The Code of the Extraordinary Mind 

 

Chukwuma Chinaza Adaobi

Chinazaadaobi26@gmail.com

Catholic University College of Ghana

Introduction

This book provides a 10-step system for success and to break-free from your limited mind. Vishen has spent over 200 hours interviewing extraordinary people and compiled all the wisdom into this book.

According to Vishen, there is a code or a set of principles and strategies that you can learn and apply to create a breakthrough and live an extraordinary life. This is what he says, “Just as a programmer can program a computer to do specific tasks by understanding its code, you can program your life and the world around you to improve, enhance the way you live and the experiences you have in this lifetime. But first, you have to see this code. And that’s where this book comes in.”

Through his own experiences and the insights from other extraordinary people like Richard Branson, Arianna Huffington, and Elon Musk, Vishen believes that the human brain can be hacked like computer software.

However, in order to do that, you need to know the code. And this book is about the 10 laws you need to break the code and achieve extraordinary results in life.

Part 1: Living in the Culturescape: How You Were Shaped by the World around You

In the first part of the book, Vishen talks about how you were shaped by the world around you since the day you were born. The culturescape refers to the cumulative beliefs, rules, and norms that define how we think we should live.

The first section consists of two laws, they are:

Law 1: Transcend the Culturescape

Vishen writes that the world is exactly like how we perceived it. Many people are living their lives according to the culture, their surrounding, and often follow the regulations or rules that have been laid down by other people, not themselves. And you need to step outside your perceived world to recognize the relative truths that can be changed.

Law 2: Question the Brules

According to Vishen, a Brule means a nonsense rule. For instance, most people have been conditioned that in order to be happy and successful, they have to work hard, get good grades in school, build a happy family, and save for retirement. Vishen says that this is a Brule because this is not true. He then goes on to explain how Brules come around, how to identify them and get rid of them.

Part 2: The Awakening: The Power to Choose Your Version of the World

The second part of this book is dedicated to the awakening of your mind and to create a new reality that you desire in life. Once you understand that the culture does not define you and how to ignore the Brules that stop you, it is time to learn how to build your own models of reality.

Law 3: Practice Consciousness Engineering

Vishen says that conscious engineering is about upgrading the operating system for your brain. He gives the example that most people upgrade and keep their electronic gadgets like their computer system and phones up-to-date, but they do not do the same for their beliefs system and habits. And this chapter is all about replacing your inner system with a better future.

There are two types of conscious engineering involved. The first is the hardware, which is your models of reality or beliefs. And the second part is your software, which consists of your systems for living or your habits.

Law 4: Rewrite Your Models of Reality

In this chapter, you will learn how to replace the disempowering beliefs that are dragging you with healthier, supportive, and more empowering ones. You can find plenty of examples in this chapter where Vishen also shares his own experiences and events that transformed his models of reality. When your beliefs changed, the results you get in life will change as well. Vishen shares how he transformed from an employee working for Microsoft to starting his own business, which is Mindvalley. He also shares his relationships and his views on religions.

Law 5: Upgrade Your Systems for Living

Your systems for living are your habits and practices in life. They are what you do each and every single day that shape your life. And successful people are always striving to do and perform better every day.

In the book, Vishen shares the 3-step method how you can effectively upgrade your systems for living. The first step is the discovery process where you find out new methodology, blueprints, and techniques through books, courses, and from other people. The second step is the refresh rate, which is how often you upgrade your system. And the third step is about measurement. You can never tell if a system is working for you until you measure it.

Part 3: Recoding Yourself: Transforming Your Inner World

The third part of this book is what Vishen called “recoding yourself”, where you discover what makes you happy in life and find out your ultimate vision and goals. There are three laws dedicated to this part.

Law 6: Bending Reality

This is one of the most interesting chapters in the book. Vishen shares his journey from how he worked as an employee to building his own business, Mindvalley. He discovered a simple switch that transformed his life and business altogether. The idea behind bending reality is quite simple; you do not have to peg your happiness to your goals. Instead, choose to focus on the present and be happy right now.

