Srikumar Rao's Blog, page 31

There is NO Meaning and NO Why!!

I have been making this compromise. So have you.

In the manifesto for my program, I state that you should enroll if you wish to discover ‘meaning’ in your life.

Lots of participants come to Creativity and Personal Mastery because they see I am passionate about what I do and want to discover similar passion in their lives.

I paint a vivid picture in the manifesto of how you wake up every morning brimming with good cheer and vibrantly alive. Of how your life is full of ‘meaning’ and ‘purpose’ and how enrolling in my program is a good first step towards getting there.

This is ‘true’ and countless individuals find that the spark has come back into their lives after they took my program.

Today, as we countdown to a new year, I would like to go deeper.

The very quest for ‘meaning’ is a delusion.

There is a belief that I can ‘find’ something or adopt an attitude or way of looking at something and thereby become energized and happy.

This is a false belief. And even the notion that there is an ‘I’ that needs to be happy and fulfilled is a delusion.

We bring our grasping, acquisitive minds to this quest and each time we reiterate our desire to find ‘meaning’ we implant in our mind that we are currently leading a ‘meaningless’ life.

I have been doing this for decades. So have you.

Life is. It has always been and will always be.

You DO NOT ‘discover’ meaning. It discovers you.

As long as you do something to get or be something else, you are trapped in the spider web of delusion and getting sucked deeper into the illusion of despair.

Thus, if you meditate to calm your mind and relieve tension, you are stuck. If you meditate because you would like to be enlightened, you are stuck.

The only way out is to meditate because you meditate.

Remember, the purpose of washing dishes is not to get them clean.

The purpose of washing dishes is to wash the dishes.

If you find this dense and difficult to get your arms across, I don’t blame you. After many decades I am just beginning to understand this.

But do play around with this idea as you would roll an oversize bit of candy in your mouth.

The candy will dissolve and become pleasurable.

And you will understand what I have just put down.

And it will make total sense.

I wish you a terrific 2018 in every way.

Peace!

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This Powerful Technique Will Make You the Master of All Situations

It may take you a few attempts to get the hang of it but then it will transform your life.

We are buffeted every day as we go about our life.

Our desires are not fulfilled, our expectations are not met, our best-laid plans unravel, and we feel as if we are wading through molasses.

We are stuck. Or we feel stuck.

Shanna rubbed her eyes blearily.

She had already hit the snooze button twice. Now she had to get out of bed.

Shanna was an associate with a top, white-shoe law firm. Her reviews were great. She was on track to make partner in three years.

She should have felt on top of the world. Few of her law school classmates were doing as well as her and two of her best friends had both been laid off. One had accepted a position at a tiny, three attorney, we-handle-any-legal-problem firm and the other was still looking.

But she felt awful. The partner she was working with, who was crucial to her rise, was making insistent passes. She had just broken up with her boyfriend. In her head, she had already married him and they were planning children. Her father was in the early stages of dementia and it was progressing much more rapidly than she expected.

And her car, her brand new BMW convertible, was constantly breaking down. Every warning light on the dashboard would light up and a peremptory voice would tell her to take it to the dealer right away. She had already been to the dealer twice.

In my programs, I stress that the mental models we use and the mental chatter we entertain are responsible for all of the feelings of overwhelm and anxiety we feel. If we make appropriate changes in them the problems simply vanish.

This is true.

But most of us need a lot of help to identify the errant mental models and the changes we need to make.

Here is a general-purpose solution to feeling stuck.

Think of it as a can of WD-40. You can use it to fix a wide range of problems from a squeaky sliding door to the stuck water valve.

Convert whatever situation you are facing, the one that you resent and is causing you stress, into a game.

You get to decide the rules.

The fun part of a game is playing it. Winning is nice, but not mandatory. The playing is what makes it enjoyable and enables you to grow.

This does require you to step outside yourself and view your life as a movie in which you are starring. And the script is constantly changing and you are writing it.

So, Shanna can watch her interaction with the partner dispassionately. Should she go to Human Resources? Send a stronger signal that she did not appreciate his advances? Should she let him know that she had mentioned some of his trespasses to others in the firm and was he a shrewd enough lawyer to recognize that they could someday be deposed to provide contemporary corroboration of charges of inappropriate conduct and sexual harassment?

Many avenues open up to Shanna once she adopts this line of thinking and being. She cannot reverse or slow her father’s dementia, but she can let him know how much he means to her and she can use the limited time they have together to have deeper conversations. She can bid him goodbye – in her head – and come to terms with the knowledge that his cage of flesh will soon disintegrate.

I get push back when I advocate this.

This is not a game, I am told. This is real life.

You cannot be casual about what is happening and what you do. There are consequences.

I hear you, but you are dead wrong. Life can be a game. In fact, it is only when you play it as a game that you can truly enjoy it.

And whether life is a game or not is a decision you make. It happens between your ears.

Games have consequences too. You accept them.

