Interview with Nik Halik – How a Simple Man Achieved Extraordinary Things

‘Start to think differently. The reason why the majority of people fail is that they all think the same.  One of the biggest secrets of life is, do the exact polar opposite of what everybody else is doing’  Nik Halik

I am very excited to present an interview I did with one of the most admirable people that I have met, Greek-Australian Nik Halik, an astronaut, best-selling author, global wealth strategist, successful entrepreneur, international speaker and high adrenaline adventurer.  

NIK HALIK IS THE FOUNDER AND CEO OF a number of companies including the FINANCIAL FREEDOM INSTITUTE, Money Masters Global, co-founder of The Intelligence Group of companies and the creator of the Thrillionares Organization.

He is a global wealth strategist, successful entrepreneur, international speaker, astronaut, high adrenalin adventurer and best-selling author. He became a multi-millionaire and amassed great wealth through savvy investments in property and the stock market in his late 20s. His group of companies has financially educated and life coached over 300,000 individuals globally and is creating millionaire clients across the globe.

Not only is Nik a successful entrepreneur, but he is also one of the world’s top adventurers. Among his various expeditions, he was one of the first explorers to dive down five miles and land on the bow of the Titanic. He has climbed the highest mountains in the world and was one of the privileged select explorers in the world to view the curvature of the earth from the edge of space.  He currently resides in Hollywood, California and amongst his private homes in the Greek Islands, Morocco and Australia.

Nik: It’s a great honor and thank you for inviting me on this call

Nik: Absolutely. First of all I was like the pharmaceutical poster boy. I had chronic allergies, I had asthma and I was medically  confined to my bedroom.  So for the very first 10 years of my life I was what you call ‘home-tutored’ and my parents gave me the encyclopedia Brittanica when I was about 8 years of age.

One thing I will never ever ever forget around 3.30 every day in the afternoon I would gaze out my bedroom window and watch all the kids walk home from school, riding their bicycles and their skateboards, playing soccer and football, so I guess my biggest obstacle was to dismantle the boundaries of my bedroom wall so that I can at least attempt to live a normal life, the life that existed outside my bedroom window. So I was heavily inspired to write down goals.

So what I did was, after reading the encyclopedia Britannica that became my map of the world, my map of my new territory of my life and my mindset, so reading the encyclopedia I was able to write down my top 10 goals that would really inspire me for the next 30-40 years.  And I did it as a way of incentivizing me to overcome my medical hurdles and obstacles and then define a strategy how to basically get better and at least live a normal life.  But one thing I didn’t realize about these particular ten goals that I wrote down was that effectively I drafted the screenplay of my life and the default programming that was involved in writing these goals and actually achieving them. Originally I wanted to live a very normal average life but as soon as I put pen to paper from ordinary it was kind of pulled to extraordinary and that was a great stimulus at the time.

Nik: Yes definitely. I wrote things like becoming a rock and roll star (giggles) to dive down and have lunch on the Titanic, to run with the bulls in Spain, to visit 100 countries in the world, to have exotic  homes around the world, to become an astronaut, to live in a space station, to walk on the moon, to climb the highest mountains of the world and this was an 8 year old. So 32 years later, 8 have been completed and I’ve got 2 remaining.

Nik: You know what the biggest thing was? I made a promise to an 8 year old and that 8 year old still resides in me, I am still accountable to that 8 year old who wrote down the top10 hit list. I am still accountable, I am responsible for my actions, and I don’t want to let that 8 year old down.

Nik: I know, it is far more profound wisdom in reversing the questioning and allowing life to question us, I mean look yourself in the mirror and just probe and ask yourself ‘Do you still respect who you are and what you have accomplished?’ Ask yourself that every day.I defined my passion a very long time ago and I think I was very definitive and I really discovered my ‘Why’. My ‘why’ is basically everything to me. I found my passion, I connected to my passion and also I clarified what my passion was in life. You know what? There are two most important days in our lives: The day we were born and the day we discover why we were born.  And as an 8 year old I discovered my real purpose and for the last 32 years of my life, I’ve just been maintain congruency regarding that purpose of my life.

Nik: Yeah absolutely, find what puts a smile on your face. And you got to guard every day against negative programming or negative frames or negative associations or influence.  We have to live with integrity, respect ourselves because in 30, 40, 50 years time we are going to stop breathing and we want to be able to respect ourselves.

