Let me start with something uncomfortable.
Everyone talks about scale. Build bigger. Reach more people. I’ve spent 24 years trying to touch millions with Mindvalley.
And I’ve finally figured out the part no one tells you: the bigger you get, the more you realize that apps, content, and algorithms all have an invisible ceiling.
Let me explain.
In 2002, I was VP of a dot-com with offices in San Francisco and New York. I was paid well, earning the equivalent of $150,000 a year in today’s money. I had stability. A decent place to live. Everything that was supposed to matter.
But something felt off.
While I had money and stability, I lacked meaning. I woke up every day dreading going to work. Work was a chore. Something I simply did not enjoy.
I’d worked many jobs across the years, as a dishwasher in Michigan, for a nonprofit in New York helping Americans understand other cultures, and climbing the corporate ladder as a VP of Sales in technology. But this VP role? It was draining the life out of me.
One day, in the middle of that chaos, I made a decision that made absolutely no financial sense.
I paid $10,000 to train as a Silva Method facilitator.
The Silva Method was a meditation course I’d taken about 18 months earlier. It has transformed me. In fact, it was the very course that helped me go from an intern at this company to a VP in record time. Now I had the promotion, the salary, and the title.
So why would I suddenly throw away $10,000 to become a facilitator?
Here’s what I understood, even then:
The best investment is never the one that makes immediate sense.
It was a gut feeling, really. I knew I wanted to start a business. I just didn’t know what. I dabbled with many ideas, an early version of a blogging software app (Blogger.com beat me to it), a unique spin on children’s stuffed animal toys. Nothing felt right.
But then I saw a quote by Nelson Mandela that I couldn’t shake from my head. It said:
“If you want to change the world, change education.”
I thought about that. And I realized something profound: the best education I’d ever received wasn’t university. It wasn’t Microsoft.
It was meditation. Mindset. Consciousness.
That was the education that truly transformed my life.
So I decided to double down. I decided to dedicate my life to upgrading human education, not just teaching people how to make a living, but how to live.
I put down $10,000 to train with one of Jose Silva’s nephews. Jose himself had passed away in 1999, so I never got to meet this brilliant man.
After I graduated, I decided to teach my first Silva class.
As you can see, it was small. Hardly anything to brag about. And I took this picture before my students poured in.
I taught them the Silva Method over a weekend and earned about $2,000-$3,000.
I felt rich for the first time in my life.
I’d earned money on my own initiative. But more than that, I felt something I’d never felt in that VP role.
I felt alive.
I couldn’t see the future. If you’d told me that 20 years ago, before making that decision to become a Silva instructor and teach my first class, that I would be running an education app company that does well over 100 million in revenue, and that app would be featured in every Apple store in the world, I would have thought you were crazy.
Everything started from that crummy hotel room at a Holiday Inn in 2002.
While my VP of Sales job made me money but drained the life out of me, teaching and helping students with the Silva Method lit me up.
I felt joy. A connection. A centeredness that I had never experienced before. I was contributing. I was making a difference.
From there, I built a website to sell meditation CDs. Then, building an app. The n creating Mindvalley. Then, creating festivals around the world.
Each step of growth came from this one question:
How could I spread enlightened ideas to more and more people?
The mission vs. the money
You remember when I earned $2,000-$3,000 teaching that first Silva Method class?
I said it was the first time I felt genuinely rich.
But here’s what actually happened that weekend:
I made a choice. Not between a job and a mission, but between two kinds of lives.
One pays you. One fills you.
Business people do it for the dollars. Entrepreneurs do it to change the world.
The difference?
When you’re acting from a mission, everything changes.
That $2,000 didn’t feel like income; it felt like an impact. It felt aligned. It felt alive.
And that alignment? That’s what compounds.
That’s what scales from one hotel room in 2002 to 100 million people in 2024.
The real question isn’t
“Will this make money?”
It’s:
“Is this me solving something that matters?”
When the answer is yes, money follows. Impact follows. A life that means something follows.
