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Mindvalley is a global school of 3+ million people and they produce online trainings for peak human performance. They assert that the Mindvalley curriculum is designed to unleash the fullest potential of the mind, body, and spirit.  They work with the leading authors and teachers to produce in class learning experiences in every area of life.

I first encountered Vishen Lakhiani and MindValley Academy after a devastating break-up. It wasn’t my longest relationship or the most intense, but it left me broken at my core and in need of absolute and immediate change.

It wasn’t the break up so much that shattered me as it was the repetitive patterns of my life that had been keeping me stuck.  I came to the realization that I could not make the same choices or the same mistakes one more time or it could possibly be the end of me.  I could no longer live the life I was living.  Everything had to change. Everything.

So, as every other desperate, confused, information starved person does I took to Google looking for answers.  I stumbled across Vishen’s podcast How to Defy Convention and Become Truly Limitless.

Listening to this podcast was like the lightbulb going off.  It was the “aha” moment when everything seems to come together.  The darkness that had been enveloping me and the negative energy I had been allowing to pervade me disappeared.  The clouds opened up and rays of sunlight began to shine through.  I believe the universe shows you things when you are ready to hear them and at that moment I was ready.  Everything began to click.

The message he was conveying wasn’t some earth-shattering, never heard before mind altering new way of thinking.  But, it was a message that I desperately needed to hear and I was open to hearing it.

What I like so much Vishen’s message is not exactly what he is saying (since many others have said similar things before), but how he says it and the tools he provides to help you accomplish the task of changing.  The book The Code of The Extraordinary Mind was written a few years after the podcast, but is basically an expansion of all the thoughts expressed during the speech.

Chapters

Start out with understanding who you are, what you believe, why you believe it and how those beliefs are serving you today.

1. Transcend The Culturescape

In this chapter he discusses how we have definitions of who we are based on our cultural identity and that often these definitions limit us, limit our ability to grow and keep us from becoming what we were truly meant to be.

For example, he was brought up in a culture that said you were really only valuable if you became a doctor or engineer or lawyer or something requiring similar higher education.   The problem with this cultural viewpoint is it had nothing to do with who he really wanted to be.  It wasn’t until he got his first job as an engineer at Microsoft that he figured out how miserable that path was going to be if he continued.

Define your culturescape

2. Question the Brules

Brules are what he considers bullshit rules that are passed down from generation to generation, often subconsciously.   Brules lead us to living lives that we don’t really want to live, or believing things we believe out of habit rather than choice. Brules leave us stuck in someone else’s belief system.

Did your parents tell you that being successful means getting up and working nine to five, being a slave to a corporation or a boss and saving up until the day you die and then passing it onto your kids?  I know mine did. Is that the life you want? Is that your dream?

Until I read this book and never truly believed that I could change my financial situation or really take control of my own life.  I thought I would always have to struggle because of a bullshit rule I was living by.  My parents instilled in me, “success means working for someone else because then you have safety”.  I call bullshit.

Did the brules you live by tell you that happiness comes with a house and a car and 2.5 kids and a dog and job where you get up, go to work, come home, eat dinner, watch television and go to sleep?  If you enjoy this life and this makes you happy, then great!  But, many of us want something different or something more than what we have, but we were told that its abnormal to want something else so we keep on living a life unfulfilled.

Question your brules.

3. Practice Conscious Engineering

This chapter focuses on how to consciously decide and design the direction your life will take by questioning and disregarding those parts of the culturescape and the brules that no longer serve you.

Part of this chapter focuses on learning to follow your intuition, which really means following what you know about yourself but have failed to accept as a truth, mostly because you have been living according to rules set down by someone else.

Most importantly this chapter lays out twelve areas you need to examine to live a balanced life. Decide what you want out of each and why you want it.  These areas include: Love, Friendships, Adventures, Environment, Health, Intellectual Life, Skills, Spirituality, Career, Creativity, Family and Community.

Giving up the idea that I have to work for some company forever allowed me to start writing again.  Finally, I was finding a purpose.  I was doing something that brought me joy and contentment and didn’t feel like work at all.

Despite spending twenty or so hours a week working on my blog and creating content after working a normal forty hour work-week I was happy.  I was creating my life for myself.

Engineer your life to reach your goals and dreams.

4. Rewrite Your Models of Reality

Once you have defined your culturescape, gotten rid of your brules, and started to consciously engineer your life by identifying what areas you need to change or where you need to grow you begin to rewrite all those beliefs about yourself that  are not true and that no longer serve you.

Vishen tells a story of being in a hot tub with a monk (because where else would you have a discussion with a monk while in Fiji attending a party thrown by Richard Branson) who tells him his problem is low self-esteem.  Naturally, he denies this at first.  But, as he thinks about it and begins to question himself, he realizes he does have low self-esteem (triggered from childhood events)

He then realizes it doesn’t have to be his belief anymore.  He can rewrite his reality and with that rewrite his belief system and rewrite his life moving forward.

Decide what reality you believe about yourself.

5. Upgrade Your Systems For Living

Change, learn grow and read.  Figure out where you need to make improvements and how you are going to go about it.  Become voracious in your appetite for knowledge.

After that break-up I was obsessed with learning.  I wanted to know how I could prevent failure in the future and how I could change not only my relationships with men, but my relationship with myself.  I read books, I listened to podcasts, I signed up for courses, I hired a teacher and a life coach.   I did anything and everything I could to upgrade my system of living.

Live a life of meaning and if you aren’t sure what that means then figure it out.

6-10.  Re-coding Yourself

The remainder of the chapters focus on Bending Reality (focus on the now, but make a plan for improving your future), Living in Blisspline (helping you learn to live in the now), Create a Vision for Your Future (map out what you want, what makes you happy and figure out how to get there), Be Unfuckwithable (which means you no longer let the beliefs or desires of others control your self-esteem) and Embrace Your Quest (putting all the information together I a cohesive path forward).

In Summary

Overall, the book is filled with specific questions to ask yourself, exercises you can perform to help you achieve the goals you are setting.  It pushes you into new ways of thinking about the world and then shows you what to do once you start thinking in new and different ways.

Most importantly the book focuses on creating a life of happiness and contentment that is brought about by figuring out what makes you happy deep down in your soul.  Strip away your false beliefs, your regimented life plan, living for tomorrow.  Stop thinking you are stuck where you are and how you are forever.

This is really a very brief overview of the book.  If you are ready for change and want to know how to go about it, but don’t know where to start I would give this book 5/5 stars. This book seriously helped me reconfigure and reconstruct my life into what I want it to be.

No longer do I live my life based for anyone else.  No longer do I limit myself or my beliefs.  Take the time.  Read the book.  I guarantee you will not regret it.