Episode 279 | March 8, 2022

Spirituality and Entrepreneurship with Yanik Silver


A Personal Note From Orion

Spirituality and entrepreneurship are two words that you often do not see side by side. A lot of people think that spirituality and entrepreneurship are mutually exclusive. However, today’s guest discusses how spirituality can play a massive role in an entrepreneur’s successful life.

Yanik Silver has been called a Cosmic Catalyst, a Maverick Mischief-maker, and a Galactic Goofball. He redefines how business is played in the 21st century at the intersection of evolutionary growth, impact, and fun. Yanik is the creator of the Cosmic Journal, author of Evolved Enterprise, and the founder of Maverick1000, a global collective of visionary entrepreneurs making a serious difference in the world, without taking themselves too seriously. 

In this episode, Yanik talks about his spiritual journey and incorporating spirituality into his business. He also shares some tips on how to lead a fun and extraordinary life and deal with stressors in these crazy times. 

So without further ado, on with the show!

 

In this Episode

  • [00:55] – Orion introduces her next guest, Yanik Silver, who has been called a Cosmic Catalyst, a Maverick Mischief-maker and a Galactic Goofball.
  • [02:36] – Orion pulls a card and asks Yanik the meaning of activated ally.
  • [04:06] – Yanik communicated the reason for admiring certain characters, heroes, or mentors and Orion shares being connected to Wonder Woman and their similarities.
  • [06:02] – Yanik discusses the idea of the activated ally, where many people know about the shadow aspects that we try to keep hidden and project it into a hero.
  • [08:37] – Orion asks the origin story of deciding to have a card deck and becoming a mega-successful entrepreneur with an incredible spiritual side.
  • [12:34] – Orion asks about Yanik’s spiritual awakening and how he combines being a spiritual leader and entrepreneur while helping people with their business lives.
  • [14:27] – Yanik shares the meaning of multidimensional opportunity and success.
  • [16:51] – Orion wants to know more about the concept of fully expressing yourself regardless of any situation without trying to be a chameleon and fit in.
  • [20:03] – Yanik talks about his interest in puppets and introduces Max.
  • [23:30] – Yanik and Orion discuss the meaning of “We are made of star-stuff but born of the earth.” 
  • [26:06] – Orion inquires about the thoughts of Yanik about being multidimensional and asks him about experiencing astral projections or having visions beyond this realm.
  • [27:45] – Yanik states that knowing where we are in that story helps handle shifts, changes and external noises.
  • [30:38] – Orion asks the daily practices of Yanik and what the day in his life looks like.
  • [31:41] – Yanik narrates how he wrote his journal and how it came about.
  • [34:44] – Orion and Yanik discuss destiny and choice.
  • [38:12] – Yanik shares his three top tips for living a stellar life.
  • [39:08]Visit Yanik Silver’s website to know more about him and his group Maverick1000 for different successful and industry-leading entrepreneurs. Also, check out The Cosmic Journal and The Cosmic Journey Oracle Deck for a fun and magical experience.

Jump to Links and Resources

About Today’s Show

Hey, Yanik. Welcome to Stellar Life podcast. It’s a pleasure having you. Thank you so much for being here.

My pleasure. Thanks, Orion.

Before we start, I have this in my hand. I’m going to pull a card and you’re going to tell me what it means about this interview. We’ll take it from there.

All right, let’s take a deep breath together.

I’m holding your cards in my hand. Tell me when. Are you ready?

The Cosmic Journey Oracle by Yanik Silver

The Cosmic Journey Oracle When.

The activated ally. What does that mean?

The activated ally. There are 55 cards in that deck and 11 of them are these cosmic Q&As. What you would do—and people that are listening to this might want to do it as homework—is you would actually connect to your ally. Let’s see what the actual characteristics of the ally are, but I can tell you how to use the card. What number was that? It’s a Roman numeral.

Oh my God, I think I put it back on the deck. It’s the IX. How do you read that?

The attributes are hero, mentorship guide, and superpower.

Are you going to be my hero, mentorship guide, and superpower right now?

