Vishen: Hi, I’m Vishen Lakhiani, founder of Mindvalley, the school for human transformation. You’re listening to the Mindvalley Podcast, where we’ll be bringing you the greatest teachers and thought leaders on the planet to discuss the world’s most powerful ideas and personal growth for mind, body, spirit, and work. I’m Vishen Lakhiani, and this is the Mindvalley Podcast.
Hi, everyone. Welcome to The Mindvalley Podcast. Tonight, with me, is Jon and Missy Butcher, the legendary creators of Lifebook, those incredible entrepreneurial couple from Chicago that has had such a massive impact on the Mindvalley community, on my life and in the lives of people who have been following them over the last decade or so. So, Jon, Missy, welcome to Mindvalley.
Jon: Thanks so much, Vishen.
Missy: Thank you, Vishen. Nice to be here.
Jon: Great to be here.
Vishen: So, today we’re talking about life vision.
Jon: All right.
Vishen: And let me tell you why. When I poll you guys, and I asked you guys, “What do you wanna learn?” Some of the biggest questions we get from people, Jon, Missy, for those of you listening, are questions along these lines. How do I find my purpose? How do I know if I’m on track towards my mission? How do I figure out why I’m here? How do I know if my goals are aligned with my soul or what I’m supposed to be doing? How do I not fall into the trap of living other people’s vision? But ultimately, how do I create a life vision? And you guys have not just created an incredible life for yourself, you’ve done it while being extremely successful entrepreneurs. I mean, there’s Precious Moments, there’s Purity Coffee, there’s Lifebook. There’s four other companies that you guys are currently part of, but you’ve done it without the burn out, without the bad help, while having an incredibly beautiful marriage that has spent three decades, while being grandparents and being able to travel around the world with your kids, while being able to live in luxury but also give so much to the world. What I wanna do, guys, is basically, in a nutshell, what’s the deal, what’s your secret?
Missy: Oh, wow. Okay, that’s a big question.
Jon: You know, I think the secret is our life vision.
Missy: Yeah.
Jon: Because when you’ve got a crystal clear vision and you know that that’s your north star, that’s where you’re headed, you’re not going to be compromising your love relationship on the way to getting there. You’re not gonna be compromising your health. Our careers are part of a bigger picture. You know, Vishen, so many people get swept down the road of their career.
Missy: Easily. That happens easily.
Jon: Right. You know, how I’d like to start is why a life vision is so important in the first place. Especially in this day and age where we’ve got so many distractions, and where we can so easily get just pulled off course. If you don’t have a crystal clear vision for your life, there are millions of people, corporations, gurus out there that are going to be happy to step in and fill your vision gap and take you and your life where they want you to go as opposed to where you want to go. That’s the danger.
Missy: I think it starts with understanding that really you are totally in control of your own life.
Jon: Right.
Missy: I mean, I think that as a child growing up, your parents are in charge, right? But at a certain point, you need to take over. You need to take over and say, “Hey, give me the reins of this thing.” And a lot of people don’t do that hand-off. You know, they just stay in that being cared for whether it’s the government or their boss. They get a job that cares for them. And really, it’s up to us…
Jon: Their life evolves.
Missy: …to do it ourselves.
Jon: They just react to life. They let life happen to them as opposing to directing it themselves consciously. And the danger there is that you can wake up one day and say, “What the hell happened to my life?” Or, “How did I get here?”
Missy: Why I’m I here?
Jon: “How did I get in this relationship? How did I get in this career? I never planned for any of this and I’m not necessarily fulfilled by it.”
Vishen: And you’re so right because if you look at the data, 54% of Americans, according to Gallup, dislike their jobs. So you think about this, people are going to school, they’re working hard, they’re investing in a university education, then they’re getting into a career, and 54% of Americans are waking up going, “Why the hell am I here? I dislike this.”
Jon: I’ve got a statistic that’s like that too. You know Richard Rossi, right? He’s one of our mutual good friends. He runs a big educational company where he works with the most talented high school kids in the world. He was in front of 300 seniors getting ready to go into college, spending $100,000 a year for these Ivy League colleges. Three hundred of the smartest kids in the country because that’s who he works with.
