I’m in Spain this week.
I’m celebrating my birthday with a small group of close friends. And for my birthday experience, I took them to see a flamenco show.
Not the flashy, tourist kind.
The real thing.
Low light. Raw guitar. A small room where you can see every line on the dancers’ faces.
And that’s what struck me first.
Their faces.
They weren’t just performing steps.
They were telling stories—of heartbreak, resilience, pride, longing.
You could see entire lifetimes etched into their expressions.
These were people who had lived.
And something inside me paused.
I caught myself thinking:
Their lives must be fascinating.
What would it be like to live a life like that?
Then a playful thought followed.
If I wanted to understand that life…
Why wouldn’t I just learn flamenco?
Not casually.
Not “once a week after work” learning.
Flamenco in London, squeezed between meetings and emails, would be like learning to surf in a bathtub.
So I asked a different question.
What if I did it properly?
What if I moved to southern Spain for a week?
Took daily flamenco classes.
Immersed myself in the culture.
Late dinners.
Struggled through Spanish.
.
Lived—briefly—a different life.
And that’s when something clicked.
I realized I’ve started thinking about life differently.
Over the last few years, AI and leverage have quietly changed everything for me.
What used to take 50 hours now takes one. Teams of 20 have become teams of two or three.
As a result, I’m building multiple new companies alongside Mindvalley with tiny teams, massive leverage, and far more freedom than I ever imagined possible.
But here’s the unexpected side effect of optimization:
It gave me time.
And time, I’m realizing, isn’t meant to be endlessly reinvested into more work.
It’s meant to be lived.
So I decided to test a radical idea.
I’ve committed to taking one full week off every month to deeply immerse myself in a different life—learning something new in the place where it truly belongs.
Some examples of what’s coming:
I’m considering spending a week living with monks in a Greek Orthodox monastery near Thessaloniki. No phone. No electronics. Waking at 5 a.m.
Working the land. Eating simple meals. Praying. Meditating. Napping in the afternoon. Cooking together. Sleeping as the sun sets.
Silence.
Simplicity.
Presence.
I briefly thought about moving to Paris to learn bartending… and then realized that probably wasn’t the direction my nervous system or my liver wanted to go.
So instead, I’ll spend a week in Paris learning French cooking, the way it was meant to be learned.
Each immersion follows two simple rules:
Rule #1: Meet locals.
Not wealthy. Not influential. Not “network-worthy.” Just locals. The baker. The bartender. The monk. Ordinary people living ordinary lives—because their stories are often the most eye-opening.
Rule #2: Learn the skill where it was born.
Flamenco in Spain. French cuisine in Paris. Orthodoxy in Greece.
No shortcuts. No simulations.
This curiosity isn’t just intellectual; it’s physical too.
As much as I love my current training, I’m now exploring entirely new relationships with my body. Pilates. Yoga. Aikido. Ways of moving I would never have touched before.
My goal is simple and slightly absurd:
I want to be in better shape at 60 than I was at 21, when I was 19 and representing Malaysia in the U.S. Open for Taekwondo.
And then there’s the biggest shift of all, now that I’m turning 50.
I’ve decided to stop chasing money.
If my company reaches a billion-dollar valuation, great.
Nice milestone.
But it’s no longer a requirement.
My goal now is this: Live 100 lives before I die.
I will be a flamenco dancer.
A monk.
A Bedouin.
A French cook.
Maybe even a barista.
Each for a week.
100 weeks.
100 lives.
This is worth more to me than a billion dollars in net worth.
I start today.
I’ve officially signed up for a week-long stand-up comedy immersion in London.
And yes, you’ll be seeing me perform in comedy clubs soon.
I’ll be sharing these experiences as I go, what I learn, what breaks me open, what surprises me.
And I’d love to hear from you too.
If you could live a different life for one week every month…
What would you study?
Where would you go?
Who would you want to live alongside?
Share them in the comments. I read them. They shape what comes next.
Thank you for being part of this journey, and this chapter of my life.
Here’s to living many lives.
P.S. If this idea of living many lives resonates with you, you’ll enjoy what’s coming next.
On January 18, we’re bringing together Social Media Summit Highlights:
This is a LIVE curated selection of the top-rated sessions from our recent summit.
