A 15-Min Mind Hack To Enhance Brain Power | Vishen Lakhiani

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- [Vishen] I love Dublin. This is the fourth time I've come to this amazing city, and I always have an amazing amount of crack every time I'm here. I hope I used that word right. I realize the Americans who are watching this on YouTube are going to get very confused by what I just said. So I used to live in Silicon Valley and my background is computer engineering. In 2002, I was working for a company there that was going through massive growth. We went from to 100 employees in 2 years. It was growing like crazy and I was going through a ridiculous amount of stress. So I decided to figure out what I could do because my health was deteriorating. I wasn't performing as well as I wanted to. And I googled online and I discovered this thing called meditation. So I flew to LA to take this class, and when I showed up, I was the only person in the class. It wasn't as popular then as it is right now, but still, it changed me. I went back to work and all sorts of like really interesting thing happened. I was in technology sales. In one week, I doubled my sales quota. The funny thing is it doubled again a month later and doubled again two months later. I ended up getting three promotions in four months. But other things started improving as well. My health got better. The quality of my relationships got better. All because, at this point, I was doing something I wasn't doing before. I was meditating for about half an hour to 45 minutes every single day. It was a discipline I did every morning before starting work. And as I got better at it, I decided that...well, one thing really bugged me. The fact that I was the only person in that class, given how awesome it was. So I decided to start a company. I quit my job about 18 months later, started the company called Mindvalley, trained myself to be a meditation instructor. At that point, I was in New York, and I decided to launch as many companies as I could, fill in that gap in our education that teaches people mindfulness, meditation, contemplated practices, how to have better relationships, nutrition, health, wellness, the stuff that we truly need to have rich lives, but the education system somehow forgot. So that's what Mindvalley does. I'm now sort of like an investor. I invest in companies that are helping us lead richer lives. Companies such as the Mindvalley Academy, which is one of the largest online universities for mindfulness and meditation, or Omvana, which is the number one meditation app in over 30 countries. Now, I work with about 200 authors in America and around the world who teach this. But people always ask me, "How do you meditate?" So meditation was my biggest tool. It helped me get Mindvalley to where it is today. We've won numerous awards for being one of the happiest workplaces in the world, and a lot of that is because we practice what we preach. But meditation was really the tool I used to build up my business, and not get stressed out or kill myself while doing it. And when people ask me, how do I meditate, given the number, the sheer number of meditation apps and products that are in the Mindvalley ecosystem, I tell them this, I created my own method by taking little bits of ideas from a wide variety of different practices. What I wanted to do is really think like a hacker. I guess, being a computer engineer, I tried to hack everything about myself. So I was meditating for 45 minutes a day, and I decided, you know, I want to get the same amount of results in 15 minutes. So I started developing simple processes to identify what was it that I was experiencing, what were causing these results, and figuring out how I could make them tighter and more efficient. Now I meditate for about 15 minutes a day, but I'm getting way better results. But it's a specific style that I'm doing. Now, the style doesn't come from any culture, or religion, or... In fact, it's been something I've been experimenting with for a decade. And so [inaudible 00:03:51] asked me to come here and teach something really valuable, so I thought rather than give a speech, what I wanted to do is simply teach you this particular style, something you can take back home and try in your lives. Now, this particular method is something I call the 6-Phase Meditation, and it's used by some tens of thousands of people who discovered my YouTube videos, a little articles I wrote about it. I really give it away all across the web. But it's something that means a lot to me. It's how I start every single day, and I'm hoping that you might get something out of this, a particular practice you could take home and try out for yourself. So here's what it's based on, right? When I thought about how I was living my life, I realized that there were six particular needs, six things that if I could somehow figure out how to meet in my life, things would kind of work out really well. It almost seemed as if I would have the luck