or cease to exist on their own accord. Or they will shift to truly represent human health. You do not want to be investing in Coca-Cola or Nestle at going forward 2020 onwards, or any of these other companies that are basically doing a disservice to human beings.

• 45:25Speaker 01

  It's time that we got really real. Capitalism by itself is not the answer. We need entrepreneurs who are not just creating companies to make a buck and put useless crap out into the world. Because as you know, our planet is dying, right? We need entrepreneurs who are willing to heal the planet and create products and services that make us a healthier species, that help reverse the effects of global warming, that make us more compassionate to one another, that help us protect other species on this planet, and so on. And that is where humanity is going to go. So we already have people in large oil companies, meditating, forming teams, meditating, and starting their day with compassion meditations as a team. Now, what is this doing?

• 46:09Speaker 01

  These people in these large oil companies, they're becoming a new type of human being, more conscious, more connected with the earth. And they're going to go forth and change the nature of their companies to start moving to systems and models that can help heal the planet and not extract from the planet.

• 46:32Jay Shetty?

  I can't wait to see these predictions come true. We're going to bring this video, whatever video we watch in 20 years' time. I don't know what it's going to look like, but we will have to track this then. But taking it from this very macro view to the micro of like, if someone's listening right now. And they're saying, Vishen, you know what? I read your book, Code of the Extraordinary Mind. I loved it. It changed my life. I am going to read Buddha and the Badass because I know that I want to be able to do all of these things you're saying. They're going to get the book when it comes out. And then they go, but Vishen, I'm walking back into one of those 90 Fortune 100 companies or those multiple Fortune 500 companies that haven't yet switched on. And my manager or my boss, really micro, I'm going so micro now.

• 47:15Jay Shetty?

  So my manager or my boss doesn't get it? And he or she is limiting me from living what you're teaching me? What do I do in that scenario?

• 47:24Speaker 01

  That's a very, very, very good question. When I first started bringing meditation and intuition into my workplace at the company I was working for, I became one of their most successful employees, right? Pretty soon I was able to do two jobs. So I was Vice President of Sales and Vice President of Business Development. I could handle two jobs. As I got more productive in the company, as I magnified my impact, I had greater influence. The same thing starts to happen. Based on how you're operating right now, you may not have influence. But when you start applying these tools, your influence will grow. As you are able to do more and give to that company, you will have more say in that company. My best people, I listen to what they have to say.

• 48:08Speaker 01

  I don't listen equally to everyone, right? I listen to the best people. Ray Dalio, when he wrote the book Principles, he said, every founder, every CEO, everyone who's running a company has a secret algorithm in their head. Not all ideas are equal. The ideas of the best people are way, are going to be listened to way more than the ideas of people who are just doing a mediocre job. So you start by becoming one of the best people. And you do that not through the bullshit rules of hard work, right? I mean, work hard, right? There's nothing wrong with that. But you got to bring in other elements to make sure that you're working effectively and creating change. Once you do that, your power grows. And then it's a question of being able to use this power in the right way to change and course correct and inspire your team and your company to do the right thing.

• 48:54Jay Shetty?

  I think that's yeah, really powerful advice, really grounded advice, because I think so many people are feel stuck in that scenario. They're listening to you, they're they're convinced that it works, but then they're not able to make that shift in their workplace. But you're right, it's almost like it's it's like you you almost have to play both games at one point, right? Does that make sense? You almost have to play both games at one point. You have to earn the respect and the influence in the company,

• 49:18Speaker 01

  Right.

• 49:18Jay Shetty?

  in the way the company sees it. But at the same time, you have to bring all of this to it so that you can actually be a catalyst for those ideas inside the company.

• 49:26Speaker 01

  And you got to stand up for what you believe. Yesterday, we did something that at one point I thought we would never do as a company. Yesterday, on Mindvalley's Instagram, I released a video criticizing Coke.

• 49:37Jay Shetty?

  Yeah.

