Unlocking Wellness: Dr. Rao's Path to Mastery and Recovery

I have the immense pleasure of welcoming Dr. Srikumar Rao to the show today. Dr. Rao is a distinguished coach, speaker, and author who collaborates with top entrepreneurs, professionals, and senior executives, guiding them on their spiritual and professional journeys. His pioneering course, Creativity and Personal Mastery, has been a highlight at prestigious institutions like Columbia Business School.

Dr. Rao's work has reached millions through his TED Talk, Plug into Your Hard-Wired Happiness, and his acclaimed books, including Are You Ready to Succeed? and Happiness at Work. His latest book, Modern Wisdom, Ancient Roots, continues to inspire those seeking unstoppable success.

With a PhD from Columbia Business School and extensive media coverage, Dr. Rao is renowned for transforming ancient wisdom into practical exercises for today's intelligent professionals. I’m thrilled to have him share his insights with us today. 

• [04:20] We learn how Dr. Rao created the Creativity and Personal Mastery course. He was getting his PhD at Columbia Business School. 
• [04:49] He worked at Warner Communications and his career took off like a rocket. He worked on the advertising campaign for the movie The Exorcist. 
• [06:26] He became head of communications at Warner Communications. 
• [07:36] He had been doing a lot of reading and wanted to take the work of the world's great thinkers and put them into a course that would be acceptable to intelligent people in a post-industrial society.
• [08:15] He needed the course for himself. He created it and it did well. He moved the course to Columbia Business School, and it exploded.
• [09:33] He eventually began teaching the course privately and became a coach by accident.
• [10:01] Life is a spiritual journey. Addiction uses a dysfunctional mental model or idea of how the world works. The problem is we don't know we have mental models. Instead, we think this is the way the world works.
• [11:05] It's not the way the world works, it's our model of how it works.
• [12:01] We don't live in the real world. We live in a matrix. We experience the world the way we create it.
• [14:24] Think about your awareness like a flashlight. It illuminates whatever you shine it on.
• [16:01] We often shine our flashlight of awareness on the things that are wrong in life.
• [16:51] Consciously shine your flashlight of awareness on the many ways that you are truly blessed and fortunate.
• [19:57] Celebrate that the Universe is aware of you and working for you. A miracle doesn't have to bend the law of physics. All that's necessary is for you to have the conviction that the Universe interceded on your behalf.
• [21:29] Extreme resilience is when you bounce back extremely fast.
• [24:27] Asking yourself if there's a positive will move you to a different emotion. Is there something I can proactively do to make this a good thing?
• [29:36] Mindfulness and mental chatter. Having mental chatter isn't the problem, it's identifying with mental chatter.
• [34:51] Principles of personal mastery in a recovery journey. If you can reserve your mental chatter instead of becoming it, you'll have power you never had before.
• [36:01] When you become aware that you aren't your addiction, instead you're an observer of your addiction, eventually you'll have mastery and the addiction will drop.
• [37:57] Advice when struggling with relapse. Don't beat yourself up. Simply accept what happened and begin again.
• [41:44] The reason we feel overwhelmed is because there's a lot of mental chatter going on. Learn to focus on exactly what you're doing at that instant.
• [43:45] Don't label anything that happens to you as bad. Whenever a disaster happens, instead of thinking it's terrible, think about what you can do about it.
• [44:18] Focus on what is within your control, and you'll stop obsessing about what's not in your control.
• [44:57] Hardwired happiness. The Kingdom of Heaven is within you. You accept the universe exactly as it is.
• [46:53] The if then model. If this happens, then I'll be happy.