compassion is not something you do for other people that's a great side effect compassion is something you do for yourself it changes the way you function and show up in the world so the best-selling author and host the number one Health and Wellness podcast on purpose with Jay Shetty hey everyone welcome back to the number one Health podcast in the world thanks to each and every one of you that come back every week to listen learn and grow and you know that I love introducing you to thinkers leaders people who can inspire you to change your daily habits and make shifts small shifts that make big differences in your daily lives now today I'm talking to a guest who's already been on the podcast before he's a favorite here I know you enjoy listening to him and some of the videos that we've done together when I've been speaking on his platform and he's been here have gone absolutely viral so I know you're excited for this one I'm talking about the one and only Vision lakyani now Vision created Mindvalley one of the world's most powerful life transformation platforms that now has a following of 20 million people across 195 countries and today we're talking about his brand new book called the six phase meditation method and for those of you want to know how much I love and endorse this book and this human I have a testimonial right on the back of the book uh this book is a practice it's not just a book that you'll read it's not just a book that will sit on your shelf it's a book that you will actually Implement that will shift the way you think about meditation and the way you think welcome to the podcast Vision thank you Jay thank you back here I love the new podcast setup I love your new place this is amazing wow I love seeing you grow and grow and grow oh well it's such an honor because I've had so much fun with you at multiple Mindvalley events whether we were in Italy Sardinia whether we were in La where we did so many events together I mean I think the community that you've cultivated in mind Valley is so special yeah and the people that are so special and whenever I'm there I feel so much love I feel so much genuine sincerity to grow and and my community here loves you too and can I can I appreciate you for one thing and many people don't know this about you and maybe you don't know this about you as well but when I first met you in 2018 in Sardinia you were speaking at one of my events I was not on Instagram I was not on social media at all I felt I was too old I didn't know I felt imposter syndrome I felt I don't know anything I felt I'm too old and you were the person who convinced me to get on Instagram I didn't know that you didn't know that but before then I used Instagram just to share I use Instagram as a gratitude wall I would share pictures of things I was grateful for never for an audience and you showed me that it was possible my Instagram blew up it's now like 800 000 people at vision and now I use it to to curate this this this community and to talk about my discoveries and personal growth but you were the person who inspired me to get on well thank you man I had no idea that's that's beautiful I'm I'm happier for the world that you did get on so my first inspirational Instagram post happened one week after we spoke and you don't even remember this but we spoke over dinner yeah I remember I've remembered all our meetings but I think what you've done with mind value what you've done with your work has been incredible today I want to dive into parts of this book but I want to dive into it with your experience because I think everyone can remember or has a distinct memory of their first meditation experience what was your first meditation experience ever do you remember it like the first time you were ever introduced to any form of meditation so the first time it happened to me I was 14 years old I was a young kid in Malaysia and I decided to try a form of meditation that I learned from a book called The Silva method a really old 1960s 1970s book back then I was 14 so must have been like 1990 there was no internet in Malaysia we had four television channels so really to pass the time by all I did was I would browse all of the books in my father's bookshelf and I discovered this book called The Silver method now the book captivated me because it spoke about how the mind can heal the body what was happening with me back then is I was having a really horrible skin problem my face was covered in acne I had very little confidence I considered myself ugly I had difficulty making friends at school you know even if I liked a girl I had no confidence to even talk to her and so when I read in this book that the mind can heal the skin I was game on I want to figure this out so I tried practicing nothing happened I continued practicing nothing happened and there was very little results but I read and re-read and reread that book over and over and over and over again then I started picking other books from Bob Proctor from a Wayne Dyer I started reading this books it became a passion and slowly things began to click and one day a applying the silver method at this point I was 17 years old things had finally started clicking I began to understand it's not just about hoping and wanting your skin to heal there was a process there was a method there was a psychology when it clicked in five weeks I completely healed my skin five years of skin disease healed in five weeks today science talk about this as a thing it's called psychodymatology how your mind influences your skin but that was my first evidence that we can use our minds to influence our bodies now the next thing I did was I decided to see can I use my mind to accomplish a really big goal for me that was qualifying for the US Open Taekwondo championships Taekwondo is Korean karate I was really into it and I managed to qualify my first ever trip to the United States which was my Dreamland since I was like a kid I wanted to go to America my first ever trip was to the US Open to represent my country it was in Colorado Springs in 1993 my first time I fell in love with America but it became because I visualized that in my mind and that was my beginning the beginning of my fascination with the human mind that would later lead to me starting Mindvalley and writing this book that's amazing I I love that story for so many reasons a because well let me just break this down for everyone you had an intention that was very clear even if it was to save your skin or to impress a girl or whatever it was you were clear of why you wanted to meditate the second thing was you were happy to read the book again and again and again and again and again and I think that takes a lot of resilience because most of us when we try something once and it doesn't work we give up and the third thing is you didn't just test on something small once you saw a small result you're like well does this apply to something bigger and I think those three