You will learn how to build visibility, leverage, and impact in the modern world from Brendan Kane, Prince EA, Marie Forleo, and me.
Now, if you’re curious how ideas turn into movements on social media (and how people design lives with more freedom once they have an authoritative personal brand), I’d love for you to join us there.
407 Responses
Thank you so much for this message I needed to hear !Such a wonderful idea!I guess one can afford that only after 50 (various reasons)..but If I can dream ,I would say acting,dancing,opening a club of happiness (whatever that means), lastly open homes for kids and elderly!Happy birthday Vishen!Enjoy life!
You’re an amazing inspiration Vishen! What a wonderful way to live!
I am so happy for you!🥳🌟
Keep us posted🙏🏻
Hi. Over the summer of 2025, I took 4 weeks of vacation as a trial run for retirement. I took Absolute Beginner’s Ballet level 1 and 2, and 7 weeks of Into to pottery. The year before, I signed up with the Meet-Up app and did a few different events. I made three new close friends. The year before that I took a Lifecoaching Certificate course from Mindvalley. The year before that I had a crazy spiritual awakening and a spontaneous Kundalini awakening. Which led me to YouTube spiritual gurus and Mindvalley and a Reiki Master certification. If someone would have told me that my life was going to turn upside down and my personality was going to change I would have laughed. Life sometimes begins at 50! I’m now starting a Life Coaching business and making my own YouTube videos. Who knew!
Hi… I wish that I could afford to do something like that…. Here is a suggestion. Why don’t you come to Trinidad and Tobago and experience our country during the Carnival season? It’s the week of February 16. I promise you that there is nothing on this scale anywhere in the world. It is nothing like the Brazilian carnival, which is like a show. You participate. from steelpan, carnival in the streets for 2 full days, endless parties, costumes, dancing, Soca and Calypso, beaches, entertainment, food, and sun…sand…sea…our culture is hard to describe in words, but the experience is past awesome and a must-do for…a once-in-your-life bucket list. If you are interested…let me know… traceyalonzo2015@gmail.com. You can find me on Messenger. Tracy Alonzo
Happy birthday, Vishen! I retired last year and am now living the simple life. Gardening, eating the fruits of our labour and in bed soon after sunset and I am so grateful I am able to do this with my spouse. Thank you for always expanding our minds!
I did this, Vishen. Not 50 other lives. One.
In my sixties I moved to Tokyo on a 90-day Tourist Visa intending to study Sogetsu Ikebana (Japanese flower arranging) at their headquarters. I intended to complete the first certificate, then check it off the bucket list, and find the next
shiny thing.
A decade later I continue to study ikebana, up-levelling my teaching certification year by year. In addition, I have written and am in the process of self-publishing a literary travel memoir about that serendipitous journey on “the way of flowers” or kado. That–titled TOKYO REVERIE–will be available sometime this spring.
I highly recommend that you add a week of immersion in Sogetsu Ikebana to your list of life experiences in which to immerse yourself.
Do a Vipassana course! Thank you for the inspiration 🙏🏻.
Well this email couldn’t have had better timing. I am literally living in Spain, picked up my whole life last year and took a leap of faith moving here. Recently, I’ve hit some hurdles. This week I’m trying to decide if this is for me. I have the same appetite and curiosity for the world. I want to take a cooking course in Italy. Learn Spanish, Portuguese Italian and French. I once saw an interview with a woman who learned five new languages after she turned 50. I want to open up my own businesses, design a magazine, get my yoga certification and help people all over the world. I’d live 250 different lives if I could. I hope you can be present in all your experiences and share some nuggets as you go along.
What an awesome way to celebrate turning 50. Oh that would be so amazing. I wish I could do something so awesome. Maybe on a smaller scale we can do something similar. I think I would love to stay on a farm and learn to live like a farmer. What it takes to feed our country and respect the land. I would love to live with native indians to learn how to live off the land and be one with mother nature. So many great options. I look forward to seeing your journey. Happy Birthday to you and thanks for sharing with us. Such a fun new chapter for you.
Love your idea…I’m British but live here in Paris and have an Italian pizzeria and wine bar with my husband Gino. We’re over 60 and we’ve lived many adventures but we’re always looking for other paths – so we really love and understand how you’re living your life too…so if you do come to Paris, please drop in to see us ! We’d love meet you in person and just give you a big hug !
