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
I want to learn more about acupuncture, yoga, artificial intelligence, and nutrition.
Vishen, you’re the best! 💗
Exciting!!! And Happy Birthday, all the blessings. I remember learning from about the 20% Innovation time weekly, and recently from MU about the 7 phases. This one, a week a month.. nice!! Do you need a travel / Video assistant? Maybe one of those lives, could be in Ecuador. Maybe it could be to experience for a week 3 sanctuaries in the Amazons, the beach and the andes of Ecuador. Maybe this chance to invite you to join us next october to our inca Pilgrimage Through Ecuador with our Inca Wisdom Keeper Naupany Puma, an experience that was manifested after i joined the mindvalley university last year, thank you for that! https://inspiralretreats.com/
First of all happy birthday! It sounds like you are planning a wonderful experience to celebrate you Chiron return! I think this brilliant! Every influential mentor should know and understand or at least attempt to understand how other people live, experience the passion they feel for there craft. Seville and that area of Spain, heading towards the Costa de la luz, is one of the most magical and passionate places. I have spent a large chunk of my life there and will continue to do so. I have had flamenco lessons myself and it is not an easy practice but really helps you to get into your passion, your flow and creativity. The dance, the music, the singing, all magical. There is a flamenco bar on the south side of the river, full of locals, all ages dancing with one another in such a passionate manner, proud of their ancestry…wonderful. To experience these things that you are planning will teach you so much about yourself, others, life. Stand up comedy will really strip you bare. I have a friend, who is a stand up comedian and the sharpness of his mind is phenomenal, to lay yourself open like that will teach you a lot about yourself, possibly take you deep into your shadow and your inner child. I live near London so would love to come and see the performance! I look forward to seeing your journey. Surrendering to the universe is a wonderful thing, a lot of people with large organisations can never do that, so well done for doing it. Exciting times ahead. Sending much love and gratitude 😍❤️🌈🙌
Happy Birthday Vishen. Its a radical idea. i would love to learn classical indian dance if i get to take a week off like this…..
Happy birthday Vishen! Thank you for inspiring us all, opening up our own mindset of what is possible.
With all your 100 lives I hope you can look back and see you chose to have fun in everything you did.
This is so inspiring. Really live this. Would definitely love to do something similar.
Hope you enjoy this journey.
Happy 50th Vishen! I love the idea of living 100 lives in 100 weeks! I would love to study Egyptology in Egypt, visit the library there and the Nile River. I want to walk where the pharaohs walked! I’d also love to visit Russia and learn about their architecture! I love their building and cathedral designs! I also love the royal history of Russia, including the Romanovs. I would also visit South America, to the Amazon or visit the Mayan and Incan pyramids. I’d learn their culture and socialize with the local people. I found it interesting that you didn’t want to visit the Blue Zones to live until 100, but to live 100 lives in 100 weeks instead. Perhaps, learning about longevity and living many lives in one can be even more enjoyable! I turn 40 in a few weeks, and I’m greatly inspired by your goal! I would love to read future blog posts about your travel experiences. To many more birthdays to come!
A great idea, Vishen!
I wish you all the best (without taking too much, because learning needs some time to go deep and practice afterwards). You all know this 🙂
That`s life, how it should be!
Immersion in all the activities who make life special, even if they are very normal, down to earth.
Did you think of wintersports too? The snow is great in Austria.
I’m just now relearning how to sew again and doing lots of Nordic Skiing in my two month off-time from my company.
Margit (from Austria)
Vishen, happy birthday! I also turned 50. And seems the universe urges you at this segway to contemplate how much quality time is really left and if you are living your best life. So here is to 50 or 100 weeks of awesomeness. Slow living, connecting, and raw learning. And who knows what serendipity have in stall, some of us might be on the same journeys and connect there in silence and simplicity. Many blessings for you and love from Africa.
This information 📖 is going to 💡 help so many 🙏 people who really 💖 need to hear 🌟 this wisdom
Happy 50, dear Vishen,
I absolutely love this!!
I’m smiling big while reading it — it’s bold, alive, and deeply human.
Honestly, it makes me want to jump up and shout: yes, THIS is it!
