3 Simple Questions To Figuring Out What You Want From Life | Vishen Lakhiani

what I want to teach you here in this 30 minutes that I have is a really a really powerful exercise that I designed way back in 2012 and I designed it for my own life but in 2012 I showed a little video of this exercise on YouTube I think it was 30 minutes and it blew up the next thing I knew this exercise was being tweeted by the American Management Association to manage us all across the United States and then it started getting deployed in schools around the world in places like the US Mexico Canada India and the exercise was merely something I did to give me clarity in my own life now it's a really quick exercise but it is based on the idea and I think the reason why it was so popular is because it's based on the idea that goal settings as we learn it in in the modern world can actually be a bad practice you see many people when they practice goal-setting they think that they are setting their own goals but we forget that very often our goals are not coming from us our goals are programmed into us it is programmed into us through advertising through the media through politicians who tell you how to think and what to one true all sorts of things that come from what I call in my book the code of the extraordinary mind the conscious state it's a math set of beliefs and rituals that human beings all around us buy into without questioning and so very often what we think are our goals are nothing more than stuff that has been programmed into us they are their wants or desires that we were induced to believe to enrich a business or someone else or to be compliant to what society says you need to do and this is why so many people what wake up one day at the age of 40 going what on earth happen to my life so the three most important questions is a framework to help you unplug yourself from society's versions of how you should be and what you should want and to listen deep down inside you to identify what your soul truly wants I've come to believe that we are not just human beings we are souls having a human experience and every soul choose this alive because of what it wants to experience in that black so no matter where you are right now whether you are stuck at home and you are anxious and annoyed and depressed that this whole coronavirus thing or whether you are wildly successful or whether you're struggling and you feel that there's something else for you I believe that your soul chose to be in that situation and they chose to be in that situation so it can learn something so it can grow so it can learn through this growth but your soul does not want you setting goals that are gonna force it to do things that are not meant in your path so the three most important questions is a simple way to go straight in and to listen to that soul or that hunk or that intuition or that gut whatever you want to call it now to understand the three most important questions I want to I want to show you a framework to help understand the difference between goals that come from within and goals that come from outside us so give me a second as I share my screen so you can now see my slides and Christina can you confirm that you can see my slides okay so in our life there are two types of goals they are means goals and they are end goals we confuse both of them but these are actually really really different a means goal is a means to an end an end goal is the end goal itself so when you think about it right the means goal is get good grades so you can get to a good University work hard so you can get good grades again so that you can get a job apply for that job get that job work your butt off grow so that someday you can retire so that someday you can live the life you were meant to live but one of these things in between were means to an end what is the true end that people are chasing and too many people they don't know what that end is I was once teaching a class in New York and I was teaching people how to access their mind to program whatever abilities that they wanted in life and a woman came up to me and she said can you teach me how to be a faster typist and I'm like what do you mean why do you want to be a faster typist and she said well because I work in data entry and the more data I can input into this computer the more I get paid so I said okay but surely if you've just unlocked all of these powers of your mind you might want something bigger so let me ask you this you want to be a faster typist so you can earn more but why do you want to earn more and she says well I want to earn more because I need to grow my savings and I said good we're getting somewhere why do you want to grow your savings and she said I need to grow my savings because I'm trying to buy a home I said good that's even better why do you want that home and she says I need this home because my mother lives in Detroit it's not a safe city and I want to get my mother to leave Detroit move to New York and live with me in my home and I go now we're getting somewhere why do you want your mother to live with you in your home in New York and she said well because we're the last two surviving members of our family and in my mother's home in Detroit we have this huge number of family heirlooms and antiques I want to move it all to New York I want to decorate this home with the legacy of my family so that when I have children they never forget their family heritage and I said amazing that's what you're looking for now why again are you trying to focus your mind on just being a pastor typist so you see she had forgotten the difference between the end goal and the means goal to her being a fast detectives was a means but that's not how your subconscious mind works you have to give your subconscious