Ask The Expert: Becoming Flawsome with Kristina Mänd-Lakhiani

Amplifyou Intro/Outro: 00:00:03

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Michelle Abraham: 00:00:44

Hello, hello Amplify You family Michelle Abraham, your host here today, guys, I have got an awesome interview for you. Today we've got a ask the expert interview and I do I have an expert for you. I have Christina van Lakhiani. With me here she is the co founder of Mindvalley. And she has an amazing book about to launch. So let me just first say hi to Christina first, and they'll tell you a little bit more about her. Hi, Christina. How are you? Hi, Michelle. It's

Kristina Mänd-Lakhiani: 00:01:10

A pleasure. Thanks for having me.

Michelle Abraham: 00:01:12

Oh, well, so great to have you on here. And now, you know, I've been in the personal development space for a long time. So Mindvalley is a really big name that obviously I look up to. And so to have you here on our show is fantastic. And we have so many of our entrepreneurs who are looking to grow their businesses and get going in the world of the personal development space and making a positive impact there in the world. And I know your message that you have with your new book coming out is really going to align with them. But let me just share a little bit about Christina to you guys, our audience and listeners so that you get to know her as well. So over the last 20 years in the personal transformation industry, Christina is a truly remarkable teacher. And she's a talented international speaker, entrepreneur, artists, philanthropist and a mother of two. So Christine has come up with something called happiness hacking, which I absolutely love. And we're gonna dive into that more later. She's also the author of a transformational class seven days to happiness and live by your own rules my kinda girl. She's recognized as one of the top 10 influential people on the online making a difference in the world today. She's been awarded the influencers for changed by the Global Impact creators. So Christina amazing, so many cool things. I don't even know where to start by Christina, let's start off by asking you what does the word philosophy mean? And your book becoming philosophy is coming out really soon. So I'd love to just kind of figure out what floss that means. It sounds like a really cool word. And I'm did you make it up?

Kristina Mänd-Lakhiani: 00:02:47

I wish I did. But no, I actually didn't I found it someone internet. So somebody else had come up with a word, but there's no trace to who it was. So because of that, it's still a new word, it still has some of the fuzzy meaning you know, some sort of words, new new words, they take time before they become more or less clear to people. My the meaning that I give to it is about, about recognizing your imperfections, and seeing your strength and power in your imperfections. So rather than seeing them as your weaknesses, just recognizing that being a natural part of you, your imperfections are actually something which you can learn to value and seal your strengths in them.

Michelle Abraham: 00:03:34

So powerful, are podcasters who are about to launch their shows oftentimes get the courage to launch a show and then something stops them just stops them inside from actually going forward with launching this show. And it's that fear of imperfection and that fear of hearing their own voice. I need advice for those for those podcasters that are getting stuck up on those kind of imperfections.

Kristina Mänd-Lakhiani: 00:03:59

I think a lot of people get stuck with imperfection because imperfection. I saw this meme somewhere that imperfection, spells paralysis, not imperfections or perfectionism spells paralysis, I kind of got stuck with the word imperfection. So perfectionism is is a trap. Definitely. And it's definitely a dead end attempt. And you know, it's an unattainable height usually. Because that's the interesting thing about perfection is that the more you try to reach it, the further it becomes. It's it's like you know, you you grow and you become better so that you can be that perfect version of yourself. And then the more you grow, the more you realize there's so much more still so much more to do so. It is unattainable to agree degree. And I learned a long time ago when I was a kid I went to art school and I learned art professionally, and I know that no matter how long I worked on a piece of art, it was never, it was never that perfect vision that I had in my in my head. And that would be half the problem, actually, the fact that it's unattainable. Mostly, the real problem is that because of our obsession with perfection, we create all those things that we later need to, to heal, to, to sort out to understand, because we are obsessed with perfectionism, we can't take them the real, you know, the, the real version of what we are. And then we, our relationship with ourselves just gets gets ruined in that pursuit of perfectionism. So what can I say? Courage is an interesting thing, the only way to develop it is to train it. And the only way to train it is to do the things which are scary. And, and one thing I can tell for a fact, that fear of something like, like, speak public speaking, or launching a podcast, or starting a business, is actually not the question of life and death. And as scary as it might be, most likely, you will be okay. Even if you fail very badly.

