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
When I was 21 I went around the world, 10 countries. Last year I wrote a chapter in the Mission Hope Rediscovering and Embracing Joy Within book about joy in each of the countries. I would go back to each country with the intention of experiencing joy as it relates to the culture.
I would go to Tao Garden, north of Chiang Mai – Thailand to Study Taoism. I would follow Mantak Chia ideally for his 4 week winter retreat plus his Dark Room. Guess where I am now? 😀
What a nice surprise to hear you inspired by flamenco. It did it for me in my 20s in my professional career. Came home from a vaction in Spain to San Francisco and took flamenco classes. After a long term relationship ended a few years later, quit my job moved to Spain. Worked in a high school, studied dance, worked on organic farms during school holidays. Learned Spanish. Lived my most transformed year. Opened my world to people’s lives and other ways to live. Wrote a blog, got through writers block and inspired people back home. I love that you started with flamenco of all things! Its a complex dance, 12 count rhythms. Go live!!! Baile :-). tanyaenespana.blogspot.com The blog is still online. Blessings and share this. Experiencing new cultures and connections brings greater understanding, more peace and appreciation of this world. Thank you!
HI VISHEN,
I LOVE YOUR IDEA OF LIVING 100 LIVES. GENIUS.
MAY I SUGGEST AN IDEA FOR ONE OF YOUR FUTURE LIVES? IMMERSE YOURSELF IN ARGENTINE TANGO DANCING IN BUENOS AIRES. FEEL THE PASSION OF THE DANCE. LEARN ABOUT ITS HUMBLE ORIGINS IN THE RIO DE LA PLATA. LET THE WORLD DISAPPEAR AS YOU LEARN TO REACH A DEEP CONNECTION WITH ANOTHER HUMAN 3 MINUTES AT A TIME. ITS MAGIC.
What a fabulous idea! Thank you. As someone who is in the 6th level, I love the idea of immersing myself and changing perspective. Appreciate you sharing and look forward to hearing how these experiences have shaped your year
What an exciting and enriching journey you are embarking on! You will learn so much from the stories you hear. I look forward to reading them. Look for themes and recurring lessons. Gather the gems and turn them into a book. I know you are currently writing a book, but if you decide to capture this journey in book form, I’d love to help.
Painting and creating vision boards with friends. Beach walks, creating my balms and reading.
What a great idea! Enjoy your new life (lives)! I think I would want to sit at a dinner table with a large family in Tuscany outside at a vineyard. Learn the lifestyle and the language. Enjoy the views and the company. I hope you get to do that one week. I’d love to hear about your experience. I might also take professional singing lessons to see if someone who cannot carry a tune really can learn how to sing and do it well. I’m enjoying even the process of thinking about the possibilities. Live it up!
I absolutely love this idea! I may steal it someday.
Don’t steal it perhaps one day. One day can be suddenly too late
YOU don’t have to do it every month like Vishen. Just do it 1,2 or 3 times this year at least and you will be so happy after that you did it. I guess I am talking to myself 😉🤔😁😀
Reading what you shared just got me thinking of all the possibilities opening in my mind to explore, like being a kid and see what fun adventures I like to explore next.
Thank you.
I love this! It resonated with me so deeply.
I also turned 50 in December and interestingly have been having exactly the same thoughts…the pull to do new things – not for qualifications or as a weekly 1 hour session but full immersive experiences in different lives!
Unfortunately know I won’t be able to do one week every month like you as I still have children living at home and need to be here for them. ….But maybe one week this year is indeed doable….?
I’m 84 and this is my first year for taking sunrise plunges into the Colorado River 3 times a week. Following Wm Hof to some degree with cold showers also. Highly recommend!!
I LOVE this concept! I would study art in Florence. Sushi in Kyoto. Farming in California. Design in Denmark. The possibilities are endless!
I love this. I was lucky to have been able to live many lives before I was 30. some of them I wish I hadn’t. ( Getting knocked over by the Bull in the Azores, and having my tendon fixed by a country witch doctor after the hospital failed) . Curious to see where this goes.
Hi Chris, do you post your experiences anywhere? Sounds like you are on quite a journey 💖
Come and visit in South Africa, stay on a legit wildlife nature reserve and braai like a local, with good red wine.