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Learning How to Learn as a Catalyst for Growth

Rock Thomas is the founder of M1, the tribe of healthy, wealthy and passionate people, also known as fulfillionaires. He also broadcasts the “I am movement” podcast, on which he sits down with a variety of thought leaders. Together, they explore all of the aspects that make up a wildly successful and fulfilled person.

Rock’s goal is to empower high achievers with a proven curriculum and high-level network that they need in order to create their success story, achieve financial freedom, and reach the next level as a whole-life millionaire.

In his quest to gather as much knowledge and insight as possible, Rock sat down with Vishen Lakhiani, the founder of Mindvalley, one of the world’s most cutting edge personal growth companies with no loans, no investors and no government grants.

Vishen Lakhiani is an entrepreneur, a visionary, a best selling author, a speaker, and an activist, who believes that the human species is capable of extraordinary things – if we unify and come together. He believes the solution to that world lies in raising human consciousness, which means evolving the way people learn, grow, work, and co-create.

Starting From Nothing

Vishen is now the head of a $100 million company, but early on in his career, he hit rock bottom. After graduating from the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor in 2001, he borrowed $30,000 from his father and moved to Silicon Valley to start a software app. But the dot com bubble burst, and Vishen found himself renting space on a small couch from a college student.

Despite graduating from a fantastic engineering school, it took Vishen six months to land a job – and even then, it was a commission-only phone sales job. After struggling for months, Vishen found a class on meditation in Los Angeles that changed his life. He returned to his phone sales job after attending the class and began doubling his sales month after month; he received three promotions in four months. At 26, he became the Director of Sales for his company and moved to New York to build up the office there.

For 18 months, Vishen had a team that reported to him and he sold technology to law firms. He was met with incredible resistance, and he began to wonder what he really wanted to do with his life.

Two thoughts guided him: One, Nelson Mandela said, “if you want to change the world, change education.” The second thought was that the meditation class in LA completely transformed him. But why didn’t he learn this in school? Life would have been so much easier.

Moving to Meditation

Vishen quit his job and became a meditation instructor in New York. He took a huge pay cut, but he found that he was happier, his wife was happier, and he was working from home. He built web meditation sites and sold CDs while wearing pajamas all day.

In the first month, he lost $300. In the second month, he lost $800. But in the third month, he turned a small profit. In the fourth month, that profit increased slightly.

Vishen is adamant about not quitting your day job too early – he maintained a day job and worked on his websites for two hours each night. Studies show that this is the best way to ensure success with your dream job.

To determine when he could quit his day job, Vishen calculated his MLI (Minimum Liveable Income). Once his meditation website and his classes supplied his MLI, he immediately quit his day job. Vishen reminds everyone who wants to pursue something that they are passionate about: Know your MLI, and don’t quit your day job too early.

Knowing When to Grow

It was November of 2003 when Vishen quit his day job and made Mindvalley his full-time job, with his wife doing customer service for him. It wasn’t until January of 2005 when Vishen decided to hire his first employee.

He was living in Malaysia, and found that he was spending four hours each day on customer service, but he could hire someone to do customer service for much less per hour. At the end of 2005, he had a team of seven employees, and he could grow his business by focusing on the highest leverage issue. He focused on programming until he realized he was better at marketing; then he hired a programmer. In 2008, Mindvalley was earning $2 million each year.

Vishen was continuing to travel and teach meditation in New York and London, while also maintaining his website and selling CDs. He was also marketing and building websites for other great teachers, including Bob Proctor. Bob became a mentor to Vishen, and it was something he said that changed the course of Vishen’s life.

Thinking Bigger

Bob and Vishen were both going to be in London for business at the same time, and Bob invited Vishen to come meet him at a seminar he was hosting. Vishen was so proud to tell his mentor that he was being paid $5,000 to teach meditation for the weekend – $5,000 for doing what he loves.