of the Irish. Like, projects would go great, my business would grow. I would be able to get optimal productivity while working under 50 hours a week. I'd have great relationships with my kids, with my family, with my friends, if I had these six needs met. So now these six needs were basically this. One, love and compassion. I believe all human beings need a little bit of love and compassion in their lives. Number two, gratitude. The idea of being happy, and not tying your happiness to some future goal, but being happy for what you've thus accomplished so far. Peace. Being at peace with the world and the people around you. Vision. Yet, while having these initial three things, also having a vision for how you want your life to unfold in the future. And then, having a sense of control of how your day and your life is unfolding every single day. And finally, feeling supported, feeling as if there are, in some ways, maybe luck or invisible forces supporting you in life, so that the big projects that you're setting out to do, you know it's going to kind of be okay. So I developed this particular style to help me get my levels...again, you can tell I'm a computer gamer, get my levels up in all of these six areas. As we go through life, sometimes this is what happens. We drop in certain areas. This simple 15-minute practice every single morning helps you level up in all of these areas, and it's really, really, really quick and really efficient. So, again, it's called the 6-Phase Meditation. Before I have to teach it to you, I just want to point this out to you. There's amazing, amazing amount of science on why meditation completely transforms you, and I'm going to go through this quickly because you all know this. What happens to your brain when you meditate? Well, drops blood pressure, and it actually gives you a healthier heart. It slows down aging. I'm actually 84. Its pain-relieving properties are almost twice as effective as morphine. It reshapes your brain, slows down aging of the brain. Leads to better decision making, attention, memory, and it makes you less reactive. You're less likely to get pissed off at the guy who cuts you off in traffic. All of this from meditation, and there's more. Yet, the fact is...the sad fact is, with all of these benefits, why is it that, right now, maybe only 20 million Americans meditate every single day? Why is it that most of us don't meditate? And I think it's because meditation sometimes gets too difficult or too complex or get lumped together with cultural or religious practices. And many of my ADD entrepreneur friends in Silicon Valley simply feel that they just can't find a way to sit still and stop thinking about something. Well, the good news about what I'm going to show you is, it's not about clearing your mind, at least not the style I'm going to teach you. It's about actively engaging your mind and asking yourself a series of questions to get you to reflect on certain things, and all of it takes about 15 minutes. Now, it's something you want to do every single morning. I cannot imagine starting my day without meditating because it completely shapes what the rest of my day is going to be like. But if you really think about it, most of us don't. We've built a society and a culture where many of us forget that so much of what's going on in our head is under control. Okay? So I want you to try an experiment with me. Raise your right hand, everyone. Now, I want you to take that right hand and put it around the person on your right. Okay? Do that. Now, I want you... Be serious now. I want you to actually lean in, push back their hair, and smell them. Just take a deep whim. Now, what do you smell? Someone, toss out something. What are you smelling? Anyone? - [Man] Chanel. - Say that again. - Chanel. - Chanel, okay. Probably... This is Ireland, so probably lucky charms and Guinness. But the fact is most of you aren't going to smell anything. But if you're doing this exercise 100 years ago, all of you would stink. You'd be smelly little buggers. Because 100 years ago, we did not shower every single day. Now we do. Now you get up and you shower and you put on clothes and you spray on cologne and deodorant and everything else. But it didn't work 100 years ago. You see, we've progressed as human beings in terms of our physical evolution, but not so much in terms of our mental progression, our mental evolution. So people will wake up and they would not dare skip a shower. Yet, millions of people wake up every single day feeling dread or anxiety or stress or depression, and they're not trained to do anything about it. Simple practices like gratitude can elevate levels of happiness, but we don't learn that. Instead, especially in America, we learn to pop pills like Prozac. Why? Because the pharmaceutical lobby, massive, the gratitude lobby, tiny. So this practice is designed to put this in your own hands. It doesn't require you to spend a dime on anything. All of it is going to happen in your head. So the 6-Phase