And he said, I would like you to raise your hand if the following is true. You’re getting ready to go to an expensive school for four years. If you could not get a diploma, you can’t get that piece of paper, you can’t get that certification, and you can’t tell anybody that you went to school, would you be going into college right now? Exactly 5%, 15 out of the 300 kids raised their hand indicating that, “Yes, I would be going to school because I wanna learn for myself.” Five percent versus I’m going to school because I want that piece of paper, and so that I can tell people that I went to college. They’re not doing it for themselves. They’re living their life the way other people, the way society, the way tradition tells them they should be living it. But I think that we’re learning more and more that that is not the road to fulfillment.
Vishen: Or as Jack Delosa, who was a guest on this podcast said, “They’re living other people’s rules.” OPRs, other people’s rules. And what’s funny is that it leads us to even question if college is necessary. Look, if you’re doing it for fun, because I had an incredible time when I went to college in Michigan. I loved it. But that degree never did anything for me.
Jon: No, I’ll tell you. None of my successful friends will tell you…
Missy: But they will say that college was a really nice social, met some of their life friends there, their adult friends.
Vishen: But it’s unfortunate that only 15% of these kids would do with for the pure joy of learning.
Missy: Yeah.
Jon: Now, Jade, our daughter is 17. She’s getting ready to go to college next year. And she’s gonna go to college in Seoul because she’s in love with the Korean culture. She likes K-pop, those pretty little Korean [inaudible]. But here’s the rule with Jade, and we sat down and we really discussed this. Jade is picking a performing arts school. She’s gonna take only the classes that she loves, that she wants to learn. She’s gonna take music. She’s gonna take dance. She’s gonna take graphic design. She’s gonna take the things she’s interested in. She’s not interested in a diploma. She’s not interested in being able to tell anyone that she went to school. She’s interested in bettering herself.
Vishen: And now as you say that, I bet many parents who are listening or many kids who are planning on going on college are thinking, Whoa, whoa, whoa, what’s gonna happen? How am I gonna get a job? And here’s something I wanna share. Google already announced that 15% of its employees do not have a college degree. And I can tell you here at Mindvalley, I’ve interviewed thousands of people. We have a team of 300. I have no idea what college anybody goes to because we don’t even look at that anymore. We do not look at college or college degree on one’s resume. We’ve just become blind to it. We’ve hired people from Harvard. They’ve not worked out. We’ve hired people with college de-, with a high school diploma and they’ve been some of the most successful people I’ve ever hired.
Jon: You certainly can’t correlate a vision. I mean, look at Bill Gates, and Steve Jobs, and the list of college dropouts that have changed the world is just awesome.
Vishen: So I think the key message here, and I love the advice you’ve given Jade, your daughter, and the advice I would give Hayden, my son, is look, go to a college only if you get to study something you’re truly excited about.
Jon: Exactly.
Vishen: And I love your words, “If you’re willing to do it knowing that no one is gonna hire you for that degree, and that no one might even care that you’ve gone to college,” because that’s the way…
Jon: They will care about your skills though. And they will care about your experience and…
Missy: And your attitude and your, you know, your go get it attitude.
Jon: Exactly.
Vishen: Right. It’s your attitude that truly matters in terms of a determinant of success. The back to life vision. So we know that the conventional part, other people’s rules, or as I call it, the bullshit rules of rules, are not the way we wanna go. So how does someone get clear on their life vision?
