Srikumar S. Rao - Are You Ready to Succeed?: Unconventional Strategies for Achieving Personal Mastery in Business and Life

UNCONVENTIONAL STRATEGIES FOR ACHIEVING

PERSONAL MASTERY IN BUSINESS AND LIFE

SRIKUMAR S. RAO

Grateful acknowledgment is made for permission to include material from THE WAY TO LOVE: THE LAST MEDITATIONS OF A. DE MELLO by J. Francis Stroud, copyright 1991 by Gujarat Sahitya Prakash of Anand, India. Introduction copyright 1992 by J. Francis Stroud. Used by permission of Doubleday, a division of Random House, Inc.

Copyright 2006 Srikumar S. Rao

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without the written permission of the Publisher. For information address Hyperion, 77 West 66th Street, New York, New York 10023-6298.

ISBN: 9781401383664

First eBook Edition: JANUARY 2006

Dedicated to:

Bhagvan Ramana Maharshi

H. H. Jagadguru Sri Abhinava Vidyatirtha Mahaswamigal, the 35th Shankaracharya of Sri Sarada Peetham, Sringeri

And My mother and the tradition they belonged to.

And also to:

My wife, Meena, who bore a disproportionate share of the burden of running a house while I developed the course and did the actual writing.

My daughter, Gowri, who unfailingly cheered me on when I was flagging.

My son, Gautam, who discovered one of his passions while still in schoolI wish I had found it so early!

Contents

AN IDEAL LIFE

IT AINT REAL!

ITS MENTAL CHATTER, AND IT IS REAL!

YOU CANT KILL IT AND IT WONT SHUT UP! THE WITNESS IS YOUR SALVATION

YOU CAN CHANGE THE UNIVERSE!

YOUR ME-CENTERED UNIVERSE CREATES THE STRESS IN YOUR LIFE

FREEDOM AND HAPPINESS: THEY AINT WHAT YOU THINK

YOU ALWAYS ACT IN YOUR SELF-INTERESTEVERYONE DOES!

YOU CREATE YOUR WORLD FROM WHAT IS INSIDE YOU!

INTRODUCTION

W hat if I were to tell you that you live in a dreamworld and that you have always been living in a dreamworld. That you have never known anything but this dreamworld. What if I were to go on and explain that you, who have spent your whole life so carefully constructing this world, have put a great deal of stuff in it that you dont really likethings that cause you to moan and groan, sometimes very loudly indeed. Things that frequently make you miserable, and others as well. If you are like most people, you will think, Nonsense. This is no fantasy, its my life. I understand that its hard to accept that your reality is but a shadow, and one that you created. Instead, its easier to dismiss what I say and persist in thinking that what you recognize as your life is real and that it somehow simply happened. You had nothingor very littleto do with it. And THAT, I am here to tell you, is the source, the root cause of ALL of your problems.

Knowing that you are living in a dreamworld is actually very liberating, because it gives you the option of waking up. I sincerely hope that you are ready to do so. If you are not yet ready to do so, you have another optionyou can at least create a new, better dreamworld.

This book will show you how. And, regardless of whether you wake up or create a better dreamworld, you will find that life has become richer. The colors you see are more vibrant, your interactions with others are more fulfilling, and you experience more joyous moments. You become more effective at work and enjoy it more.

I know this is so, because it happened to me and because I have helped hundreds of others get there.

Three decades ago, I was a doctoral student in marketing at the Graduate School of Business, Columbia University. Initially, I was thrilled to be in a top business school in one of the great universities of the world, but as time went on I found myself profoundly unsettled by what I saw around me. I read academic papers and doctoral dissertations with sentences like, Item structure congruence methods aim to address the issue of operationalization equivalence. They presuppose construct equivalence and confine their testing to components of the construct.... Increasingly, I was filled with wondermenta wonderment that expressed itself as, For this, they killed a tree? So much of academic research seemed so utterly bereft of any redeeming or lasting value that I could not fathom how bright, even brilliant, people could be so wrapped up in it.

I tried desperately to find meaning in my own research, to pump up my enthusiasm and sagging motivation. I failed. Ultimately, sheer force of will enabled me to complete my doctorate. Sadly, the joy I felt on receiving my diploma didnt come from a sense of accomplishment but from the knowledge that my painful graduate days were finally over.

I entered the workforce. In very little time, I could have sworn that the world consisted of two sets of people: those who passionately loathed their jobs and those who simply disliked them. As for me, I busily alternated between the two. It wasnt fun, but I didnt know that anything else existed. The notion that one could find deep meaning and sustenance from life and from what one did for a living was an alien one.

Searching to quell my dissatisfaction, after a few years I left private enterprise and took a position in academe. Simultaneously I started writing and eventually became a contributing editor for Financial World and, later, Forbes. It gradually dawned on me that I was hardly alone in my unhappiness. As I spoke to thousands of undergraduates, graduate students, doctoral candidates, and corporate managers, I saw that most could readily identify with my feelings of angst and ennui, and many had tales of their own.

I knew there had to be a better way. Life was not meant to be like this. If I felt trapped, then so must thousands of others with whom I had spoken and, by extension, millions of others in the broader world. I was so busy wallowing in my own misery I barely noticed that there were some free spirits who had escaped my fate and who soared effortlessly over the quicksand that kept sucking me in. It was not until much later that I realized they were the real teachers and the ones worth emulating.

During this period, the one truly bright spot in my life was reading. I had been a voracious reader all my life, particularly philosophy, spiritual biography, and mystical autobiography from many different times and traditions. The stories and their wisdom gave me my only sense of hope that there was something powerful, meaningful, and good at work in the universe. Immersed in these books I would feel the peace and the ineffable sense of well-being I sought. But the mundane demands of the world would inevitably come creeping back, and they were wonderfully effective at suffocating the freedom I experienced during such reading.

I felt like the water buffaloes that, during hot summer days in tropical countries, like to wallow in the muddy water. After all, it keeps them cool and comfortable. But there are flies and mosquitoes and other biting insects with mandibles and proboscides strong enough to penetrate even their thick skin. They cover the backs of the buffaloes like a blanket. When the pain gets too intense, the buffalo dives into the water and experiences blessed relief. The insects rise off its back in a swarm. But they hover in the air. They know the buffalo will surface soon, and the moment it does, they will descend and continue their feeding.

It was a perfect visual metaphor for the way I felt. The insectsthe gnawing insecurities, worries, anxieties, jealousies, irritations, concerns, fears, guilt, and apprehensionskept coming back. And each time they returned, they seemed stronger and more fearsome.