The Code Of The Extraordinary Mind

The Code Of The Extraordinary Mind gives you a 10-step framework for success, based on the lives of the world’s most successful people, who the author has spent 200+ hours interviewing.

When Vishen was growing Mindvalley, he’d constantly be stressed about meeting certain revenue goals. “How much did we increase this month?” “Should we expand to this market?” For a while he completely forgot how to be happy and have fun.

Striving for constant improvement is important when working towards your dream, but that doesn’t mean you can’t be happy right now. That’s what rule 6 is for. You’ll have to learn to hold two alternate versions of reality in your head at once:

The exciting future you’re working towards. The reality you’re in right now, with plenty of reasons to be happy.

This’ll make sure you neither get unhappy nor lose sight of your long-term goals. When Vishen started focusing on his happiness right now and made fun a bigger part of his day, he not only stressed less, but even got better business results!

Rule 7 is a reminder to practice blissipline. Blissipline is a combination of the words “bliss” and “discipline” that Vishen came up with after noticing that this feeling of bliss, for example after accomplishing a big goal, rarely lasts long and often fades fast.

In order to prolong this feeling and not end up on a hedonic treadmill, he decided to practice gratitude in a very disciplined way. Sure, you could come up with a list of a couple things you’re grateful for every day (and that’s great, I’ve been doing it for four years), but a particularly powerful exercise Vishen suggests comes from entrepreneurial coach Dan Sullivan. It’s called the reverse gap.

We usually tend to focus forward, meaning we’re looking at all the things and goals we want and work towards. There’s a gap between who you are now and who you will be when you accomplish those things. This is your forward gap. Now, Dan says if you instead focus on your reverse gap, meaning the gap you’ve already closed, the stuff that’s behind you, the things you’ve accomplished, you’ll see how far you’ve already come – and be a lot happier.

You can sure see how this relates to rule 6, because it forces you to not put happiness off to the distant future, yet still acknowledge where you are right now and how far you’ll still have to go.

Rule 9 is about becoming what Vishen calls “unfuckwithable,” meaning nobody can stop you from making your dreams come true. If you’re unfuckwithable it’ll be impossible to compromise you, to entice you to give up your dreams for money, or…