Ditto in life. If you let the doom and gloom envelope you because this is real, then you live in quiet desperation.

But if you are playing a game skillfully, and you accept the outcome of this game whose rules you have written, then life becomes a blast.

Think about what I have just proposed.

Don’t reject it. Try it out in your life.

The changes, and they will be for the better, will be profound.

Peace!

P.S. Early-bird tuition for our upcoming programs is coming to an end soon! If you think you’d like to join one of our programs please reach out to: janelle.light@theraoinstitute.com

The post This Powerful Technique Will Make You the Master of All Situations appeared first on The Rao Institute.

Help!! I Can’t Sleep!

What to do when you go to bed and all you do is toss and turn!

I just came back from London – one of my favorite cities – and delivered a talk at Warwick Business School while there. It was an engaged audience and an earnest woman asked me for help with a persistent problem. Many others indicated interest when she explained her situation.

And, in the hundreds of talks and workshops I have conducted all over the world, this topic has risen again and again. It is a universal problem and seems to be afflicting more and more people.

It is likely that you, too, have been afflicted by it at some time. Or you will be.

She was passing through a rough patch at work and thought she was in real danger of being pink-slipped. She said, “When I go to bed, I just can’t fall asleep. I’ve tried counting sheep. I’ve tried a glass of warm milk. I’ve tried vigorous exercise. They simply don’t work for me.”

We all know that getting an adequate amount of sleep is essential for good health and optimal mental functioning. ‘Adequate’ may vary with individual and age but at least seven hours is a good benchmark.

So why do we fall short?

Why do we toss and turn and fall into fitful slumber from which we emerge bleary-eyed and tired to power our way through yet another day with caffeine imparted by coffee or colas?

The reason is your mental chatter. That incessant stream of insistent thought that is always with you, that paints dark scenarios of the future and forces you to dwell there.

You spend enormous amounts of your emotional energy contemplating the two or three things that are wrong in your life.

More precisely, on the two or three things that you have arbitrarily decided are wrong with your life.

And you completely ignore the fifty to five hundred things that are pretty darn good about your life.

I point out to my audiences that they are incredibly privileged. They don’t have to wonder where their next meal will come from. They have beds to sleep in and roofs over their head.

When I point this out, they acknowledge that they are privileged.

YOU are privileged. In saner moments you also recognize this.

But you don’t feel privileged. You feel put upon and stressed out.

And this is because you let your mental chatter take you to your areas of disturbance in life and you expend your emotional energy there.

Starting tonight, try this:

Beginning five minutes before you go to bed consciously think of the many ways in which you are truly blessed and fortunate.

Experience the feeling of gratitude. Feel it arise from the soles of your feet and well up through your body and gush out through your face.

This is not just a ‘thinking’ exercise. You cannot just make a checklist and go through it. Food to eat, check. A roof over your head, check. Good health, check.

You have to actually feel the gratitude, not just think it.

It may take you some time to get the hang of it. Persist till you actually experience gratitude.

Then go to bed.

Your sleepless nights will come to an end. Many of my students report that they began the exercise but never finished it because they fell asleep.

I trust that this will also be your problem.

Peace!

P.S. Early-bird tuition for our upcoming programs is coming to an end soon! If you think you’d like to join one of our programs please reach out to: janelle.light@theraoinstitute.com

The post Help!! I Can’t Sleep! appeared first on The Rao Institute.

Hope is Good but There is Something Even Better

Today is All You Have, Make Full Use of it!!

Faith, Hope and Charity are celebrated in the Corinthians. We have been indoctrinated into the belief that ‘hope’ is a wonderful virtue to cultivate. There are tales galore of persons in severely adverse circumstances who survived because they had ‘hope.’ We support our close ones by admonishing them ‘not to lose hope.’ We define ‘losers’ in our society as persons who have ‘given up hope.’

I invite you to consider that this approach that has undoubtedly helped many may still be flawed.

Because built into the very fabric of ‘hope’ is the notion that it is ‘tomorrow’ that will be better.

We ignore today because it is too problematic and live in the expectation that tomorrow will solve all our problems. There will always be another tomorrow. That, in fact, is the stirring conclusion of Gone With the Wind.

Here is the catch:

When we fixate on what will come, or could come, tomorrow, we dismiss the present. Possibly we even denigrate it.

But today is all you have. It is all you will ever have.

When you are busy imagining the many ways in which the future will be ‘better’, you are ignoring the gift that the present has for you. And it is a munificent gift.

It is our mental chatter that leads us to conclude that our present is terrible and needs to be changed. It is that incessant voice in our head that insists we change our circumstances and drives us in our quest for ‘more’.

We want more money, bigger house, a better spouse, more accomplished children, more fame and power and prestige. More, more, always more.

And Hope is the hand-maiden of this urge feeding it with the notion of possibility.

It makes us unhappy in the present and teaches us to live for and in the future.

And we forget that we can only be joyful now!

I get great pushback when I speak about this in public forums. I am asked if I advocate not ‘planning for the future’ and to abandon striving to make oneself better.