lessons in and of themselves are so powerful what has changed in the benefits to you of meditation today at that time it was solving your skin it was getting focused around the Taekwondo championships how do you view meditation like what is its use in your life today because I feel like so many people keep telling us to meditate and there's so many benefits but for you personally what what's the reason so I grew up in a Hindu family Malaysia meditation was never what I was thought the style of Hinduism I was thought was very dogmatic you had prayers you had chance you had mantras and I found it oh God so boring and irritating I hated being dragged to Temple to listen to a pre-speak in Sanskrit a language I didn't even understand so when I was 19 I gave up Hinduism I decided the religion was not for me I read a quote by Gandhi that said I'm a Hindu and I'm a Muslim and I'm a Christian and I'm a Jew and I'm a Buddhist and I thought that's it I want to study and unite ideas from all of these different spiritual practices and so that was my beginning I got obsessed with spirituality I started reading books by Esther Hicks by Neil Donald Walsh and I became particularly captivated by the spirituality that was emerging from the United States from everyone from paramahansa Yogananda who was an Indian who crossed over here to Neil Donald walls to especially Jose Silva now a lot of them spoke about spirituality what made Jose Silva's work different was that he broke it down into actionable steps and that's what fascinated me most so a lot of people spoke about meditation about sitting still about going within Jose Silva would teach the method you're going to do this method to reduce your brainwave frequency to the alpha level this method to gathered down to the Theta level this method of positioning your eyes to activate Alpha frequency in your brain this method to reprogram your subconscious this method to manifest a goal this method to do healing and that structured approach captivated me now we call that active meditation that's the word Jose Silva use also use the same word active meditation this means it's different from passive meditation which was more than meditation from Hinduism from Eastern cultures where you focus on your breath or you go within and there's a usefulness in that but what I loved about active meditation is in the words of Jose Silva you use it to solve problems you do not push your problems away you turn your problems into a project you have skin disease you're going to heal it you need to achieve a business goal you're going to make it happen and you would apply different tools to solve these problems now when I was in Silicon Valley I applied the Silva method and it completely transformed my career I was able to hold down two jobs I got promotion after promotion after promotion at the age of 26 I was vice president of the booming.com and I was meditating using the silver method and other practices I would combine with it and one day I certainly had a calling I realized that meditation was the most powerful thing I'd learned in life it was the reason why I was successful at my career yet my University degree for which I paid almost a quarter million dollars for taught me Jack it wasn't really helping me so I decided I wanted to do something that could help the world I decided to quit and become a meditation teacher now as I started becoming a meditation teacher as I started compiling all of these methods I needed something for myself and I look at meditation from as a tool okay so a lot of people say all right meditation is a form of self-awareness of prayer yes yes yes but meditation is also a tool the point of meditation in the words of the great teacher Emily Fletcher is not to get good at meditation it is to get good at life and so I use two different types of tools now let's think about our home we have coffee makers and we have electric drills we use a coffee maker every single day or a tea kettle every single day to put ourselves in a good state to start our morning an electric drill is a power tool you don't use it every day you use it when you have a problem when you have to drill a hole in a wall or threaten someone I guess so in meditation the style that I teach there are two types you would use a power tool like the silver method which now sits on mind Valley for a really tactical problem for example healing right the silver method has been proven by Dr okal Simonton as a very effective form of imagery therapy for accelerating healing you're sick you want to do it if you are suddenly feeling like you have a migraine you want to use it to help reduce your migraine the sixth phase is what I developed as not the electric drill but the coffee maker something you use every single day even if your life is amazing you use it every single day because it helps put you in a peak state for work for happiness for human connection and it puts you in this beautiful state where it almost feels as if the universe has your back like you have you know the Tinkerbell Fairy following you around blessing everything you do and making your life magical this is how I view meditation it's an active approach to tackle the most complex problems in life but also as a daily approach to put you in Peak states of humanness this is why I love talking to you because I love that explanation and I think that that breakdown of how meditation can be used differently for different challenges is fantastic and I love the analogy with the with the tea kettle will go with and and and the drill because I I do think you're right that we've made meditation what you just said is about becoming good at meditation which is absolutely irrelevant to life and with the six phase method what I love about it is that you have the same thing that you loved about how the silver mother taught it you've figured out your own method that people can take now in this book when you talk about this is where I want to get into some of this and everyone who's watching and listening back at home or wherever you are I'm only going to be giving you a tip of the iceberg but I want to give you this Insight because my hope and goal and intention is that you will go and order the book right now while we're having this conversation to really dive deep into it but I want to give you just enough to recognize how practical it is so you talk about how we need to start with the circle of love and compassion when I hear the word compassion and I think when a lot of people do compassion feels like a tall order because I feel like it's been removed I think before compassion we think of criticism we think of complaining we think of comparing like those are more natural thoughts can you talk to me about how you had this Epiphany that compassion was a beginning when often our beginning places criticism complaining or comparison so compassion is not something you do for other people that's a great side effect compassion is