Here’s the uncomfortable truth:
If your work is only about you, it will eventually exhaust you.
But if your work is about something bigger than you, something that serves humanity, something that heals, uplifts, and transforms, then that energy finds you.
All great movements start small.
A classroom. A garage. A dorm room. A hotel conference room with bad carpet and stale coffee.
But they start with a decision.
Not to make money. Not to build a brand. But to serve a mission.
So let me leave you with this:
What injustice bothers you?
What system feels broken?
What part of humanity deserves an upgrade?
And what would happen if you stopped asking:
“What’s practical?” and started asking, “What’s noble?”
Because that $10,000 decision? It wasn’t about meditation. It was about saying yes to a mission. And when you say yes to a noble mission, the world rearranges itself around you.
Sincerely,
Vishen
One last thing: Ask yourself one honest question: If money were guaranteed, what mission would you choose? Drop it in the comments. Sometimes speaking it publicly is the first step toward making it real.
If you are interested in the Mindvalley Certified Life Coach, I’ve added a little bit of information below; see the PS line.
PS: Because of how becoming a coach and facilitator changed my life. In 2021, I started a company with co-founder Ajit Nawalkha called Mindvalley Coach. To train people to become coaches and facilitators.
Over 12,000 coaches have been trained so far, and many of them didn’t do it to turn this into a side business, like I did, but because they want to bring the practices of elevating humanity to their employees, businesses, and families.
If you find this interesting, our next Certified Life Coaching class starts March 4. Go here to learn more.
84 Responses
Totally resonates! I was laid off last year and started (slowly :)) building my own research institute on AI, Mental Health, and Meditation. I also started creating content to teach meditation and awakening that I always wanted to do but never had the time!! We’re also organizing a one-of-a-kind interdisciplinary event on AI and Mental Health (HARMONY 2026) in Pittsburgh to break the traditional “silos” and bring people together to solve the most pressing problems. All these things really cannot wait. The future of humanity depends on it. I am deeply grateful for my layoff. Even if money is not guaranteed, I still wouldn’t change a thing.
You’re right Vishen, if it serves a bigger purpose or yes we can say the real touch in the heart that this is one thing I would do if now was my last second to live – I would do it….
I share something with you. I pray you have the time to read about it…I am sure you have enough instinct, intuition and gut to understand this.
The UK Newspapers hailed him! Rain God! The Rain in England!
https://www.srisatgurujagjitsingh.com/?page_id=1210
Then why not Tanzania now?
I would continue to build what I am building, because I know it will be life changing for millions of people, even after I’m gone. In fact, when I realized the mission is bigger than myself, a divine force started taking care of everything else in my life. Everything fell into place, everything felt right. challenges seemed easier. Most importantly, when I found myself on a mission to serve humanity, I felt like I had been recruited by God for this mission. Indeed, he is the most generous compensator because He pays in abundance.
Dear Vishen,
Subject: Liberated-Being Science a Potential Mindvalley Partnership
Thank you for sharing your reflections on the Silva Method and the investment that helped catalyze your path as a facilitator of human transformation.
By an unexpected symmetry, I am writing from the 14th floor of a hotel in Duluth, Georgia—looking through a wide glass horizon that evokes both boundlessness and clarity. Just days ago, on February 2, 2026, I faced a defining professional moment. As CFO of a New York public school district serving 6,700 students with a $272 million budget, I was asked to resign or be terminated after declining to certify an incomplete and structurally inaccurate Treasurer’s Report for Board presentation. I chose not to resign Truth—or my fiduciary duty to public trust.
That moment clarified something deeper: my life’s work is not within bureaucratic preservation, but in the measurable liberation of human potential—what I call the movement from Suffering-Being to Liberated-Being.
Over several years, I have developed Selfing-Mastery™, an integrative framework grounded in ACT, ABA, RFT, Precision Teaching, and Positive Evolutionary Psychology. Its central contribution is the Liberated-Being construct—defined not as inspiration or mindset, but as the sustained enactment of values-aligned behavior under real psychological and environmental constraint.
