Mani Vaya has been meditating for 20 years. He started in his teens because of what he describes as ‘a major failure’ in his life. Mani is a former Physicist and Electrical and Computer Engineer who went on to manage cell phone product launches which were sometimes billion dollar projects. He has since moved on and is now the host of the ‘2000Books' podcast, interviewing top business and self-help authors. Mani reads 7 business and personal development books a week and talks about all the great ideas he learns from these books on his Youtube channel and podcast which can all be found at 2000books.com.

Contact Info

• Website: www.2000books.com
• Youtube: 2000books
• Podcast: www.2000books.com
• Free Video Course: The most important ingredient of success: http://www.2000books.com/success

Most Influential Person

• Tony Robbins

Effect on Emotions

• My emotions are much more well-managed. They are not so up and down.

Thoughts on Breathing

• There are instances every few days where you can feel overwhelmed, frustrated or confused. A simple breathing technique that anyone can do is just, breathe in to the count of 5 and then breathe out to the count of 10 and that is a very powerful exercise because it gives control back to your parasympathetic nervous system; to your pre-frontal cortex and away from your limbic brain.

Suggested Resources

• Book: Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand
• App: Airplane Mode or Off on your device 🙂
• App: www.dhamma.org Learn to do a Vipassana Meditation taught by S. N. Goenka

Bullying Story

• I have always been scrawny. In college, I was the shortest kid. Thankfully, somehow I grew taller after that. I'm still skinny.
• Yeah, there was bullying in my college days and people made fun of me and people physically bullied me because I was the smallest kid. I did not use mindfulness to deal with this.
• I was resentful of the guys who treated me this way. I tried to avoid them and I kind of hated those guys.
• I don't think I was understanding enough at that point to be able to use any kind of mindfulness to deal with this. I chose not to dwell on this as I look back in my life.
• There are so many failures in my life, but I want to keep on programming the right story to myself.
• I feel like I bully myself sometimes because I realize this goal [a certain goal] didn't get accomplished. That's what I call self-compassion towards myself.
• There's a great book on this topic by Kristin Neff on self-compassion. Stop Beating Yourself Up and Leave Insecurity Behind by Kristin Neff.
• I feel like I have so much to accomplish that I don't have the time to reward myself [for small accomplishments]. I do go down to the beach here in San Diego and those are very rewarding moments.