Meditation, right? I'm going to tell you about these six phases and how we're going to do them. So the first phase is compassion, followed by gratitude, forgiveness, future dreaming, visualizing the perfect day, and then the blessing. Compassion, gratitude, forgiveness, future dreaming, visualizing the perfect day, and then the blessing. It could take 10 minutes, it could take 20 minutes, depending on how deep you want to go. I often do it in just 10 minutes when I'm in a rush. Now, the first phase is compassion, and as I guide you through this, let me explain what I'm going to make you do. Okay? So compassion is expressed in the intention of moving from judgment to caring, from isolation to connection, from indifference or dislike to understanding. Basically, this phase is about feeling connected to other people, and having a sense of compassion towards them. This is really important. There was a really famous study done at Harvard called "The Very Happy People Study." And they wanted to find out, what is the thing that correlates most to happiness? Now, it wasn't warm weather or, you know, meeting your friends in the pub after work, or having amazing great sex. It was the strength of your human connections. It had a correlation of 0.7. It was the only thing that seemed to correlate really well with happiness. Yet, if you look at the way we live life right now, we often forget that. Okay, you guys ready for another bizarre experiment? Face someone. Just face someone. Find a partner. Okay? Now, at the count... Now, at the count of three, I want you to kiss them on the lips. No, I'm kidding. I'm kidding. Don't do that. Just seeing if you're paying attention. I want you to, instead, look them in the eye. Just look them in the eye. Now, if this person is a stranger, you'll immediately notice how difficult this is. Just staring someone in the eye creates this feeling of discomfort because it creates connection. But connection, we're trained, is uncomfortable sometimes, especially with a stranger. Okay, now, stop you two. Go find a room. Face here again. This particular phase is about teaching you to connect better. Okay? So we'll go deeper into it. Compassion. Now, the second face is gratitude. Gratitude is one of the most powerful ways to up your levels of happiness. Science shows that it causes more energy, high emotional intelligence, forgiving attitudes, less depression, less anxiousness, more feelings of being socially connected, better sleep, fewer headaches, and all of that good stuff. Super, super, super simple. In this phase, you're simply going to think about three things that you're grateful for in your personal life, three things in your career, and three things that you're grateful for about yourself. It's that last bit that I found many people forget. We often expect love to come from outside sources, but we fail to truly, truly, truly love yourself. So in this particular gratitude practice, you think about your personal life, your career, but finally, you just love yourself and think about what you're truly grateful for that makes you you. Then we go on to the third phase, which is forgiveness. This is one of the most interesting ones. I learned about this because I was, at the invitation of Tony Robbins, at his island in Fiji on a nine-day retreat meditating with monks. And forgiveness and getting rid of charges that come up, that you have inside you towards other people whom you perceive may have wronged you is such a big part about getting yourself to operate at peak efficiency, at peak states. So science has shown that when you learn to forgive... All of us carry some sort of like charge towards someone. It could be something from years ago or a waiter who screwed up your order this morning. But science shows that when you learn to forgive, interesting things happen. In one study, people with back pain, their back pain went away much faster. It leads to greater happiness, better heart health, all when you learn to let go of these charges. So there's a really interesting thing about how we work as human beings, right? It's called fundamental attribution error. Our primitive reptilian brains are always used to looking for danger, so we have this tendency where when, say we're traffic and someone cuts us off, we immediately go into defensive mode and we start assuming that they are a fricking asshole. But if we do the same thing, we assume that it's only because, well, our kid, dear little Billy Boy, was late for school, or we had to get to work because there was an important project due. See, when someone else does it, we assume it's their character. When we do it, we assume it's circumstance. And about 10 years ago, I saw this in myself. I was in San Francisco. I was walking down the street, and there was a lady in front of me who was eating an Oreo, and she dropped the wrapper on the ground. And me, being a righteous guy, picked it up, went up to her, dropped it in front of a bin directly in front of her, so she would