Best regards Jenny & Gino.
Once a teacher of A Course in Miracles, I now volunteer in prisons and jails (two very difference beasts!). I know the heaviness of thick gates, the buzz of fences, the weight of the hearts of inmates as they place them vulnerably before me. Stripped of life, wealth, all possessions (except perhaps a tiny sand dollar as one man had in a bubble gum box), they have nothing left but the choice of God or hell. They are fearless, devoted, and some of the most brilliant minds I have met. They’ve already visited Hades and have returned. They create temples where they go within the walls that, at times, almost vanish. The capitalist I once dated, and loved, joked that he wanted to be a felon just to meet me there, in prison, so he could experience me the way I teach these men. Needless to say he did not last long in my life.
Outside that, my days are silent. I commune with I AM ceaselessly, I write, walk the beaches of Morro Bay, commune with friends in the UK, Bali and around the world, but most astonishing to me is how God Lives Me. There is no flash. My home is simple but full of Grace. Peace and joy are Mine as God creates what He needs to for the men I serve. If that is one of 100 lives you’d like to live, Vishen, visit. We rise around 4am. I’d ask you meet “my” men and listen to their wealth of ideas that deserve to see light beyond the oppressive container that holds them. I assure you it is an untapped resource the world is waiting for. Much regard, Joanna (in my MV days I was “Joanne” but an inmate shared that Joanne means mother, but “Joanna” means the Mother of All Life in his Slavic language ❤️)
Vishen’s concept of ‘living 100 lives’ is an undeniably creative antidote to stagnation and a fascinating way to diversify one’s experience. However, the execution feels disconnected from the reality most people face. The project relies on a rare tier of privilege—specifically the financial safety net and ‘leverage’ to opt out of responsibilities for one week every month—which frames extreme luxury as a simple mindset shift. Furthermore, equating a one-week immersion to ‘living a life’ feels like romanticized tourism; it allows for the sampling of a lifestyle’s aesthetic (the monk, the baker) without the inescapable weight, repetition, or struggle that actually defines it. Ultimately, it reads as ‘cosplaying’ ordinary life from a position of extraordinary safety.
You should come to Vienna, austria, the city where classical music grew and developed. Home of Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven, Strauss (Waltzes), etc.
you should come, learn how to dance Waltz, sing opera (I’m an opera singer so if you need connections here in Vienna, hit me on my Instagram @catalinapaz.es, or learn some instrument, or just attend rehearsals of some of the best musicians of the world.
Immersion learning how to dance waltz, and then actually going to a Ball, which is like time travelling to a different era, where princesses stories still exists…
Vienna is elegance, music, Schnitzel, Beer… but before anything is the home of classical music. I can teach you how to sing opera, that’s for sure.
And if you don’t want something too fancy you can just choose learning how to ski probably in Schwitzerland (more famous for that than Austria).
Or learning how to joddeln in the Salzburg region (Austria) and stay in a wood house in the alps eating at local restaurants, etc.
I often think how exciting it is to be an actor. They live different lives. Get into someone else’s shoes for the duration of the shoot. It must be exciting, overwhelming too at times. I would love to be an actor for a week. I would also love to be a Broadway star, maybe for a whole year, not just a week. Or a lifetime!!
What a fabulous goal to have fun with…how about being a lifeguard on a Cornish beach?!
CHEERS TO YOU VISHEN! I am so grateful for you and mindvalley! I think your idea is so beautiful and the true meaning of living! I turned 50 this past year. I also hope to live a very long life. I am still caught up in the rat race, but have so many places I want to see and so many cultures I want to experience in my life!
CHEERS TO FULLY LIVING LIFE!