Yeah. We’re going to connect to that. There’s a reason you admire certain characters, heroes, or mentors. Those that you look up to actually represent a golden shadow. They reflect exactly who you are when you act from your highest self. Who are you most attracted to right now? You can call forth that ally—and it can be anyone who’s passed or alive, it doesn’t really matter—for the conversation so we can activate it now. Who’s a hero that you connect to?

Can it be a fictional character?

Yeah, absolutely. It could be fictional.

Wonder Woman.

Why do you connect to Wonder Woman?

Because Gal Gadot is just really like me, which was the coolest thing in the whole world. Back in my past life—in this lifetime—I wanted to be an actress. People told me that because of my accent, the only role I can get will be of a terrorist or something like that. I believed them and I gave my power away. 

My theme is a multidimensional opportunity to bloom where I'm planet(ed). Click To Tweet

Just looking at what she did in Hollywood and how she, with her accent, became the most iconic American superhero. Not only that, in the movie, I’m looking at the way she weaves into the quantum field and manifests her reality. Not only did she not need to work on her English, everybody on set had to learn her accent to match her.

Wow, I didn’t know that. I love that. She created her own reality.

Yes. When I look at the character saving the world, being strong, sexy, and wearing those cool boots, it sounds fun.

There’s actually an amazing history of Wonder Woman if you go back to the original creator of Wonder Woman. It’s worth researching. It’s pretty interesting.

The idea of this activated ally is that a lot of people know about shadow aspects of the things that we try to keep hidden and the things that we don’t present to the world, but our golden shadow is also an aspect of ourselves. We project it onto a hero, or in this case, the activated ally. It’s also ourselves at our highest expression of who we are. Everything that you just mentioned is all you. That’s all you in your highest aspect for sure. That’s all that.

The Cosmic Journal by Yanik Silver

What we do with these 11 cards is you would have a cosmic Q&A with that activated ally. If you’re right-handed, you would write questions using your dominant hand. For instance, what’s one of the attributes I can utilize for what’s next for me is one of the questions. What’s your best advice here? Which of your characteristics do you see in me? 

Whatever you want to do, you just bring up that ally. It’s even better if you meditate for a few minutes and bring forth that ally. You’d ask the question with your right hand or dominant hand, and then you answer with your left hand as that ally. You go back and forth and have an entire conversation.

I do that. Actually, I think this was the first episode on this podcast. We’re already at 260 or something like that. Many years ago, when I had my first episode, I had Bill Donius on. Do you know of him?

Yeah, Bill’s where I learned the original process from. He and I are friends.

I’ve been doing that ever since. It’s pretty amazing.

It’s super powerful. It unlocks this entire full-brain aspect of who we are. Bill doesn’t normally talk about this. I don’t know if he talked about it in the show, but he would use it to connect to his grandfather who passed on.

We talked about more minimal and more surface-level.

I don’t know if he does the back and forth. He learned this process from a child psychologist, Lucia Capacchione, who talks about inner child work. Bill uses it in innovation sessions for Fortune 500 executives. It’s really amazing and it’s super powerful, but you can do it in this very spiritual way too. You tap into anything, especially tuning in. There are all these archetypes. On the deck, there are 11 of them, but that ally is a great one. We’re going to use Wonder Woman as our ally to connect with her for our interview here.

If you want to do something extraordinary, do not do ordinary things. Click To Tweet

That’s pretty cool. When did you decide that you’re going to have a card deck and how did you even start it? Maybe you can give me a little bit of your origin story. You’re a mega-successful entrepreneur, you have this incredible spiritual side, and you have this super funny monster behind you. You are such an interesting person.

Sometimes, it depends. You have to ask my wife if I’m an interesting person, or my kids. They would say that I’m probably embarrassing, but who knows?

The origin story is a Russian immigrant family. We came over when I was three years old. My dad ended up starting a company about seven, eight months after he came to America, and then I ended up working for my dad—medical equipment sales and service. I got a super early start in marketing and sales. At 14, I was telemarketing. At 16, I got a car, but only if I went out and cold called. I was cold calling these doctors who were 50-year-old, 60-year-old, and 40-year-old. I realized that really sucked.