To operationalize this shift, I created the LB-12 Liberated-Being Scale, a rapid clinical instrument designed to quantify movement from suffering-driven reactivity toward stable, values-aligned agency. An IRB-ready validation protocol is complete, positioning the model to evolve from philosophy into peer-reviewed science and scalable global application.
This convergence—ancient wisdom, modern behavioral science, and measurable transformation—feels closely aligned with Mindvalley’s next evolutionary horizon: moving from inspiration alone toward evidence-anchored inner transformation at scale.
If this direction resonates, I would value a brief conversation to explore:
• Scientific validation in collaboration with Mindvalley research initiatives
• Integration into transformational learning journeys or certification pathways
• Co-development of a measurable global Liberated-Being Index for human flourishing
My intention is simple:
to help shift the growth industry from motivating change… to reliably producing it.
Thank you for the work you and your team continue to bring to the world.
I would be honored to explore whether our paths meaningfully intersect.
With respect,
Dr. Ed Joseph, PsyD, MBA, MPS, BCBA
Founder, Selfing-Mastery™
Clinical Behavior Analyst | Fiduciary Integrator
914.403.1809 | Dr.Ed@binahaba.com
If money were already guaranteed, this would be my mission:
My mission would be to help people and businesses reinvent themselves in the digital age, turning what they already know and have lived into new sources of income so they can prosper, support their families, and face the future with confidence and peace of mind.
After more than two decades working with organizations, projects, and entrepreneurs, I’ve experienced both professional growth and the need to reinvent myself more than once. In recent years, I’ve had to start again in many ways, adapt to a fast-changing world, and build new opportunities in an increasingly digital environment.
That journey has given me a very real understanding of what many professionals, business owners, and families are going through today: uncertainty, financial pressure, and the challenge of staying relevant without feeling like everything built over a lifetime has lost value. I believe deeply that experience should never go to waste. It can always be reshaped into something meaningful and productive.
Through my own ongoing transformation and learning process, I want to show that it’s always possible to redesign your path, create new income streams, and build a more stable future — not only for yourself, but for the people who depend on you and for the businesses that must evolve to keep moving forward.
If money were guaranteed, I would challenge the cultural addiction to busyness.
I’d help ambitious, capable people step off the treadmill and redesign their lives around what truly matters — health, relationships, creativity, and meaningful contribution.
We don’t need more productivity.
We need better design.
My mission was to bring Bowen manual therapy to the Turkish people in Turkey. I’ve sown seeds but not reached far enough. Now it’s a more general mission to help people look after their health and their movement abilities by learning mixtures of several techniques and tailoring the movements, habits and their thinking to each of their needs. It sounds wishy washy here because I’m working one to one usually, with Eden Energy medicine, Bowen manual therapy, Meir Schneider’s methods, and Yoga plus dance/ballet exercises. I need a bigger reach- hoping to run classes on the beach in summer, and donation based pricing.
I’d travel to share the knowledge I have of world medicines and learn the tribal medicines used to heal the emotionally sick in order to share cultural medicines with other healers and community leaders.
As a person at the receiving end of an expensive legal battle from a large corporation, with no exit route from a David & Goliath story of lies and twisted deceit at the hands of this corporation, I want to tell the story, as a warning to others and illuminate the heartlessness of this Corporation. They should not get away with it. I dont know whether just to put it out there… and it will likely be a lost voice… or find ways to give the story oxygen and cause a firestorm that brings a mirror to their executives actions and call them to account.
If and when I can fulfill a mission that can better me and the world i live in, I would want to pivot technology to do better at protecting our data and identity and provide unlimited ways to make everyone in the world healthier and wealthy, eliminating poverty as much as possible. Thank you for this place MINDVALLEY to express and learn about myself…
Thank you, Vishen! Your insights and questions found me at the right moment, right when I needed them. I am in the middle of that shift you are expressing so well.
Wishing you lots of zest for the best!