• 49:38Speaker 01

  For lying to the human race. Now, a year ago, we were told not to do that. Coke might be one of our Mindvalley for Business clients. Why jeopardize that? In fact, Coke did come to us several months ago to ask if we could bring our solutions to their company. And we still might, but we're not, but that's not going to prevent us from standing up to what we believe. And that is that Coca-Cola marketing is downright full of lies, and they need to change. Right? So you got to stand up for what you believe, even if it's unpopular. So so those those are key principles that the book advocates.

• 50:09Jay Shetty?

  Well, that's what you're saying at the beginning, right? Like you've chosen your values.

• 50:13Speaker 01

  Right.

• 50:13Jay Shetty?

  Your sole print.

• 50:14Speaker 01

  Exactly.

• 50:15Jay Shetty?

  Like that's your company's sole print. So if that's your sole print, it doesn't mean you can't support that organization. And I think I think what you've just made there is a really important distinction. Because I think we live in a world which likes to see things as very black and white. Like, if I don't like this brand, I would never even work with them. When actually, what you're saying is, I can keep my values, but I can still help this brand.

• 50:35Speaker 01

  You can change the brand.

• 50:36Jay Shetty?

  Correct. And I think that that is such a powerful way of living. Because what we don't understand is simply distancing ourselves from something or simply putting something in a corner and trying to avoid it doesn't make it better.

• 50:47Speaker 01

  Right.

• 50:48Jay Shetty?

  And it will just continue to live.

• 50:49Speaker 01

  Exactly.

• 50:50Jay Shetty?

  And and I think we do that even with our own negative tendencies. If there's something we don't like about ourselves, we just move away from it. We don't approach it with care, compassion, and solve it. So what I'm fascinated by is

• 51:03Jay Shetty?

  Where are the leaders intuitively, apart from Steve Jobs and those kind of level of figures that you've spoken about, where are you seeing, in which industries are you seeing intuitive leaders succeed? Where are you seeing that already?

• 51:18Speaker 01

  Right. So firstly, there are intuitive leaders everywhere, in every industry. People just don't speak up about it. In secret conversations I have with brilliant men and women all around the world, they talk about intuition. Some of them don't have a name for it. They call it a gut feeling, or they call it, you know, my instinct, but it's intuition. There's not enough words in the English language to describe this phenomenon, but it's intuition. But people behind closed doors, when I start talking about it, inevitably, everyone is able to relate. They're like, oh, I felt that way at that point, and I had made one of the best decisions in that, in my life. I felt that way when I asked so and so to marry me. That's intuition. We all have it.

• 52:03Speaker 01

  We've created a world where it's considered taboo. That's no longer the case. We need to start talking about this.

• 52:09Jay Shetty?

  Yeah. One of the ways that I've talked about it and worked with my clients for, for many, many years, and I remember doing this probably the first time, maybe like seven years ago, and, and I talked about something called the karma code. And basically what it is, is there is a type of intuition that you tap into when you make your best decisions, and it is something that you can reverse engineer by looking at your previous positive decisions. So if you look back at the last decade or decades of your life, and you pinpointed the three best decisions you made, and when I say best decisions, I don't mean based on the result, but you knew it when you made the decision, right? That's the difference. Because sometimes you make a bad decision and the result's good and you're like, oh, that was a great decision, but it wasn't. You knew it wasn't.

• 52:53Jay Shetty?

  And it just, there was some, there was some, you know, greater force there. But think about when you made a decision where you knew you were making the right decision at that time, and then analyze what were people saying, what were you feeling and thinking, and how confident were you? And if you can pinpoint the last three best decisions you've made in the last three or four decades, you will find your karma code, which is where your intuition is at.

• 53:19Speaker 01

  Right.

• 53:20Jay Shetty?

  Because there is a certain set of...

• 53:24Jay Shetty?

