#394 How Your Beliefs Shape Your Health and Success in Life - Vishen Lakhiani

Vishen Lakhiani (0:00)

What you believe about your health will shape your health. So beliefs actually influence your body, they influence your performance, they influence the way you show up in the world.

Siim Land (0:08)

Welcome to the Siim Land Podcast. I'm your host, Siim Land, and today our guest is Vishen Lakhiani.

SPEAKER_3 (0:13)

With 700 bucks and a beat up laptop, he launched what has become arguably the largest and most successful meditation and wellness media companies on the planet.

Siim Land (0:22)

Vishen is the founder and CEO of Mindvalley, which is an education company that teaches about personal and spiritual growth, business, entrepreneurship, and many other topics.

SPEAKER_4 (0:31)

It now has a following of 20 million people across 195 countries.

Vishen Lakhiani (0:38)

If you believe stress is bad for you, stress will be bad for you. But if you believe stress actually energizes you, gives you drive, stress actually will not be bad for your health.

Siim Land (0:47)

Why does it work?

Vishen Lakhiani (0:48)

These beliefs, whether they are buried or they are conscious beliefs, are literally creating your reality every single minute of every single day.

SPEAKER_4 (0:56)

He's a New York Times bestselling author.

SPEAKER_3 (0:58)

He's also a hyperactive philanthropist who's on the Innovation Board of the XPRIZE, the creator of A-Fest. And this very unique perspective, the diversity that it brings, is what has allowed him to question everything and crawl out from under the horde of bullshit rules, what he calls rules, that he believes are holding us all back.

Vishen Lakhiani (1:17)

Running is not exercise. It is negative exercise.

Siim Land (1:20)

Loneliness and socializing are like very huge predictors of longevity and living well.

Vishen Lakhiani (1:25)

The first human beings who are going to live to be a thousand are alive today. And some of them are in their sixties.

Siim Land (1:31)

Is it more like similar to affirmations or-

Vishen Lakhiani (1:34)

Oh God, no. Affirmations are stupid.

Don't do affirmations.

SPEAKER_4 (1:38)

One and only Vishen Lakhiani.

Siim Land (1:40)

Vishen, glad to have you on the podcast.

Vishen Lakhiani (1:42)

Likewise, Siim. I'm happy to be here.

Siim Land (1:44)

By now, you've written multiple other books, and the newest one, Zero Bullshit Meditation. That's a very provocative title, and it describes what you have coined to be like the six-phase meditation.

Vishen Lakhiani (1:59)

Yeah, so the book is actually called the six-phase meditation.

Siim Land (2:01)

Okay, on Audible, I found the title.

Vishen Lakhiani (2:04)

You know why? My British publishers wanted a name that would resonate with Brits.

And Brits can be very cynical. And so in Britain, it's called the Zero Bullshit Meditation. But in the rest of the world, it's just called the six-phase meditation method.

Siim Land (2:20)

Okay, gotcha. Yeah, that's really interesting.

But meditation has had a pretty powerful effect on your overall life and success.

Vishen Lakhiani (2:29)

Well, me and my billions of other people.

Siim Land (2:31)

Yeah, for sure. But we can start with your story of how did you get into meditation, and how has it transformed your life?

Vishen Lakhiani (2:38)

So how I got into meditation was I was working in Silicon Valley, and I was going through a really stressful time, because when I lived in Silicon Valley, and this kind of reveals my age to some degree, but the dot-com bubble had just burst. Right? So, so many people were losing jobs. I had lost money that I borrowed from my father to start a business. My business was going nowhere. I was just burning true money, and eventually I ran out, and I was sleeping on a friend's couch. I didn't have money to pay rent. I had to rely on friends to basically support me till I got a job. Fortunately, I had some good friends that I'm so appreciative of even today. Now, during that time, I got the only job that was available, and it was this awful job where I had to sell software to lawyers. So I knew nothing about sales. My background is computer engineering, and I was struggling.

I was Googling online, probably looking for help, looking for advice, and I found this class on the Silva Method. Specifically, it was a class called Silva Ultramine. Now, Silva Method, Silva Ultramine, they're two different protocols, but by the same founder, Jose Silva. And he was this mind science pioneer in the 50s, 60s, and 70s who was teaching people how to go into altered states of mind and then use their mind for three things, tapping into intuition, healing your body, and manifesting goals.

So, and the way they teach it is incredible. You truly master it.