One of my doctors turned me on to direct response marketing. I was like, wow, this is amazing. I can write ads, people will actually pay attention, and I can just talk to interested doctors. Very early on, I used those skills and helped my dad’s business grow. I was always a weird kid. At probably 14 or 15, I was really deep into the pyramids, Stonehenge, UFOs, and all sorts of things. I always was intrigued by all that stuff.

We’re all made of stars but also born of the Earth.

You were ahead of your time.

Yeah, that’s right. I was a weirdo ahead of my time. I think just being an immigrant child makes you a little bit of a weirdo too. You don’t totally feel like you always fit in. I always would do things that were a little bit odd. 

I remember, even when my doctor client gave me these audiotapes about marketing. I played ice hockey. All my friends would be in my car. We’d be driving to places and they’d be like, what are all those tapes? I’m like, you guys won’t like them. I would just listen to self-development, personal growth tapes, and marketing tapes instead of listening to music. I always would go the opposite direction of most other people. 

I was finding someone, a guy named Earl Nightingale, who’s a mentor via audio. He wrote The Strangest Secret and Lead the Field. I don’t know how many times, but he really gave words to the things that I was feeling about. If you want to do something extraordinary, do not do the ordinary things.

There's a reason you admire certain characters, heroes, or mentors. Those that you look up to represent a golden shadow. They reflect exactly who you are when you act from your highest self. Click To Tweet

I got started in the online world and did really well there. People were like, how did you do that? Could you teach me? Then that turned into a whole other career. About 13, 14 years ago, I asked a really simple question, which is, am I happy? Would I be happy doing what I’m doing 10 years from now? Outside looking in, everything was great, but the real answer in my journal was no. I was like, all right, what do I really want to do? That was this deep exploration and coming back to the spiritual side when the normal stuff wasn’t quite working.

Sometimes, we get answers when we ask. It’s not the answers that we like to hear, but we have to listen. It’s the perfect answer for us.

Yeah. Sometimes, it’s that smaller voice. I call it a cosmic alarm clock. It’s a small, little subtle voice. We can either hit snooze and go back to bed or we can answer it. It’s usually a small voice, but it’ll get louder and louder a lot of times. It will bonk you on the head over and over again. The universe will keep doing something to get your attention.

The Universe will keep doing something to get your attention.

For some people, it’s health stuff. For some people, it’s financial. For some people, it’s relationship stuff. It all depends, but there’s something in there. You can answer it when it’s a small voice, or you can answer it when it’s a loud or ringing voice that literally slams you over the head. But regardless, you’re going to listen at some point.

When did you have that spiritual awakening? How do you combine being a spiritual leader, which is a cool one, and an intrapreneur and helping people with their business lives?

It’s a good question. I don’t know if I’d even consider myself a spiritual leader.

Maybe a mentor.

When I look at people that I really appreciate, they are in integrity. They do the work. I think about my kids. They’re not going to listen to me necessarily about here’s what you do to have a better life, but they will watch me. They’ll watch if I’m doing yoga. They’ll watch if I’m doing weird meditations or whatever. They’ll watch me journaling and reading. They also watch me sometimes on my phone just scrolling mindlessly. I’m not perfect there.

Entrepreneurship is a really interesting spiritual journey for most people and they might not even realize it.

A lot of it is, okay, how do I walk that talk of what it means to combine spirit with this reality of where we are right now? Entrepreneurship is a really interesting spiritual journey for most people and they might not even realize it.

Michael Singer, he has these books, The Untethered Soul and The Surrender Experiment. The Surrender Experiment was really great, where he inadvertently started a company and said that that was the greatest spiritual journey he’s ever been on because it forces you. So many things come up in entrepreneurship and in this path. I don’t think you can separate the spirit from entrepreneurship wherever you are.

What’s your New Year’s resolution?

I don’t do New Year’s resolutions.

If you just go deep inside for a second and connect, what—?

For solstice every year, I connect. I go off by myself for the day, typically, and I’ll set a theme or intention for the year. The year for me starts on solstice. I’m more interested in the natural patterns. This year, my theme is a multidimensional opportunity to bloom where I’m planet(ed).

What does it mean, multidimensional opportunity?

I don’t know. I’m going to see what it opens up, but to me, opportunity is one of my favorite things because when I look at where I’ve been successful, a lot of it and where I’ve helped people is providing them opportunity, especially economic opportunity.