Of course not.

You should strive to grow, materially and spiritually. In fact, it is your obligation to do so.

But do so with a sense of joy and gratitude. Do so with the knowledge that the planning for tomorrow happens today. That the actions you undertake to bring about that future are taken in the present.

So you enjoy each day and it is complete in and of itself.

Tomorrow will be the same when it arrives.

You don’t work and strive in the ‘hope’ that there will be a superior tomorrow.

You work and strive because the working and striving itself are providing you with the nourishment you need and contribute to your growth.

And tomorrow will turn out the way it turns out and you are fine with it.

Try living this way. You may be surprised at how light and cheerful you feel.

Peace!

The post Hope is Good but There is Something Even Better appeared first on The Rao Institute.

Why Positive Thinking is Bad for You

Positive Thinking is so firmly enshrined in our culture that knocking it is a little like attacking motherhood or apple pie. Many persons swear by positive thinking and quite a few have been helped by it. Nevertheless, it is not a very effective tool and can be downright harmful in some cases. There are much better ways to get the benefits that positive thinking allegedly provides.

Perhaps the statement that best exemplifies positive thinking is “When life hands you a lemon, make lemonade.” It seems so self-evident that this is a good thing that we never question the wisdom of the adage. But it does not take a whole lot of digging to unearth the flaws in this reasoning.

First, did fate really hand you a lemon or was this merely your initial, unthinking response? Second, is a lemon really a bad thing, something that you would rather not have, but now that you do have it you will somehow salvage something by making lemonade? Finally, it is quite stressful to be handed a lemon until such time as you figure out how to make lemonade. Do you really have to go through this phase?

No matter what happens to us in life we tend to think of it as “good” or “bad”. And most of us tend to use the “bad” label three to ten times as often as the “good” label. And when we say something is bad, the odds grow overwhelming that we will experience it as such. And that is when we need positive thinking. We have been given something bad, a real lemon, and we better scramble and make some lemonade out of it and salvage something out of this “bad” situation.

How tiring and tiresome!

Now think back on your own life. Can you recall instances of something that you initially thought was a bad thing that turned out to be not so bad after all or perhaps even a spectacularly good thing? Like the time you just missed a train and had to wait a whole hour for the next one and it was horrible except that your neighbor also missed it so you talked for the first time and a beautiful friendship developed. You will find many instances in your life, some of them very significant such as the job you desperately wanted but didn’t get only to find that a much better one came by and you would not have been able to accept it if not for the earlier rejection.

Now let us propose something radical and revolutionary. Let us propose that, no matter what happens to you, you do not stick a bad thing label on it. No matter what. You are fired from your job…your mortgage lender sends you a foreclosure notice…your spouse files for divorce…or whatever. This seems so far-fetched as to be laughable.

Of course, these are horrible tragedies and terrible things to happen. Or are they? Is it possible, just possible, that you have been conditioned to think of these happenings as unspeakable tragedies and hence experience them as such?

Viktor Frankl in his book Man’s Search for Meaning narrates the tale of the beautiful girl of privilege who was grateful to be in a concentration camp because she was able to connect with a spiritual side of her that she never knew existed. Observations like this led Frankl into his life’s work of determining why, when faced with extreme adversity, some people positively flourish while others disintegrate.

Many, who rise so triumphantly, never label what they go through as bad and lament over it.

They simply take it as a given as if they were a civil engineer surveying the landscape through which a road is to be built. In this view, a swamp is not a bad thing. It is merely something that has to be addressed in the construction plan.

And if you never label something as bad, then you don’t need positive thinking and all of the stress associated with getting something bad and experiencing it as such till you figure out how to make lemonade out of it simply goes away.

That is the huge pebble in the positive thinking shoe. “This is bad. Really bad. It’s a lemon. But somehow I will make some lemonade out of it and then perhaps it won’t be so bad.” First, you think its bad and then you think you will somehow make it less bad and there is a strong undercurrent that you are playing games and kidding yourself. Some people succeed. Many don’t. And those who don’t are devastated that the model they were trying so hard to build caved in on them. That’s why positive thinking can sometimes be harmful.

Can you actually go through life without labeling what happens to you as good or bad?

Sure you can. You have to train yourself to do this. You have been conditioned to think of things as bad or good. You can de-condition yourself. It is neither easy nor fast but it is possible.

Let’s say you break your leg. There is stuff you have to do like go to an orthopedist and get it set and go to therapy when the cast comes off. But all the rest of the stuff you pick up “Why did this have to happen to me? Bad things always come my way. I am in such pain. Who will hold the world up now that I am disabled?” is simply baggage. You don’t have to pick up this load and the only reason you do is because you were never told that you didn’t have to.

I am telling you now. Don’t pick up that useless burden.

Don’t label what happens to you as bad. Then you won’t need positive thinking and much of the stress in your life will simply disappear. Poof! Just like that.

