Book SummaryThe Code of the Extraordinary Mind, by Vishen Lakhiani

1-Page Summary1-Page Book Summary of The Code of the Extraordinary Mind

Many of us are unknowingly trapped by inherited beliefs, societal expectations, and unquestioned rules that limit our potential. In The Code of the Extraordinary Mind, entrepreneur and self-help expert Vishen Lakhiani provides guidelines to help you escape from those psychological and cultural restraints to actively recreate your worldview and lifestyle. Ultimately, Lakhiani seeks to empower you to live a happy, purposeful life—and to decide for yourself what such a life looks like for you.

Lakhiani is an author and motivational speaker, as well as a cofounder of Mindvalley, an online education platform that helps people achieve their personal and spiritual development goals. He earned a bachelor’s degree in engineering from the University of Michigan and...

The Code of the Extraordinary Mind Summary Examining Your Past to Change Your Future

Lakhiani’s first step toward building the life that’s best for you is to free yourself from the societal and personal baggage that’s holding you back.

We’ll start this section by discussing how your culture may have influenced your beliefs and expectations about life, and the importance of letting go of those assumptions. We’ll then go over Lakhiani’s process for questioning the rules you live by, so you can get rid of the rules that don’t hold up to scrutiny.

Looking Beyond Your Upbringing

The first step toward creating your ideal life is to recognize that many of your beliefs aren’t based on objective, universal truths. Lakhiani explains that your understanding of the world has been fundamentally shaped by your culture and upbringing: the social practices, beliefs (religious or otherwise), and even the language that you inherited just by growing up when and where you did. For instance, in gendered languages like Spanish (which uses the masculine “el” and feminine “la” as opposed to English’s neutral “the”) speakers tend to apply masculine or feminine qualities to objects accordingly. This is just one of the countless ways that cultural influences shape people’s...

The Code of the Extraordinary Mind Summary Committing to Lifelong Personal Growth

Once you’ve deconstructed your limiting beliefs, you’re ready to begin rebuilding your mindset and worldview in ways that better serve your happiness.

In this section we’ll discuss how you can continuously improve your mindset and the benefits of doing so. We’ll then explore what Lakhiani believes is the ideal mindset, a balance between being happy with the present and being excited about the future.

Updating Your Mind

Lakhiani—who, if you’ll recall, started his career in Silicon Valley—says the human mind works a lot like a computer. As such, you need regular updates in order to stay current and optimize your mental performance. He therefore proposes a continuous, lifelong process of personal development focused on two areas: your mental hardware (beliefs) and mental software (habits).

(Shortform note: Many people before Lakhiani have described the brain as a computer, although they usually mean it more literally. In Determined, neuroscientist Robert Sapolsky says that everything we do is the result of our brains taking in countless pieces of information, processing that input, and [calculating a...

The Code of the Extraordinary Mind Summary Balancing Present Contentment With Future Anticipation

As you continue to update your beliefs and habits, Lakhiani promises you’ll move closer to an ideal state of being: one where you’re happy in the present moment and yet excited about the future.

This is a difficult balance to strike, and the author says that finding it requires moving away from the traditional idea that your happiness comes from achieving major life goals. Instead, create a bold and exciting vision of your future, but recognize that you can be happy while working toward it. By separating your concept of happiness from your vision of the future, you can be content with your life as it is, yet still look forward to even better things to come.

For example, becoming a millionaire is a fairly common life goal, and people pursue it because they think wealth will make them happy. However, in the process, they often make themselves miserable by devoting their lives to jobs they hate, just because those jobs pay well. If such a person were to recognize that becoming a millionaire isn’t actually a prerequisite for being happy, they could find a job that suits them better (even if it pays less). By doing so, they could start to find contentment in the present,...

Shortform Exercise: Start Creating the Life You Want

Now that you’re familiar with Lakhiani’s system for improving your worldview, lifestyle, and state of being, think about some small ways you could start applying his principles to your life.

What’s one rule you grew up with that you’ve already questioned and discarded, as Lakhiani describes? This could be something as life-changing as what career you’re “supposed” to pursue, or as minor as what kind of foods are appropriate for breakfast.