Srikumar Rao's Blog, page 30
November 30, 2018
Native American Wisdom: A Tale of A Dog & A Wolf – Which Do You Feed?
This is a simple exercise that will improve your life and the world.
There are many versions of the story I am about to tell you but I like this one. It comes from the Native American tradition.
A young lad was about to take his place among the adults of the tribe and the final step was an interview with the medicine man.
“Here is a dog,” said the medicine man. “It is intelligent, loving, kind and trustworthy.”
“And here is a wolf – malevolent, vicious and ready to kill,” he continued. “The dog and the wolf are fighting and they are both inside you.”
“Which one will win?” asked the lad anxiously.
“Whichever one you feed,” said the medicine man gravely.
It is an instructive parable.
Inside each of us are “Let’s help each other and make the world a better place” impulses.
We also have “Let me grab whatever I can for myself and the Devil take the hindmost” impulses.
And the two are at war with each other.
It is your job to identify and feed the dog in you. It is also your job to identify and selectively feed the dog in every person you meet.
Magic happens in your life when the dog in you becomes friends with the dog in the other person.
It also happens in the world.
We constantly feed the wolf in us and those we meet without even recognizing that we are doing so.
Say you meet a friend who is depressed at the state of the world and he rails against feckless politicians, crooked businesspersons and the increasing divisions in society.
You commiserate with him and launch your diatribe against environmental despoliation, corrupt legislators and ineffective government.
You part feeling warm about the camaraderie but oblivious that you have fed the wolf in both yourself and your friend.
If, instead, you had said “I entirely agree with you. But is there any sign that things are moving toward greater amity and cooperation? And is there anything we can do to foster movement in that direction?” – you would have started feeding the dog.
So, in every interaction you have – with friends, spouses, children, colleagues, business associates – ask yourself, “Am I feeding the dog or am I feeding the wolf?”
Are you bringing out the best in the person you are speaking to and leaving him energized with possibility and determined to do the same to others? Or are you leaving her more desolate and feeling down?
If you consciously practice this, your life becomes richer and so does that of persons in your circle.
Try it. Start today!
Peace!
The post Native American Wisdom: A Tale of A Dog & A Wolf – Which Do You Feed? appeared first on The Rao Institute.
November 15, 2018
Part 4: CUTV News Radio spotlights Dr. Srikumar Rao of The Rao Institute
CUTV spotlights Dr. Srikumar Rao of The Rao Institute. Tune in to listen to the conversation here.
Commack, NY – Dr. Srikumar Rao is an executive coach, motivational speaker and founder of the Rao Institute. Dr. Rao has helped thousands of executives, professionals, and entrepreneurs all over the world achieve quantum leaps in effectiveness, resiliency and overall happiness through his Creativity and Personal Mastery program.
“We believe we live in the real world, but we don’t,” explains Dr. Rao. “We live in a real world, not the real world. The world we live in is a world that we have constructed through our mental models. If you’re living in the real world and you don’t like it, you have to grin and bear it, but if you’re living in a real world you’ve constructed, and you don’t like it, there’s hope. You can deconstruct the parts of it you don’t like and build it up again. My program teaches you how to do this.”
“This has everything to do with our relationship to ourselves,” says Dr. Rao. “You’re unique, you’re you, there’s never going to be another person like you.”
Dr. Rao is the author of Are You Ready to Succeed: Unconventional Strategies for Achieving Personal Mastery in Business and Life (2006).
“My job is to make the transmission of this information as clear and powerful as I can and get my self out of the way,” says Dr. Rao. “I am proud of being a good instrument.”
Dr. Rao also has a special gift for everyone who listens to this show. For more information, visit https://theraoinstitute.com/cutv/
The post Part 4: CUTV News Radio spotlights Dr. Srikumar Rao of The Rao Institute appeared first on The Rao Institute.
November 8, 2018
Part 3: CUTV News Radio spotlights Dr. Srikumar Rao of The Rao Institute
CUTV spotlights Dr. Srikumar Rao of The Rao Institute. Tune in to listen to the conversation here.