mind the end goal and then be open and allow it to guide you to the right opportunities the right parts the right things to get you to that end goal you see if you aim to be a faster typist if there is no passion in there you lose the momentum and the energy towards that goal but there's definitely passion and for that woman in having that home imagining her future children running around it seeing that home decorated but her family heirlooms and perhaps being a fast attack this isn't the fastest for you to get there perhaps there's a better way she may not know it right now but her subconscious might be able to figure it out and so you want to aim for the end goal and not the mean goal means goals are usually a means to something they end in a soul I need this so that I can have that that end goals they are straight-up feelings being able to be a parent and hold your new baby in your arms that's a beautiful end goal waking up next to the person you love is a beautiful end goal owning a home that you can decorate in a special way is a beautiful angle so you want to focus on end goals now here's a quick checklist so I want you to take out a pen and a paper to see the difference between meme school and then school now the first rule is mean schools usually have a soul so if you think about goals that have a I need to get this so I can get that that's probably a means go second means goals are about conforming to brutes AB rule is an English word I coined meaning rule means goals are conforming to rules that may come from societal program but I'm not necessarily true for example in America a bull should rule is that to be truly successful you need two cars a garage two kids right that was really the picture of the American Dream in the 80s it's not today why pursue that it is a rule now the second thing is angles how do you know that your an end goal end goals are about following your heart when you think about an end goal something about it likes you up the second thing is end goals are about feelings very often the end goal isn't an object is it a possession it is a feeling itself remember the examples I gave earlier the feeling of holding your newborn child in your arms the feeling of waking up next to someone you love do you care if the room looks good do you care if what woman what brand of sheets you have it's about the feeling objects are often programmed into us by good advertising but feelings they are the true measure of happiness so angles often a guy wreak goals towards feelings now how do we ensure that when we set goals we are pursuing our end goals and this is where the three most important questions come in these are three questions that you're going to ask yourself and we're gonna do the exercise and we're gonna go really fast and all of you are gonna get a really clear vision of what your end goals might be now here's the trick you're gonna ask these questions in a specific sequence the first question is what are the experiences I want to have in my life an example of an experience might be traveling to seven countries by train with a camera and photographing every beautiful thing I see an example of an experience might be being able to dine with a specific restaurant in Paris that you read about an example experience might be being able to rent a motorcycle and cycle across South America as you learn the Spanish language now the second question is to be the man or woman who has all of these experiences how do I need to grow and this is where you answer the second set of questions which are related to your growth for example if you want to backpack across South America maybe you need to learn Spanish if you want to travel around the world and do photography maybe you need to learn or take a photography course if you want to start a new company in the software space be an author you may want to take classes on if you want to be a great engineer you may need to go and study a particular field of engineering so this is where you make a list of how you want to grow now growth isn't just skills growth is also personal growth if you want to have the experience of running your first marathon or spa and race your goal for growth like to work out in the gym four times a week for two hours each to train yourself so think about growth now the three most so the first question is experiences the second one is growth and then we come to the third question and this is an interesting one contribution here you're gonna ask yourself if I were the man a woman with all of these experiences who has grown in this way how do I contribute to the rest of the world and this is where you talk about service about doing things the better humanity now when you put all of these together note that all through each of these connects to the one before and when you put them on a sheet it will look something like this you're gonna take out a piece of paper draw two lines in the center create three columns and these columns are gonna be experiences growth and contribution and you're gonna write that in English or in Russian or whatever language you speak and we're gonna take you through this exercise now before you do this I want to actually show you the power of this exercise these are a couple of people who work at mine value have done incredibly well and I want to show you what they happen to them when they do this exercise because when I found that this worked for me I mean everyone in my team around something like 300 people do it once a year we take everyone to a team retreat and we make them do this exercise this is what a guy from Brazil his name is Ronan this is what Ronan wrote down he wanted to inspire people to follow their dreams have a healthy strong body speak at Ted have a super effective mind now interesting things