  Surroundings, inner feelings and emotions that puts you at your peak to tap in on the highest. So I'll give an example. For me, my three best decisions in the last decade were becoming a monk, leaving being a monk and starting to get into media. Those are my three best decisions. So I broke it down. I was like, all right, let's take a look at these. When I became a monk, everyone thought I was crazy. Everyone in my life, there was no one who agreed with me. Second thing, I was going completely against the grain of everyone else my age. Everyone else my age was going off to work at a bank or a consulting firm. And the third thing is I was convinced I was making the best decision of my life. There was no doubt in my mind that I was doing anything wrong. So those were my three key metrics that I could see around that. Let's look at the next decision, leaving being a monk. Same thing.

• 54:09Jay Shetty?

  When I left being a monk, everyone thought I was crazy. My family and everyone was like, why are you coming back? Everyone that I lived with was like, why would you leave this life? What are you gonna do? You've done it for three years. What are you gonna do? Second thing, it was against the grain. All the monks I knew were carrying on living as monks. So I was doing the opposite thing again. And thirdly, I realized that I was convinced it was the right decision for me. When I look at getting into media, again, everyone thought I was crazy. Everyone's like, Jay, you have a safe job. You're getting married next year. Why would you do this? Why would you quit your comfy, amazing job at Accenture that's going so well? Second, it was against the grain. Everyone at Accenture was not quitting their job to live their passion. It just wasn't the case. And third, again, I was convinced it was the right decision. So I found that more often than not, when I'm going against the grain, when no one agrees with me, I'm usually doing the right thing.

• 54:54Jay Shetty?

  So now I'm worried when people agree with me. If I make it a decision and people agree with me or they think that I'm doing the right thing, I actually worry more.

• 55:02Speaker 01

  Exactly, exactly.

• 55:03Jay Shetty?

  And these are just indicators. Obviously, that's not the final answer of intuition, but they're indicators that help you.

• 55:09Speaker 01

  They're indicators, and that's such an important lesson. I can see now that you've actually made me feel more at ease with my ideas because, yes. I mean, how do I go back to my team and explain that I just saw the future of our company on an ayahuasca trip?

• 55:21Jay Shetty?

  I believed you. You told me and I believed you because I know you also that. That you, because of the question you are.

• 55:28Speaker 01

  Right.

• 55:28Jay Shetty?

  Because of the open mindedness. And I think that's the point that we're saying that these conversations happen behind closed doors. But what we're doing right now is we're actually having this conversation in front of camera.

• 55:39Speaker 01

  Exactly.

• 55:39Jay Shetty?

  And we're being very vulnerable and opening up to the fact that some of this may push you over the edge and make you feel like, wow, that's really bendy. But the point is, if you don't do that with your mind, how did any innovation ever happen before?

• 55:51Speaker 01

  Exactly.

• 55:52Jay Shetty?

  And, and you've got to keep remembering this, that everything was visualized here before it was made here.

• 55:57Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 55:57Jay Shetty?

  This microphone, this chair, and you may not think this chair is innovative, but guess what? At one point, it was really innovative.

• 56:03Speaker 01

  Right.

• 56:03Jay Shetty?

  You may not think this is innovative, but at one point, it was really innovative and it existed here.

• 56:07Speaker 01

  Yeah, and, and the best innovations are not incremental. They are massive leaps, right? If you look at the companies which are making these massive innovations, they are leaps of imagination. They're coming from somewhere else. Tesla cars, the iPod, these are, these are, these are things which just emerge. And great founders, the people who are starting these companies, before they became founders, guess what? They were ordinary people.

• 56:32Jay Shetty?

  Yeah.

• 56:32Speaker 01

  They were, and so if you're listening to this, right? And you're going, oh, you know, I'm just an ordinary person. That's what every founder was, right? Elon Musk was literally like cleaning pipes in Canada before he became Elon Musk. Mark Zuckerberg was a college kid before he became Mark Zuckerberg.

• 56:49Jay Shetty?

  Yeah.

