Vishen Lakhiani - The Buddha and the Badass: The Secret Spiritual Art of Succeeding at Work

Know that this book may challenge some of your deeply held beliefs about life.

I always write about a topic with the intention to disrupt. In other words, to wedge new ideas into your mind in between the normal stream of thoughts you run on autopilot. Awareness sets you free. New ideas that you never even had an inklingof are gateways to becoming a bigger, better, more powerful version of yourself. And that benefits not just yourself, but also your family, your community, and the world.

My friend the great philosopher Ken Wilber popularized the importance of worldviews in his work on integral theory. You can simplify his work and determine that the readers of this book will fall in one of the four following worldview categories. Depending on your worldviews certain aspects of this book will appeal to you and others might affront you.

You could be a rationalist. In which case youll love the business ideas in this book but scoff when I speak of the magic of the mind, intuition, or listening to your soul.

You could be a traditionalist. In which case youll love anything that reminds you of your spiritual beliefs but may feel threatened when I talk about questioning culture and traditional rules.

Or you could be a green, which means you might also be a spiritual junkie, and youll love the talk of magic but maybe dread the sections on taking action and running a business.

Finally, you might be viewing this from the integral level. This means you are open minded and can integrate all these worldviews without feeling your ego is threatened, by picking and choosing what resonates with you. This is the most productive way to read this book.

Thats because this is not a traditional book on entrepreneurship or business. The world is changing fast. When I started out teaching meditation in 2003, I had to hide my career from friends. Today meditation companies have valuations of over a billion. And today when I meet with the upper echelon of people in government, sports, Hollywood, Silicon Valley, and business, they privately share their deep spiritual beliefs and how they no longer see their work and their career from a strict material point of view.

Many have gone on record to publicly share this. My appreciation to the R&B star Miguel who spoke in Billboard magazine about using my 6-Phase Meditation before his concerts (more on this in Chapter 5). And to Tony Gonzalez, the famous football star, for doing the same in countless interviews. Also to Bianca Andreescu who, after beating Serena Williams in the US Open at the age of nineteen, endorsed my work and book to the press as a tool she used. Billionaires and game-changing entrepreneurs are talking about some of the controversial ideas from this book in private. And my goal is to make this conversation more public. Because now is the time.

And so this book is designed to disrupt the way you see the world and to give you the tools to shift the world through cognitive changes in your mind. In short, it creates a transformation. Once you see the patterns this book unveils, you cannot unsee them.

Depending on your worldview, you will either love this book or hate this book. Thats by design. Its because we grow through discomfort or insight. But never through apathy.

You may have found this book in the business section at a bookstore. Though, honestly, I dont know if it truly belongs in that section. Indeed, this book is about the way we work todaybecause the way we work is utterly broken. But let me warn you that this book is not about business in any conventional sense. Its about transforming the way you work from the inside outand how that internal change can ripple out to change the world.

So, what is this book? Its about the mastery of your work and your life, whether youre launching a start-up, at the helm of a major organization, or only starting your first job. Its for someone whos pouring their energy into a job that doesnt feed their soul or conversely for someone who has an incredible vision for their company but cant figure out how to expand it to a world-changing level.

My first book, The Code of the Extraordinary Mind, accidentally became a bible for athletes across the world because it explored performance. This book explores teamwork, running a business, and making a dent in the Universe. Id like it to be a bible for changing the nature of work.