started happening when Ronan did this as he started listing down his three most important questions he started getting clarity in his life then he noticed that coincidences synchronicity seemed to happen to move him towards the exact things he wrote down for example he took part in a race called biker challenge he came in number one on a 20,000 competitors and no one of his goals was to speak 1/10 as a result of this he had achieved a lot of his goals on health and fitness but then out of nowhere he got a request to speak at a TEDx conference in Malaysia he did so well as a speaker he got invited to speak in Paris he flew to Paris to speak at TEDx and today Ronan just launched his fitness channel on YouTube you can go check it out he is a fitness teacher and trainer on mine Maui the stuff that he put on in his three most important questions mysteriously came true now here's another example this is Jason Campbell so Jason wrote down he wanted to teach entrepreneurship sales and living awesome he wanted to be a manager delegator he wanted to be a world-class speaker though the team of people and managed them to do amazing things now Jason one day was at the back of the room when we were having a big seminar so he was the guy controlling the a/v playing the music making sure the light and the sound was going well and on that particular day at our event we had a speaker fall sick so Jason came to me he said mission you know you have 20 minutes to film could you put me on stage and I said Jason I'm sorry but this is only for professional speakers you've never spoken before he said edition I put this down in my three most important questions and you promised that you would support us in our dreams so 20 minutes what's the worst that could happen so I said okay Jason I'm gonna put you on stage just for 20 minutes so I put him on stage and Jason was voted best speaker today Jason hosts superhumans at work a podcast online Bobby where he gets the interview so many of the most amazing business minds in the world and he's doing exactly what he put down to do on his three most important questions again a remarkable series of coincidences one after the other to get him there so are you excited yet because you can see what you might experience next now this is a third person Lou Bonita zodiac she to work at mine Valley she was a girl from Romania now she put this put this down in her three most important questions I'm gonna read it out to you because the text is a little bit small she wanted to be a highly paid photographer she wanted to be a writer she wanted to speak and do photography now Luminita when she did this she maintained a blog and she wrote a blog post called fifteen things to give up to be happy this was maybe in 2013 hardly anyone visit a few blog post because most blogs don't get that much traffic but one day someone shut that post on Facebook and then another person shut the post and then a third and the postcard shared more and more and the next thing you know that poster came the most viral personal growth post in history on Facebook penguin Random House the major publishing company reached out and said we'd like to give you $30,000 $30,000 to turn this into a book Luminita wrote the book and it became featured on Amazon she made money from it and she got to travel around the world taking photography being a writer and doing what she dreamed of doing she left myung valley of course when she got that huge check because she no longer needed to have a regular job but she was so grateful for this exercise she asked me to write the foreword for her book so this is what often happens to people when they do this exercise and I want to now show you what happens when groups of people do it so we spoke about individuals but what if we do this as a group so in our company we have everyone's three most important questions on a board and people look at each other's questions and they collaborate these four individuals found that all four of them wanted to hike Nepal so they got together and did a trip to the Himalayas and it's really beautiful because when you're doing this not only are you identifying and getting clarity on your goals but you are creating a blueprint for your soul that your family that your co-workers can look at as well and when they get to know you they can understand how to support you this is why this exercise has been used in companies and recently I got this photo this is a group of schoolchildren in India notice they are basically outside right they don't even have walls or a roof in this particular village school but they are doing the three most important questions because it changed the life of their teacher so you guys ready to get started so what you want to do is you want to get a piece of paper you want to make sure the paper looks like this I'm gonna give you a moment and right now an experiences growth contribution and I'm now gonna take you through the exercise now to ensure that you do this well it's important that you shut down your logical mind in other words you want to listen to your right brain your creative brain your inspiration if you are bound to negative self-talk you don't want to give room for that negative self-talk so we're gonna do this in really fast three minutes per category I want you to write down everything you can think of in three minutes that will first fit experiences then growth then contribution and I'll give you examples along the way so I'm gonna set a timer now for three minutes and we are going to begin in the first column experiences I want you to write down the experiences in life you crave it could be related to your love life and your love relationships what type of love relationship do you want whatever man or woman do you want to be with what type of