In the book, he shares a great quote from Alan Watts that explains bending reality, “I have realized that the past and future are real illusions, that they exist in the present, which is what there is and all there is.”

Vishen calls the state where you live and enjoy the present moment as “bending reality”. When you do what you love and are passionate about it, ideas flow to you, you attract the right people and opportunities, and things just fall right in place.

Law 7: Live in Blissipline

The word, “blissipline” is the combination of two words, bliss, and discipline. Vishen says that blissipline is the discipline of daily bliss, where you experience the state of being happy in the present moment. Most people find it difficult to stay happy because they tell themselves that they will be happy when they reach the new profit target, when they get married, when they have a new car, a new house, etc.

This phenomenon is also called the “forward gap,” where you look into the future and use the future to decide your happiness now. And Vishen suggests you follow the “reverse gap”, where you look back into your life and appreciate how far you have come. Chasing the forward gap is like chasing the horizon, where you put your happiness to the future, which is a never-ending chase.

In this law, Vishen also shares two powerful methods how you can achieve blissipline through forgiveness and gratitude. He shows great examples that happened in his real-life of how forgiveness and being grateful have remarkably impacted his life.

Law 8: Create a Vision for Your Future

While you need to chase the reverse gap and never tie your happiness to your goals, you also need to have an exciting future to look forward to. This law is about creating your heartfelt goals and vision that will give you the “forward momentum” and pull you forward.

In this chapter, Vishen goes on to explain the difference between the end goals and the means goals. Plus, he says that most people treat the goal setting technique wrongly and he suggests his readers follow the 3 questions in the book to come up with experience goals. Besides that, Vishen also talks about the 12 types of end goals people should set in their lives.

Part 4: Becoming Extraordinary: Changing the World

This is the final part of the book. This entire section is about how to go from creating your own rules and master your inner self to influencing others and changing the world. When you have reached this point, you have truly become extraordinary. This is not about just mastering your inner and outer self, but it is also about pushing humanity forward and making a positive dent in the universe.

Law 9: Be Unfuckwithable

Unfuckwithable means when you are truly at peace and in touch with yourself that no matter what others say or do, they will never bother you or influence you. You have simply become at peace in your own world.

And this is exactly the state that you need to achieve extraordinary results in life. When you become unfuckwithable, you are not afraid to dream, to take bold actions, to do something out of the norm, and to also to fail. Vishen says that this law is important because all the extraordinary people who have accomplished outstanding success in life are able to do so without the influence of others. They act on their own accord.

There are two components of being unfuckwithable. The first is to have self-fueled goals, where you have complete control over your goals and no object or person can take them away from you. The second component is to realize that you are enough.

Law 10: Embrace Your Quest

According to Vishen, when you have reached the final phase of becoming extraordinary, you are ready to serve your higher calling or quest. And this law is all about contributing to mankind and leaving your legacy. If you practiced all the previous laws, your quest will come to you automatically. And all you need to do is to listen, take action, and accept your quest in life.

You will discover that your journey is filled with two types of life growth. The first is called the kensho, the growth by pain, and the second is satori, the growth by awakening. And you need both to reach the highest level of success. Vishen then relates his life journey to how kensho and satori have shaped his life.

When you are not sure what to do, just take any baby step and listen to how life respond. When you take even the smallest step, the universe will lead and guide you somewhere, but you must be willing to listen and follow.

Appendix: Tools for Your Journey

At the end of The Code of Extraordinary Mind, Vishen includes the tools that you need on your journey to self-discovery. One of the most profound tools he shares is the Six-Phase meditation. This is where you can put everything that you have learned from the book into one daily habit. And the Six-Phase is a transcendent practice that Vishen created and used daily.

In the Six-Phase meditation, you will go through the first phase that is called connection, where you connect with yourself where you focus on your consciousness. The second phase is called Gratitude and this is where you focus your thoughts on things that you are truly grateful for. The third phase is Forgiveness and you put your mind to anyone you have had a conflict with. The fourth phase is Visualizing where you envision the perfect future that you desire. And phase five is Daily Intention that you focus on your current moment. And finally, the sixth phase is called Blessing, where you call on any higher power you believe in and ask for luck, support, help, energy, and more.