Commack, NY – Dr. Srikumar Rao is an executive coach, motivational speaker and founder of the Rao Institute. Dr. Rao has helped thousands of executives, professionals, and entrepreneurs all over the world achieve quantum leaps in effectiveness, resiliency and overall happiness through his Creativity and Personal Mastery program.
“We believe we live in the real world, but we don’t,” explains Dr. Rao. “We live in a real world, not the real world. The world we live in is a world that we have constructed through our mental models. If you’re living in the real world and you don’t like it, you have to grin and bear it, but if you’re living in a real world you’ve constructed, and you don’t like it, there’s hope. You can deconstruct the parts of it you don’t like and build it up again. My program teaches you how to do this.”
“This has everything to do with our relationship to ourselves,” says Dr. Rao. “You’re unique, you’re you, there’s never going to be another person like you.”
Dr. Rao is the author of Are You Ready to Succeed: Unconventional Strategies for Achieving Personal Mastery in Business and Life (2006).
“My job is to make the transmission of this information as clear and powerful as I can and get my self out of the way,” says Dr. Rao. “I am proud of being a good instrument.”
Dr. Rao also has a special gift for everyone who listens to this show. For more information, visit https://theraoinstitute.com/cutv/
The post Part 3: CUTV News Radio spotlights Dr. Srikumar Rao of The Rao Institute appeared first on The Rao Institute.
October 25, 2018
Part 2: CUTV News Radio spotlights Dr. Srikumar Rao of The Rao Institute
CUTV spotlights Dr. Srikumar Rao of The Rao Institute. Tune in to listen to the conversation here.
Commack, NY – Dr. Srikumar Rao is an executive coach, motivational speaker and founder of the Rao Institute. Dr. Rao has helped thousands of executives, professionals, and entrepreneurs all over the world achieve quantum leaps in effectiveness, resiliency and overall happiness through his Creativity and Personal Mastery program.
“We believe we live in the real world, but we don’t,” explains Dr. Rao. “We live in a real world, not the real world. The world we live in is a world that we have constructed through our mental models. If you’re living in the real world and you don’t like it, you have to grin and bear it, but if you’re living in a real world you’ve constructed, and you don’t like it, there’s hope. You can deconstruct the parts of it you don’t like and build it up again. My program teaches you how to do this.”
“This has everything to do with our relationship to ourselves,” says Dr. Rao. “You’re unique, you’re you, there’s never going to be another person like you.”
Dr. Rao is the author of Are You Ready to Succeed: Unconventional Strategies for Achieving Personal Mastery in Business and Life (2006).
“My job is to make the transmission of this information as clear and powerful as I can and get my self out of the way,” says Dr. Rao. “I am proud of being a good instrument.”
Dr. Rao also has a special gift for everyone who listens to this show. For more information, visit https://theraoinstitute.com/cutv/
The post Part 2: CUTV News Radio spotlights Dr. Srikumar Rao of The Rao Institute appeared first on The Rao Institute.
October 18, 2018
How You Can Promote Healing and Live in Peace
A participant in one of my programs confided that she no longer spoke to her brother. They were on bitterly opposite sides of the recent US Supreme Court nomination battle over Judge Kavanaugh.
She was not the only one. There have been many others and some battles have pitted even closer persons against each other and become more rancorous.
The nation is torn. The world is divided.
And the chasm is widening, and vitriol is increasing.
How did we get this way?
There are many factors but here is a really important one that we don’t consider.
Back in the early seventies, when I was a doctoral candidate at Columbia Business School, the Morningside Heights area was not very safe. Several of my classmates were mugged. One was hit on the head with an iron rod and I saw her still bloody wound when she came to school.
That was the time the original Death Wish came to the screen and it was an instant box office hit.
I saw it and enjoyed it hugely. I cheered lustily many times as the protagonist went about his mission with deadly accuracy.