see me, and I went, "Oh, ma'am, you dropped this." And then she turned to me and she started crying. And I turned around and she says, "Why did you have to do that?" And I go, "I was picking up your garbage. What do you mean why I have to do that?" And she said," I had a massive fight with my husband this morning.My life seems to be in absolute ruins. I'm sorry I dropped that.My mind just wasn't on it. I just wanted to eat this Oreo because I needed to relieve the pain. You didn't have to be such an asshole." And I realized what I'd done. I had assumed that she was someone who didn't give a shit about the environment, was a litter bug. In fact, it was her circumstance that caused her to do it. Now, we make need these judgements about people all the time. All of you are judging me right now and judging each other. The problem is these judgments often create charges, they create false ideas about another person. We carry them with us and these charges hold us back. That's what this phase is about. Phase three, forgiveness. So in this phase, you're going to bring to mind someone whom you feel may have wronged you, and simply repeat the statement, "I forgive you and I ask that you forgive me." That simple. Now, we go on to phase four. Now, phase four is about future dreaming. See, so far, everything that we've spoken about is about the present, is about happiness of us in the present. Now we go to thinking about what's happening in your life in the future? So I'm a big fan of this phase. This is really what some people call creative visualization. I've experienced massive growth in my entrepreneurial career, and one of the reasons I believe I've had that is because I do this every single day. That used to be my first office in 2005. It was an absolute... I'm censoring myself because this is...but you know what I was going to say. That's my office now. In 2012, it made "Inc magazine," "Top 10 world's coolest workplaces." But we did... Now, that was our auditorium. That's where we inducted new employees in 2008. You guys are laughing. It's really mean. But that's our auditorium now. It's somewhat like this space. But every single thing, I visualized years ahead, and somehow, it would seem as if my brain would find the right answers, the right opportunities to get me to those visions. So I've always believed that as an entrepreneur. But the single most important thing I did every single day was think about what I wanted to attract in my life and visualize that in that meditation. So there's something really interesting about your brain, right? We tend to overestimate what we can do in one year, but we underestimate what we can do in three. There was a study on this. So when I'm visualizing, and when you do this, I want you to think three years ahead. And wherever you see three years ahead, double that because your brain is going to underestimate what you're actually capable of. It's a really interesting phenomenon. Okay? So that's what this phase is about. You're going to visualize yourself three years ahead. Then we go on to the perfect day. But before that, before I tell you about the perfect day, a little bit about the visualization bit, right? In spirituality, there's this belief that you are meant to be happy and content where you are right now, and not have desires or needs. I think that's rubbish. One of the greatest philosophers in the world right now, Ken Wilber, he has...he's the greatest living philosopher alive. He wrote a famous essay called "Egolessness." And in that essay, Ken said, "The great saints, mystics, and sages, from Moses to Christ, Padmasambhava, they were not feeble-minded milquetoasts, but movers and shakers, from bullwhips in the temple to subduing entire continents. They did not live their life based on some pie-in-the-sky piety, but rattled the world to create change, and, in some cases, social influence that lasted thousands of years." Think about that. I think the greatest people in the world, the most spiritual people in the world are people like Elon Musk and Larry Page, whom we may not perceive through our traditional sense of being spiritual, but you think about the good they're doing for the world because they have that vision. All of us should be like that. And that's why this vision part is such an important aspect of this practice. Okay? But now, following the vision, we go on to the fifth stage, which is we're taking that vision into mind. You visualize how you'd like your perfect day today to unfold. You visualize starting your morning, alert, excited, going to work, having an amazing lunch meeting with incredible colleagues, enjoying what you eat, having great ideas come to you, perhaps going home a little bit early, being able to have time to play with your kid. Now, why does this work? Why does visualizing the perfect day work so well? Well, some people think it's because your thoughts create your reality. Maybe. Others say maybe it's the brain's particular activating system. Maybe. But what I've found