something you do for yourself it changes the way you function and show up in the world so there's a lot of science right now on compassion practices that derive from Zen roshi Buddhism or even from the hot mat Institute for example the hot mat Institute found that if you just close your eyes and you see the face of someone you love you see the eyes you see the unknowns you feel that love for them you feel it in your heart area it changes your heart resonance and your heart resonance is a biomarker of Health in short giving love to someone else instantly physiologically changes the heartbeat that you're having and puts it in a better state that shows that your body is in a healthy mode heart resonance correlates with health and I found this fascinating that is how we start the sixth phase then we move to a more advanced compassion practice where we extend love across the world not we start with our family our neighborhood our city our country and then globally now why is this important compassion is like a muscle you can train it and when you train it you become more loving if you think about all the great Saints and sages and Mystic compassion and love was a key part of who they are whether it's Yogananda or Jesus it was compassion and love but this is how it shows up in your world right so I remember after depend endemic I went for breakfast with a friend all the restaurants had been closed for three months and finally that weekend everything opens and so we are waiting in line for around 20 40 minutes to get in finally we get in it's really busy so they can only see this at the bar and all I'm craving is coffee eggs and some and a side of avocado so I order my coffee and 20 minutes later the waitress hasn't brought the coffee the waitress is carrying around there's a lot of people over there she's wearing a mask and she left the coffee on the bar and I can see it and it's 20 minutes I can't get her attention finally she brings me the coffee just puts it down doesn't even say anything and it's gone cold so I have to order another copy that other coffee comes ten minutes later then my omelet comes 40 minutes later they forgot the avocado and all of this chaos now at the end of that as I was tipping the waitress I still had a smile on my face and I gave a tip worth 50 of the entire bill so my friend looked at me and goes what are you doing like the service here was horrible she doesn't deserve fifty percent and I said really well I thought she did and I explained it to my friend that's that I said look it's all how we see it to me I'm just happy to be here to be able to eat outdoors again it doesn't matter we have to wait 20 minutes in line it was just nice being able to step into a restaurant after three months that waitress she's been running around with a mask on herself for gosh maybe 12 hours look at the light she's not even getting a break and probably for the last three months she didn't have a job she was probably worried about how to put food on the table and that's why I gave her a 50 tip I don't care if my coffee was cold or my avocado came late that didn't even register for me rather I was in the state of appreciation of Love of ore at the humanity around me even if it was a little bit messy compassion had put me in that zone when you see someone else even if it seems like what they did is wrong to you you look at them with a sense of empathy with a sense of understanding and it is that understanding that changes and reframes your definition of the world so I'm not saying do compassion so you become a better Tipper I'm saying do compassion because the world becomes a more beautiful alive connected place and your life becomes more peaceful now the side effect is everyone you come in contact with you bring happiness into their lives and the world needs that today what I love about that example is that it shows something in a personal way that we all experience and it's so fascinating because I've been experimenting with something similar in a professional setting so a lot of people would say oh yeah you can do that with a you know with a waiter or a waitress at a at a store but then what about someone in your workplace and I realized that if you go hard on people and people experience this I think we've all had experience with it we've all had bosses who are hard on us and I found that when my bosses were hard with me it closed me off it didn't open me up whereas if someone checked in with me and said hey Jay you look like you're struggling a bit is everything okay at home like is your family okay like is how are things going you don't have to tell me but if you feel like telling me let me know that allowed me to have a safe space and want to deliver more for that person as opposed to if that person came up to me and goes I'm not really happy with your performance right now like hearing that from someone didn't open someone up and so even your same approach in a professional setting still works and applies that when you approach someone or someone approaches you and just says hey I can tell that you're dealing with a few issues or something must be going on do you feel like telling me I think that compassion is such a superpower and it's so underestimated where did we lose that where did we go wrong I I think we underestimate it because for the longest time in society we thought kindness is associated with weakness strength power even to put power over someone else was a sign of strength with today we know that's not true there was a Gallop study done on two 10 million employees and they found that the employees who loved their jobs more who were most engaged who were most productive were one of the highest correlations with Revenue growth answered yes to the following question my supervisor or someone at work cared about me as a person well and that's compassion now I remember a funny story about DJ so I remember me yeah yeah that shows how compassionate you are so so I want to share this with the audience we were having dinner at mindvalley's Festival afest this was that Festival in ibita and you disappeared to use the restroom oh yeah and then we never saw you for two hours so imagine you're having dinner with someone there about six people in the dinner table and that person goes I have to go use the restroom two hours later he hasn't come back and so you're thinking gosh what a jerk if he was bored by my company he should have just said Vision I'm gonna go to sleep he had to make that restroom excuse so I was mildly annoyed by you and then I realized what happened Jay went to use the restroom and as you were coming out of the restroom one by one people were coming out to take photos with you or ask you for advice and you stood there for almost two hours talking to everyone taking photos giving them the advice they needed and then you were so tired you went to sleep that's compassion and and see you you may have done that almost just organically but I never