Hi Vishen, Love this. I have been doing this a few times a year for a several years now. Last year, I took a 5 day Italian language course in Florence Italy, ( since i have been studying Italian), a writers tour in Paris in the St. Germain area,of famous women’s’ authors’, (since I’m writing my book), a Museum of Picasso’s works from his youth to his 90’s and the notebooks he used, and a tour in Japan for their culture and to find my birth place. This year I am going to Paris again for a Memoir writing class at the Paris Institute of the Arts and am still planning where else for this trip. I think I will add London to explore my ancestry and the castle we owned during King Henry the v111’s reign, which evidently is now a historic site. There’s also a guy doing great dance classes there. I’m also going to go to Korea as I have been immersed in watching K dramas all year ha ha! Not sure what I’ll do there yet, I’m still researching that. As a woman traveling alone it’s a bit more challenging. Importantly, at this stage of life, I can do this and so can you. We have the luxury of time and money. You’ve built the companies, made the money and can make the time. Same here, to a certain degree, certainly not at your level. I hope people can find even a weekend to do this and shift their goal to capturing the only real resource we really have, which is time. Travel and learning something new open not only our minds, but our hearts and make the world a smaller, kinder place. Meeting new people from other countries, not just visiting the tourist sites, gives us the chance to expand ourselves and changes us. I lived in Spain as a child for a couple years and we would watch Flamenco in the caves with the Gypsies. Those years changed me as a person and my helped shape my perspective of people profoundly. I wish you great travels and maybe we’ll cross paths on one of these journey’s. Best, Melissa
What a beautiful idea this is.
I don’t know you personally …and yet there is something in your words that resonates on a quiet, almost intimate level, as if they touch a place we all recognize, even when we don’t have a name for it.
I’ve often wondered how exhausting it must be to live in that constant state of self-optimization: forever refining, improving, upgrading, as if being human were a project that could never quite be finished.
I’m a Mindvalley fan, and I really love the frequency you’ve created in that space. There is a certain openness there, a shared longing for growth that feels alive rather than forced. Still, what touched me most wasn’t the vision, the ambition, or even the promise of transformation. It was one quiet, honest line you wrote:
Not wealthy.
Not influential.
Not “network-worthy.”
Those words landed softly and stayed.
Because in a world that celebrates visibility, status, and perceived value, there was something profoundly human in that admission. It created a pause. A breath. A widening of the room. Suddenly, it wasn’t about becoming more, but about allowing what already exists to be seen.
There are so many stories out there: unpolished, unheard, living quietly inside people who were never told their experiences mattered. Stories without a brand. Without a title. Without an audience waiting. And yet, how extraordinary they are.
How extraordinary it is when they are met not with judgment or hierarchy, but with presence. When they are heard by someone who listens not for utility, but for truth. When they are welcomed into a space that doesn’t ask, What do you bring? but instead whispers: “YOU MATTER”.
That is what touched my heart.
Because maybe the deepest value isn’t found in being optimized, elevated, or made impressive, but in being witnessed. Fully. Gently. As we are.
Maybe your new blog could be called “You Matter.”
Vishen, that’s a fantastic idea. I am 62 in two months, no money income, but I’m working on it, creating my grandmazeal web, and social media. I’m learning from the scratch and have to say that you and Mindvalley were my breakpoint. I attended Futurehuman, and now live between Dubai, UK, Slovakia. And my dream is travel across Europe in campervan by 2027. I love your idea of taking a bit of everything and experience different lifes as I believe it will make you even more extraordinary as you are.
Wishing you all your dreams and plans comes through.
With love in my heart and smile on my face
Helena
You never stop surprising me Vishen!!👏.
I 100% relate to the endless curiosity that drives you. Making money becomes the byproduct of having fun. I wanted to share that back in 2000 when I took the silva method class in Colombia, I set a goal to retire at 50 and write a book. Fast forward, after 25 years in Oil and Gas, my last day in payroll was March 31st, 2025, only 5 days before I turned 51, and I am writing a book. Coincidence?… Nah!
I didn’t grow up wealthy, but I saw myself exploring new places every year, and I got paid to do that!. I built a great career as a Quality Management leader, which took me all over the world. My dream was not about chasing money, but to serve the world solving problems, leading projects, adding value and making the most out of every interaction.
I’m constantly looking for new places where I can become anything, and meet people from anywhere, where there are no labels constraining my true self. Maybe that burning desire to experience oneness took me to a few Mindvalley events. I always have admired your passion to live on your terms, and now, a fearless determination to blend with the locals, not as a tourist, but as another “good neighbor next door”. You are exponentially growing, and yet you don’t mind being the new kid on the block 💯. This is something I’ve done a few times with my boys, and they love it! hopefully you get to take yours with you from time to time. It’s priceless bounding time.
To another 100 lives and more! 🥂