is this. When you tell yourself and pretend that you can influence the outcome of your day, that you can decide you're going have an amazing lunch, when things go wrong, let's say the waiter screws up your order or it comes late or he spills water on your table, you are less likely to focus on that, and instead, you're more likely to focus on the great taste of the food or that amazing conversation with your friend or the beautiful ideas you were getting as you were eating. You are actually actively training your brain to ignore the negative bits and focus and embrace the positive bits. So whether you're shifting the world with your mind or not, you are shifting your level of happiness and learning to appreciate the good stuff in life. It's a powerful, powerful, powerful technique. And then we go on to the final stage, which is what we call the blessing. Okay? Now, in the blessing, you're simply going to assume that there's a higher power that's supporting you. Now, you could be religious, you could be an atheist, it doesn't matter. Pick whatever God you believe in or pick whatever higher power you believe in. It could even be your future self if you're atheist. And just imagine that your vision, your perfect day, everything you want out of life is being supported. And you're going to imagine a powerful energy just flowing down into you, giving you the strength and energy to wake up and take back and make that day happen. That's called the blessing. Okay, now, to summarize, compassion, gratitude, forgiveness, vision for your future, perfect day, and the blessing. And now what I'd like to do is actually take you through this. And don't worry if you don't capture it all now intellectually. This exercise is freely available all over the web. I'll show you the Google term to put in, so you'll find it. There are infographics on it and apps on it. It's used quite widely. So I'm going to sit down, and I want you to just find a comfortable position and listen to my voice. Now, as we do this, I'm going to play a background sound, which is from one of the companies that I invested in, which is a sound designed to help you relax. It's called OmHarmonics. It will help you relax. Okay? And I want you to just listen to my voice as I guide you through this. This is going to take 10 minutes. Okay? Everyone ready? So let's begin. Listen to the sound of my voice. Feel yourself going into a relaxed state of mind. Take a deep breath in and breathe out. ♪ [music] ♪We will start this exercise with phase one. ♪ [music] ♪Imagine yourself surrounded in a bubble of white light. Fill this bubble with a feeling or an energy of compassion and love. ♪ [music] ♪Feel yourself surrounded by this energy of love and compassion. [music] ♪You're now expanding this bubble to encompass everyone in this room. Feel everyone in this room surrounded by this energy of love and compassion. ♪ [music] ♪As you exhale, the bubble expands further and now encompasses everyone in this city block. ♪ [music] ♪Feel everyone in this city block feeling love and compassion. ♪ [music] ♪As you exhale, imagine this energy permeating the entire city. [music] ♪Now the country. ♪ [music] ♪Now, see a vision of the earth in front of you. And as you exhale, see this energy encompassing the entire earth. Feel yourself connected to every living creature, plant, animal, and human being on earth. ♪ [music] ♪Feel energy of love and compassion radiating from you to earth. ♪ [music] ♪We now go on to phase two. I want you to think about anywhere from 1 to 3 things in your personal life that happened in the last 24 hours or past few days that you could be grateful for. It could be a delicious cup of coffee, a hug from a loved one. It doesn't have to be anything elaborate. And as you bring back to mind and memory this moment, feel that little feeling of joy that you had when you experienced it. ♪ [music] ♪Now, think about your career and your livelihood. Think about anywhere from one to three things that you're grateful for that have happened in your career. It could be a project going well, a raise, a business project that's blooming. Bring back to mind the feeling you had when you experienced this. [music] ♪Now, think about yourself. Think about anything from one to three things that you truly love and adore about yourself. ♪ [music] ♪Feel a feeling of pride and gratitude for having these qualities or opportunities. ♪ [music] ♪As you do this, it helps if you can recreate in your mind the emotion that you experienced when you first experienced these things. Now we go on to phase three, forgiveness. Bring to mind someone, it could be someone recent, someone from the past, who you feel you still have a charge that you need to forgive. See them in front of you. ♪ [music] ♪And repeat mentally after me. ♪ [music] ♪"I forgive you.