i recently had the opportunity to talk about my journey, consciousness, psychedelics, Bitcoin, conspiracies, inner development, spirituality and building the neoslife village (starting at 1h39). The youtube version can be found here.
if i could have you take one thing away from my story it is this: wherever you are at, whatever you are struggling with, whether you are full of questions or quite in bliss, you are exactly where you need to be. the most important thing is that you stop listening to others and start listening to yourself. trust yourself. trust your inner guidance. not your head that is constantly worrying but your heart, intuition, dreams and deeper yearning. that is the real you and that you wants to live a full life. and that you is willing to take risks to live the life you came here for. if this resonates, you have come to the right place. welcome to neoslife and thank you for being here.
in 2014, vincent was 36 years old, living in brazil and the co-founder of an ecommerce startup. i had left london and investment banking to reinvent myself. doing something more exciting by building a business in an emerging market. after two years of bootstrapping and tiny angel checks, we had just raised several millions from us investors. we could finally grow and bring our vision to life. as we moved from surviving to breathing again, we started fighting. two egos banging their heads against each other. in the course of the year, our relationship had become toxic. i subsequently left the company and moved to new york city. it was a nasty professional divorce.
early 2015, while i was planning to launch my next startup in the u.s., i was waking up every morning asking myself: why did we fight? why did i start a company? what makes me happy? what makes a fulfilling life? … i never started that next company and instead began travelling and exploring life. the question of what makes a happy life and why are we here would define a seven year journey leading up to the creation of neoslife.
during that journey, i took apart everything i came across by asking why? how does it work? and is that really true? it lead me down endless rabbit holes and the craziest experiences while travelling the world making me live on three continents and many countries. over time, the journey would move from external exploration to travelling the inner world - one that is infinitely deeper than the physical one, and, as i was finding out, is hiding all the answers within.
on my search for truth, yes, truth, i even thought of myself as a truth seeker, i explored far and wide: burning man, nomadic life, three coaching courses, vipassana (ten days of silent meditation), four tony robbins events, ayahuasca ceremonies on three continents, all kinds of mind altering substances aka psychedelics, two joe dispenza retreats, thousands of hours studying bitcoin and our financial system, hermetic and ancient wisdom, hundreds of hours being coached by many gifted individuals (i’m forever grateful for what you helped me see. your service is what brought neoslife to live), countless self-help and later spiritual books (i highly recommend this quick read), vortex healing, unified integrative medicine journey, sacred geometry, hundreds of hours with the gene keys, study of spiritual texts and the truths contained therein, going vegan and vegetarian (i’m now a flexitarian), denying myself for year-long periods: alcohol, sugar, sex, coffee, porn, any stimulants - really anything that i felt i might be dependent on, cold showers only, ice baths, getting into cooking and learning about food and nutrition, studying anything that sparked my interest, holotropic and other breath work, sound healings and working on my family dynamic (the last “boss”). as ram dass said:
if you think you’re enlightened, go spend a week with your family.
i’m missing many things but you get the idea. on this journey, i was so taken by what i discovered and that no one had told me about nor have i been taught it anywhere like at school or university, that i felt called to share it in various forms starting in 2016. when i look back at some of my early attempts, i cringe, yet this is how it is: everything is developmental. everyday we are the best version that we can be. and if we are committed to growing, we will be a better version tomorrow. here are my sharing in chronological order: this was my first video in august 2016. a lot more youtube followed as well as writing on medium. then i switched to instagram and most recently i started sharing on substack (this is so far my best stuff and has been setting the tone for the development of neoslife).
in the process, i also became a coach and was fortunate to be able to support some incredibly distinguished individuals on their journey as well as people that found themselves in very dark places. while i love working with high performing individuals as it is the most interesting and fun work, i believe my biggest service has been supporting individuals in their most difficult moments.
our darkest moments are our biggest growth opportunities. they really are gifts in disguise. neoslife would not be born if my co-founder would not have pushed me out of the business with malice and force. it was a needed growing pain. births are painful. they require the death of something old. my most defining moments in life where my darkest: the divorce of my parents, being mobbed out of my first job, being fired from my banking job, being pushed out from my first startup, being forced out from my second startup (see a pattern here? there was something that need to be learnt. until we learn what we come here to learn, we keep being served the same lesson with increasing volume. it’s all in service of us to grow) and making and loosing a fortune in very short time (read here). I had to “die” many times and every time was a gift because as painful as it was, it allowed me to shed some part of me that needed to go so that i could become more grown up, more evolved version of myself. this is really why we are here. not to be comfortable but to grow. and therefore everything is a gift.
as you can see, it’s been quite a journey. and while i was doing all of this for myself, it was really all in the service of ultimately birthing neoslife. all of the above was real life trial and error and experimentation to extract the gold, the wisdom from it. to see what works and what doesn’t and thereby to get closer to the truth. numerous explorations turned out to be dead ends and the only way to find out was to go down those paths and experience it myself. i now see clearly why i had to do all of this but many times i was doubting myself as i saw my peers rising up in the world creating unicorns and alike. as steve jobs said:
you can't connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards. so you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future. you have to trust in something - your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever. this approach has never let me down, and it has made all the difference in my life.
ultimately, all of it served the objective of making the journey easier for others. not easier as in less work, because you will always have to do the work yourself, but easier as in that you don’t have to figure out where and how to explore. that is the purpose of neoslife.
none of these experiences by themselves made me wiser (it is often confused that drinking e.g. ayahuasca in itself is enough) but they helped me to get to the bottom of things and showed me what i needed to learn, be and do to move forward. one step at a time. it was a long, exhausting and often difficult journey, more than once bringing me to the edge of insanity (read here). and it was meant to be exactly like that. i would not be who i am today if not for all the experience and all the seeking.
and without that, there would be no neoslife. it was conceived in november 2021 but it would not be until a year later that i would work on what you are now looking at. in october 2022, i concluded the seven year cycle of seeking with my most profound experience yet: where i had to surrender everything i own and thought i am. you can read about this life changing experience here. and that was when i realised what neoslife was really meant to be and i started dedicating 100% of my time, energy and life to its unfolding.
if you think it just took eight years of seeking and exploring and then neoslife was born, i wish. before neoslife, there were many iterations: consciousx, alkeme authentic intelligence, wbr - the well-being revolution, and a few more. and countless explorations teaming up with others to create something meaningful that failed. those were the necessary “failures”, the trial and errors that brought us exactly to today with neoslife. there are no overnight successes. it’s long hard work and at some point the baby is ready to come out. and that’s when something beautiful is born, after the gestation period is over, however long it takes.
go deeper: who’s vincent
you might enjoy this article on waking up from the matrix:
back to the beginning welcome to neoslife