When I first started online, I woke up with an idea at 3 AM for something called instant sales letters. I’m like, oh, I’m going to go create these little fill-in-the-blank sales letter templates. I had no technical skills, but I put it out there. Then all of a sudden, within a couple of months, it was doing six figures. People were like, how did you do that? Can you teach me?

The year for me starts on the solstice. I’m more interested in natural patterns.

I was teaching them this opportunity of taking their knowledge, information, and content and selling it online. That was an opportunity. I look at all the things that I’ve done, a lot of it has been opportunity with integrity or evolved opportunity and providing other people with unique ways of sharing that.

Multidimensional opportunity to me is—I don’t know. We’ll see. But it’s more than just this one very specific way of only counting success as dollars in the bank. For a long while, that hasn’t been the way that I’ve only counted success. That’s important as a measure of the value that you’re providing, but it’s only one measure.

So what is success to you?

Success to me—at the barest, foundational level—is doing what I want to do with people that I love and working on projects that I’m really intrigued by and love to do where it feels like play.

Last year, my intention was play(fully), profit(fully), and purpose(fully). Fully was always in parentheses, but that idea of play is such a big one. Not just play like, oh, we’re playing a game but fully expressing yourself to me is like play.

Tell me more about fully expressing yourself because I’ve been really curious about that concept lately. It’s been on my mind like, who am I? How do I really express myself? I’m an Aries and I’m really good at adapting to situations. I can be the proper lady at the table and I can be the crazy person that dances in the rave. I’m like, how do I express who I am regardless of any situation without trying to be a chameleon and fit in?

The Surrender Experiment by Michael A. Singer

Is there a time that you remember that you’re like, oh, this feels totally authentically who I am? I go back to when I was a kid, what are the things that I love to do and bring more of that out. As a kid, I was a weirdo, as I said. I’m into Stonehenge, the pyramids, UFOs, and all that stuff. I got in trouble for drawing all the time in class. I would also be the class clown. I was also friends with everyone but not deep friends with every single group. 

All those things have now continued to come out of us—I was also athletic. More and more when you express yourself, I think the purest expression is really in those years of maybe 9–15 approximately. You think back to what you really just love to do. Now, with a couple of more years on you, you have a new lens of what that looks like.

Originally, as a kid, I wanted to be a professional hockey player and a cartoonist in the offseason. You asked how those cards came about and so forth. I was not the best cartoonist. I was not the best hockey player. I didn’t make the NHL. But looking at it today, it’s funny how my drawings are coming back in my journal many years later, and then I realize that that was part of my full expression. I love that. It’s just fun.

It wasn’t done for anyone. It wasn’t done with an end purpose of, okay, well, this is going to make me money or this is going to be my next project. It was just done because I loved it. Almost every meeting, I have a doodle and draw, but then it turned into something when I created enough space to allow it to almost emerge by itself.

When I was a kid, I liked to climb trees. I wanted to be a zoologist. I wanted to be a singer. I loved dancing. Pretty much all the things that I love today. I love animals, dancing, and singing. I like performing.

Those loves and likes never go away. It’s just how we express them from a new, evolved way. When I talk to entrepreneurs who are incredible leaders, they are like, well, I don’t know what’s next for me or like you asked, how do you fully express yourself? I think it’s in those areas, making sure that there’s time for those activities—however they look like—giving it room to be like, oh, they’re just fun experiments, see what happens, and just play around with them.

Tell me more about the monster behind you because that’s not the typical background.

The Untethered Soul by Michael A. Singer

I love puppets because puppets can do and say anything. This is Max. He’s based on my dad so he has a Russian accent.

For those who are listening, you can watch it on YouTube as well. He’s holding a super cute green monster with a red nose and red ears. It’s really cute.

Max can just come on and say anything. I’m playing around with the idea of maybe a Zoom puppet show at some point or a brainstorming puppet show called Evil Schemes for Global Good. You would come on, you would tell me your business issue, and then Max would answer. He’d be like, okay, Orion, what do you want to know? Oh my goodness, this is a stupid idea. You love animals and dancing, that is a terrible business. He would probably talk to me as well.