 

The post Why Positive Thinking is Bad for You appeared first on The Rao Institute.

Everything You “know” about stress is just plain wrong!! Part 2

No, stress is NOT caused by your job or your spouse or the economy or the lack of World peace!

In Part 1 of this blog I asserted that stress in your life is not caused by your boss or your spouse or your children or your job or any of the external circumstances that afflict your life. However, you firmly believe that one or more of these are indeed the cause of your stress. And you try to change these factors expending much emotional energy. In the process you frequently bring even more stress into your life and sometimes get to breaking point and even snap.

So, what does cause stress in your life?

Stress appears in your life because you have a rigid view of “This is the way the world should be” and the Universe pays scant regard to your desires. And you refuse to accept this.

Recall the story of the hapless George who was asked to fire one of his best workers, threatened with being laid off himself, coping with an alienated wife and dealing with a child in trouble with the law. In each case he wanted the world to be a particular way and it wasn’t that way at all. And his refusal to accept it brought about the stress he felt.

He felt himself at the mercy of large forces beyond his control and these forces seemed bent on playing havoc with his life. Try as he might, he was unable to move these factors and he felt impotent.

There is a simple solution to this: Acceptance with grace.

Once you accept, truly accept, that stuff will happen to you and there is nothing you can do about it, stress miraculously leaves your life. We are not enlightened beings so we cannot truly accept this in all its glorious manifestations, and therefore there will always be some stress in our life. However, if we begin to implement this strategy, stress in our life will decrease markedly.

When the Indian sage Sri Ramakrishna passed on in the nineteenth century his disciples scattered. Rakhal, who later became famous as Swami Brahamananda, was walking towards the holy Indian city of Varanasi. It was cold and he had not eaten for days and wave of giddiness swept over him. He lay down under a tree. He thought his time had come and he was at peace with it. The body comes, the body goes and he did not see this as a big deal. He closed his eyes.Another traveler saw him lying down, compassionately covered him with an expensive shawl that he was wearing, and carried on. Rakhal started musing on the benevolence of the Universe that provided him with a warm shawl just when he needed it most. Even as he was doing so a passer-by recognized the shawl as high quality and thought that Rakhal was asleep. He quickly filched the garment and hurried away, doubtless congratulating himself on his good fortune.

Rakhal burst out laughing. How marvelous is this play of the Universe he thought. How unexpected are its twists and turns. Even as I was giving thanks for receiving a warm shawl in this bitter cold, the shawl disappeared. Like life itself, it came and it went. Such are all things in this transient world.

And he was truly joyful as a spectator of this Great Game of Life.

Rakhal’s acceptance of the Universe was absolute and there was no stress whatsoever in his life. You, too, can live a stress-free life if you develop such acceptance and the closer you move towards it, the less stress there will be in your life.

 

I get tremendous push-back, sometimes fierce hostility, when I put this view forward in public talks. How dare I say “accept” what the Universe presents? What about child molestation? What about genocide and woman enslavement and genital mutilation and rapacious dictators? How can one possibly “accept” such monstrosities? And don’t I know that all the progress in the world has come from individuals who did not “accept” the situation they found? That Jonas Salk did not “accept” polio and therefore we have the vaccine that is on its way to eradicating the disease.

Hold your horses. I have heard it all and many times. The ones who are so quick to denounce what I have put forward are also the ones who have no understanding of what I am really saying.

You have a vision of the world. In that vision there is a major role for you. George’s vision included his company being prosperous, applauding him for his work and the fine subordinates he hired, his wife supporting him and being an enthusiastic helpmeet and his children being diligent workers who would sail into Harvard.

Didn’t happen and he did not accept it. And his rejection was so strong that it caused him to throw up as a physical manifestation.

“Acceptance” means you acknowledge that what you wanted did not happen.

As long as you have a vision, it is incumbent upon you to try to make it happen. The more insistent your vision is, the more effort you should put in to accomplish it. This is required. There is no getting around it. You have to do what you can do and what you think is necessary to materialize your vision.

But what you also do is recognize that, with the best will in the world, you may not succeed.

The Universe has a say in this and it may or may not play ball with you. You know this completely and at a very deep level and are OK with it. And this deep “acceptance” is what relieves you of stress. Whatever the outcome is, you “accept” it and treat it as a new starting point.

It does not affect your wellbeing or make you an emotional wreck.

Instinctively we already know this. This is the reason The Way of a Pilgrim has become one of the greatest spiritual classics of all time. No one knows who the Pilgrim was. His condition was miserable. His account of his travels were discovered in a monastery years after he presumably died and the translation did not hit the Western world till decades later. He braved the Siberian winter with only a threadbare coat. He dislocated his shoulder and had no funds to procure medical attention. He lived with the pain and used it to remind him to pray. He had few possessions and the only one he valued was a tattered copy of the Philokalia.

The Pilgrim’s “acceptance” of his lot was total and his words continue to inspire millions even a century and a half after he wrote his account.