But instead of looking at Vishen with pride, Bob asked if Vishen flew business class (he didn’t). He then said, “so you’re telling me, you travel 24 hours in coach, you left your business behind, you left your wife behind, you left your children behind, you’re gonna come to London, you’re gonna teach for two days, put in your blood, put in your sweat, put in your tears, teach 60 people for two days and walk away with $5,000 Vishen? Vishen, you have to learn to think bigger.”

Vishen continues to be guided by a Bob Proctor quote: “The question is not, are you worthy enough to reach your goals? The question is, are your goals worthy enough of you?”

Vishen returned to Malaysia determined to transform the level he was playing at. He no longer just wanted passive income; he wanted to change the universe. Two years later, he launched A-Fest, a personal growth festival with a $1 million budget.

The growth continued quickly, from one website to seven, and from $2 million in sales in 2008 to $13 million in sales in 2011.

Lifebook

In order to achieve his rapid growth, Vishen continued his education. In 2009, he and his wife completed Lifebook, which is now a Mindvalley program. Lifebook looks at and evaluates your life in 12 different categories, not just finance and career; it also takes into account your love relationships, your emotional states, your character, your parenting, etc.

Lifebook hones in on four different aspects of your life, and then looks at your Vision, your Strategy, your Why, and your Beliefs about each aspect. Then you expand to all 12 areas of your life. Lifebook helps you build a full life of success, not just one aspect.

The next step is to relentlessly focus on these visions. A daily meditation practice of Creative Visualization combined with gratitude, compassion, and forgiveness can make your dreams become reality.

You Don’t Need to Fall Victim to ‘Brules’

Mindvalley seeks to disrupt the bullshit rules around each of the life categories. Vishen calls bullshit rules, brules. For example, there’s a Brule that you are supposed to see your body deteriorate as you get older. Mindvalley has classes that go through all of the Brules that people blindly follow from society and they bust them.

Learning How to Learn

Vishen began reading personal growth books at 14 years old. Rather than focus on textbooks and school learning, he focused on working smarter and optimizing his time. So much of Vishen’s focus has been on finding the most efficient way to do something and not wasting any additional time on it.

You can learn how to meditate in under 15 minutes; you can work out for 15 minutes and still build muscle; you can read a book and absorb 5x what an average person does.

Meta Learning is learning how to learn. Mindvalley publishes the #1 course on it, called Super Brain by Jim Kwik. With Super Brain, you can learn how to accelerate your speed of learning.

The goal of Mindvalley U is to disrupt the four year college education model because it’s outdated. Why would you ever want to graduate from learning? So they changed the timeline.

You can be on campus for as long or as short as you like, and the location of the campus changes. It’s all about hacking education, getting you the skills that you need to live this life where you can do epic work in the world, and enjoy life. Mindvalley U is an education for people who are smart and don’t want to get into the rat race.

There are famous speakers and hundreds of different classes in the span of one month at Mindvalley U; the classes are for as young as six years old.

Vishen’s Chief Definite Aim

When asked about his chief definite aim, Vishen feels that his is simple: “I want to move the human species to a cosmo-centric level of awareness. Cosmo-centric in integral theory is the highest level of consciousness that we are aware of in this world. It means that we as a human species, basically have our shit together. Our compassion extends to all other human beings plus all life. Plus we think multiple generations down. We certainly don’t think like that today.”

Overcoming Brules Related to Money

“Unlimited Abundance” is the Mindvalley program with channeler and healer Christie Marie Sheldon that identifies the 24 most common money-related blocks that will hold people back. If you don’t have money, you’ll find that it negatively influences your life and your relationships.

The program provides diagnostic tests to determine which blocks you have, and you are then provided with a meditation that helps you retrain your subconscious.

Neither Vishen or Rock is interested in a life that is lacking in any area. Instead, they’re interested in a balanced, whole, energetic, playful, curious life – where people get to co-create, support, encourage, and challenge each other to live an epic life.

Planning Your Success

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