Michelle Abraham: 00:06:18

Right? I love that. And you know, it's funny, we have this like saying at our company, if you're not embarrassed by your first few episodes, you want to put them out there. So we hope that puts people at ease for like, it's okay to be imperfect and have those flaws, but to love yourself and love what you hear any suggestions for the people that want to listen back to every single episode and critique everything? I mean, I think your philosophy and philosophy is that Well,

Kristina Mänd-Lakhiani: 00:06:46

For one thing is that once something is done, maybe it's time to let it go and let it let it go into the world and make its own way there. Of course, there are sometimes such failures which need to be corrected, or in a little less dramatic terms removed from from public domain. It just happened. I mean, I've deleted posts, and I've, I've chosen some, some interviews not to go live because just they just went on good enough. But that was never a question of perfection. It was always, it was always the failure. You see, the thing is that we are sometimes so black and wide. And perfectionism sometimes makes us feel that if it is not perfect, then it is a failure. But there's such a huge ground between perfection and a true failure. And everything in between is the actual life. Because perfection is unattainable and failure. While it happens. It's also not usually the rule of the game. I mean, if you do podcasts, let's say you do 100 interviews, even if even if 10 are horrible, still you have 90 which is which are not a failure. So that's that's important to recognize that, that not hitting that impossibly high bar doesn't mean that you have to, you have to, you know, stop and redo and start over again.

Michelle Abraham: 00:08:08

Yeah, that's such a great point. I love it. Is it? What's your what's your dream? And what's your vision for becoming flogged? Becoming a flop. Like impossible, but

Kristina Mänd-Lakhiani: 00:08:23

I actually it's kind of cool that you you said that because so many people I would say one in five would make that slip of a tongue. So easy. I know, I know. It's it's probably the opposite of solace. Sorry, I was so entertained. But that's

Michelle Abraham: 00:08:48

No problem. That's okay. I was just saying like, how philosophy, what's your vision for? Possible,

Kristina Mänd-Lakhiani: 00:08:56

I totally want it to be a legend. And I can tell you straight away it's imperfect because because of the way the nature of publishing books, and my vision of it was very different. But you see, when you create, when you create something, you're not the only creator of that something often and and it changes and sometimes it changes in ways that you maybe didn't think were necessary or were the right way or, or maybe you didn't think about it. So it isn't perfect in my in my opinion, but that's what makes it so perfect.

Michelle Abraham: 00:09:37

You totally floss out, right. That's great. I wouldn't want to turn the conversation just a little bit to like, your inspiration for this book. Where did that come from? Was that from, you know, being immersed in Mindvalley culture with so many, you know, personal development experts over the last 20 years? My So I've had a big influence on this new, the new path that you're taking, can you share a little bit about that journey? Well, yes,

Kristina Mänd-Lakhiani: 00:10:07

I ended up in Mindvalley, a little bit accidentally, because my personal career choice was first government and then, you know, into the got into Governmental Organizations such as UN, but I ended up doing Mindvalley. It was, these were the circumstances at the very beginning. And sometimes, sometimes our life takes us in unpredictable directions. And then you find out in the hindsight that that was meant to be. So I ended, I entered in Mindvalley, I stopped, I stopped rebelling and trying to do something else. And, of course, most of my journey in Mindvalley, I was an enterpreneur. And working with other authors, and part of the journey was, of course, people telling you, you have to do that. But then I'm very obstinate and rebellious person. So just because I have to, doesn't mean I will. But crossing over to becoming an author was, was happened much later, I was probably about 15 years into Mindvalley, when I started feeling that my message inside me was ready. And the curious thing, because I wanted to give you one answer, but as you kept, you know, growing the question, I realized that, what I have to say is that my book, and my teachings are a little bit of an act of rebellion, of having been in Brussels for 20 years. And having seen it for such a long time. And so many people go through our industry that I think I rebel about about the things that we we do wrong, and we don't even question and a lot of a lot of my messages are a little bit surprising to people. Because you see, we we talk about people living, extraordinary, wonderful, happy, fulfilled, brilliant Instagrammable, successful lives, all those all those wonderful terms. And then here I come and say, Guys, aren't you tired of just trying so hard to be something that you're not? Maybe on this path to those wonderful lives, you actually need? Need to slow down and ask yourself, am I even going in the right direction? And doing the right thing? Or am I you know, moving from one trap into another a lot of people come to personal growth feeling that they have escaped a trap of regular everyday life. And then they ended up in the same kind of Trump was just a different set of rules.