forget that and that put you at hero status in my mind no well I I honestly have to say it's it's because you attract the best people like that the culture and community of the quality of individual that comes to mind valet events is really special and you know I I know that I know so many a festers in my personal life as well like Irvin who's one of my closest friends over in Valencia e and it's like he's been an a I think he's like I don't know how many atheists he's been to maybe like nine or something I don't know he's been to a lot I think he's the health director for the New York Knicks yeah absolutely absolutely he's the director of training and conditioning at the Knicks and it's just like he's the embodiment of everything we're talking about in a beautiful way and I think I did that because of the quality of the people you attract but I appreciate you remembering these things obviously meditation gives you a good memory so so I I say that because compassion today kindness is the ultimate Flex yeah I remember years ago when people wanted to sell you stuff on the internet do this to make money do this to build a business they would post with their Lamborghini or their car today nobody gives a damn today the stuff that we share on Instagram are very often inspirational stories people doing kind acts people saving animals people doing great things for kids compassion is the flex in today's society what is the difference between a technique and a pure intention in the sense of I I we know each other well and I know that you've meditated for God knows how many years now and I know how much study you've done and how many incredible people use this method like so many celebrities and athletes use this method what have you found to be the difference between someone who uses compassion as a technique to get what they want or to present themselves a certain way versus what is the difference in result and practice in someone who's doing it from a pure place I'm just fascinated absolutely okay so the technique is not compassion the technique is the circle of compassion which is the specific exercise we do inspired by Zen roshi Buddhism and the hot mat Institute to expand and open your heart right so that is the technique The Compassion itself is a quality of being so the sixth base is six specific techniques that layer on top of each other that open up six different aspects of your being which I believe are really important for you to show up in the world not just as a good human being but to crush it at work to hit your goals to get things done and to do it from this state of just absolute Bliss and Equanimity the point is you're making is that you can't even use compassion for lower means or lower requirements because well that's very compassions fake kindness right you're doing something to get something yeah but the technique that we are doing actually trains your brain to understand how deeply connected you are if you do this you automatically become nicer so yeah you're talking about the actual change in your Consciousness and like exactly transforming your character as opposed to like what we're saying like I'm talking about marketing versus meaning yeah like the idea of like oh I can Market this stuff versus this actually makes sense there was one thing specific I wanted to ask you you talk about happiness and gratitude I wanted to ask you your take on after all these years you've helped so many teachers share their work you've helped so many like that's one of the most special things about you that I appreciate about you is that you're not just presenting what you know you're supporting the work of so many other incredible people and you've supported mine too you know you've supported me too in in such a deep and beautiful way and what I'm intrigued by though is out of all the reading you've done all the studying you've done what is happiness is happiness in your eyes still a goal is it a Pursuit is it a byproduct what is happiness because I feel like we still don't know we still hear people talking about I just want to be happy well my goal is to be happy what's Visions take on that so happiness is not the goal at all in fact happiness is not even what we care about what we're looking at is a concept called bliscipline discipline is not being happy it's not forcing yourself to be happy look I am a person who can be prone to depression it's actually in My DNA wow right you can measure these things now with DNA and I've been in depression in my life I'm also a person who is prone to Melancholy Melancholy is when I wanna when it typically it happens when it's raining I want to sit by the fire listen to sad music and just be by myself and I like that I'm not happy I'm neither am I sad or depressed I'm just Melancholy and it's a beautiful feeling and we all feel that sometimes if you've ever seen the Pixar movie Inside Out it shows that sadness can be a superpower you can be sad when you miss someone you can be sad when you're grieving there's a beautiful quote from the the Disney show Wanda vision what is grief that love persisting the goal isn't to push away sadness rather the goal is this is to remember this when we are showing up with people when we are showing up at work the thing that matters is the concept of discipline and that is having the discipline to ensure that you are you are nurturing your positive emotions now positive emotions doesn't mean you're fake happy positive emotions mean that even if you're sad you you can observe it like I love that quote what is grief but love persisting because if you're grieving someone that's a beautiful emotion you can grieve someone who has left your life but you're not beating yourself out of it so you're still in a way Blissful now why is this important there's a study called PQ and there's a book about it by shamin and PQ means positivity quotient it's your ratio of good thoughts versus overall thoughts now what they find is that the higher your PQ the better you function at your job the better you function at your work we spend 70 of our work on our waking hours on our work and so if we can practice discipline and Elevate our PQ we get more done we are happier as we work the quality of our work is better but you know the studies on PQ fascinate me they found that the number one thing that determines how well a team functions is their PQ is what is the ratio of positive emotions within the team and between the members of this team and so if we can train for bliscipline if we can put ourselves in these Blissful States we simply do better now one of the most beautiful things I read was in the book Titan it's the biography of John D Rockefeller he was the richest man who ever lived and at the age of 83 John D Rockefeller wrote a beautiful poem that illustrates this idea of discipline he said I was only taught to work as well as play my life has been one long happy holiday full of work full of play and I left the