Have you ever wondered what your life would be like if creating happiness was your superpower? What is the secret to creating happiness? Let’s find out in today’s episode of The Science of Superpowers as host Tonya Dawn Recla is joined by guest Kristina Mand-Lakhiani, co-founder of Mindvalley and author of the transformational quests, “7 Days To Happiness” and “Live By Your Own Rules.” Kristina is an incredibly talented international speaker who talks about personal transformation, authenticity, understanding, and accepting oneself. Join Tonya and Kristina in today’s episode to discover more about unlocking the secrets to creating happiness now!
Hello everyone and welcome back to The Science of Superpowers. I am so glad that you’re here with us again. This show is really, just settle in and prepare yourself for yumminess. We’re going to dive into a really beautiful topic with a truly lovely guest, and it’s worthy of just a moment of. Let’s take a breath and just relax in, whether you’re driving, listening, whether you’re sitting at home, whether you’re in nature, whether you’re at work, whatever you’re doing here, just take a breath and let the world fall away for a moment.
Because at the heart of all of this and everything that we do, why would we do this if we don’t have some sort of idea that it’s going to create happiness for us, that it’s going to make us feel good about who we are and our contribution to the world, or how we show up for the people in it? Whatever it is that drives you. I think if we all get very real and honest if we remove that element, if it was like, you could do this and you’d be successful, but we’re going to guarantee you that you will never be happy a moment in your life, would we do it? And I’d love to believe that we would not.
And so if we can all engage in that world vision, then we have a chance to say if that thread of experiencing happiness and truly just following what brings us joy and bliss isn’t present, then perhaps that’s an indicator. And today we’re going to talk about that. Of course, we’re all about like really, truly, how are we utilizing these innate gifts, or these spiritual guidance pieces, or these supernatural abilities, or whatever you want to call them, we lump them all together because we do believe that we have abilities and that we are able to create, and what should we be creating if not happiness, hope for ourselves and others?
And so today we’re going to talk all about creating happiness. And we’re talking today with Kristina Mand-Lakhiani, and you all know her from Mindvalley and her contributions in that space. And certainly, that’s had such a tremendous impact on the world, and it felt really important to bring her on and dialogue about that aspect of it. Success, success, success, it’s intoxicating, it’s easy. Well, I say it’s easy, but it’s a natural by-product in terms of the developmental aspects when we allow ourselves to relax into that. But I would contend, and we’ll see, maybe I’m off base and she’ll tell me that, that that thread of happiness is the amplifier, the fuel. So we’ll see. We’ll see if I’m on track. But before I get too high on my soapbox, let’s go ahead and bring Kristina on so we can all welcome her to the show. Hi Kristina, thanks so much for joining us.
Hello, thanks for having me.
Well, we’re so delighted to have you and to get your insights on this. And before we do, we’re going to jump in and first ask you the question of what are your superpowers and how are you using them for good now?
When you asked me that question, first I suddenly thought that the only superpower I can think about is actually being a woman. And I know it might be a very simple superpower, but I remember when I was pregnant for the first time and just the experience of my body going through such changes, there and back and reacting in such inexplicable ways to my baby. I suddenly had a newfound respect for all the women of the world, and I think this is truly a superpower, in a true sense, superpower. Just for the context, I just interrupted watching Avengers with my children.
I love it.
So I take superpowers very literally. And I believe that half of humankind has superpowers. Not all of us have learned how to use them, but half of us have them.
I love that you brought that up because we’re talking about creating happiness. And I had a similar experience with Neva. Mine might’ve been not so glorious at times because there were many moments of like, “Well, why the heck would it be doing this? How does this benefit the baby? How does it benefit anything? Where does this come from?” I remember I’ve never had, I don’t know what they refer to them in your country, but in our country, they call them saddlebags, that’s where your thighs jut out a little bit and I’ve never had it. And then all of a sudden in pregnancy, they started doing it. I was like, “I’m not carrying a baby yet on my hip, what is this serving?” And then they went away after the birth. It was just such a unique experience.
As I said, I was probably a little more tongue in cheek about it, but I love what you’re saying about, we take that for granted, and the creative aspect that we all get to participate in, but that’s uniquely for women. Gosh, that’s a moment of pause worthy of awe of just the miraculousness and that process alone. Have you been able to translate that into your business pursuits, any of your artistic pursuits, have you been able to harness that?
Well, it has happened a while back now and I’m a co-founder of Mindvalley, but then was a business person, an entrepreneur for a long time. So I never went out speaking about life or happiness or anything like that. So it was a few years back that I decided to close the door to being a marketer and an entrepreneur. Well, I haven’t completely closed the door, but that’s not how I identify myself anymore. And I found my voice and I started speaking. So since that moment I’ve rebranded myself, now I consider myself a very delightful philosopher and I think I’m so blessed because, in the old days, only the absolutely blessed people could afford to be philosophers. And now, definitely, I would have probably analyzed the whole universe out of that experience, but now it’s in the past and it just stays as a miraculous, mystical memory.