Few persons have ever borne a weight on their shoulders as heavy as General Dwight D. Eisenhower on June 5, 1944. The invasion of Normandy had been postponed to the next day. Hundreds of thousands of troops were ready and on edge. Nearly ten thousand ships and boats were ready to cross the turbulent seas to ferry those troops over. More than twelve thousand planes waited to provide air support. Across the world millions of fighting men waited with bated breath to see which way the tides of war would turn. The fate of billions of civilians would ultimately hinge on the decisions he made as commander of Operation Overlord.

Wouldn’t you say he had good cause to feel the mother of all stress?

And yet he slept soundly. He recounted later that he had done all he could – consulted the most competent meteorologists, assigned the best field generals to plot the campaign in their assigned areas and used the most able logisticians to plan the invasion. There was nothing more for him to do and he “accepted” in advance what the morrow would bring.

Acceptance does not mean that you placidly acquiesce to the myriad injustices that are all around you. In fact, that you are incensed about these injustices is the very reason you need to try your level best to “right” these “wrongs”. But, like Ike, you know when you have done all you can and you make peace with the outcome whatever it is.

Clearly this attitude is immensely helpful at work and in life. Rakhal and The Pilgrim were exceptionally advanced spiritual adepts and Ike was a super disciplined military commander. Is it possible for an “ordinary” person to adopt such a way of life?

Yes, it is! I can speak with sure knowledge because thousands of executives have taken my programs. It takes, on average, a month for a participant to begin changing his – or her – world view. Such a shift is small at the four-week stage, but it is sufficient to bring about a marked decrease in stress. And many progress exponentially from that point on.

And here is another paradoxical benefit. When you sincerely, truly and completely “accept” whatever the outcome is of your action, you frequently obtain the result you want.

It was the semi-final of the 2011 US Open Tennis tournament. Roger Federer, on a comeback streak after a lack-luster year, had outplayed Novak Djokovic and was leading 5-3 in the final set. The crowd was solidly on his side. His serves were lethal and coming beautifully. In fact, he was up because his serves were so difficult to return. They were not rockets like those of Andy Roddick or Ivo Karlovic, but they were sharply angled and frequently just caught the edge of the tape and skidded away out of reach.

Federer had two match points and was serving at 40-15. The game was over – or should have been. The Fed hit a competent serve and Djokovic took a full swing at it sending it whizzing down the line where it clipped the tape and bounded away for a winner. It was a low percentage shot, one that Federer himself would never have attempted. But Djokovic had already “accepted” the outcome and went for broke. And he succeeded but he would have been OK if he had not.

A demoralized Federer, who many consider the greatest tennis player ever, went on to lose the game, the set and the match. And Djokovic demolished Nadal in the final to win three Grand Slams in a single year – a feat accomplished by only five other male players, including Federer himself.

Reinhold Niebuhr’s Serenity Prayer continues to inspire millions:

“God grant me the serenity

To accept the things I cannot change;

Courage to change the things I can;

And wisdom to know the difference.”

The wisdom to know the difference has been the stumbling block for most, and acceptance as outlined above is the missing link.

Try this method. It works!

And, finally, ponder these words by Viktor Frankl who – having lost his wife, parents and sister in Nazi concentration camps – certainly knew a thing or two about adversity:

“Forces beyond your control can take away everything you possess except one thing, your freedom to choose how you will respond to the situation. You cannot control what happens to you in life, but you can always control what you will feel and do about what happens to you.”

 

Please do comment if what I have said touches a chord in you.

Peace!!

The post Everything You “know” about stress is just plain wrong!! Part 2 appeared first on The Rao Institute.

Everything You “know” about stress is just plain wrong!! Part 2

No, stress is NOT caused by your job or your spouse or the economy or the lack of World peace!

In Part 1 of this blog I asserted that stress in your life is not caused by your boss or your spouse or your children or your job or any of the external circumstances that afflict your life. However, you firmly believe that one or more of these are indeed the cause of your stress. And you try to change these factors expending much emotional energy. In the process you frequently bring even more stress into your life and sometimes get to breaking point and even snap.

So, what does cause stress in your life?

Stress appears in your life because you have a rigid view of “This is the way the world should be” and the Universe pays scant regard to your desires. And you refuse to accept this.

Recall the story of the hapless George who was asked to fire one of his best workers, threatened with being laid off himself, coping with an alienated wife and dealing with a child in trouble with the law. In each case he wanted the world to be a particular way and it wasn’t that way at all. And his refusal to accept it brought about the stress he felt.

He felt himself at the mercy of large forces beyond his control and these forces seemed bent on playing havoc with his life. Try as he might, he was unable to move these factors and he felt impotent.

There is a simple solution to this: Acceptance with grace.

Once you accept, truly accept, that stuff will happen to you and there is nothing you can do about it, stress miraculously leaves your life. We are not enlightened beings so we cannot truly accept this in all its glorious manifestations, and therefore there will always be some stress in our life. However, if we begin to implement this strategy, stress in our life will decrease markedly.