Jon: Well, Vishen, I’ll tell you how we do it at Lifebook. You know, I only know our methodology. And what we do at Lifebook is we take a look at the 12 most important areas of our lives, and we ask ourselves what do we want in each of these areas. What do I want for my health and fitness? Who do I want for my love relationship? What do I want for my financial life? What do I want for my career? And then based on that work, based on defining what you want in each individual area of your life, you can take that then and add it all up and say, “Okay. Well, if that’s what I want across every category, what does my life look like at that point?” You know, what is my clear compelling vision for my future based on what I want in every area of my life? And we just sort of wrap it up at the end of the program into a very tight, very clear life vision that you can begin then moving toward with intention every day of your life. Now, that vision will change as you change. It’s dynamic. It’s a never-ending process to continually ask yourself, what do I want out of life? Missy and I, at least once a year, right, baby? We…
Missy: Oh, yeah. For sure. But I would say, to begin, like if you have no idea where to start with your life vision, it’s really a process of awakening, a process of becoming conscious. So you can ask yourself a few questions. You know, and that’s what we do at Lifebook. But it really is an awakening process. You get that moment where you’re like, “Oh, I really am in charge of my own life, now that I’m an adult. I really can make the decisions myself and take the path that I choose.” You have to shine consciousness on it and then get creative.
Jon: Going into a grocery store, you’re gonna come into contact with 35,000 brands in less than an hour, every one of which is trying to get you to do what they want you to do. Every time you drive down a freeway and look at the billboards, every time you get on your phone, every time you get on Facebook, you are bombarded with hundreds and hundreds of messages every day trying to get you to make the decisions that other people want you to make. If you don’t have a crystal clear vision of your future, you’re gonna get pulled into a rabbit hole.
Vishen: That’s a really, really, really good point.
Jon: Oh, Dude, and it’s gonna get worse and worse.
Missy: Yeah.
Vishen: And you guys touched on something earlier, which I think is key over here. Right? And it is that when one goes to college, when one thinks of their future, when one thinks of their purpose, the massive problem in the world today is we think about it along a tiny slice of what a complete life is. And that slice that we think about is career and money.
Jon: That’s exactly right.
Vishen: If you ask the average person, “What are you gonna be doing?” Because I ask this to everyone I interview. “Where do you see yourself in 40?” And 98% of people, right, 49 out of 50 will basically talk only about the job they’re doing and the type of professional level or income. And it’s puzzling that they don’t talk about their health. They don’t talk about their marriage. They don’t talk about the fact that they might be, you know, a mom or a dad raising incredible kids. They don’t talk about traveling around the world. They’re all freaking obsessed with career and money. That’s the way we have seduced people to live life. We grow up incomplete because we’re obsessed about one tiny slice of life. Now, what’s great about the procedure that you guys have created is that in Lifebook, finance and career are two out of 12 different…
Jon: Exactly.
Vishen: …categories, and they are 10 additional categories. Now, if you guys wanna know about those 10 additional categories, listen to the earlier podcasts I did with Jon and Missy. But a key aspect of life vision, for the first fundamental rule of your life vision, is expand how you define vision. Don’t fall into the gap that the majority of people in the planet fall into, where it’s only about career and money because we’re living in the safest time in human history. We are living in a world where in 2030, and 2035, and beyond, it’s very likely that money will be freely available. It’s very likely. Bill Gates said that universal basic income will be the rule of the land everywhere. And most people will find survival easy. And now it’s about truly pursuing your passions.
Missy: Mm-hmm.
Jon: Right. Truly living while you’re here.
Missy: It frees you up to pursue. Yeah.
Vishen: Yes. Right. The basics are taken care of. It’s known as the essence of Maslow’s experiment. But just for the people here who might be new to the Lifebook philosophy, could you quickly run through the 12 categories?
Jon: Sure. The first five categories are the personal life categories, which we define as you separate from the rest of the world. Those categories are your health and fitness, your intellectual life, your emotional life, your character, and your spiritual life. That’s kind of what makes you, you. And then we go from there into the relationship categories, there are three of them, your love life, parenting, and your social life, followed by two business categories, your career, and financial life. And finally, your overall quality of life, which includes the experiences that you create for yourself, the environment you surround yourself by, your house and so on, and the things that you want in your life. This is where cars, and boats, and paintings and stuff like that live. And then finally, we take those 11 categories and we wrap them all up into one called your life vision. And, you know, it’s so funny, Vishen, Lifebook is fun, it’s enjoyable, it’s fascinating, but it’s a lot of work. It’s a lot of thinking.
Missy: A lot of thinking.
Jon: It’s a lot of thinking. And that thinking that you do is transformative. But at the end of the process, it basically boils down to a two-page vision of the extraordinary life that you wanna create for yourself. And then from that point forward, you can move toward that life vision with confidence and with intention every day.