♪ [music] ♪And I ask you to forgive me." ♪ [music] ♪We now go on to phase four. I want you to see some aspect of your life three years in the future. Could be you experiencing your ideal body and health, or your ideal love, or your ideal career, or adventure, or growth, or contribution. Pick any one of these. [music] ♪And feel the joy you would feel as if it were already happening. Play around with this for a few seconds. ♪ [music] ♪If everything could go well for you, if you had incredible luck and support, what would that aspect of your life look like three years from now? ♪ [music] ♪Feel the feeling you would have as if this were true. ♪ [music] ♪Now, bring your attention back to today as we go into phase five, visualizing your perfect day. ♪ [music] ♪I want you to think about what you have to do today, and visualize each hour of the day unfolding in the most perfect possible way. You could visualize it or you could simply make a statement, such as, "I'm going to have an amazing lunch with so and so." ♪ [music] ♪As you do this, pretend that you have power over how your life and your day is going to unfold. [music] ♪And you could direct things to appear, unfold, and flow to you, simply by your thought. ♪ [music] ♪Just pretending it so tends to give you a sense of control and power that often leads to you having more positive experiences throughout the day. ♪ [music] ♪And now, we move on to the final phase, phase six. You visualize yourself three years in the future. You've decided on how your perfect day is going to unfold. I want you to now imagine as if there's a higher power above you. It doesn't matter what your religious or spiritual beliefs are. The important thing is as if you feel that there's an energy or a higher power supporting you in all your visions and intentions. ♪ [music] ♪Imagine a beam of light flowing down from above to the top of your head. Feel this as a warm, positive, loving, supportive energy, and feel it gently flow down from the top of your scalp down to your forehead, your eyes, your face, your neck, your shoulders, your arms, all the way down to your fingers, your chest, your abdomen, your hips, your upper legs, your knees, your calves, and your feet, all the way down to your toes. Imagine yourself thanking this higher power or the supportive energy, and see yourself ready, empowered to face your day. At the count of five, I'm going to count you awake. One, two, three, coming out slowly now. Four, five, eyes open, wide awake, feeling fine and in perfect health, feeling better than before. How did that feel? So you see how fast it went, right? It didn't take a really long time. And many of my entrepreneur friends love it because you don't have to clear your mind. Now, some argue that this isn't really meditation. It doesn't really matter. It's simply the act of going within and consciously fine-tuning different aspects of your human being, hacking yourself, in other words, so that you have an optimal experience in this particular life. Now, you can download this on omvana.com. It's free. Just sign up and you can download it. These are some of the various apps and stuff that my company has out there. You can download Omvana on your iPhone or your Android and this particular meditation is free. So just click on Free Tracks and you'll get it for free. The beautiful thing about it is there are things that you will see consciously happen when you do this. There are also things that happen unconsciously. One of the most interesting unconscious bits that I noticed when I started doing this is what I call the two-mind effect. It almost seems as if my mind was split in two. And when I'm about to react in a bad way to something, let's say someone cutting me off in traffic, this other mind would appear a wiser, more astute, calmer mind, and it would kind of calm me down. It would say, "Relax, Vishen.You're just going through fundamental attribution error." So there are numerous unconscious things which I noticed were happening to me as I started adopting this practice. But overall, I would credit it as the number one most-effective thing I do every day in my life, and I hope... This is my gift to you. I hope that you get to take this back, experiment with it, feel free to hack it in any way you want. Write to me if you find a really good variation of it that's working for you because I'm always looking to refine it, get it better, and get it out to as many people. Thank you.
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Channel: Mindvalley
Views: 662,632
Rating: 4.9046988 out of 5
Keywords: Consciousness, Consciousness evolution journey, What is consciousness, Stream of consciousness, Reprogramming the subconscious mind, gratitude meditation, raising consciousness, spiritual awakening, spiritual growth, Personal growth, Growth mindset, How to achieve your most ambitious goals, How to set goals and achieve them, Personal growth development, Spiritual motivation, How to achieve your goals, How to deal with failure, Self Improvement, Guided visualization
Id: 77YVmymBozk
Channel Id: undefined
Length: 35min 36sec (2136 seconds)
Published: Tue Feb 03 2015
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