adventures do you want to go on with this person it could be your friendships who are your closest friends how do you spend time with them how do you make them feel and how did they make you feel [Music] next adventures what adventures do you want in life where would you like to visit to travel to would you like to experience something unique maybe canoeing down the Grand Canyon jumping out of a plane with a parachute of course what adventures and experiences do you want to have in life a fort might be your environment what type of office do you want to live in what type of workspace do you want to have what would your house look like how many houses or homes would you like to have when you travel what types of hotels or locations do you get to stay up right down your vision for the environments that you want to experience and I'm going to give you one more minute to complete this [Music] write down as many as you can you can come back and fine-tune and clean this up you can even spend hours on this fine-tuning it later but now it's important that you get started you have 20 seconds left now we go to the second column growth ask yourself to be the man or woman who had all of these adventures how do I need to grow what skills do I need to learn what classes do I need to take what mentorship do I need what types of personal growth programs should I enroll in the best type of growth is personal growth because once you train your mind or your spirit or your soul or your body everything else becomes unlimited to you the second is the regular education that you get in school crafts engineering but that is always second because if you focus on personal growth first if you focus on improving your mind your soul your brain such as what we're doing now you gain the clarity the powers the ability to accelerate through everything else in life you can be you can learn computer engineering as I did but you could also be a broke stressed out engineer who's bored with the a job but if you focus on personal growth you gain wisdom and the rest of your life will work out so here are some examples of personal growth that you could put down health and fitness whatever body do you want what type of energy levels do you want do you have a desire to be able to do certain feats of physicality at the German what are your goals for your intellectual life how often do you study what programs do you enroll in the best most successful people in the world do about 20 to 30 minutes every morning of personal growth it could be meditation it could be learning a program it could be reading a book but they focus on growing themselves little by little every single day next goals for your spiritual life what new spiritual skills do you want to learn manifesting intuition connecting with a higher power and finally skills this is where you put in new languages writing ability entrepreneurship raining and everything else our education systems tends to focus on this one most and forget the others this is important but personal growth is always the first one so you have 40 seconds complete your list of how you want to grow and as you go through this this lighter them note that there will be many opportunities for you to to participate in incredible growth opportunities for you now we come to the final one contribution so your finish growth and don't worry you can go back and find unit here in contribution you're gonna make a list of if you have all of these amazing experiences if you've grown in all of these amazing ways how now do you get back to your society to your loved ones to your community you could give back through your career are you in a job where you're contributing to the world in a favorable way you can give back to your creative life maybe some writing or some aren't something that likes people are giving back doesn't mean that you have to do it for free earn money you can still create products services are creativity that people pay you for but are contributing to people's lives how can you contribute to your family life you can set goals to be an amazing mom or dad or son or daughter and finally how can you contribute to your community itself true volunteering donations and so on especially in this time of Kovac 19 there are so many different ways you can communicate contribute to people who are in need so I'm gonna give you a minute write down how you want to contribute and this slide gives you a list of how all of it flows together don't worry if you cannot read it for those of you who are in Russian it's right now just focus on contribution to the world and make your list and if you're done with contribution you can go back to the first of the second column to fine-tune things you have 20 seconds left you [Music] so congratulations you just finished your three most important questions now what do you do next take it stick it on your wall share it with your loved ones teach this exercise to other people I made this exercise free put it up on the web so as many people as possible could go through it so I hope you enjoyed this exercise I hope you enjoyed between most important questions and thank you for joining us today [Music]

Channel: Mindvalley Talks

Views: 74,889

Rating: 4.9323859 out of 5

Keywords: mindvalley, Education, Personal Growth, tedx, tedx talk, ted talk, subconscious mind, Subconscious mind reprogramming, How to reprogram your subconscious mind, personal growth, Jason Campbell, how to be happy, manifesting, Self compassion, Goal setting motivation, How to connect with people, How to love yourself and be confident, Manifesting meditation, Follow your heart, Spiritual formation, Deep learning, Self improvement motivation, How to find your passion

Id: qFIDsUekyYs

Length: 28min 25sec (1705 seconds)

Published: Fri Jun 26 2020