This is really funny. Just holding the puppet, talking, and doing those crazy things without thinking about what other people will think about you, how do you do that? How do you navigate that? Now, you’re mega-famous and you’re a leader, but when you started, how did you navigate doing those silly things and not caring about what other people think of you?

I love entertaining myself. We ran pretty big internet digital marketing seminars for a while. My favorite part of it was just playing practical jokes on the speakers and people that we have. Gary Vaynerchuk or whatever, we’d have these big fog and things that would fly up at him. Someone else would be a little copter and a drone that came over and would say something. We paid a lot of money for set design. It was just fun. I just look at it like if you’re not having fun, it’s not really worth it. Why not have fun?

You can’t duplicate someone else, but you want to add in your element of whatever it is for you.

We’re talking about heroes and allies, right? One of my favorite business heroes and mentors is Richard Branson, but I can’t be another Richard Branson. His humor and the way he does things is not going to be the same as what I do when I’m authentic to myself. He’s engaged and he loves it. You can’t duplicate someone else, but you want to just add in your own element of whatever it is for you.

You might be like, oh my God, what are they going to think of me? I might not bring Max to a big pitch that I might have to do, but who knows? Maybe I will. Even the cards were a big jump for me and the journal because it’s all about cosmic energies, galactic energies, Starseeds, and all these things. That was very different from some of the other stuff I put out there, but at the end of the day, I felt like it’s the fullest expression of who I am. The purple one is really cool. That’s one of the special edition ones.

I got the special edition purple one.

That works like an oracle too. You can just pop it open.

Should we do it again? Let’s do it again, why not? It’s fun. “We are made of star stuff, but born of the earth.” Perfect for Stellar Life.

Yeah. Well, perfect for your name. Your name is right on target for that.

A lot of people go on spiritual journeys. If they get really sucked into those journeys, sometimes the ego gets involved. They get into this spiritual ego where it’s all like, I’m flying high. I’m like a tree that is touching the sky, but I don’t have roots. I’m not grounded.

I love what you’re doing here where you’re saying that we are both. We need to be grounded. We can’t just fly high and be out there. We need both. We need the nourishment from being grounded and from the earth. We need to also connect to our intuition and connect to our heart.

Business is the earth element of being on the ground and getting things done.

Yeah, absolutely. Business is a good way of doing that. Business is the earth element of being on the ground and getting things done.

One of my friends is a shaman. He’s like, entrepreneurs are the new shamans because you have one foot in and then one foot in this Earth space. I talked about connecting your head, which is your business side, connecting your heart, which is the impact you want to make in the world, and then your higher purpose. How do we align all of that together? It does have to be aligned.

I was talking to one of my friends. We were talking about this. I heard it from somewhere. I wish I could remember and give them credit. They’re saying that people that associate with the stars or anywhere like that—you said we’re all made of stars but also born of the Earth—the evolution is from the top down instead of the bottom up. Your third eye might be more developed or your crown chakra might be more developed, but it’s grounding.

That was the way for me. I never connected as much to the lower levels like that. All of this had been a process of just being like, yeah, you’re here for a reason. As I said, my intention, that multidimensional opportunity to bloom where I’m planet(ed). Planet(ed) is that representation. You’re planet(ed) here for a reason, not just planted but what is your industry or marketplace? Why have you been strategically planet(ed) in that particular spot? What does that look like? Allowing that to then bloom in that place as well.

What does being multidimensional mean to you? I know you’re like, I’m hoping it’s going to be a surprise, but have you ever had astral projection or tapped into places where you didn’t even imagine you can or some visions that are beyond this realm?

I had a lot of different visions that have come beyond this realm.

I haven’t done astral travel, but I’ve worked in different sacred ceremonies and so forth. I definitely had a lot of different visions that have come beyond this realm. I think that’s part of the multidimensional aspect.

I really believe we’re in this 26,000-year cycle of this great year. Actually, the last page of the journal talks about it. A lot of times, most people think of history as this very linear thing, but it’s really a cycle. It’s more like a cycle that goes like this and this. We’re in this ascending consciousness phase. The same way there are 12 hours approximately of daylight and 12 hours of darkness, then there are four seasons. They can extrapolate out these cycles, cycles, and cycles.