For those not familiar with the 1974 movie, it was about a mild-mannered architect whose wife and daughter were assaulted in a robbery. The wife died. The daughter had to be institutionalized.
There were plot twists, but the architect takes to the streets with a gun and shoots various criminals. Some he catches in the act. Some he entices to attack him.
It felt good to see those crappy, crummy, sleaze bags get their due with no delay. That movie transformed Charles Bronson from a well-known actor to a super star and is his defining role.
I watched Death Wish again recently but had a different take on it this time around. Movies like it are a HUGE part of the problem.
There are thousands of movies – Payback, Kill Bill, Revenge, etc. – with the theme of a valiant hero(ine) demolishing the evil-doers.
Mega popular TV serials – Homeland, 24, Fauda, etc. – have the same story line.
They are entertaining, so we watch them and are enthralled by them.
We don’t pause to think that they are also conveying a message that is getting more and more deeply embedded in our psyches.
These are:
1) There is a duality. There are ‘good guys’ and ‘bad guys’ and we identify with the former.
2) The ‘bad guys’ are truly evil and we need to stamp them out by any means. Violence is not just acceptable – it is highly desirable.
3) Persons not ready to engage in such fighting are ‘wimps’ who frustrate us ‘good guys’.
4) Anger is good. Revenge is sweet. We must persist till we annihilate those dastardly rascals.
There is not a lot of nuance and the world is black and white. This makes it simple to spot our ‘enemies’ and easy to figure out what to do with them.
Constant bombardment with such ideas means that we start seeing the world in this manner. Virtual Reality and massive multiplayer games blur the distinction between real and entertainment.
We see the world a tussle between ‘us’ and ‘them’ and we root for our side and are ready to do anything to win.
Unfortunately, the ‘real world’ is morally ambiguous and has a lot of grey with fringes of black and white.
But we cannot deal with this so we force-fit everyone into the boxes we create and deal with them as we have become conditioned to do.
We are not yet at the stage of rampant physical violence, but we sure have reached the stage of tempestuous emotional assault.
Sex, violence and extreme views expressed vociferously grab attention. And attention is the currency that enriches our new media giants Facebook, Twitter, and Google.
We may not be swayed by any individual story. We resist being ‘manipulated’ by a particular news account.
We don’t understand that we are being influenced at a much deeper level. That we see the world more and more as a contest between ‘them’ and ‘us’.
That it is OK to do dirty on them because ‘they’ started it.
And it goes downhill from there.
The tech companies mouth pious platitudes about cleaning up their act. But their business model is based on grabbing your attention, so they will not make any significant change.
And they will continue to bring up the right to ‘free speech’ to show that they are really being high-minded.
I don’t have the answer for what should – or can – be done societally.
But I do know what you can do.
Each time you watch a movie or read a book or engage in a heated discussion, you are going on a journey.
Ask yourself, “Is this a journey I want to take? Does it take me to a place that I want to spend time in? Do I feel more serene and full of love for my fellow human beings? Or am I more agitated and alienated from others?”
If you ask these questions seriously and sincerely, your life will change. The books you read, the movies you watch the conversations you have and people you have them with will all be different.
If enough persons do this, the world will also change.
As Gandhi said, “Be the change you want to see!”
Peace!
The post How You Can Promote Healing and Live in Peace appeared first on The Rao Institute.
October 17, 2018
Part 1: CUTV News Radio spotlights Dr. Srikumar Rao of The Rao Institute
CUTV spotlights Dr. Srikumar Rao of The Rao Institute. Tune in to listen to the conversation here.
Commack, NY – Dr. Srikumar Rao is an executive coach, motivational speaker and founder of the Rao Institute. Dr. Rao has helped thousands of executives, professionals, and entrepreneurs all over the world achieve quantum leaps in effectiveness, resiliency and overall happiness through his Creativity and Personal Mastery program.