When the Indian sage Sri Ramakrishna passed on in the nineteenth century his disciples scattered. Rakhal, who later became famous as Swami Brahamananda, was walking towards the holy Indian city of Varanasi. It was cold and he had not eaten for days and wave of giddiness swept over him. He lay down under a tree. He thought his time had come and he was at peace with it. The body comes, the body goes and he did not see this as a big deal. He closed his eyes.Another traveler saw him lying down, compassionately covered him with an expensive shawl that he was wearing, and carried on. Rakhal started musing on the benevolence of the Universe that provided him with a warm shawl just when he needed it most. Even as he was doing so a passer-by recognized the shawl as high quality and thought that Rakhal was asleep. He quickly filched the garment and hurried away, doubtless congratulating himself on his good fortune.

Rakhal burst out laughing. How marvelous is this play of the Universe he thought. How unexpected are its twists and turns. Even as I was giving thanks for receiving a warm shawl in this bitter cold, the shawl disappeared. Like life itself, it came and it went. Such are all things in this transient world.

And he was truly joyful as a spectator of this Great Game of Life.

Rakhal’s acceptance of the Universe was absolute and there was no stress whatsoever in his life. You, too, can live a stress-free life if you develop such acceptance and the closer you move towards it, the less stress there will be in your life.

 

I get tremendous push-back, sometimes fierce hostility, when I put this view forward in public talks. How dare I say “accept” what the Universe presents? What about child molestation? What about genocide and woman enslavement and genital mutilation and rapacious dictators? How can one possibly “accept” such monstrosities? And don’t I know that all the progress in the world has come from individuals who did not “accept” the situation they found? That Jonas Salk did not “accept” polio and therefore we have the vaccine that is on its way to eradicating the disease.

Hold your horses. I have heard it all and many times. The ones who are so quick to denounce what I have put forward are also the ones who have no understanding of what I am really saying.

You have a vision of the world. In that vision there is a major role for you. George’s vision included his company being prosperous, applauding him for his work and the fine subordinates he hired, his wife supporting him and being an enthusiastic helpmeet and his children being diligent workers who would sail into Harvard.

Didn’t happen and he did not accept it. And his rejection was so strong that it caused him to throw up as a physical manifestation.

“Acceptance” means you acknowledge that what you wanted did not happen.

As long as you have a vision, it is incumbent upon you to try to make it happen. The more insistent your vision is, the more effort you should put in to accomplish it. This is required. There is no getting around it. You have to do what you can do and what you think is necessary to materialize your vision.

But what you also do is recognize that, with the best will in the world, you may not succeed.

The Universe has a say in this and it may or may not play ball with you. You know this completely and at a very deep level and are OK with it. And this deep “acceptance” is what relieves you of stress. Whatever the outcome is, you “accept” it and treat it as a new starting point.

It does not affect your wellbeing or make you an emotional wreck.

Instinctively we already know this. This is the reason The Way of a Pilgrim has become one of the greatest spiritual classics of all time. No one knows who the Pilgrim was. His condition was miserable. His account of his travels were discovered in a monastery years after he presumably died and the translation did not hit the Western world till decades later. He braved the Siberian winter with only a threadbare coat. He dislocated his shoulder and had no funds to procure medical attention. He lived with the pain and used it to remind him to pray. He had few possessions and the only one he valued was a tattered copy of the Philokalia.

The Pilgrim’s “acceptance” of his lot was total and his words continue to inspire millions even a century and a half after he wrote his account.

Few persons have ever borne a weight on their shoulders as heavy as General Dwight D. Eisenhower on June 5, 1944. The invasion of Normandy had been postponed to the next day. Hundreds of thousands of troops were ready and on edge. Nearly ten thousand ships and boats were ready to cross the turbulent seas to ferry those troops over. More than twelve thousand planes waited to provide air support. Across the world millions of fighting men waited with bated breath to see which way the tides of war would turn. The fate of billions of civilians would ultimately hinge on the decisions he made as commander of Operation Overlord.

Wouldn’t you say he had good cause to feel the mother of all stress?

And yet he slept soundly. He recounted later that he had done all he could – consulted the most competent meteorologists, assigned the best field generals to plot the campaign in their assigned areas and used the most able logisticians to plan the invasion. There was nothing more for him to do and he “accepted” in advance what the morrow would bring.

Acceptance does not mean that you placidly acquiesce to the myriad injustices that are all around you. In fact, that you are incensed about these injustices is the very reason you need to try your level best to “right” these “wrongs”. But, like Ike, you know when you have done all you can and you make peace with the outcome whatever it is.

Clearly this attitude is immensely helpful at work and in life. Rakhal and The Pilgrim were exceptionally advanced spiritual adepts and Ike was a super disciplined military commander. Is it possible for an “ordinary” person to adopt such a way of life?