There’s a reason that many civilizations tracked tremendous numbers. The Mayans had 13 calendars and one of them was 5260 years. You multiply that by five and it corresponds to precession. That’s approximately this 26,000-year cycle. That’s where I think we’re in. That’s where the multidimensional aspect comes in. What is the bigger story? What is evolution asking us to do right now? What’s consciousness activating in us?

What do you do to handle outside stressors and situations? We are living in a time where it’s pretty crazy. If you asked me two years ago that this is what life’s going to look in many places, I would be like, what? This is just a crazy movie. How do you handle all the shifts, changes, and external noise?

One part is knowing where we are in that story. That really helps.

How does that help me to know where I am in that story? It’s an interesting idea, but what do I do to contribute or to interact with it?

What is evolution asking us to do right now? What’s consciousness activating in us?

It’s been a prophecy for a long time. We’re in this time that things have to really break down in order to create this new age. That was the Golden Age, Silver Age, Bronze Age, and Iron Age, and then it would come back up again. Knowing that it has to have these periods of darkness and then to come back up helps in knowing where we are in the story, but really, the everyday practices.

I’ve been meditating for seven, eight years. I never thought that I could meditate because as an entrepreneur, I have a million ideas a minute and I like experiments. Anything that you want to try that you know you’d like to try—it could be journaling, meditation, breathwork, no sugar, no alcohol, or anything. I’d like them as experiments. That way, it’s not like, oh, I’m forever saying I’m not going to do this. I’m going to add this. I say, okay, for 33 days, I’m going to try it, and then we’ll see.

The meditations definitely allowed me to say, okay, what’s the stimulus? What’s happening? How do I create more space between my reaction to it? Instead of just having that instantaneous reaction, everything’s crazy. Let’s see how I can essentially navigate my own nervous system, bring that calmness to myself, and then decide how I want to interact.

The other thing that I find is words. Even using the word like crazy, which is a normal word that a lot of us will use, brings up a lot of turmoil.

Right. I should know better. I should not all over myself. 

Entrepreneurs are the new shamans because you have one foot out and then one foot in this Earth space.

Exactly. The more we can bring that tension to our internal dialogue or our external dialogue, you can learn too much about someone by the words that they use and so forth. All that dictates how we show up in the world as well. Of course, you can get stuck in the guilt patterns, shame, and all those things as well because if you look at it, there are so many things that are hitting us from so many directions that it’s not easy to be centered. 

What’s your daily practice? What does a day in your life look like?

My day is a little bit different every day, but there are some non-negotiables for sure. Some mindfulness in the morning—it could be breathwork, meditation, and yoga as well. It might not be yoga every day.

Not turning on my phone first thing is a big one because I want to limit my internal inputs, what’s coming at me first. It’s definitely not getting on email or anything like that that I have to be reactive and respond to that. That’s for sure. Having some water is a super easy one. Then, from that spot where I’ve created my own space, I can come into my day.

Synchronicities, little symbols, signs, nudges, and all these things are moving us towards what is our destiny. Click To Tweet

At the end of the day, I love to journal. It’s like processing the day. Pretty much a daily journal habit is one of my favorite things. It’s been scientifically proven to make you happier because it’s expressive writing. It allows you to take whatever that’s happened. You create a story—a beginning, middle, and end—on the page. That makes you happier just by expressing that. 

How did you write your journal, the one that you published? How did that come about? How do you write something like that? Because it’s very insightful. It’s really deep.

As I said, I wanted to be a cartoonist. I saw this thing going around online. What I saw was a 100-day art challenge. I’m like, oh, that’s a long time. It intrigued me like when something calls you and you’re like, I’m a little scared of it, but it’s really interesting. Okay, I’m going to do 108 days. It’s more meaningful in different Wisdom Traditions. 

In my journal, I just wrote to myself. I travel around a lot. It would be difficult to do this. Am I willing to do it? I’m like, I don’t know. The byproducts, who knows what will happen from it? I just committed to that every single day no matter what. I love it when you make a commitment to yourself and you actually keep it. It actually proves that you can honor yourself, you trust yourself even more, and you grow from there. 

