The Buddha and the Badass

• Forget hustling. This book, from the author of If you’re the average person in the developed world, you spend 70 percent of your waking hours at work. And if you’re the average person, you’re miserable for most of those hours. This is simply not an acceptable state of affairs for your one shot at life. No matter your station, you possess incredible unique powers. It’s a modern myth that hard work and hustle are the paths to success. Inside you is a soul. And once you unleash it fully into the domain of work, magic happens. Awakening the Buddha and the Badass inside you is a process that will disrupt the way you work altogether. You’ll gain access to tools that bend the very rules of reality. • The Buddha is the archetype of the spiritual master. The person who can live in this world but also move with an ease, grace, and flow that comes from inner awareness and alignment. • The Badass is the archetype of the changemaker. This is the person who is out there creating change, building, coding, writing, inventing, leading. The badass represents the benevolent disruptor--the person challenging the norms so we can be better as a species. Once you integrate the skill sets of both archetypes, you will experience life at a different level from most people. You will operate from a space of bliss, ease, inspiration, and abundance. <The Buddha and the Badass: The Secret Spiritual Art of Succeeding at Work< will show you how. Author of the <New York Times< bestseller <The Code of the Extraordinary Mind< and founder of Mindvalley, Vishen Lakhiani has turned his own life and company into his research lab. He’s codified everything he’s learned into the how-to steps in this book. <The Buddha and the Badass< teaches you how to master your work and your life....

Autorentext

Vishen Lakhiani is the founder and CEO of Mindvalley, a personal growth education empire with more than two million students, which teaches revolutionary success systems for mastering life via online learning platforms, storytelling and filmmaking, and live events. He is the author of the New York Times bestseller The Code of the Extraordinary Mind, which has been translated to more than twenty languages. Vishen is now expanding Mindvalley's presence globally with the aim to bring its teachers, tech, and programs into 100 national school systems and every company in the Fortune 500 within the next few years.

Klappentext

****NEW YORK TIMES, USA TODAY, AND #1 WALL STREET JOURNAL BESTSELLER • Forget hustling. This book, from the author of The Code of the Extraordinary Mind, will disrupt your deeply held beliefs about work, success, and, indeed, life.

If you’re the average person in the developed world, you spend 70 percent of your waking hours at work. And if you’re the average person, you’re miserable for most of those hours. This is simply not an acceptable state of affairs for your one shot at life. No matter your station, you possess incredible unique powers. It’s a modern myth that hard work and hustle are the paths to success. Inside you is a soul. And once you unleash it fully into the domain of work, magic happens. Awakening the Buddha and the Badass inside you is a process that will disrupt the way you work altogether. You’ll gain access to tools that bend the very rules of reality.

• The Buddha is the archetype of the spiritual master. The person who can live in this world but also move with an ease, grace, and flow that comes from inner awareness and alignment.
• The Badass is the archetype of the changemaker. This is the person who is out there creating change, building, coding, writing, inventing, leading. The badass represents the benevolent disruptor—the person challenging the norms so we can be better as a species.

Once you integrate the skill sets of both archetypes, you will experience life at a different level from most people. You will operate from a space of bliss, ease, inspiration, and abundance. The Buddha and the Badass: The Secret Spiritual Art of Succeeding at Work will show you how. Author of the New York Times bestseller The Code of the Extraordinary Mind and founder of Mindvalley, Vishen Lakhiani has turned his own life and company into his research lab. He’s codified everything he’s learned into the how-to steps in this book. The Buddha and the Badass teaches you how to master your work and your life.

Leseprobe

Chapter 1

Uncover Your Soulprint

Never forget what you are, for surely the world will not. Make it your strength. Then it can never be your weakness. Armour yourself in it, and it will never be used to hurt you.

—George R. R. Martin, A Game of Thrones (A Song of Ice and Fire, Book 1)

Every person’s life unfolds in a way that is unique to them. Each significant event you experience leaves a trace: every high, every low, every elation, every suffering. These experiences shape you into who you are meant to be. And when you decode them, you’ll discover that the Universe has a plan for who you are meant to be. You are here to fill your unique role, career, and mission. Your greatest job is to uncover your story, stay true to it, and act from it. 

From 2013 to 2016, my company, Mindvalley, was burning through cash. A series of disastrous events nearly wiped out the business. This three-year period was a battle for survival.

One evening after another horrid day in survival mode, I flopped onto a chair at my kitchen table in distress. I was in crisis. It was 11 p.m. I wanted to smash my head in my pillow, turn the lights off, and go to sleep. But I had an appointment. I had a call booked with a potential Mindvalley teacher to discuss his appearance on one of our popular content shows. And thankfully I kept it.

I dialed the number of Srikumar Rao. And that night, I experienced his sage wisdom for the first time.

Rao is a famous business professor who has lectured at places like Columbia and London Business School. His classes have waitlists because his teachings are so revolutionary. Rao mixes the wisdom of long-dead philosophers and spiritual teachers with modern American business school ideas. It’s not your classic MBA curriculum. It’s more like the love child of Rumi and Jack Welch.

Rao lives in New York, but he is not the classically brash New York type. He’s a humble, down-to-earth Indian man. He’s the kind of person that only occasionally opens his mouth in a group, and he speaks slowly. But whenever he speaks, every person in the room shuts up because they know he’s going to blow their mind.

That night we were strangers. But he’s good at reading people. The tone of my voice clued him in to the fact that I was stressed.

“Vishen. Enough business talk. Are you okay?” he asked. 

“Yes, I am,” I said.

This was a lie, of course. Rao knew it too. So he probed further. He struck me as so loving, so sincere, I felt safe with him. I’d been struggling to hold in my anguish, and now I let it all out in a big messy stream of confessions. 

“I’m burning out, Rao. I am so stressed. My health has gone to shit. I’m questioning my ability to lead and be a CEO. I am fighting to keep this company above water. And I can’t share this with anyone. I’ve been keeping it all in. And I just don’t know what to do,” I shared.

Rao listened. Then he said, “Vishen. I want to read you a poem. Just listen. It’s by a thirteenth-century poet named Rumi.”

“Okay,” I said.

But in the back of my mind I was thinking, Poetry? Is he serious. I’m pouring my heart out and he wants to give me a damn poetry lesson?! 

But he did.

Here is that poem Rao …