“We believe we live in the real world, but we don’t,” explains Dr. Rao. “We live in a real world, not the real world. The world we live in is a world that we have constructed through our mental models. If you’re living in the real world and you don’t like it, you have to grin and bear it, but if you’re living in a real world you’ve constructed, and you don’t like it, there’s hope. You can deconstruct the parts of it you don’t like and build it up again. My program teaches you how to do this.”
“This has everything to do with our relationship to ourselves,” says Dr. Rao. “You’re unique, you’re you, there’s never going to be another person like you.”
Dr. Rao is the author of Are You Ready to Succeed: Unconventional Strategies for Achieving Personal Mastery in Business and Life (2006).
“My job is to make the transmission of this information as clear and powerful as I can and get my self out of the way,” says Dr. Rao. “I am proud of being a good instrument.”
Dr. Rao also has a special gift for everyone who listens to this show. For more information, visit https://theraoinstitute.com/cutv/
The post Part 1: CUTV News Radio spotlights Dr. Srikumar Rao of The Rao Institute appeared first on The Rao Institute.
September 5, 2018
Your Job Is To Bloom (Let Go Of Trying To Gather An Audience)
I saw My Fair Lady with family.
It is my all-time favorite play and we had fabulous seats.
Afterward we went back stage and I told Lauren Ambrose what a superb job she did as Eliza Doolittle and Ted Sperling how great the music was.
There was also some star-gazing involved. Mandy Patinkin was right behind me and I tried to avoid staring. But he also came back stage and we bumped into each other five times. The twinkle in his eyes said we should stop meeting like this so I told him – truthfully – that he was my favorite character in Homeland.
We had a lovely dinner after that so it was a magical day.
It also got me thinking.
A powerful moment in MFL is where Henry Higgins’ mother commiserates with a sobbing Eliza Doolittle. She is distraught because Higgins did not congratulate her after an exemplary performance at the royal ball when the crown prince himself took the first dance with her.
Eliza rebukes Higgins by comparing him to Col Pickering who treats a flower-girl as if she was a duchess. Higgins retorts that he treats a duchess as if she were a flower-girl and asserts that he treats everyone the same.
Eliza wanted to feel ‘special’ and be treated that way.
So do you. So do I. And so does everyone else.
The problem arises when we want this recognition and applause to come from a specific person. Or persons.
Every time our emotional wellbeing is affected by whether or not someone else acknowledges us, we construct a prison around ourselves and hand that person the key.
Why would you do that? Why would you ever want to do that?
We do it because we have never thought about it and because everyone around us is doing so.
Do you really want your happiness to be controlled by the spigot of other people’s attention and acclaim?
Your job, like a flower, is to bloom. Your fulfillment lies in that.
The rose that blossoms in the wild is not a whit less than the one that does so in a show garden.
Think about this. Think about how you are constantly basking in the acclaim of others and trying to obtain it and more of it.
You don’t need it.
And the best way to free yourself is to see, really see, how this quest is robbing you of your birthright – serenity and happiness.
Peace!
The post Your Job Is To Bloom (Let Go Of Trying To Gather An Audience) appeared first on The Rao Institute.
August 20, 2018
A Lesson From Laundry
I ran low on underwear a few days ago. And I ran clean out of the comfortable sweats and hoodies that I like to live in when at home.
So I did my laundry.
I don’t like doing laundry. Once upon a time I really hated it. Now I don’t, but it is not one of my favorite activities.
When I make my list of five activities that really energize me, doing laundry will not be one of them.
I did it because I had to and because I needed fresh clothes.
It felt good when I saw the empty hamper and realized that all my clothes were washed and folded and put away, ready for use.
But the hamper did not remain empty. There were dirty clothes in it this morning and I added the day’s quota to them.
Soon I will have to do my laundry again.
Our inner life is just like that.
Our mind is an incredibly fertile garden and our errant mental chatter contributes the weeds that choke it.
We are angry at others and ourselves. We covet wealth and fame and power. We are jealous and lustful. We are driven by ambition and riven with pain.
