WHEN YOU DON’T KNOW WHAT TO DO WITH YOUR LIFE - Vishen Lakhiani

not all shared subjective reality is true so what I write about in my book is how to study the culture escape the shared subjective realities we are living in and identify what rules help you and what rules are really bruised or bullshit rules rules that hold you back from truly living your most extraordinary life so let me give an example of a bullshit rule growing up in an Indian family there's not a pressure to be successful your family pushes you to be a lawyer a doctor or an engineer and if you're not any of that you're a family embarrassment so in my case I loved I viewed artists the idea of me being an artist as disappointing my family as the opposite of success so I signed up for computer engineering classes I studied hard went to all of these boring as helll classes that I had no interest in at the University of Michigan so that five years later I could get a job at Microsoft and now boom I was it I was working for Bill Gates I was at Microsoft eleven weeks into Microsoft I realized I was miserable and I quit cold-turkey I realized that for five years I was pursuing something that I had no interest in because the rules of the culture escape of being a good Indian kid said be a software programmer so I quit I quit Alaina joined a non-profit and that's really when my life began I dabbled in different things from from traveling around the world to meditation to art but it was through following these fashions it was through ignoring the bullshit balls of the conscious game identifying what really drove me what made me passionate that I was able to build a life I have today and that's really why I'm so adamant about teaching people through my work to question everything to question your religion to question your societal rules to question the idea of a college degree that's how I feel all of us should be living life by questioning everything and I don't mean skeptical of everything there's a difference I mean healthy skepticism ultimately questioning the rules of the culture escapes so we can stay true to our own inner identity I think the idea of goal setting in the Western world is rubbish because here's what happened when you ask people to set goals even if you teach them methodologies like SMA RP SMART goal setting you're basically encouraging people to set goals based on that same consciously but it's restricting rules so people especially in the United States set goals along the lines of this okay we need to get a good grade so I can graduate high school so I can get into a good college need to study hard to get a good GPA so maybe I can go to graduate school or maybe I can do well in my LSAT that becomes the next goal get into law school the next go graduate from law school get into a partnership become a lawyer and that's how teenagers often think about their life the series of like tics that they have to go through but here's what happens let's actually look at that let's look at lawyers 50% of lawyers in America are clinically depressed it's not just the u.s. I think most really did a similar study so why have kids going into these professions where they end up in a job that they thought was a good goal at one point only to find themselves absolutely miserable we set our goals to have two cars in a house of a certain size to be in a marriage it's because these goals aren't coming from inside us they're coming from the culture scape and the conscious scape is basically a safety net mechanism you see for the longest time in human history we have to watch out for each other they were worse they were diseased go back a thousand years to the wild animals that might kill you so you have to follow certain rules of the culture escape the states say among these were get a good education so you're not stuck in a factory job so that you can have a blue-collar job it was get married so if you're a woman you have provide for you it was have five kids because you know if you go back fifty years ago infant mortality was so much higher you have five kids to we're gonna probably pass away but the problem is people continue with these same rules in today's world when everything has changed so the thing is I don't believe in goal setting because when you teach traditional goal setting people are locked into the rules of the culture escape so here's what I suggest I suggest we ask ourselves three questions and I call these the three most important questions now the first question is this it's what experiences - I won in half okay now tell you why that's important you see there two types of codes there means goals and their end goals so people tend to chase means goals not realizing these are very different from end goals a means golus do well in mine Elsa graduate from college get that particular job save up for retirement but if you ask these people why do you want that there's always a soul well I want to qualify for college so I can do this want to become a lawyer so I can do this well the soul leads you to the end goal now what are angles angles are these things that really lead to be the beauty of being human it's waking up next to someone you madly love it's holding your first child at your arms it's having a puppy it's seeing your business open for the first time it's making that you know getting that first customers completing your first book it's creating a work of art and having people admire it in falling these are in goals so what advocate is in the three most important question is forget the means goals means goals goals designed by the conscious key instead go straight to the end goals now the first question you ask yourself to identify your end goal says what experiences do I want to have in life and this is where you start writing down your experiences you know when I do this exercise I ask people to take out a piece of paper so if you're watching do that right now take out a piece of paper three columns top at the first column you're gonna write down experiences right and ask yourself what experiences do I want to have who do I want to wake up with what type of house do I want to live in what countries do I want to visit where do I want to travel to what adventures do I want to have whether it's climbing Mount Kinabalu or hiking the Andes what type of family life do I want what dog do I want the beautiful thing about experiences is often they don't require that much money it's crazy we associate money with happiness that often the most beautiful experiences in life require no money almost any human being today can fall in love can make a baby these are some of the most profound experiences I've had so the first thing is you make a list of the experiences now the second thing is you ask yourself this question for me to be the man or woman who has all of these experiences how do I have to grow and here we come to the second list see I believe we are souls having a human experience here on planet Earth but these souls are not just here to explore these wonderful things about being human I believe as as souls as human beings we crave grow human beings of growth driven machines and so you make that second list and that second list is how do I want to grow how can I learn to be a better father a better spouse a better lover what languages do you want to learn do you want to learn a musical instrument do you want to learn to write do you want to learn to play a particular sport or learn a particular skill what many people don't realize about the world is that growth is a goal in itself it's one of the key things that drive us forward as human beings but very few people write down growth as goals because that education system which tries to teach us to grow through forced learning makes many people dread learning so growth becomes that second list now you have to list your experiences and your growth now you ask yourself the third question and the third question is this to be that man a woman who has all of these experiences to be that man a woman who has grown in such a way how can I give back to the world it's very important reason for that question the Dalai Lama said if you want to be happy make other people happy and I believe that we do these three most important questions that third category is what truly leads to both Pearlman it's when you can take your growth you can take your experiences and contribute the following souls to contribute to the human race you plan entrepreneurship great mentor someone mentor a kid who wants to get there you have the ability to say figure out how to use it to deliver you know beautiful music to inspire people so your list of contributions becomes your steps for you to give back to the world because that takes you beyond pure happiness into fulfilling them now when you have this list experiences growth and contribution this becomes your whole list everything else is just a mean school now when I started creating this I found that it allowed me to rewire my brain to shortcut and bypass so many bullshit rules to go straight to these final items to go straight to ways I could contribute ways I can grow ways I could have these beautiful experiences and often these for unconventional thoughts when you have done the three most important questions you get to short-circuit the rules of the conscious game and figure out shorter paths towards true human fulfillment