Yes, it is! I can speak with sure knowledge because thousands of executives have taken my programs. It takes, on average, a month for a participant to begin changing his – or her – world view. Such a shift is small at the four-week stage, but it is sufficient to bring about a marked decrease in stress. And many progress exponentially from that point on.

And here is another paradoxical benefit. When you sincerely, truly and completely “accept” whatever the outcome is of your action, you frequently obtain the result you want.

It was the semi-final of the 2011 US Open Tennis tournament. Roger Federer, on a comeback streak after a lack-luster year, had outplayed Novak Djokovic and was leading 5-3 in the final set. The crowd was solidly on his side. His serves were lethal and coming beautifully. In fact, he was up because his serves were so difficult to return. They were not rockets like those of Andy Roddick or Ivo Karlovic, but they were sharply angled and frequently just caught the edge of the tape and skidded away out of reach.

 

Federer had two match points and was serving at 40-15. The game was over – or should have been. The Fed hit a competent serve and Djokovic took a full swing at it sending it whizzing down the line where it clipped the tape and bounded away for a winner. It was a low percentage shot, one that Federer himself would never have attempted. But Djokovic had already “accepted” the outcome and went for broke. And he succeeded but he would have been OK if he had not.

A demoralized Federer, who many consider the greatest tennis player ever, went on to lose the game, the set and the match. And Djokovic demolished Nadal in the final to win three Grand Slams in a single year – a feat accomplished by only five other male players, including Federer himself.

Reinhold Niebuhr’s Serenity Prayer continues to inspire millions:

“God grant me the serenity

To accept the things I cannot change;

Courage to change the things I can;

And wisdom to know the difference.”

The wisdom to know the difference has been the stumbling block for most, and acceptance as outlined above is the missing link.

Try this method. It works!

And, finally, ponder these words by Viktor Frankl who – having lost his wife, parents and sister in Nazi concentration camps – certainly knew a thing or two about adversity:

“Forces beyond your control can take away everything you possess except one thing, your freedom to choose how you will respond to the situation. You cannot control what happens to you in life, but you can always control what you will feel and do about what happens to you.”

 

Please do comment if what I have said touches a chord in you.

Peace!!

 

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Everything You “know” about stress is just plain wrong!! Part 1

No, stress is NOT caused by your job or your spouse or the economy or the lack of World peace!

George exemplifies the executives I deal with daily. Here is his account of a recent day:

I knew it was going to be a bad day when my boss called me into his office. The bank still has loads of junk loans and has not yet marked them down. A major customer just sued claiming that securities he bought were mis-represented. My boss got to business right away and told me that there had to be massive “cost cutting”. I would have to let two of my senior executives go including Jennifer. And, even though it was profitable, my entire division could be shut down. It was not considered to be a “core” operation.



Jennifer was one of my best hires and a real find. She was an Ivy League graduate and also had an MBA from a top school. She had recently delivered her first child – a boy – and was back at work in ten days. I even had to call her at the hospital because a crisis erupted and, the day after delivery, she spent hours on the phone sorting it out. Her husband was a patent attorney and was laid off two months ago.Distaste for what I had to do and for the company rose like bile. I would have loved to tell my boss to “shove it” but I needed the job. Especially right now when my third child just started at Harvard and the sale of my second home in Florida fell through yet again.

The phone rang. It was Jane, my wife, asking acerbically if I was going to be “late again”. Of late we don’t talk any more. She simply lectures me on how I don’t do “my share” of house work and how I embarrassed her by falling asleep at her stupid book club meeting and why can’t I learn to fix the faucet so she didn’t have to call the plumber who charges as much as a surgeon used to when we started dating. There is some truth to her ranting and I take it as much as I can but, especially of late, have been blowing up too often. That tells on my health and my doctor just doubled my dosage of hypertension pills. And added a cholesterol reducing drug.

She is also mad at me because Dave, our second son and not the one starting at Harvard, was swept up in a police sting operation and had stuff in his pocket he should not have had and, worse, tried to sell it to an undercover officer. She thinks it’s my fault because if I had spent more time with him he would not have gone off the tracks.

The phone rang again. It was my mother. Could I take her to her appointment with the oncologist? She still had six visits left on her chemotherapy regimen and didn’t like using the car service I had arranged. Since I never spent time with her any more perhaps I could drive her and we could “talk” on the way.

I hooked the wastepaper basket with my foot, pulled it over and threw up. A gob of vomit spattered on the outside and trickled on to the carpet.

What went through your mind as you read George’s tale?

His is an extreme case but the chances are good that you can relate to one or more aspects of his story. Individuals register in my open programs because they feel under stress. Companies ask me to help their executives cope with stress. There are “experts” who specialize in work-related stress, marital stress, family stress. and even – I came across this recently and chuckled – email stress.

Stress is the demon in our society, stalking the cities and the countryside, striking down young and old and growing in strength daily.

Why is there stress in your life?