Towards the end of the book, Vishen offers how you can also learn from through online experience. You can download the Mindvalley app and discover even more ways to learn and connect with him and his team to go deeper into the journey to extraordinary.

TECHNOLOGY VS. MAGIC

   

Arthur: Atianashie Miracle

       (CLARKE’S THREE LAWS)

v  When a distinguished but elderly scientist states that something is possible, he is almost certainly right. When he states that something is impossible, he is very probably wrong.

v  The only way of discovering the limits of the possible is to venture a little way past them into the impossible.

v  Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.

In my eyes, this statement, while basically true, shows a misconception of what magic is—and a misconception that is shared by many others, at that.

My starting point would simply be to ask: How is magic and technology defined?

Both are somewhat vague concepts, but the definition of magic typically includes something along the lines of “paranormal”, “not explainable by science”, or similar—effectively creating a division that technology (and/or science) and magic are the natural respectively supernatural equivalents: An aero plane is technology, because the way it flies can be explained within the realms of the natural laws; a (hypothetical) flying carpet would be magic, because it draws on the supernatural.

This, however, just obfuscates the issue: We are now left with the discussion of what is natural and supernatural (normal and paranormal, whatnot).

My take is: Magic is a phenomenon that is yet to be explained by science. In other words, the only difference between technology and magic, is that the one is something that we understand today; the other something that we do not yet understand, but eventually will.

TO ILLUSTRATE: Imagine that the ancient Egyptians had had some remarkable break-through in magic, somehow managing to generate artificial light by inducing magical, invisible particles to pass through fine threads of copper. The secret was lost, and as time went past this feat became considered a myth of low credibility—only believed by a minority group of supernatural experimenters, alchemists, and the like. Come the modern era, electricity, and first predecessors of the light-bulb... The minority is vindicated, magic does exist, and magicians, not electricians, become an invaluable group of professionals.

This scenario differs from reality on one single basic count: The Egyptians had no such break-through (and it would indeed have taken either an amazing feat or an extraordinary piece of good luck for it to happen).

An apparent counter-example: Science may one day be able to deliver a flying carpet; however, for one to have existed in the days of Aladdin, magic would have been needed. Not quite: There were, in fact, no flying carpets back then (and likely no Aladdin, for that matter), which makes a world of difference. A flying carpet that does not exist is, ipso facto, not magical, not flying, nor even a carpet. Assume, however, for the sake of argument that flying carpets did exist: What would make them magical? Is there any reason to expect that their flying ability would not be explainable (as opposed to “already explained”) by science? I hold that given the existence of a flying carpet there would almost certainly be a scientific explanation to be found; hypothetically, that the carpets contained cavoritew. Similarly, that science has failed to find an explanation for e.g. ESP is unremarkable and uninteresting, because there is no true indication that ESP actually exists; only if its existence can be proved, and science fails to come up with an explanation over a pro-longed period of time, can the possibility of something truly paranormal be taken into account.

Notably, much of what we today would consider primitive technology, medicine, or similar, was once considered magic by many—including such mundane things as smiting. Equally notable is that even (attempts at) magic that did not actually work has historically often been put into systems of rules that are basically scientific (by the standards of the day; not, obviously, by modern criteria), and usually followed a logical pattern (cf. e.g. http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/etext03/bough11h.htme). Similarly, alchemy, which is usually considered either magic or related to magic today, was one of the most scientific fields that had ever existed until the modern sciences entered the field—and chemistry, a highly respectable science, is arguably a special case of alchemy (as the Christian religion is arguably a special case of the Jewish: had the Jews/Alchemist been completely swallowed by the Christians/Chemists in a comparatively short time period, there might have been very little distinction made). Similar statements apply to e.g. astrology and astronomy.