You don’t need to see the full path, just the next step.

It doesn’t have to be a 100-day or 108-day thing. It could be a 10-day experiment or whatever it is, but it just makes you stronger. I’ve decided to do it and it was my favorite part of the day. No matter where I was, and what it is, I would do that. Sometimes I’d go back to my old journals and pull out some things, but a lot of times, I was just meditating and then seeing what would come through me. I wouldn’t know.

There’s one that’s one of my favorites. It’s a labyrinth. On that labyrinth, it says, “You don’t need to see the full path, just the next step.” That was what it looked like. I spent all that time drawing the labyrinth and that was the only quote that I was going to write because you don’t need to see the full path, just the next step. Then intuitively, I’m like, let’s see what happens if I keep writing.

Literally, if you read it, it’s really fun because it goes along with the labyrinth. It says, “And then the next one will open to you. Each step moves you closer to your center even if you feel upside down and turned around.” At that point, you’re actually upside down and turned around inside the labyrinth. I kept going and it was really, really powerful. It’s just trusting myself to see what would happen.

For 108 days, I did that. Then, I shared it to a couple of friends. I was really excited. I started using it myself as an oracle and I shared it to my friend. He’s like, oh, this is amazing. He paid to get those purple editions (like you have) created and then I got a breakfast meeting with the head of Hay House, which is one of the biggest personal growth transformation publishers out there. Reid was like, I’ve never seen anything like this. 

They immediately got a contract. There’s a Hay House version too that’s available. That was the wildest editing because the editors are going through it. They’d be like, “well, we need a new word here. You need to put a different paragraph. We need a new image.” I literally would have to redraw or rewrite an entire page. It wasn’t a Microsoft Word document that I just updated because everything was handwritten. It was pretty interesting.

Success is doing what I want to do with people I love and working on projects that I'm intrigued by and love to do where it feels like play. Click To Tweet

That’s very cool. Do you believe that we have a destiny that is pre-written for us? Do we have a choice? Do you think that only parts of our lives are a choice and some are already a destiny?

I thought a lot about this in some way. I definitely believe that we’re in a free-will zone and that we have free will to decide what we want to do anytime, but so many times, it feels like there is a destiny and you keep coming back to it. I love synchronicities and different things that show up that are just incredible. I think that you’re continually being guided back to what is your true path or your dharma, but you always have a choice about what you want to do with it. 

I do think that there’s a predisposition and a destiny in a way, but you’re not like, oh, I’m destined to only do this one particular thing and no matter what I do or no matter what choice I’m going to make, I’m going to always end up with this book that I’m going to write or something that I was always predestined to do. There are probably a half dozen other books that I could have come up with, but I was drawn to that in some way. I think it’s a mixture in some way. 

Do you believe that you’re destined for greatness?

I ask people this a lot when I speak, especially to entrepreneurs. I’m like, “do you believe that you’re destined for greatness?” A lot of hands would raise up. I’m like, not in an egotistical way but in a way that you have all these resources, talents, and tools that you want to provide an even greater service to the world too. That’s where people get really excited about that destiny of greatness in that way. That you have all this potential to utilize it. You have the raw material and that becomes your destiny of greatness, essentially.

The reason it came to mind is because you showed the labyrinth. The way I saw it was like in a vision where it’s almost like some kind of a maze where you have choices and you can go in different directions, but some parts are non-negotiable. You have to hit those parts in your life or in your destiny, or maybe there are a few parts that you have a choice between part A or part B. But there are some things that we are meant to do or be or some people we are meant to see, and the rest is free choice but it is within this container.

I like that. To me, the synchronicities, little symbols, signs, nudges, and all these things are moving us towards what is our destiny.

I’ve been doing Dispenza meditations. You’re going to ask for a without a doubt sign. I’m like, I’m not getting the signs. I think the more I want to get the signs, I’m not getting the signs. When I let go, I’m like, oh my God, here’s a white feather.

If you’re not having fun, it’s not worth it.

Yeah. This is definitely around a lot of that attachment. We’ll foresee it to be the certain way that we think we want it to be, and when we let go of that, it shows up in magical fun ways.