I get many answers when I pose this question to groups as I do all the time. There is stress because of unsatisfactory job conditions; fear of losing the unsatisfactory job; insecurity because of the difficulty of finding another unsatisfactory job after losing the first one; marital discord; troubled relations with children, siblings or parents; addictions of various kinds; financial problems; medical problems including those affecting loved ones; discord in the world at large ranging from economic crisis to political strife and violence; the list is endless.

WRONG! None of these factors cause the stress you experience though you think they do.

There is one reason, and one reason only, that you experience stress in your life. And, the good news is that there is a proven solution to deal with this reason. It comes from ancient wisdom, has been tested over millennia and it absolutely works.

It is simple. It is NOT easy, but you can learn it. When you succeed in mastering it, it will completely banish stress from your life. Even if you don’t master it but make a sincere attempt, stress will greatly diminish in your life. I know this is true because I hear it at first hand all the time and every day.

And what is this one reason you feel stress and how do you deal with it?

I will reveal this in subsequent columns.

P.S: I am raising my arms up to ward off the tomatoes and rotten eggs you are ready to throw at me. I am not trying to be coy. I am trying to get you to think about what I have said and try to arrive at the answer yourself. I am trying to set you into ferment over the challenge I have tossed out. Because here is another truth: It is only when you are passionately involved, when you feel that you MUST know the answer, when waiting becomes unbearable, that the answer I will give you will have the most impact on your life.

Please do comment if what I have said touches a chord in you.

Peace!

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WATCH THE VIDEODr. Rao speaks at the Awesomeness Fest

Dr. Rao Speaks at BetterWorks: Goal Summit 2017

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Should I Keep Struggling or Throw in the Towel and Move on?

A framework that helps you decide when to keep and it and when to give up

Aphorisms and proverbs sometimes pack powerful wisdom.

We are fond of quoting them and using them to guide our

behavior or to explain it.

 

But have you noticed how many of them contradict each other?

We should “Look before we leap” but, unfortunately,

“He who hesitates is lost.”

 

“Many hands make light work” but, alas, “Too many cooks

spoil the broth.”

 

“Wise men think alike” but “Fools seldom differ.”

 

“Absence makes the heart grow fonder” unless, of course,

you are “Out of sight, out of mind.”

 

“The pen is mightier than the sword” except in the land

where “Actions speak louder than words.”

 

And that brings me to a dilemma that we all face sooner or later.

 

We are stuck in a situation that is suffocating and sucks

the energy out of us as thoroughly as an efficient Dementor.

 

Perhaps it is a job we hate though we have tried our level

best to ‘learn’ and ‘stay motivated.’

 

Perhaps it is a marriage in which we are stifled and we try

to be sensitive to our partner’s needs but are both miserable and unfulfilled.

 

Maybe we have started a business and it is going nowhere in

a hurry and we have tried everything we know and are running

out of funds to keep the lights on.

 

Do we keep at it with all the vigor we can muster with our dispirited

soul because victory comes to those who persist and never give up?

 

Or do we conserve our energy and quit the battlefield so we can

live to fight another day?

 

Everyone who has taken Creativity and Personal Mastery has

grappled with his – or her – version of this dilemma.

Many have asked me for help and advice.

 

We have been told over and over again that persistence is a virtue.

There are tales galore of how someone was struck with all manner

of adversity but hung in determinedly and eventually achieved great success.

 

In my program I have a module where I show participants that an

‘intolerable’ situation is so largely because we have defined it in that

manner and reinforced this ‘label’ with our mental chatter and mental models.

 

And many have reported that with a change in thinking that toxic

situation became bearable, even enjoyable.

 

We also have a module where I point out that one of the ways

in which the universe signals to us that it is time to make a change

is by making us miserable where we are.

 

So where does this leave you and what should you do in your

particular position?

 

I can give you a framework to use in such situations.

 

Most of us tend to ask “What should I do?” We desperately try to

think of the ‘Pros and Cons’ of each course of action somehow

balance and evaluate and compare them in a convoluted manner.

Instead of this, ask “Who am I being?”

 

Take an example: If you believe you are stuck in a toxic job environment,

then you are being a victim of external circumstances and indulging in

self-pity. You are also being me-centered and definitely not in an

emotional domain of appreciation and gratitude.

 

Is this where you want to be?

 

Assuredly not.

So who do you want to be? You want to be a person who is calm and serene,

grateful for the many things in her life and willing to work hard to ‘fix’ the

areas where your preferences are not being met.

 

Think about who you want to be and then pour your emotional energy

into that being. In other words BE the person you want to be.

 

This takes a bit of practice but it is not as hard as you may think it is.

Initially, there will be a feeling that you are kidding yourself or playing a

game but this will pass. You will actually be able to, at least for the time being,

become who you want to be.

 

Now ask yourself what this person would do in your situation.

And the answer will pop out easily.

 

You may decide to remain and try harder. You may decide to quit and go elsewhere.

 

It does not matter.

 

Because here is a great truth for you to ponder:

Who you are being is MUCH more important that what you are doing.

 

Peace!

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