• 56:50Speaker 01

  All of these innovations came from ordinary people. Um, they simply had something that they were tapped into that, that inspired them. And here's the thing, they acted on it. There's this beautiful book by Elizabeth Gilbert called Big Magic. And she writes this really interesting, she says, the universe doesn't play favorites. It'll come and whisper in your ear. And I'm paraphrasing, of course, but she writes it so eloquently. She says, it'll come and whisper in your ear and maybe you'll act in it, maybe you won't. And if you don't act in it, no problem, but it'll go. Share the idea with the next person. But if you're ready to act on it, you will be blessed with all the resources, all the connections, all the synchronicities to make that expression that the universe wants real. So you want to listen to these ideas even in the face of doubt.

• 57:35Jay Shetty?

  Yeah, and sometimes it's that doubt where we just push these ideas.

• 57:38Speaker 01

  Exactly.

• 57:39Jay Shetty?

  Too crazy.

• 57:40Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 57:40Jay Shetty?

  It's too much. And you know, I love what you said about the ordinary people thing, because that is just so true. Like, I talk about it all the time, that you don't know how much even extraordinary people that you see as that way are hearing no, are hearing their ideas are crazy. Like, you know, you hear that, I hear that. And you also have ideas where you still start to think, nah, it's not possible, right? We still have that and we have to push beyond that because that holds us back so much. Tell us about, what was the biggest lesson you learned while writing this book? Like, when you were writing this book, what was the biggest takeaway that you had? In turn, or through research, whatever?

• 58:19Speaker 01

  So, oh my God, so the book itself emerged through intuition. So the original book, so what happened was, Mindvalley is known for having a really incredible culture that attracts people from all around the world. So people all around the world, like, apply to work at

• 58:34Jay Shetty?

  You have an amazing team.

• 58:35Speaker 01

  A little company in Malaysia, right? And you've met my team, they're remarkable people.

• 58:38Jay Shetty?

  I love them, Kadi, Miriam, Agatha, like.

• 58:40Speaker 01

  They're gonna be so happy that you mentioned them on this podcast.

• 58:42Jay Shetty?

  You are my favorite people, Miriam, Kadi and Agatha. You are my three favorite people at Mindvalley.

• 58:46Speaker 01

  Oh my God, they're gonna be so lit up.

• 58:48Jay Shetty?

  I mean, I love them.

• 58:49Speaker 01

  And they are such close friends of mine as well. So people all around the world come and work at Mindvalley. So I was asked to write a book on culture. But as I was writing the book on culture, because that was what I was asked to do, all of a sudden, I felt a different calling. And the book shifted. It's no longer a book on company culture. It's a book on how to bring spirituality into the job that you do. So you don't need to be running a team. You don't need to have a company. As long as you're looking at doing good work in the world, this book is for you. It's about merging the Buddha aspect of our nature with the badass aspect of our nature. The Buddha is going within. The badass is going. Out and shifting the world, but shifting the world based on the insights of the Buddha.

• 59:34Jay Shetty?

  Yeah.

• 59:35Speaker 01

  This book suggests that it's not just about endless introspection. It's about going within to understand what you need to do out in the world and how to shift the world for the betterment of everyone involved.

• 59:49Jay Shetty?

  Hmm, absolutely. I love that, man. And that's the best balance.

• 59:52Speaker 01

  Right.

• 59:52Jay Shetty?

  That's the best balance. And I love that you did that. I'm so glad you didn't write. And that's why I admire you and respect you. I'm so glad you didn't just write another book on company culture.

• 1:00:01Speaker 01

  Exactly.

• 1:00:02Jay Shetty?

  Can you imagine how boring that would be if it wasn't coming from your intuition?

• 1:00:05Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:00:06Jay Shetty?