“Live 100 lives before I die.”
That’s a declaration of freedom!
What touches me most is how this vision challenges me to step out of all the masterclasses I once enrolled in — roles, identities, paths that never truly defined me, but that I somehow accepted along the way.
This feels like permission to unsubscribe… and consciously re-enroll in myself.
Some time ago, at the end of a MV summit, I instinctively wrote and tagged something playful:
“Class yourself.”
A little wink to the idea that we are not meant to stay in one form, one label, one curriculum.
So when I read your vision, my first thought was:
Oh Vishen… you class yourself. 😄
And now I have to ask — with real excitement and curiosity:
May I borrow this challenge?
Because it’s genuinely brilliant.
Thank you for this gift.
(It’s worth more than a billion 😃)
With admiration and joy,
Andra
I LOVE this. I have done this before to learn new skills and it is the best. I hope you share clips of your time in Spain dancing! As a dancer, my dream would be to spend a month in different countries learning their local dance forms. To dance with the people who live there and have learned their dance from the generations that danced before them. To experience their music. Language. Teaching styles. Ok this is making me rethink my life goals… Maybe time to go back to nomadic dancing life 🙂
happy birthday Vishen. I really appreciate your mission and the education you offer. I’d love to buy into Mindvalley but I never find time to do the challenges>
On another note I’ve had a desire for a while to spend a month in Italy at a place where I learn to cook Italian food and I’m only allowed to speak Italian. It’s looking like a possibility in 2027
It is lovely, something every matured person should visualize this path to get the best if not the fullest of the Life Experience. Having said, it is also a blessing and seeing this post is itself a blessing for many like me. Let this seed of thought be planted in every individual mind who takes Life as collection of experiences. No matter be the situation or circumstances, each seed will germinate at the appropriate time.
I am one of the vivid follower of you Vishen; some period i miss you as life rafter takes us to different spin yet the universe gets me back to you without fail. I would love to hear your stories of 100 lives and tell to me listeners that there is a Man who lived 100 Lives.
All the best Vishen.
Herd Cattle on Horseback on a big station in Australia. Dog Sledding in Alaska, Find the best place to see the Northern lights and learn what makes this happen. Help on a research station in the south pole. Learn to Sail and sail somewhere like the south pacific, learn about the Polynesian cultures and their love of the seas.
Have wonderful adventures
Hi Vishen happy birthday 🎂 🥳 I would love to live with a remote tribe like in the Amazon and learn their skills and eat their local foods.
I would also like to learn about your morning practice of 29 things you say to yourself and spend a week with you learning. Lee
I’d like to learn dog training for one week. I’ve had dogs for most of my life, and I know that I could have had a more enjoyable time if my dogs were better trained. I just hurt my back walking my dog because it wasn’t properly trained to heel on command. I pulled on the leash and hurt my back.
This is such synchronicity! My daughter’s birthday is the 19th, and she was sad that what she wanted to do was too expensive – going out to a restaurant with friends. I’m turning 50 in June (Happy Birthday, Vishen!), and I came across a market in the area where she goes to college. I sent her the website and explained how she could enjoy the day at the market: talking to local vendors, eating the foods they put their soul and tradition into, starting with a light brunch and moving into a tapas walk. She was beaming with joy to explore this. Thank you, Vishen, for this inspiring idea; I realized I am already living these lives. For instance, I love sports and am a retired champion Pro Women’s Football player (yes, like the NFL). I played for three seasons in my 30s and enjoyed every hit, every game, and my teammates. I will definitely release this lust for life and live my life beyond!
I also am turning 50 this yr. 100 lives if only it were possible for me to live 50 lives would be the greatest thing ever. I would love to spend a week learning your life. Then a week with your top 3 who inspired you to be the best. Then 1 week rediscovering who I truly am meant to be. I know there’s much more I could be and help other if only I had the means and the know how. I have a lot of healing to do but know it can be done and to help others along my journey. I believe there is still beauty in the world. When you e seen the things and felt pain as deep as I. Have there has to be beautiful happy people and places. I just need the right doors.
Thank you for including me in your journey I’m sure I will learn much needed downloads
Senserly Jolene M Richardson.