The human condition is messy.
We meditate and achieve clarity. We see clearly that we are pursuing ends that will complicate our lives and bring us sorrow in the end.
We root out those weeds.
But the weeds will come back.
The laundry hamper will fill up again.
Clothes don’t stay clean forever once you wash them. They will get dirty again. And again.
So you wash them again. And again.
The clarity that you achieve after a good meditation will leave you and you will revert to being an ego-driven automaton, jerked about by fick
le desires.
Doing the laundry is not a one time action. Achieving clarity of purpose and serenity in life is not a once-and-you-are-done proposition.
So keep meditating, keep reflecting and, above all, seek out aids to keep your conscious mind on your spiritual quest.
These aids might include like-minded friends, books, audio and video material, retreats, smart phone apps and much else.
Make all this a permanent part of your life.
Like laundry.
Peace!
The post A Lesson From Laundry appeared first on The Rao Institute.
January 31, 2018
Ambition is Bad For You!
I heard of Horatio Alger long before I came to America. My father gave me a book titled ‘Lives of Poor Boys Who Become Famous’ and one of his friends commented that they were real Horatio Alger stories.
Later, I read many Horatio Alger stories. One of them – In a New World – is still on my shelf.
The stories are mostly about teenage boys who, born into poverty but nevertheless made it to fame and fortune by dint of hard work, luck, and driving ambition.
I have heard many a business leader say they look for ambitious youngsters and many a politician who cites lack of ambition as the reason the destitute remain so.
What about you?
Are you ambitious? Do you regard ambition as an admirable virtue? Do you wish you had more?
Most importantly, do you wish you were like some person who had tremendous ambition and reached some high position?
This is the fool’s journey that our society sends us on.
The dictionary definition of ambition is “an earnest desire for some type of achievement or distinction as power, honor, fame or wealth and the willingness to strive for its attainment”.
And there is the nub.
When you are ambitious, you live for the future and in a future that may or may not come.
And even if it does come, it is not what you expected and will never give you the joy and peace and well-being that you think it will.
Abd-ar-Rahman III, the Caliph of Cordoba, in the days when it was a flourishing city with dozens of libraries while London and Paris were both overgrown hovels ruminated thus:
“I have now reigned above fifty years in victory or peace; beloved by my subjects, dreaded by my enemies, and respected by my allies. Riches and honours, power and pleasure, have waited on my call, nor does any earthly blessing appear to have been wanting to my felicity. In this situation, I have diligently numbered the days of pure and genuine happiness which have fallen to my lot: they amount to Fourteen: – O man! place not thy confidence in this present world!”
I frequently get pushback when I advocate giving up ambition.
“Why should I get up in the morning if I don’t have ambition? How will anything change in the world, how will any improvement happen if not for ambitious persons who make things happen and will not rest till they achieve their goals?” they say.
Before I answer this, spend a moment in reflection.
Ambition, by definition, makes you unhappy with your lot. It sows the seed of despair and, with it, the notion that ‘tomorrow will be better if I get whatever my ambition leads me to desire.’
Pay heed to the words of Abd-ar-Rahman.
Tomorrow will not be better. Nor the day after. And this has nothing to do with the toys you acquire or the power you wrest. It is just the nature of desire and the way it is whipped into unrest by your monkey mind.
Gain comes from the effort you put into attaining it.
Have a grand vision and work towards it because that is your path in life. It is not ambition because you fully recognize that your reward does not lie in achieving whatever you set out to do.
Your gain comes from the effort you put into attaining it. That is what produces the change in you that is a true blessing.
Accept that it is wonderful if you achieve your goal, but no problem if you do not. On this road, you will always win.
Think about it.
One final note. You may agree with what I have just said, but you will not be able to give up ambition.
Ambition has to give you up.
If this does not make sense to you, be patient. I will elaborate on it in a future post.
Peace!
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January 24, 2018
CPM Alumni Testimonial Video
Learn More About CPM
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