Currently, I see only one possible case of magic that could fall outside of technology/science with a non-negligible probability: Use of magic formula, prayers, or similar, to make demons, gods, or other “magical” creatures perform acts. Even here, however, the problem would likely be more of semantics and definitions, even provided that this scenario is not hypothetical: A higher being acting in the world will likely use mechanisms explainable by science, or an extension of science to a greater or other universe; further, the actual formulae would likely be scientifically investigate and explainable. The one issue would be whether the mechanisms used by the higher beings were inherently inexplicable by the means of this world. (Such a scenario could likely be constructed in theory by assuming that this universe is run as computer simulation in another universe, and considering Gödel’s incompleteness theorems.) It is further disputable whether this should be considered magic at all (although some historical justification can be found), and not rather religion: Certainly, the current major Christian churches would react as negatively the accusation of magic, as would a chemist to the accusation of alchemy.

An important observation, that some non-scientist may be imperfectly aware of, is that even the phenomena that fall solidly into what is typically considered technology, are imperfectly explained by science, including e.g. electricity. Further, it is quite possible that trying to explain these is like plumbing a bottomless hole: It can be plumbed to a greater and greater depth, possibly even an arbitrarily large depth, but a bottom cannot be found; a “x because of y” can be amended with a “y because of z.”, “z because of z1.”, etc. but a terminal “z [high number] because.” may never be found.

RECOMMENDATION

A final issue: The word “magic” can be traced to the Proto-Indoeuropean root “*magh” (“to be able, have power”), which is also the root of “machine”. (Cf.            http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=magice,respectively,             http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=machinee.)

REFLECTIVE ENTERING DURING BIRTH

REFLECTIVE ENTERING DURING BIRTH

Atianashie Miracle

12/8/18

When a child is born immediately, the child will become sensitive of the environment, feeling the environment and all the sense organs will begin to work but the only thing is that each and every one of the senses will begin to mature with time like to smell, to feel, to hear, etc. The child will now recognize the mother’s voice even the smell of mother’s body able to differentiate the taste of the breast milk and ordinary water. The body will becomes use to the noise in the environment.

SOCIALIZING A SHY BABY

SOCIALIZING A SHY BABY

Atianashie Miracle

UEPS 240

20/8/18

Parent who have form the habit of insulting their children or using bad words on their children should caution themselves because those bad words affects them in the future. According to “Gilissen and others, 2008”, parents of fearful children should take special care to foster a secure attachment. It is easier to build strong children than to repair broken ones.

Challenges and Opportunities of Community Engaged Teaching

By Atianashie miracle, CFT Assistant Director

For experienced and inexperienced educators alike, community engaged teaching can present unique and sometimes difficult challenges for which many are not equipped.  However, when these challenges are met and overcome, community engaged teaching allows students, faculty, and communities to experience profound growth.

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• Time commitment
• Ensuring positive community impact
• Ensuring Student Learning

Time Commitment

Of the many concerns that educators express about community engaged teaching and research, possibly the most frequent is that it takes a lot of precious time.  Indeed, it takes significant amounts of time to develop a productive working relationship with a community partner, to design projects that meet both learning and community goals, to manage the logistics of the projects as they unfold, to engage students in special skills training, and to reflect on the meaningfulness of projects with students.

Possible Solutions:

Centers for Teaching and Learning

Centers for teaching and learning offer many resources to assist you in efficiently planning community-based courses that have a high impact on students and the community.  Because each course and community project can be unique, the most useful service is usually a one-on-one consultation.  However, we also offer workshops on community engaged teaching and we host a working group on these pedagogies for experienced faculty.  Here at Vanderbilt’s Center for Teaching, the staff has extensive experience with every phase of course planning and thus can help to make your community-based teaching successful.  Please call the CFT or write Joe Bandy to schedule an appointment.

Public Service Offices

Rely on community service offices to bridge the gap between campus and community.  Your fellow educators and your institution’s public service centers can help you to develop meaningful partnerships more efficiently.  Indeed, peers in your department and the staff of organizations such as Vanderbilt’s Office of Active Citizenship and Service (OACS) or the Center for Nashville Studies may have established community partners and project ideas to suit a wide variety of learning objectives.  They therefore can help make the planning much easier and help establish a positive working relationship between you and your community partner.  They also may be able to assist with services such as campus vans or other logistical necessities that your course may require.