I have so many questions, but I want to be respectful of your time. I’m going to keep playing with your cards and everything that you provided for me. Thank you. Before we say goodbye for now, what are your three top tips to living a stellar life? Where can people find you, join your mastermind, learn from you, and just hang out with you?

The three tips for a stellar life. One of them for sure is following your curiosity by continuing to see whatever piqued your curiosity and what feels like play for you. Curiosity and play, incorporating that. 

Then, figure out ways of being of service. For whatever reason, humans are really interestingly wired. The more we serve, the more it’s actually selfish for us in some way. Doing that is really, really powerful. Curiosity, playfulness, and serving.

Figure out ways of being of service.

They can check out The Cosmic Journal anywhere books are sold, Amazon or hayhouse.com. We also have the card deck, which is called The Cosmic Journey Oracle Deck. Both of those are pretty fun and pretty magical. I’ve had multiple people cry for picking the right page at the right times. That’s really fun. 

For the rest of my stuff, I blog occasionally at yaniksilver.com. We also have a group called Maverick1000, which is for different successful, industry-leading entrepreneurs, so a couple of different places.

Thank you so much, Yanik. This was so much fun. I’m so happy we got to do this. Thank you so much for taking your time. I know you’re super busy, so thank you for being here and sharing your wisdom with me and with us. Thank you so much.

My pleasure. Thanks, Orion. I’m looking forward to seeing what happens when you journal with Wonder Woman, with your activated ally.

Me too. Thank you, listeners. Remember to follow your curiosity, be playful, be of service, and have a stellar life. This is Orion, until next time.

Your Checklist of Actions to Take

{✓}Do mindfulness practices in the morning. They could be breathwork, meditation, and yoga. These can set a calm and productive tone before the day’s activities, and distractions begin.
{✓}Don’t turn on your phone first thing in the morning. When you check your phone right after waking up, you are priming your brain for distraction. Seeing or reading something negative first thing in the morning can trigger your stress response and put you on edge for the rest of the day.
{✓}Have a daily journal habit. Keeping a journal helps you create order when your world feels like it’s in chaos. You get to know yourself by revealing your most private fears, thoughts, and feelings. Look at your writing time as personal relaxation time. It’s a time when you can de-stress and wind down.
{✓}Express yourself fully. It can help you keep in touch with how you are feeling. It can also help you release a lot of tension that you might be carrying around. On the other hand, repressing yourself can cause considerable struggle and lasting mental and emotional pain. 
{✓}Always have fun with what you’re doing. Having fun helps balance your stress and feel-good hormones and prevents diseases long-term. It also helps to boost your creativity, energy, productivity, and overall cognition.
{✓}Commit yourself and keep to it. It’s essential to accept yourself and believe in your abilities to live your best life. It proves that you can honor and trust yourself.
{✓}Be curious. Curiosity makes your mind active. Curious people always ask questions and search for answers. Since the mind is like a muscle that becomes stronger through continual exercise, the mental exercise caused by curiosity makes your mind stronger.
{✓}Believe that you are destined for greatness. You’re capable of doing extraordinary things; it can be scary because of the uncertainty, but you need to push the boundaries to see the greener pasture of the other side.
{✓}Always be of service. Serving others is good for your mental health, emotional well-being, and self-esteem. In addition, the laws of the universe have shown time and time again that those who serve others are more successful themselves.
{✓}Check out The Cosmic Journal and The Cosmic Journey Oracle Deck – both are pretty fun and magical. Also, visit Yanik Silver’s website to know more about him, and check out Maverick1000, a group for different successful, industry-leading entrepreneurs.

Links and Resources

About Yanik Silver

Yanik Silver has been called a Cosmic Catalyst, a Maverick Mischief-maker and a Galactic Goofball. He redefines how business is played in the 21st century at the intersection of evolutionary growth, impact and fun. Yanik is the creator of the Cosmic Journal, author of Evolved Enterprise and the founder of Maverick1000, a global collective of visionary entrepreneurs making a serious difference in the world, without taking themselves too seriously. In fact, it’s not unusual to find him dressed as a lemur, a showgirl or even in matching mermaid tails with Sir Richard Branson.

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