Vishen: Sorry, I was confused about one thing. You said a two-page vision because when I did Lifebook, I ended up with a 75-page vision.
Missy: Well, he’s talking about just the life vision category.
Jon: Just a little life vision section at the end…
Missy: But the book is that big.
Jon: We’re releasing a new program, which we’re so excited about. We’re actually running it at Mindvalley this weekend.
Vishen: Which is why you’re here at Mindvalley HQ.
Jon: Exactly.
Vishen: Because we’re putting 100 of our employees through it.
Jon: We’re here in Kuala Lumpur to run the program Lifebook Ultimate, which is basically Lifebook Part 2. So, Lifebook Part 1 helps you get crystal clear on a vision for your life. You emerge from Lifebook with a 120-page book that you wrote and the person that you wanna become and the life you wanna live. That’s where the Lifebook program ends.
Lifebook Ultimate begins with your life vision, that you’ve worked so hard to create, two-page synopsis of the life that you want to live. And then, we move through a beautiful process of creating an action plan out of that life vision and helping you accomplish that action plan inside of an accountability system with all of the support, and encouragement, and inspiration you need. So we’re super excited about taking Mindvalley through that program.
Vishen: And we’re super excited about going through it. Now, I wanna state something, which I know a couple of people here might be wondering, right? They’re thinking, Okay, great guys. You’re telling me I gotta write down all of my goals in 12 of these categories. Right?
Jon: Mm-hmm.
Missy: Mm-hmm.
Vishen: But truly just running it down isn’t going to make it happen.
Jon: Right.
Vishen: So what’s the next step? After I write it down, what do I then do?
Jon: Well, that’s what Lifebook Ultimate is. But let me tell you something, writing it down is half the battle.
Missy: It starts the process actually.
Jon: It is literally the consciousness, the thinking that you do during the Lifebook process and you wouldn’t even really…if you could go away for a week and do nothing but thinking about your life, even outside of the Lifebook process, it’s about bringing consciousness to your life and taking responsibility.
Missy: Yeah. And really, it’s more about self-discovery, because when you start really thinking about how…
Jon: Well, that’s what happens when you bring consciousness to your life and take responsibility.
Missy: Yes, that is correct.
Jon: You discover a bunch of stuff about yourself.
Missy: I think a nice place to start, if you’ve never done anything like this around life vision, is to just journal or write down an ideal day. What would your ideal day be? Just if you could wake up in the morning and do all the things you really wanna do, what does that look like?
Jon: Matter of fact, in our life book, that is how we define our life vision according to our ideal day. We’ve written two pages about what is our absolute ideal day look like from the moment we wake up to the moment we go to bed, and that is what Missy and I are focused on creating.
Vishen: So you have your long-term vision, Missy?
Missy: Yeah.
Vishen: …like the long-term vision and then the ideal day. Is this a separate exercise that you do?
Missy: Yeah. Yes, it can be. Absolutely.
Vishen: So could you give us an example? Like, what would your ideal day look like?
Missy: So my ideal day would be I wake up at, you know, whatever time my body says it’s time to wake up. I do my meditation. I do my gratitude ritual, then I do my yoga or my workout. And then I go downstairs, I’ve taken inventory of my house, my kids, what’s going on that day, then I decide, do I wanna paint today? Do I want to, you know, take a trip with my kids? It’s like that. It’s like you really… It allows you to just freely and creatively think about how you wanna live on the planet. And it’s so freeing. And get really creative. Like, really go there and say, “What would my ideal day be?” And then from there, you can kind of extrapolate what your life vision could be. I mean, it’s a separate, what would you say, exercise then life vision.
Jon: Once you define a clear life vision, you can sit down and define what your ideal day looks like.
Missy: Yeah, but you could do that first. You could also start with an ideal day. But back to writing your goals down, actually writing down your life vision, there’s something about actually taking pen to paper or writing it even in your computer. I think it’s better to write it physically with your hand because something happens where you… It’s like, okay, this is real. It’s like you’ve convinced yourself, I’m serious about this.