Michelle Abraham: 00:12:46

Oh my gosh, I absolutely love what you're saying. I've been feeling that lately. We're the persona that a lot of people have on social media out there. It's just it's that trying to be authentic and trying to be real and trying to be, you know, it's almost like exhausting. You're so far from being yourself. You're trying to be authentic, but like it's

Kristina Mänd-Lakhiani: 00:13:06

Such an oxymoron, what you just saying, which is brilliant. It's like you're trying so hard to be authentic. Is that you know, like, I think it's in the in frightened prejudice. In the movie. There's this one line, which is almost classic, x natural.

Michelle Abraham: 00:13:22

Right? Yeah, x natural. And I think the people that are looking at social media from the outside and are seeing this perfect world, and it's this unachievable for them. And I think it's leading to all sorts of, you know, mental health issues. And so, knowing that you, you know, this is happening out there. And you're all about self love and self care, and like, you know, standing up for what you are this message that's inside of you, our podcasters are wanting to podcasts are people that we work with? Are they know, they have a message, but then that act of acting on it? What would you say would be some some advice for people who haven't had the courage to act on that that message that's been growing up inside of them? Yeah.

Kristina Mänd-Lakhiani: 00:14:07

You know, I probably wouldn't be a good person to judge other people's character because I believe that if you are afraid to act on your message, there may be so many different factors that that influence and I don't want to discount factors which are, you know, not in line with my answer. Because just for example, some people may have trauma which, which does make it hard for them to find the courage to share themselves. Some people may be very reserved, but my observation and I apologize if you are that person who has reasons that I don't understand not to speak up. But my observation is that if you when your message is fully matured, you won't be able to hold it in. So sometimes what you need to do is to give yourself some time to, to buy in to what you're doing. And I think Maybe funny analogy would be, like, you know, when a woman is pregnant and when the time comes, no matter how, how not ready she is for that delivery, it's going to happen. So I think that with message is the same thing. And a lot of the times we, we try to push the baby out a little too early. And of course, it is a scary process. But I strongly believe that message is like a baby, when it has to come,

Michelle Abraham: 00:15:28

it will come such a great answer. And I love it because they're so aligned with our answers with that I always say it's like a birthing process, like a podcast, too. It's not going to happen until it's ready to happen. Right. And I appreciate what you said, where, you know, again, we don't know people circumstances or situations. But you know, when that message is ready, you'll know and amplify your listeners on to make sure you heard Christina say that when you know you won't be able to stop that message from coming out. Is that what happened to you with your becoming flossing book?

Kristina Mänd-Lakhiani: 00:16:02

Definitely, yes. My book, as I mentioned that earlier, that people kept telling me you have to write a book, you know how it is. And very often you live with the knowledge that this is going to happen one day and book is one of those things, which a lot of us think, of course, one day I'll write a book, you know, they're like, I've heard the number 13 million books being published every year. That's almost scary. But on the other hand, having been impressive growth for 20 years, of course, I don't want to add to the noise. So I wasn't going to write a book unless I knew for a fact that that what I had to say I had to say and I wouldn't keep it in. So yeah, definitely that you can't hold it in once, once it's coming out. But with that said, you know, as, as you as you notice, I don't like I don't want judging people. And I think that's one of the big because maybe it's a little bit not so on the surface, or maybe it's between the lines, but we're industry is full of judgment. And well, marketing is built on judgment doesn't in essence. And I think we were just so jaded with that. So I don't want to add to that, to that burden of futile judging you, I truly think that we are so much more resilient, so much more brave, so much more beautiful if we just allow ourselves to, to be ourselves. And very often, it's the judgment that puts us in the box and makes us feel less than because we don't trust. We don't trust that if we are left to our own devices that will actually flourish. But we will, and call me naive and optimistic. But that's what I believe in people. I believe in non violence don't force people. You see, if you it's like with children, you know, when When children grow, you can force them and then they will rebel when they grow up. Or you can nurture them.