Community Partnership Databases

Increasingly, many educational institutions are developing online databases that faculty, students, and community organizations can use to register needs or ideas and develop partnerships.  At Vanderbilt, multiple sites may be of service as you identify possible community partners:

• Office of Active Citizenship and Service (OACS)
• Office of Community, Neighborhood, and Government Relations
• Community Research and Action (CRA) Program and its community engagement projects
• Institute for Clinical and Translational Research (VICTR) Research Match Program

Community Resources

Likewise, your local community or government may have organizations that facilitate civic action, from volunteerism to campus partnerships.  They are likely to know of a variety of community projects that might fit with your research or teaching interests.  Please see the Vanderbilt and Community Resources links below for more information.

Ensuring Positive Community Impact

What if your community-based project with students turns out to be of limited impact in the community?  For many educators this is a significant concern since we would like to have our community partnerships be mutually beneficial and because we want our students to feel effective in their work.

Possible Solutions:

Assessing Community Need

To ensure a project has significant impact for a community, it is important to address a community’s most urgent needs.  Therefore it is important to rely upon well-respected community leaders and organizations for an assessment of its needs and for greater background on the issues the community faces.  This should be supplemented with academic or government research that may be available about the community.  From these needs assessments, community goals should become clearer, which in turn will allow project ideas to emerge more easily.  Again, public service offices or experienced faculty may have done this work already, so please rely upon them.

Building Trust

In many campus-community, or “town-gown,” relationships there are histories of miscommunication, neglect, distrust, and even conflict.  It is helpful to be aware of these histories and the dilemmas they pose for new campus-community partnerships as you enter into dialogue with community members.  Even when there are not histories of conflict, there can be an absence of communication that may cause each side to suffer misunderstandings about the other.  Open, supportive communications are therefore essential to fostering mutually beneficial partnerships.  Also helpful are public conferences, guest lectures, community talks, campus or community tours, and other exchanges that serve to build understanding and trust.  Lastly, it is important to rely upon those bridge-builders between your campus and the community, whether they are community members with ties to the campus or staff and faculty who have been active locally.

Creative and Flexible Project Design

When designing a project with a community partner it is important to balance both community engagement and student learning goals equitably.  This might involve some creativity and flexibility on both sides.  Educators need to be flexible in adapting the learning goals of a course to the practical needs of a community partner.  Likewise, community partners may need to be flexible in choosing projects that will provide meaningful learning experiences for students.  Open and supportive communication, mutual understanding, and trust are invaluable in this process.

Setting Realistic Project Goals

In defining a mutually beneficial project, it is important to set learning and community goals that are manageable for your students within the time frame of your course.  Further, it is important to communicate these goals clearly to your students and ensure they have a clear sense of what will be expected of them at every step in the course.

Managing Community Expectations

Community partners can be excited to have students working with them on new and valued projects, and they may have high hopes about what they can accomplish.  While this enthusiasm is important for developing a good partnership, it is important to ensure your partner knows exactly what capacities your students do and do not have, and to set realistic expectations for project goals.

Ensuring Continuity

Community needs often exceed the limitations of one project and the semester time frame in which most educators teach.  Therefore, it is helpful for the community and educators to develop lasting partnerships.  Not only do lasting partnerships yield multiple projects over time that can result in a cumulative impact on the community, but they also allow for the trust and mutual understanding that ease future project planning and success.   If these partnerships can be established between the community and entire departments, programs, or institutions, community needs can be addressed across multiple educators and courses over time.  This ensures even greater community impact and partnerships that are less vulnerable to the career shifts of individual faculty.

Adhering to IRB Guidelines

If your project involves student research with human subjects from the community, it is imperative to have all members of the research project adhere to Vanderbilt University’s Human Research Protection Program policies and procedures.  These ensure respect and just treatment for community members and may provided useful teaching moments with students about ethical dimensions of community research.