worry along the way and God was good to me every day and that's really what we're talking about now the richest man in the world could pen that imagine what this quality what this Essence can do for you it's amazing isn't it how what we read or what we think about become the scripts of our life and and I feel just as you according people that have inspired you I feel like for me half the thoughts in my head I think of things I've absorbed right I'm like held on to that then create my story in my script I didn't know what you just said about you that's actually such interesting news to me I don't think we've ever spoken about that I loved how you talked about how Melancholy isn't happiness or isn't sadness but you enjoy that feeling I feel the same way about Solitude of spending time alone like I often look forward to spending time alone I try and make time to spend alone I'll often choose being alone as opposed to doing something else and that's not because I'm happy or ecstatic about it or I'm not sad about it it just brings me joy but what I didn't know about you was this Bend you said towards depression or depressive thoughts and I want to go there what has been the most depressing state that you've been in that the six phase meditation method and other methods that you practice and even teach today have helped you out of what has been that point so so first you've got to understand phase one compassion phase two gratitude phase three forgiveness all of these qualities have been scientifically proven to lower risk of depression and lower situations where you're feeling anxious or panic but I have gone through depression in my life I have gone moments where I was profoundly sad that hasn't happened much in the past decade or so wow and part of the reason is because of the six phase but it doesn't mean that I don't get sad all of us are going to go through troubles in life I miss people yesterday I was sad because it was my son's birthday he turned 15 and I couldn't be with him because I was doing a big event in LA and my son lives in Estonia in Europe and there's nothing wrong with being sad about that right but through that sadness I left them I think one of the most beautiful voicemails I've ever left my son about how much I love him so you can Channel sadness into love into compassion into into vulnerability and help you connect with yourself and other people yeah how do you stop sadness from developing into guilt because I find that you could have easily gone the other way you could have been like all right I'm sad that I'm not with my son on my birthday I'm a terrible dad which I know you're not but I mean you could say I'm a terrible dad and people do feel this way I'm a terrible dad I care more about my work by my actions than I do about my son someone could I'm saying could think of this story they could think I should have flown back I should have been there so these are these are the things that I hear from parents all the time exactly right so this Mass this past four weeks I'm gonna I'm gonna four week book tour right now this is the longest I've been away from my kids but the reason so I get that and I've never been traveled this much away from them because of that guilt but I realized that was silly I know that I'm deeply connected to my children I've learned since then that it's not about being with them all the time it's about when you're with them how do you feel with them and how do you make them feel but how do I overcome that guilt well that's where phase three comes in guilt is one of the lowest human emotions guilt shame from a Consciousness vibration point of view if you look at the Hawking scale right at the bottom guilt and shame you don't want to get there phase three is about healing from guilt and shame so when you practice forgiveness and in the sixth phase we teach you a eight-step forgiveness protocol that you stick right in you forgive yourself for mistakes you've made in the past you forgive yourself for things that you may feel shameful for or guilty for but you also learn to heal and forgive the acts of others it turns out if you want to develop the brainwave of a monk so they've actually measured the brainwave states of monks and you're amongst so I bet you've Fallen there as well so monks have high left right brain coherence that means your left and right brain are kind of vibing at the same level and high alpha amplitude so they found this in Zen roshimongs who have spent 20 to 40 years in meditation so at the biocybernard institute in Vancouver where they map the brain wave states of monks they found that these were the two qualities that you want to create but how do you get that well for forgiveness forgiveness and forgiving people who hurt you as well as forgiving mistakes that you made in the past is the number one hack to get you in that level this is why forgiveness is phase three because I've seen miracles happen through the practice of forgiveness forgiveness has been proven to not just improve back pain increase your heart health improve the quality of your sleep reduce depression and anxiousness a study showed that it improves your vertical jump another study in Israel showed that it improves your endurance and for people who believe in manifesting it's quite possible because I've heard this from many spiritual teachers it increases your rate of manifesting that's why forgiveness is space three because I practice forgiveness in a very rapid way every day um so each phase takes about two minutes of practice I don't experience guilt I don't experience shame it doesn't mean I've never made mistakes I just don't beat myself up over it because you understand that we're all human I love that principle and I'd say that that applies to marriage that applies to work it replies to ourselves like that idea I always talk about how one of the things that's helped me and my wife massively in our marriage is that we're both wired to forgive overnight yes and I've never met many people I'm like that with 99 of people like me I've been like that for a long time but my wife's like that too and that's really helped because then I don't wake up in the morning and look at her and go oh God she's still judging me for the mistake I made last night we've both moved on and so mirroring that habit is really powerful but the the two ends of the spectrum are narcissism of like you know like letting go of all mistakes which I know that's not what you're recommending and then the other thing like you're saying is self-sabotage and beating yourself up forever and you have these two Polar Opposites and I think people get so scared that they they're doing one or the other that they kind of avoid it what is the process to get to the Forgiveness you're talking about where you can allow yourself to move on so narcissism is self-love without love for others that's why we start with compassion when you start with compassion you are training your love for