Nik: Look, you can be a paradigm pioneer at any stage. I’ve got clients who are 95 years of age, who are doing the creasiest things in the world right now.  Never say no, you can reclaim your life, so long as you claim your purpose and so long as you remain accountable to yourself.

And for me the secret of happiness is simple: ‘Find out what you truly love to do and then direct ALL your energy towards it’.To me that’s what life’s all about.  Just raising your standards and adding value to your life. And I call this principle ‘Valuefacturing’ – add a value to your own life, add value to other people’s lives. So long as you are adding value to every aspect and component in your life – Valuefacturing.

Spoken words are going to evaporate but written words, they live impressions and as an eight year old, I wrote down those goals and for me that was the pinnacle thing in my life and I still have those goals and I abide by them every day because I am still accountable to that young child who wrote those goals down and that young child is still me, I’ve never outgrown the child.

Nik: It is very very important to write down goals, because you internalize the lessons, you internalize the discoveries and once you’ve really internalized them on a cellular level its just like an inner compass guiding you towards the destination and the completion of them. And I believe that’s how we really find the secret of happiness, because once we start to fulfill goals all of a sudden our intrinsic worth, the intrinsic value of our lives, the intrinsic value of our souls it starts to richen. And for me, I know for a fact that I wake up every morning with a reservoir of energy, an enthusiasm for life because there is so much out there that I am yet to discover and that I am yet to explore.

One thing I will never ever forget, my father was a very complex person, he was a communist, he was an atheist, but he was a philosopher, but at the same time too he always said to me ‘Niko, whatever you do in life, make dissatisfaction work for you because if you are satisfied you are going to be complacent, you are going to be comfortable being uncomfortable, so at all times make dissatisfaction work for you’. And at the time I didn’t really fully understand what he was referring to but as time went by that just really resonated with me because I understood that if you are comfortable in life you are really comfortable being uncomfortable and you fail to raise the bar. So I approached life from that perspective and my parents were a great influence, my mother was very religious woman, Christian Orthodox, very devoted, a wonderful mother and my father was the ‘bouzouksi’ , he left Greece in the 1950’s and discovered a Pacific Island called Australia and that’s where I was basically born.

Nik: I’ll tell you what it is.

I wasn’t born wealthy, my parents left Greece in the 1950’s and all they had was basically two suitcases and my father had his bouzouki. But a lot of us, we don’t set our internal thermostat, we keep it on the off position.

Nik: Definitely on an unconscious level. I defined my purpose very early on in life, so all I had to do from then on was to find a strategy in regards to how to accomplish my goals. When you really think about it, how many individuals out there in the world approach life on the same myopic angle, they lose their faculty of thinking, they no longer think. From a child I became my own life architect and I drafted a screenplay. And the thing is, if you draft a screenplay, irrespective of how old you are, that becomes your draft for the rest of your life and you internalize it.

And you know what I love to do these days? I love to emotionally inspire others. I also teach financial literacy too and I financially inspire but what puts a smile on my face is that I love to work with any person who is worthy of being a part of this journey and I wanna ignite the inner fire that lurks within them.

And the reality is, there is going to come a time in our lives when we no longer will be breathing, we are going to be fertilizing daffodils and what would you like to hear about your eulogy?  What would you like people to say about you? About your accomplishments, your life and your inspiration and how you inspired others. Would you be happy with what you were going to hear?  Would you beg for more time? An extra year on an extra five years or an extra ten years to prove yourself…And I think my biggest secret is, I approach each day as if it’s my last day on the planet.

Nik:  Start to think differently. The reason why the majority of people fail is that they all think the same.  One of the biggest secrets of life is, do the exact polar opposite of what everybody else is doing. And this is going to sound kind of crazy because of the uncertain economic times that we are all basically in right now I guess,  but I would say the best thing you got to, is to become unemployed.  And its very controversial I know….

Nik: Yeah, but that’s complacency, because what you are doing is, if you are looking for a stable job you wanna remain reliant to somebody who has to pay you. In other words you are going to disempowered yourself and put your palm out to get paid. All I am saying is that if you become unemployed all of a sudden, all of a sudden you are going to start to think differently and do things for yourself and devise an idea.