Jon: It’s putting a line in the sand.
Missy: Yeah. And then if you tell someone else about it, it takes it to whole other level.
Jon: Right.
Missy: It really does.
Vishen: And what’s crazy about that is, I know there are studies that show that when you write down your goals, they are far more likely to come true. I forget the exact percentage of likelihood, but I remember it was fairly significant, massively significant.
Jon: That’s true.
Vishen: And I’ve noticed this as well. I wanna share this advice to people who are listening, who are thinking, Okay, this is fluffy. Writing down your goals is great. But what’s gonna happen next, right? And there are different theories. You know, some people who are way into metaphysics might say it’s the law of attraction. What you write down, what you focus on, you attract in your life. And I believe there might be some truth in that, but there’s also the scientific reason, which is the RAS section of the brain, the reticular activation system. And you guys have heard the stories. You buy a white Volkswagen, and for the rest of your year, you’re gonna notice white Volkswagen all across. It’s because your brain, in an average second, is picking up millions of different stimulus.
Jon: Yep.
Vishen: And so, it blacks out most of it. But when you give it a goal, it starts focusing on what is associated with that goal.
Jon: Exactly.
Vishen: Now, here’s what happened with me after I took Lifebook. And there’s a video of the story because you have to see it to believe it because it’s truly incredible. But when I took Lifebook, I was stuck in this other people’s rule around the Silicon Valley startup environment. So I thought success to me meant getting venture funding in a company, being in the media, potentially taking this company public, or being able to sell the company, getting a massive cash windfall. And I was still running Mindvalley but Mindvalley was kind of on autopilot. It wasn’t the Mindvalley that it is today. It was a very different company. And so, I started a dot com on the side. We got $2 million in venture capital funding. I had an incredible business partner. I hired a separate team and we were scaling and growing that dot com. And six months into it, I realized I hated my life.
Jon: Whoa.
Vishen: I didn’t like the people I was hiring. I didn’t like the work I was doing. I felt the company wasn’t really contributing to the world. And I was miserable. So it was around that time that I took Lifebook. And I was going through this crazy period where I was feeling miserable, I was feeling lonely. I was working crazy long hours. And I started writing down what I wanted to experience in my life. And some of the things I wrote down were things such as, I wanna be able to travel and live in exotic hotels around the world. And I wanna be able to take my kids with me. I wanna be speaking on stage. Back then I wasn’t really speaking much on stage. I wanna get to know some of the most inspirational, personal growth legends in the world. I want to have my friends be able to travel with me. I wanna have a massive network of people all around the world.
And within one year, through a series of coincidences, and a series of bizarre events, that happened to me. And it happened because I ended up starting an event called A-Fest, A festival. And before I knew it, A-Fest was blowing up. Everything that I had put down in my Lifebook started coming through. All of a sudden, the world’s greatest speakers were coming and speaking at A-Fest. And because I was running A-Fest, it was happening in all of these exotic hotels. I had my kids with me. All of these friends were coming and joining me. And you guys have been to A-Fest, and you’ve seen that. And it’s uncanny how much it matches what I put in my Lifebook. But here’s the crazy thing, when I wrote those things down, I had no clear idea how to get there. But, I guess, because I wrote it down, my mind started connecting the dots backwards and forwards.
Jon: Right.
Vishen: Right?
Missy: That’s right.
Vishen: And very rapidly, that vision came true. And I bet, for any of you listening to this podcast, if you just try this exercise, get rid of that false idea that you need to know what to do next. Right?
Jon: Right. Even Napoleon Hill in his book, “Think and Grow Rich”, he says, “Get your goals straight. And then, if you don’t know what to do next, take a baby step because the baby step shows intention.” And the baby step could be simply you wanna start a company, register a domain name. Right? A baby step. And it may be in the wrong direction. But every baby step will give you clues in the next baby step, and the next baby step, and the next baby step.
Missy: That’s right. It’s all wiring.