Assessing Impacts

As in any form of instruction, it is imperative to evaluate community-based teaching and its impact.  While educators typically gather student ratings of a course, there often is no such mechanism for community partner evaluation.  Community partner evaluations can be done in the midst of a project for the purposes of implementing any mid-course corrections, but they also should be done once the project is finished to determine its final impact.  This can be in the form of a final written evaluation that an educator asks them to submit, one with specific questions regarding every phase of the project – from the usefulness of project design, to student conduct, to the helpfulness of the final results.  If there is more than one partner and they have online access, using an online survey service such as Survey Monkey can ensure greater anonymity and openness.

Additional Resources

• Learn and Serve’s “Building Higher Education Community Development Corporation Partnerships“

Ensuring Student Learning

Another common worry is that students will not be prepared well enough to complete a community-based project successfully and that this will limit the learning experience as well as fail in helping their community partner.  While failure can happen in any teaching setting, the obligations educators and students may feel to community partners can make that prospect more worrisome.  It is therefore important to ensure students have all the preparation necessary to succeed in their projects and to benefit from the learning experience that community engagement provides.

Possible Solutions:

Content

For the greatest synergy between learning and service tasks, and for the greatest chance of project success, it is important to weave the project thoroughly into the content of the class.  It is therefore helpful to provide students with course content – readings, lectures, discussions – that develop their knowledge of community issues and their understanding of relevant theoretical perspectives.  When possible, it is helpful to have community partners suggest useful readings, provide a guest lecture, or participate in class dialogue.

Orientation to the Community Partner

Students may benefit from an orientation to the project and the community with their community partner, whether it is off campus or in a guest lecture.  This helps to provide students with an introduction to the community and the project goals, and better understand the synergies that exist between service and learning goals.  It also can help the students to make the community partner less abstract and enhance their sense of accountability to the project, serving as an important motivation for student performance throughout the course.

Skills Training

If students require skills training that will be helpful in the project – such as interviewing or film-making, just to name two – it is important to set aside time for this inside or outside of class.  In these trainings it may be helpful to rely upon colleagues or support staff who have the relevant skills.

Ethics Training

It is always crucial to ensure students do no harm to their partners or those they represent.  This may require special readings and discussions about potential ethical problems associated with your project and how students should avoid them.  When possible, it is useful to have community partners participate in these discussions to help sensitize and inform students, and to enhance mutual trust.

Logistical Support

Students may have the motivation and knowledge to complete a successful project, but if logistical difficulties such as scheduling, IRB processes, transportation, or communications mount, success is less likely.  Therefore it is important to provide students with the resources they need and that they are using them effectively.

Assignments

To ensure students are progressing towards the project’s learning and service goals, it is important to assign relevant readings and assess their progress through tests, reports, oral presentations, or other assignments.  If the project is substantial, it is helpful to assign its component pieces throughout the course so that students gradually build towards the final result with important comments and corrections along the way.

What if Projects Don’t Succeed?

What if students cannot complete the project successfully and thus fail their community partner?  If one has designed the project with realistic expectations, adequate student preparation, open communications with the community partner, and a thorough work schedule, it is unlikely that students will have nothing meaningful to share with the partner.  Indeed, because students and faculty feel accountable to the community partner, it is rare to see community-based projects yield no results whatsoever.

What is more likely is one of two scenarios:

1. Students and community partners may encounter unforeseen obstacles that limit the project outcome in some way.
2. The project’s results, especially those projects that involve original research, are not what the students or the partner expected.

In either of these cases it is important to see these as teaching moments, both for students and for the community partner.  Research or service projects conducted in the context of real world constraints may indeed surface unforeseen issues that can be the subject of intensive reflection and critical analysis.  When students have the opportunity to problem solve collaboratively to address these issues, they may learn even more about the complexities of real world contexts beyond abstract course content as well as valuable leadership skills of adaptation.  However, for these moments to have the greatest educational and community impact, educators need to have the courage to teach in the context of real world complexities and challenges.