others when we come to gratitude and forgiveness you're actually training your love for yourself in the Gratitude phase you don't just Express gratitude for three things in your work or three things in your personal life you Express gratitude for what you love about yourself and that's because why shouldn't we the world doesn't tell us to love ourselves since we are kids our education system the people around us point out our flaws most people don't have a problem with self-love they have a problem with self-pity self-loathing with not enough self-love now when you come to the Forgiveness stage you further amplify your love for yourself but remember you're doing these phases after you express love for everyone else compassion first then gratitude and forgiveness and this is how you avoid narcissistic Tendencies I think it's become more and more challenging because I think the rise of narcissistic personalities and the challenge that people are experiencing in their relationships is just on such a high I feel like it's one of the most talked about things right now and I guess that also stems from that feeling of like we never got a chance to love each other so almost now we're going in that direction with step four a vision for the future this step is for some people a hard step because the future is usually a place of anxiety right for most people the future is the place of uncertainty of anxiety obviously you've done these three steps to remove anxiety Etc that's where it's a perfect build up I've heard so many versions of what a good vision for the future some people say you should know exactly what you want some people say you should have an overall Vision what is the six phase version when you finish phase three and you move to phase four you're moving to a different essence of being my last book was called the Buddha and the badass and that title came from a essay by the great philosopher Ken Wilbur and that essay was called egolessness and it starts like this the great spiritual sages and Saints of the world from Moses to Jesus to patma sambhava were not feeble-minded milk toasts they were movers and shakers who rattled the world with the force of their ego from they instigated massive social revolutions that lasted Generations from bullwhips in the temple to subduing entire continents now what Kenwood was saying is that the great spiritual teachers were not just focused on the now they were focused on the future Jesus wanted to build a legacy Buddha preached because Buddha wanted to change the institutions of that time the way the rich and the poor were Moses wanted to free his people Muhammad wanted to conquer and spread Islam to the world paramahansa Yogananda came to America to spread the wisdom of India all of these people had a vision for a future they wanted to create and that's really important Mother Teresa wanted to feed millions of people so if you really want to practice your spiritualness you can't just be sitting on your meditation cushion you got to have a vision for the future that's what phase four is about now to answer your question how much should you be specific how much should you be unspecific well it depends on what you're manifesting so now we can get into a little bit deeper spiritual ideas my friend Marie Diamond who's a brilliant spiritual teacher from Belgium and someone I train with Maurice says that what we manifest in the world comes from three different parts of our being there is Our intention which is what we desire but that's only one third then there is a destiny which is what our soul wants to experience that's one-third and then the third piece is the energy of the world around us our home you know the Chinese call this feng shui the people group Consciousness our culture our society it's all three of these so if you think of manifesting you're a car going down a highway okay that's your life all of us have a Destiny and a spiritual teacher explain this to me he said Vision you can't go for the exit Ram you are on one Highway your highway is to spread Consciousness through education you can go on that exit ramp and go into a different direction that's your Highway and I've noticed this about my life every Adventure I've tried outside this zone of spreading wisdom and Consciousness fails it just becomes unnecessarily hard if I stick on my highway I go super fast so that highway is the destiny within that Highway you can change lanes that's your intention you can change lanes you can go faster you can go slower you can go left you can go right and then there's the quality of the traffic is it stuck is the traffic moving easily is the traffic congested that's the group Consciousness around you so that's just an analogy to understand this so when you're manifesting all three of these pieces are coming together now in the sixth base if you go deeper into the wisdom of how it's designed the protocol is designed to take all three of these into account but in phase four what you're doing is you're playing with intention uh intention but also leaving things open for the universe to bring you for example if you want to meet your soul mate you don't want to get super specific because what if your soulmate is in a different age or a different body type than what you think you want Michael Beckwith the spiritual Teacher Calls this mature versus immature wanting immature wanting is oh I want I I only want to be with someone who is tall and blonde and um a blue-eyed that's what maybe Society or what you read in a magazine influenced you mature wanting is knowing that your soulmate may come to you in many different forms and it's going to be an Essence an energy that's going to spark that love in you likewise when it comes to a mission a vision sometimes we don't know what the universe has set forth for us and so when you are practicing phase four the important thing that we ask people to keep in mind is to focus on the what and the why but to Pakistan the how the when and The Who so that's advice from Esther Hicks yeah the what and the why don't worry about the when when is it going to come who is going to bring me or who's going to be my soulmate or who's going to give me that job and the how how am I going to get that how am I going to meet that person Esther says all of that adds resistance to that which we seek to manifest the what and the why add forward momentum so you focus on that I love that yeah I've I've always realized that you'll get to where you want in life just not in the way you imagined it yeah and the problem is we have this projection and Imagination of how the path should look right not why we want it or where we're going right and our paths change we Pierce different Circles of purpose you were once a monk and then you became a Storyteller and then now you have this incredible podcast and now you're launching a Tea Company you've pierced different Circles of Purpose with your purpose to help the world getting bigger