Vishen: And eventually, your vision has become real. So that’s what happened to me after Lifebook. But it started… I’ve always been a go-getter. I’ve always been like crazy ambitious. But what was different, what I learnt from you guys, was two things. Number one, not being stuck in that single track that there was one way of life, not building up a company, getting two million in venture capital funding, and then realizing I was sacrificing my health, I was putting on weight. I wasn’t spending enough time with my friends and my family. So that was one. And the second thing is being really specific in those 12 directions, in those 12 segments of life because then your brain starts connecting the dots going forward and backwards, and the vision comes to you rapidly.
Jon: And, you know, Vishen, we’re the only animal on the planet that has the ability to visualize our future. No other animal can think about tomorrow except for human beings. It’s literally what separates us. Half of our brain is dedicated to seeing things that don’t exist now but could exist if we make them real. No other animal has ever been able to do that or will ever be able to do that. And that unique human ability is what has created everything we see around us.
Missy: It’s how we’re wired.
Jon: It’s how we’re wired.
Missy: That’s right.
Jon: Once you get clear on the life that you want, that doesn’t exist right now but could exist if you make it real, all kinds of things start to happen. Just exactly like you said, this has been our experience and the experience of so many thousands of people that we’ve seen go through this program. So, congratulations, man. That’s an incredible story.
Vishen: And we wanna hear your stories, those of you listening to this podcast. As you start thinking holistically of your life in these 12 categories, we’d love to hear your success stories. Because it is incredible what happens, how this simple shift in thinking can have such a profound impact on one’s life. This is why we’re so committed to getting Lifebook now in schools. This is why we put our employees through Lifebook. This is why we’re now working to get it in corporations around America.
Now, a couple of quick tips for those of you guys who wanna take this further. If you wanna go deep and understand the 12 categories, you can do it in two ways. Number one, listen to the earlier podcasts with Jon and Missy, where Jon goes deeper into the 12 categories, and also gives you four questions to ask in each category. Right? If you wanna really take this serious, consider taking a Lifebook seminar. They are slowly expanding around the world. Or if it’s a timing issue for you, you can join the Lifebook quest on Mindvalley’s quest platform. We open up our Lifebook quest two to three times a year. Just go to mindvalley.com, click on Programs, Metta learning, and look for Lifebook. And information is there. The Lifebook website is mylifebook.com. There’s a ton of information over there.
And, one thing were really excited about is that, working with Jon and Missy, we’re expanding Lifebook to also be a program for teenagers, because we think teenagers would still benefit from this because imagine how your teen is going to view life. If they do an exercise like this, you know, when they are 13, 14, or 15, or even, like, if he or she is a really smart 11 or 12-year-old. So, this year, at Mindvalley University, which is taking place in Tallinn Estonia, we are bringing Lifebook. We’re gonna be running Lifebook sessions every week at Mindvalley U. There’re gonna be two sessions for Lifebook Level 1, the main Lifebook program. We’re also releasing Lifebook Ultimate, which is a two-day implementation program, and were releasing Lifebook for teens. So, if you are free in June or July and would like to come to Tallinn Estonia and take part in Lifebook and be part of Mindvalley University, go to mindvalley.com/u to look into that.
Jon: And let me just throw in that Missy and I will be living in Estonia the whole month of July.
Missy: Mm-hmm.
Jon: And so, if you come to the Lifebook program there, you get a big hug from us.
Vishen: Right. And what’s really special is that Jon and Missy are teaching it themselves.
Jon: Which we never do.
Vishen: Because in the future, Lifebook is gonna be more automated, they’re gonna be facilitators around the world, and it’s gonna be incredible. But this is one of those rare moments where you get to learn directly from the masters themselves. But we’ve given you a lot of free information. I also wanna share one more thing. The exercise that Missy shared on crafting your perfect day is a really, really, incredibly important exercise. I learned to do that in 2008, and it had a profound impact on my life.
Jon: Because so many people have lost control of their days. They’ve given control to their boss, to their soccer practice, to who knows what, to frigging Google and Facebook. And this is a way for you to get back in control of your day and make sure that it’s serving you and your life vision.
Missy: Plus, it’s fun. It’s super exciting and fun, and just let your creative juices flow.