  Wasn't inspired. It was the same as me. When I was meeting a lot of publishers, a lot of publishers just said to me like, Jay, just write a book about passion and purpose. Right? Just write a book about passion and purpose. It will sell. And I was like, I was like, I don't want to just write about passion and purpose. Like, I want to write about those themes, but not just those themes. And like, I don't just want to package it up nicely. And for me, I'd had this idea of think like a monks in the last four years. Because I was just like, what if you could think like a monk and live like a king or a queen, right? What if you could think like a monk? And it was the same belief system that if you could change your thoughts, if you could change your mind, if you could think the way monks do in the most peaceful, still clarity-led ways, then you'd be able to do everything else.

• 1:00:48Speaker 01

  Exactly.

• 1:00:49Jay Shetty?

  And, and it was the same for me. I didn't want to settle to just write a book. I love that. I'm so glad you said that.

• 1:00:54Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:00:55Jay Shetty?

  Because I think that's the only way we change and push, because otherwise we're just writing based on trends.

• 1:01:00Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:01:01Jay Shetty?

  And, and as we both know, like, trends are not timeless. And, and I think the work we both want to do is timeless. So.

• 1:01:07Speaker 01

  Exactly.

• 1:01:07Jay Shetty?

  You know, and that's the work of Steve Jobs is timeless. The work of these people we respect are timeless. So, yeah, I love it, man. Thank you, Vishen. This has been incredible. We are going to go to a section of our podcast that we call Fill in the Blank.

• 1:01:20Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 1:01:20Jay Shetty?

  So this is, you can fill in the blanks with only one word, or you can complete the sentence if you have to. So, work should always.

• 1:01:28Speaker 01

  Work should always make you feel radiantly alive.

• 1:01:32Jay Shetty?

  I love it. Bosses should treat their employees.

• 1:01:36Speaker 01

  Bosses should treat their employees a way a coach treats people.

• 1:01:42Jay Shetty?

  Oh, very.

• 1:01:43Speaker 01

  Pushing them, pushing them to do their best. This doesn't mean always being nice to them. It means, it means pushing them to become the best person they can be. And that doesn't mean that you're always complimenting them or giving them kind words. It's calling out their shit.

• 1:02:00Jay Shetty?

  Hmm, nice. I like that. Great. Yeah, because I think that's a mistake, I'm going off tangent, but I think that's a mistake. People feel that spiritual coaching or being a Buddha or thinking like a monk or whatever it may be that that is soft.

• 1:02:12Speaker 01

  Yeah. No, it's not. It's not. Like I, like I have compassion for all my employees, but it doesn't mean I don't call them out on their shit. So I'm known as a fierce boss.

• 1:02:20Jay Shetty?

  Correct. Yeah, yeah. And I, and I think that there needs to be that. They need, we need to realize that you can be affectionate, yet assertive at the same time.

• 1:02:30Speaker 01

  Exactly, exactly.

• 1:02:30Jay Shetty?

  It's not a choice that people are like, should you be an affectionate boss or an assertive boss? And actually you can be affectionately assertive.

• 1:02:36Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:02:37Jay Shetty?

  Because it's the intention matched with the action.

• 1:02:39Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:02:39Jay Shetty?

  That's aligned, right? Yeah, I love that. Okay, great. I'm glad we brought that up. Question number three, I have no tolerance for.

• 1:02:46Speaker 01

  I have no tolerance for mediocrity.

• 1:02:49Jay Shetty?

  Nice.

• 1:02:49Speaker 01

  I believe if you're gonna do a job, if you're gonna do a job, you gotta go above and beyond. I don't, don't believe in just paying people to get a job done. I want people who are gonna go above and beyond to, to love what they're doing, to wanna create art, to wanna, to wanna create new prototypes that can shift the world or shift the company they work for. Mediocrity really pisses me off.

• 1:03:09Jay Shetty?

  How have you found those people? And, and when you're looking for those people again intuitively, because I agree with you, I'm on the same wavelength. I'm a big believer in, I am passionate about my work and I don't expect anyone to work as hard as me for, for what I do. But I do expect people to become obsessed and addicted and immersed in their world, whatever they're building. How are you attracting those people through intuition into your life? Because I think so many. CEOs struggle with attracting that talent.