All these questions you leave here I can summarize in: I want to help others, neurodivergent people who have or been abused, women with endometriosis how to get their life together. I want to let people know about endometriosis, autism, adhd, mental health, chronic pain and fatigue, etc
Yes, me too – I want to advocate for mental health but it is still so much of a stigma and yes it has it’s complications….but healing, treatment is there.
Greetings Mr. Vishen,
I am literally sitting in a hotel room on the 14th floor in Duluth, GA, after on February 2 I was escorted by security guard after meeting with the Superintendent of schools or the CEO for not presenting an incomplete and inaccurate Treasurer’s report to the Board of Education. I was given the option to resign or have my employment terminated as a CFO with a $195K salary. I did not resign: Truth nor fiduciary integrity.
You are courage!
If money 💰 was guaranteed, I would help the rain forest 🌳 in Brazil and Congo. The rain forest in Brazil supply the world with 🌧️ rain.🩷
Money may be form of worship, in my opinion.
You can do it.
I believe in you.
Take the first step — book a flight to Brazil to meet the rainforest… ask the trees how you can help them. You might be surprised by what they tell you…
Progressive ideals are the way to world peace and stability, giving opportunity to all and returns that can save our planet. Wars and crime would reduce without cruelty and violence. Suffering and illness would find comfort and care. Perpetual trauma isn’t sustainable. Spiritual and religious freedom and sharing knowledge, because there are so many parallel and collective wisdoms. Food and travel are doors that can open awareness. Experiencing how we are all the same, and embracing the differences as beautiful and not to be feared. When you see the influence that the monks had walking through our country, you can see the thirst for mindfulness and spiritual grounding. Love is stronger than hate, and that was Jesus’ whole message as well.
Yes, we all have our own Jesus and may be our own Jesus as well, in my opinion.
Helping young women be curious about the power and magic in being a sturdy woman
Helping young men understand what the healthy masculine looks and feels like And guide them to be that!
This is our future. It needs guidance to find balance.
Allowing children to be children while they are children.
Asking them what they want to be NOW, and help them build that person.
Let them cry, let them embrace their emotions and move on to acceptance.
Great story, thank you. I would cont my work to end human trafficking and then add all human rights as well as building Peace, which is what I intend to do next month back at the UN as A Delegate for CSW70!!
Lots of zest and zeal for the path you follow that means who you are to what you need.
Vishen, your stories are very inspiring.
If I had all the money I want, I would dedicate almost 100% of my time to complete my wellness center that will support people to become the best version of themselves, having on site (in nature) and online classes and workshops. I will have facilitators (similar to those who teach at Mindvalley) bringing practical education and experiential knowledge to people. My goal would be to help people learn primarily how to tap inside them and open their hearts, aligning their best intentions, and from there start healing themselves and the world to eventually co-create a new reality that we all dream about.
Amen, so be it, so it is
Blessings to you and to every soul without exception
Javier
Little Saviour
I’ve made my decision. Made it long ago to help others understand health from a vitalist perspective.
And, now I’m pivoting to help people realign their environment and daily signals with what their biology requires for vibrant health.
Bill
You have a will
To go up the hill
steady and still
And may it be a mill
Goedemiddag,
Ik heb een hele goede opleiding gevolgd en nam mij voor levenscoach te worden en begon mijn bedrijf eind 2019. Na jaren vol struggles waarin ik er achter kwam dat ik niet bekend wilde zijn en lichamelijke en financieele tegenslag had heb ik eind vorig jaar mijn bedrijf gestopt.
Een half jaar geleden kreeg ik de mogelijkheid een plan te maken voor de wijk. Ik had voor een braakliggend stuk land al een plan in mijn hoofd. Nadat de buurt op meerdere plannen kon stemmen heb ik gewonnen en nu komt het mooie bloesem park wat ik had bedacht in een groter park tot uitvoering. Tijdens dit proces kreeg ik er zoveel energie van! Eigenlijk zou dit mijn werk moeten zijn! Ik hou er van!
Ik bid voor de liefde die jou doet leven.