Vishen: So, I wanna give you guys something that you can instantly implement, right? Missy, Jon, what are some of the questions that you ask yourself when you’re thinking of your perfect day? Maybe I’ll start with mine. So I can just kick this off. When I was doing the perfect day exercise, these were the questions I asked myself. How do I feel when I wake up? What’s the first thing I do in the morning? What does breakfast look like? How does my commute feel?
Jon: Yeah. Very nice.
Missy: Yeah. For me it’s more like what do I need to do, especially in the beginning of the day, to set up my day to be beautiful, flow, I’m centered, I’m present? To me, those are the most important things. I need to be present. I need to be centered. Otherwise, it’s gonna be…
Jon: It’s important for me that Missy is present and centered. That makes my day a lot better because she is sort of the center of the household. For me, it’s interesting vision. I’m transitioning from one chapter of my life to another right now. And I’m so excited about it. The last 25 years have been about goal accomplishment, they’ve been about achievement, they’ve been about, you know, making happen what I wanna see happen in the world. I put a lot of time and effort into building, and I wouldn’t change any of that.
Missy: That’s why we’re where we are now.
Jon: But the next chapter of my life is gonna be more philosophical. I want my days to have a more relaxed and effortless flow to them. I want more open space. It’s gonna be quite different than it has before, and I’m super excited about stepping into this new life vision that Missy and I have been working on.
Missy: So we’ve been really reworking our life vision the past two years, really.
Jon: And this is what I’m saying, it’s dynamic. It’s not one and done. We’ve been working on our life vision for 20 years.
Missy: And it’s always different.
Jon: And it’s still so dynamic. And we’re in a place right now where we’re getting ready to step into a whole new life vision this year, and we could not be more excited.
Vishen: You guys are moving to Hawaii.
Missy: Yeah, we’re moving to Hawaii at the end of the year.
Jon: Yes. After 27 years in Chicago, we’re moving to Hawaii, to a remote island, and it’s gonna be so great.
Missy: I think one of the questions you probably ask yourself, is how can I create more space in my day? How can I create more space every day because you wanna start painting more…
Jon: Exactly.
Missy: …writing more.
Jon: Well, and that’s my main strategy. The main question that I want to ask myself when I get up in the morning, is what do I want this day to be about? And have the freedom to make that decision right then. Do I want this day to be about Missy and the kids? Do I want this day to be about an art project? Do I want this day to be about the biggest business venture I’ve ever worked on? What do I feel like doing today? You know, that’s like the holy grail of living as a human being on the planet Earth. So few people have control of the time of their life.
Missy: Well, they don’t think they do but they actually do.
Jon: Take control. So few people take control. So, we’re entering a phase right now where we’re really gonna be focusing on taking control of our days and living our life exactly the way we want to live it in the moment.
Vishen: Thank you, guys. And I wanna end with this quote by Alan Watts, who’s actually gonna be a Mindvalley author. Well, he’s long passed away, but his son is working on a new Alan Watts program with us. But Alan Watts said, and I love this quote, “If you say that getting the money is the most important thing, you’ll spend your life completely wasting your time. You’ll be doing things you don’t like doing in order to go on living. That is to go on doing things you don’t like doing, which is stupid.”
Missy: Amen, brother.
Vishen: And what I love about you guys is that you don’t live life just about your business. It’s about art. It’s about travel. It’s about children. And you’re not stuck in that dumb rule where you feel you’ve got to work and slog so that you can someday retire and enjoy life. And that was a key lesson that me and my wife, Christina. learned from you.
Jon: That’s beautiful. And, Vishen, I’ll take it even a step farther, even the amount of time and energy that we do put into our career, into our financial life. All of our companies are organized around causes that matter just like yours. When we do focus on our careers, we’re focusing on making the world a better place every single day. We just could not be more grateful. And you must feel the same way, to be able to get up and do meaningful work that makes the world a better place.
Vishen: Thank you, guys. It is such a pleasure having you here.
Jon: It’s been great to be here.
Missy: Thanks, Vishen. We love It.
Vishen: Thank you, guys, for listening to Mindvalley podcast. More information on mylifebook.com.