Beautiful. What a phenomenal way to present that. And I love that you said that’s not how you identify. I think that’s a powerful part of this conversation about happiness, is it’s super important that we don’t just accept someone else’s version of what we think that should be or what they think that should be. And a lot of times we’re doing that even without our conscious awareness. There are these subtle cues that sink in around what we should want. And I know a big part of our journey individually, as well as our family and our marriage, everything has been in really debunking everything, peeling back the layers.
In my first book, I was writing about my experiences as a counterintelligence agent. In part of it, it was like you hit a point of this developmental journey where you’re like, “Wait, do I even like chocolate ice cream?” You’re sitting there eating it going, “Wait, where did this come from? How did I get here?” And it’s a crazy wild ride, but for those of us, I think, with the courage and the heart to do it, it’s so revealing into what we accept as ours. And I think as women we particularly relate to this on a lot of levels because there’s a lot of the world that we have to squeeze and fit ourselves into. And not that men don’t, but it’s a different type of experience I believe. And when it comes to happiness, if we’re not willing to peel back those layers and say, “This is real for me or this isn’t really for me,” how do we know what we’re in pursuit of?
You started this podcast and you were talking about success and happiness, and I think that’s exactly the interesting aspect of happiness. We equate happiness with success somehow without even questioning. But when it comes to success, generally it is something which is defined by the society where we grew up. Every society has a certain picture of what success looks like, for women particularly that picture is, as you just said, very strict, I would say. And then we try to be successful because we believe that success is going to bring us happiness.
And on the other hand, I’m a perfectionist and a good girl from the start. And like a good girl and a perfectionist, obviously, you have the rule book, the rule book says, you have to do this, this, this and this, and then you will be successful and that means you will be happy. And I think that’s how we all get confused because we start going on this path out of best intentions, obviously. But I think the most interesting part about deception is that we’re not aware of deceiving ourselves. So we sometimes say, “Let’s rebel against what the society is expecting from us,” but the problem is not that the society is expecting something from us, the problem is that we learn to believe that this is what I expect from myself. So it’s not really a struggle with the world around you, it’s a struggle with yourself.
In our world, we talk about the fact that we’re either manipulating the environment or being manipulated by it in every scenario. And it makes us uncomfortable to think that way, but we hit it on the head because it’s like until we get real about what you were referring to as the deception piece, we refer to as manipulation, and it is informing everything about who we believe ourselves to be and who we believe the world to be.
And so, first, recognizing that we do it to ourselves, that was the conclusion from my first book. I was talking about the rape that occurred while I was an agent and the conclusion that I came through in that developmental process and synthesizing the experience was I was doing it to myself every moment of every day because I wasn’t being realistic about what was influencing my decisions or what was influencing what I thought about myself or what it was I thought I should have. I’ll never forget, I was at my wits end in that career and I remember going and seeking out a female colonel in the army because I kept thinking if somebody could help me understand how to squeeze myself into this box and be happy with it, or why it wasn’t working for me, and it looked like it was working for everybody else, then it should be a woman who has gone through the ranks of the military.
And I remember sitting there across from her and I will never forget, I was laying out my case and I’m like, “Okay, help me here. What did you do to overcome this?” And she looked at me and gets that glassy-eyed look that you get when God’s going to talk through someone to you. And she said, “Do you know how lucky you are to know what you don’t want?” And I was like, “What?” And she said, “Leave.” She goes, “Why are you here? You could stay, but it’s like putting a round peg in a square hole.” She’s like, “You could do it, but it’s just not going to feel good.” And I’m just looking at her like, “Wait,” because the mentality, the military is selfless service, you don’t ever encourage someone to leave, because everyone’s supposed to be serving there.
And it was so bizarre. She was the second person in a military government career that was like, “I don’t think you’re supposed to be here.” And so that really stuck with me for a while because I was trying to reconcile the surveillance world and the investigative world that I was in the middle of. But a big part of it was that competitive, you had to keep one-upping each other. And it was just this constant abrasion that I was like, “This just doesn’t feel good.” But it took me a really long time to be willing to say that, what you so beautifully and eloquently was like, “I’m not identifying as that anymore.”
I think it’s important, folks, that we reflect it, at least in my experience, it took me a while to get to that place, to say that’s not a label I choose to hold any longer. It doesn’t serve me, it doesn’t describe me, and I know who I am. And again, in my speech, because I believe what spirit says about who I am. I know how I’m seeing from a divine filter then I’m choosing to view myself from that too. But that’s a walk folks. If you’re not there if you’re not even to the place where you’re going to be like, “Well, I don’t know that I want to identify as a business, but do I identify as a mom? Do I identify as these things?” Those are the steps along the journey, be where you’re at with that. Kristina, we need to jump to a quick break, but before we do, where can people go to find out more about you?
Well, obviously since I’m co-founder of Mindvalley, you’d find me there as well. But as an author, I appear there among a lot of really great people. So I’m one-of. If you want to follow me directly, then I’m on Instagram most actively present there. Kristina is with a K, it’s an Estonian way of writing the name.
Beautiful. We’ll have a link for you all on the episode page so you can always go to superpowerexperts.com, but check out Kristina’s stuff and stay tuned because we’re talking today about creating happiness and we’re going to continue talking about this and much, much more when we come back from the break. So stay here we’ll be right back.
To listen to the entire show click on the player above or go to the SuperPower Up! podcast on iTunes.
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