• 1:03:38Speaker 01

  Exactly. So firstly, we are brutally honest, right? If you go to our website, mindvalley.com, you click on careers, careers.mindvalley.com, you'll see that we have a manifesto. And I talk about the seven things I believe about work, that this is the way we're doing it. This is my soul print. So if this resonates with you, join. If it doesn't, you don't have to join. And by the way, this manifesto technique to attract the right people, attract your allies, I talk about it in my book. So one of the things that I'm really clear about in the manifesto is that our company is so connected. We are constantly evolving and changing. If you cannot deal with a rapid pace of change, please do not apply. But every now and then, someone will slip in. Then they can't cope with the change and then they will like, you know, they'll, they'll, they'll, they'll quit. But we are super honest about this.

• 1:04:22Speaker 01

  We're looking for people who innovate like crazy, who envision like crazy, who are constantly evolving and changing. Because the world is changing so fast and you gotta, you gotta evolve to be relevant. So, so what I'm doing is I'm identifying what are my values? I'm infusing the company with that. I'm being brutally honest. I'm saying this is the operating style of our DNA. If this resonates with you at a soul level, come and join our team.

• 1:04:47Jay Shetty?

  I love that. Brilliant. Okay. Next one. Being an entrepreneur means?

• 1:04:52Speaker 01

  Being an entrepreneur means having the courage to follow ideas that you believe can make a better world.

• 1:05:00Jay Shetty?

  Nice. Ineffective bosses create?

• 1:05:04Speaker 01

  Uneffective bosses create people who are broken because they are working too hard and not taking care of their own well-being.

• 1:05:11Jay Shetty?

  Nice. And the final fill in the blanks is to keep talent long-term?

• 1:05:17Speaker 01

  To keep talent long-term, give smart people a way to truly feel powerful because they are changing the world.

• 1:05:27Jay Shetty?

  Yeah, hundred percent, hundred percent. I saw that as being one of the biggest challenges inside companies where they were actually.

• 1:05:36Jay Shetty?

  Misaligning talent against their skills.

• 1:05:40Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:05:40Jay Shetty?

  And I was just like, you don't realize how talented, I had so many friends that I believed were so talented in stuff that they were not doing at work. And I was just like, we're missing out on so much revenue, so much this, so much that, so much profit, so much passion in the workplace because of that. Okay, Vishen, these are your final five. Your final five are your final five rapid fire rounds. So it's one word to one sentence maximum.

• 1:06:02Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:06:03Jay Shetty?

  Buddha and the badass, by the way, sounds like, I can't wait to see everyone reading this book and I can't wait to give it to CEOs and global HR leaders myself.

• 1:06:11Speaker 01

  Thank you.

• 1:06:12Jay Shetty?

  Because I think that I'm so excited with the view you've taken on it. Like, I, I, I'm so pumped. When you said to me that you were like, I want to see how spirituality is going to change the workplace, I'm with you on that.

• 1:06:23Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:06:23Jay Shetty?

  So, so I really want to see it change people's lives. But more importantly, everyone who's listening and watching, don't just think that's a book for CEOs and leaders to read. It's as important for you to read it.

• 1:06:32Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:06:32Jay Shetty?

  As important for you to read it, because guess what? You're going to be that change maker in the company.

• 1:06:37Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:06:37Jay Shetty?

  You're going to be the one who can lead that change and you're going to be the one who's going to bring that new culture through. So don't expect, don't ever get lost in that world of leaders will change the company. Like, that's like the worst way to live. I, I just don't believe in that.

• 1:06:50Speaker 01

  And I mean, your audience, one of the things I think I respect about you is that you're a former monk. This book basically teaches you how to be a monk in your current job.

• 1:06:57Jay Shetty?

  Yeah.

• 1:06:57Speaker 01

  How to take on certain ideas that you get from meditation, from introspection, from monkhood, but applying it in life so you can shift the world.