and bigger each time and all of us are going to go through that we are not one thing yeah and I and I love that idea because I think for me when we create and associate with identities early in our lives it becomes harder and harder to shake them so I became a monk from age round 21 22 for three years and that was a young time to create a very distinct specific identity and shaking it off took a lot of effort to allow myself to keep the parts that were still me but then to accept the new parts that were parts that maybe I'd negated or neglected and and to really become and to evolve took so much effort and even now like I find allowing yourself to become new things is probably one of the biggest challenges in the world because most of us are like oh I've always been an accountant I've always been a lawyer I've always been a doctor and usually we just use our job titles to Define it and I was actually having this conversation with one of my team members earlier today she was saying that before she worked with us she had never worked on a book or a book tour or you know and we work your mind right now and I was like that's what I love about it like I don't care that you haven't done that I'm interested in how you think and how you approach problems and I'm intrigued by the fact that you don't know the rules of this industry like that excites me how can people find the courage and strength to become new things and not feel held back by old things one of the most practice uh most powerful practices I've found is the lifebook protocol and we talk about it in the book so lifebook is a goal setting protocol by John and Missy butcher in the spirit of openness Mindvalley acquired the company uh the majority stake in the company we're now merging it with mine Valley because it's amazing we wanted I found it's the best goal setting system in the world and we wanted to integrate it with our education platform now in life book one of the exercises you do is you look at your life from 12 different buckets right your emotional life is one bucket your financial life is one bucket your character is one bucket and already if you think about that you find that most people tend to focus on just a few limiting buckets they focus on goals for finance goals for relationships goals for work but are we setting goals for the emotions we want to experience on a day-to-day basis yeah an emotional Mastery I'll be setting goals for the character how we want to show up as a man or woman in the world lifebook makes you go deep you really have to think about it and at the end you end up with a hundred page vision for your life now within that hundred page Vision there are going to be things which are going to be unclear and that's when the magic happens so I remember when I was doing life book in 2010 there was a particular category of the 12 categories called quality of life and this is really where you put down your lifestyle your home and so I put down some really crazy things because they push you to dream big I was on the speaker then I said I want to be speaking on stages around the world I want to vacation and five-star Resorts around the world I want inspiring friends I want to go on trips with inspiring friends I put down even some really like bold things I want to win an Emmy or a Grammy or an Academy Award whatever yeah what happened is 10 months after doing live books I certainly had this weird impulse it came from my soul back then I was running a.com I'd started the.com I'd raised two million dollars in Venture Capital Money it wasn't mine value it was more like an e-commerce play like a Groupon clone for Southeast Asia and I was feeling so dissatisfied I realized I'd been chasing an immature wanting I'd been chasing all of that stuff I was reading about in Tech Publications and thinking I wanted to be one of those entrepreneurs but it wasn't for me and so I gave up my shares I quit that.com and then I needed to do something this was 2010 and I thought I want to learn surfing what if I could get 250 people to join me in a beach in Costa Rica put on a little Festival where we can all study surfing maybe have some personal growth talks and maybe really have some great bonding events at night that random idea became a festival called afes afest that first Festival sold out it blew up and then it continued growing and growing and growing and within two years everything I put in my lifebook came true all of a sudden I was speaking on stage all of a sudden I had all of these amazing people Lisa Nichols chip Conley all coming and speaking on stage with me I had the inspiring friends all of a sudden I was staying in these five-star Resorts around the world hotels were giving me the presidential suite because I was bringing 250 people to their their property in Costa Rica and Mexico and the craziest thing was this I put down a wanted to win an Emmy well Nick Nanton a film producer came to one of our a-fest he turned it into a documentary called live your quest and it won an Emmy it won an Emmy and I was the producer and so all of these crazy goals came true nowhere that I put I want to invent a festival rather I described the life I wanted to lead the quality of life and the idea came to me and this important lesson here sometimes you don't want to put down the job your business your job your career is nothing more than a vehicle for your growth and the life that you want to lead most people get more clear on the job I want to be a lawyer than they do on how they want to grow and the quality of the life they want to lead yeah flip it around you got to get really clear on the lifestyle how many hours do you want to work what do you want to do first thing in the morning who do you want to be with how much time do you want to be able to spend with your kids who are your friends where do you want to live get clear on the quality of life get clear on the values you want to have and the ideal job will follow yeah and I think that that getting clear on the quality of life and then those steps that are there to make sure that you show that priority in a small way like I find that don't you find that everything that happened in a big way in your life was because at one point it was a small priority like I worked at a big consulting firm and I would use all my vacation that I got to spend time with my spiritual teachers this is after I left the monastery I would spend all of it like so I wouldn't take a vacation because I was like my priority is to still learn to still grow to still think like a monk at this point in my life even though I'm not a monk anymore because I was so scared of losing that deep important part of my life that I was like all right all the vacation I get this one I'm gonna do with it and now I'm so grateful that some of them will come live with me here some of them I'll get to travel to and but it's like because at that time it was hard to make that a priority I had to sacrifice in one