Michelle Abraham: 00:17:57

Beautiful. You're known as the happiness hacker. Tell us a little bit about happiness hacking, I think you just alluded to, to a few of the principles a few moments ago, because I think that really essentially leads to happiness right there what you just said,

Kristina Mänd-Lakhiani: 00:18:13

I didn't mention happiness. You know, this No, no going around it. Of course, I mentioned happiness in the book as well. Although strictly speaking, it's not about happiness. And strictly speaking, my book is not about happiness, it's about self love. And if we saw the correlation, I believe you need to learn to love yourself, if you want to be happy. But then you can't be happy if you don't love yourself. But when you love yourself, it's not guarantee of happiness. So happiness would be a separate topic to dive into. And I've taught it for so many years that, of course, there'd be like so much to talk about. But what I want to say is that very often we misunderstand the value of happiness and the necessity of happiness, isn't it? As I mentioned, you know, you introduce me from my less sexy side, I could talk about business and about building big companies and stuff like that. But you know, happiness and self love, considered machines, coffee, and it's so hard to sell that. Because a lot of pragmatic people would say, Yeah, I kind of get it, but you know, what I need to, you know, I need to increase my profits, I need to solve that, you know, people's problem in my business. And I'm realizing one very interesting thing. We very often misunderstand our problems. We feel that our problem is in the pragmatic level, it's, it's that huge thing that doesn't let me sleep at night because, you know, my business is, let's say in danger or, or like my relationships are strained and complicated, without realizing that very often the problems are not the problems but but the symptoms of the fact that you are discontent and not pleased with yourself and with your life and you're in the right I'm face, and you don't even know who you are. So as counterintuitive as it might seem, but very often sorting out your relationship with yourself helps you sort out relationships in your outside world. And he'll bring a very simple example. You know, I had a business partner in I had a business in Russia, of course, not a fashionable thing anymore. But I'm not. I'm not in business in Russia anymore, too. But it was 2014 When my Russian business after having done really well, for six years was on the brink of bankruptcy because of because of economic crisis and political situation and whatnot. Anyway, there were external reasons as I thought, but it just happened so that my relationship with my business partner at that time was very strained, and I was incredibly unhappy. And I as a good intrapreneur was telling myself, I have to, I have to do that because of the business because of the partners, the clients everything. So I was telling myself the story that I needed to sacrifice my own well being for the sake of something bigger than myself, which is my business. But then it became so unbearable, that I remember saying a phrase in my head, I'd rather go bankrupt with a smile on my face than keep going like this one, lordy. And then I took a sledgehammer, and I smashed our relationship. And I didn't know if my business will survive or not. But that now, of course, it was 2014. Eight years later, I can tell you the moment I actually solved that problem, which seemed to do nothing with business, my own problem of well being. I like, my challenges didn't bother me. It wasn't about the challenges. It wasn't about near bankruptcy, it wasn't about economic crisis, it was about the challenges didn't excite me anymore, because of us, deeply unhappy. So very often we misunderstand, we think that what bothers us is our success. But in reality, what bothers us is that we are not happy that even those things that used to make us, you know, inspired. They don't spark us anymore.

Michelle Abraham: 00:22:15

Wow. And I just think that's incredible insight. And a way it's, it's allowing you to then be calm flotsam, right and deliver more floss of life, like, I'm going to use that word as like an acronym. Now. It's the floss some way of being becoming faster. I think it's going to be used in a lot of terms. Because I, I see that, you know, we might think we have so many problems, but really, when we deal with our own happiness and make that into I think that was the decision that you're talking about there making that decision just unfolds a whole bunch of new new ways and new new ways for you. Well, that's been absolutely incredible. And thank you for sharing with us. And thank you for spending your time with us today. Christina has been delightful having you here on amplify you any last words of wisdom before we let you go today? Well,

Kristina Mänd-Lakhiani: 00:23:09

it's a little bit of a it's a little bit of a Jose request, which is a bit hard for me. I mean, wisdom, I would share the words of Cinderella's mother because they're my favorite. They're the shortest have courage and be kind.

Michelle Abraham: 00:23:25

Love it. I love it. Now, where can we best support you with your becoming flossing book as is launching?

Kristina Mänd-Lakhiani: 00:23:32

Well, the best way to support any starting writers to buy a book of course, that's my boot for yourself and your friend.

Michelle Abraham: 00:23:44

Awesome. Awesome. We will definitely do that. And we will put the links in the show notes to where we can go ahead and do that. And help support Christina on her mission to becoming awesome becoming philosophy book. And I just think you're creating a movement with this book. I can say philosophy for so many different things. I absolutely love it. Thank you, Christina for being here today. And have a fabulous day amplify your listeners go out and support Christina grab her book, help her get to New York Times bestselling author and we will love reading it. Share with us all the wisdom that you've gathered from that book. After you've read it. We'd love to hear more.

Kristina Mänd-Lakhiani: 00:24:18

Thank you so much for having me.

Michelle Abraham: 00:24:20

Take care everyone. Bye bye.