• 1:07:05Jay Shetty?

  Yeah, I love it. Okay, so these are your final five.

• 1:07:07Speaker 01

  Mm hmm.

• 1:07:08Jay Shetty?

  What have you been chasing in your life that you no longer pursue?

• 1:07:13Speaker 01

  Hmm, validation from other people.

• 1:07:16Jay Shetty?

  Nice, okay. What do you believe most people misunderstand about being an entrepreneur?

• 1:07:23Speaker 01

  They think it's about making money. It's not. It's about pushing humanity forward. Business people do it for the dollars. Real entrepreneurs do it to push humanity forward.

• 1:07:34Jay Shetty?

  I agree, beautiful. How do you know when you have a star employee?

• 1:07:40Speaker 01

  I know I have a star employee when when I'm in their presence and they are in mine. All we want to talk about is creation.

• 1:07:48Jay Shetty?

  Hmm, nice. That's great. If you could create a law that everyone in the world had to follow, what would it be?

• 1:07:56Speaker 01

  Follow your soul print.

• 1:07:58Jay Shetty?

  Nice. Great. Okay. And fifth and final question, what is the biggest lesson you've learned in the last 12 months?

• 1:08:04Speaker 01

  In the last 12 months, the biggest, biggest, biggest lesson? Wow, there have been so many.

• 1:08:09Jay Shetty?

  For you?

• 1:08:09Speaker 01

  Yeah. Yeah. I learned in the last 12 months that you should never have a charge or anger towards anyone. That forgiveness of yourself, of everyone in your life, that peace towards everyone is one of the most important things you can do for your own health and wellbeing and your effectiveness in the world.

• 1:08:33Jay Shetty?

  That is beautiful. I love it. Everyone, Vishen Lakhiani, the Buddha and the Badass Inner Person. I can't wait for you to grab the book. We will put the link to the book in all of the areas around the podcast. If you enjoyed today's conversation, make sure you go and preorder a copy. It's going to change your life, it's going to change your organization. And most importantly, it's going to give you the imprint to just live a successful life, no matter what you do, whether you're an entrepreneur, an employee. Please, please, please go and check it out, support Vishen, he's a very good friend of mine. And as you can see, he will blow your mind. I've had my mind truly blown today.

• 1:09:06Speaker 01

  And can I give people my Instagram?

• 1:09:07Jay Shetty?

  Of course you can.

• 1:09:07Speaker 01

  It's just @vishen. And my name is a little bit hard to spell because it's an Indian name, but it's like Shetty.

• 1:09:13Jay Shetty?

  Yeah.

• 1:09:14Speaker 01

  But it's V I S H E N, @vishen.

• 1:09:17Jay Shetty?

  Yeah, @vishen on Instagram, please, please, please go and follow Vishen. We will also tag him in all the posts we put up as well. Check him out at Mindvalley as well, of course, at Mindvalley, anywhere else that you want people to.

• 1:09:27Speaker 01

  I think that's good.

• 1:09:27Jay Shetty?

  That's good. Perfect. Great. Thank you, Vishen, for being on our purpose today. This was amazing and I can't wait for you all to see the full episode. Thank you so much.

• 1:09:35Speaker 01

  Amazing. Awesome.

• 1:09:36Jay Shetty?

  Amazing.

• 1:09:36Speaker 01

  Thanks, guys.

• 1:09:36Jay Shetty?

  Thanks, man. That was brilliant.

• 1:09:47Speaker 02

  Now, more than ever, we need someone on our side. But Rob Whitman? Whitman's votes drove up costs, cut Medicaid, and risked 350,000 Virginians' health care to pay for tax breaks for himself and his donors. He's not on our side. Shannon Taylor will fight corruption, cut taxes, and bring down costs. This November, vote for Shannon Taylor. She's for us. Paid for by HMP, the HousemanJodyPac.com. Not authorized by any candidate or candidate's committee.