sense that this is what I was using my vacation for so what I'm interested in mission is what defines for you now a good meditation what is a satisfying meditation because I think this is like a recurring challenge that all meditation and guidance guides have so people are like well did I do well like did I do good because we only know how to we don't we've forgotten how to experience we only know how to evaluate that's what I've realized the human mind has diminished in its ability to experience and increased in its ability to evaluate and our evaluation is this was either good or this was bad rather than this was my experience so how do you define what a satisfying positive meditation is today so I look at the six qualities of the six face and at the end of the day did these qualities expressed themselves in my life was I kind and compassionate today so at the end of the night you can you can basically before going to sleep you can ask yourself these six questions who did I help today that relates to compassion the second question is what was something that truly made me come alive that made me happy today that relates to phase two which is on gratitude the third one is what have I come to learn and come to learn often relates to forgiveness true forgiveness we often learn what is a new vision or a new desire that I saw today that I want to bring into my life that comes from phase four which is vision for the future now phase five is commanding your perfect day so what you may ask at Phase five is what was my favorite part of today and then the final one phase six is a blessing this is almost like a prayer and at the end of the day you might you might ask did I truly feel connected to God to a higher power did I feel that the Universe had my back today and if you ask yourself those six questions you know you had a good six phase meditation so again that's just the lens I use yeah yeah no I like that and I think it's it's useful to have some sort of measuring stick because we all need to evaluate but that's a healthy evaluation yeah as opposed to I think just saying was it good or bad right is like irrelevant you went in a direction there which I was interested in you're saying that the goal of meditation or the work that you've done you found that life is about growth and the experience and the quality of life that you want I think a lot of people Define their Destiny quite early on in life how do you test the parameters of your destiny so I think one of the things that I think is a useful tool is to understand the difference between mean skulls and end goals right very often your destiny the stuff that you're meant to be doing is something that you would do if you were not even getting paid for it very often we we do the opposite think about the standard American System right so you have people so that one of the most common jobs that Americans go into is law is Law and I'm not dishing on lawyers I'm just using this as a really interesting thing because I used to work in the legal industry I used to to sell software to law firms 20 something years back so America's five percent of the world's population 70 of the world's lawyers why well maybe it was show us like Ellie or Ellie McBeal in 1990s that glamorized law and so so many Americans go into crazy amounts of study crazy amounts of debt to become a lawyer to pass their lsats to join a good Law Firm then they're working crazy hours but here's the thing if you are a lawyer you have a 50 statistical chance of suffering from clinical depression wow it's crazy so this large number of Americans are going into a job that can make you depressed at an astonishing rate but they do it why because they are following the herd this is a classic example of immature wanted you're wanting what everybody else wants not what could truly resonate with your soul and so the important thing is to really look at what would you do that even if you're not being paid it's something that you would do anyway because it makes you come alive yeah and often that is the stepping stone to where your dream career could be I was meditating and I was I wanted to teach meditation but I wanted to teach it because I was teaching it to my friends I was teaching it to my cousins because I was so excited about it I remember a teacher telling me you're never going to make money with that you need to be an engineer and I tried becoming an engineer I was miserable but with meditation I built a massive massive massive company I wrote hopefully my third New York Times bestseller because I was simply but I never did it for money I was doing it because it brought me joy and if you look at so many of the most successful people in the world they took what they did that brought them Joy and they turned it into an incredible career and that would be my advice to people absolutely everyone Vision lakyani the six phase meditation method make sure you go and order your copy right now the book breaks down how to practice each phase I also want you to test it out and I want you to tag me in Vision on Instagram on tick tock on Twitter whatever platform you use Tag us and tell us what you learned what you took away what were the Practical things that you're gonna try what was something new about meditation that you haven't learned before I love seeing the nuggets of wisdom and the insights that you take away from these episodes uh Vision I'm going to ask you if there's anything else that you want to share yes yes so you can get the book on Amazon but if you get the book from mindvalley.com forward slash the letter six there's this crazy bonus that you're gonna get oh cool okay in fact even if you buy it from Amazon you can get the bonus just go to mindvalley.com forward slash the letter six Mindvalley has a meditation app with 500 meditations hypnotherapies ambient sounds from all of these world class teachers you get 500 of those completely free downloadable on your iPhone or your Android phone when you get the book from mindvalley.com forward slash the letter six and it's it's only for this month okay only for this month so that's a great bonus Vision thank you so much for that that's amazing I hope that everyone's gonna go try and test them out again please make sure you come back to on purpose I do want you to listen and read I'm a big reader I'm sure you can get the audiobook as well Vision you read the audiobook yes that's it so make sure you go grab the audiobook if you're more of a listener and thank you for being here on purpose I hope you go and follow Vision connect with all of his work uh subscribe to Mindvalley if you don't already and we'll see you very very soon thank you everyone if you want even more videos just like this one make sure you sub subscribe and click on the boxes over here I'm also excited to let you know that you can now get my book think like a monk from think like a monkbook.com check Below in the description to make sure you order today