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Today’s episode is truly transformative, featuring Dr. Srikumar 
Rao—a world-renowned executive coach, acclaimed author, and sought-after speaker. Dr. Rao has worked with high-performing entrepreneurs and CEOs from around the globe who aren’t just chasing financial success but are also searching for deeper spiritual clarity and life purpose. He’s the founder of The Rao Institute and the visionary behind a groundbreaking MBA course that became so popular it developed its own alumni association, taught at prestigious schools like Columbia, Berkeley, and London Business School.
In this eye-opening conversation, Dr. Rao shares how he moved from a fast-tracked corporate career to helping others achieve both inner and outer wealth. He discusses how our biggest roadblocks are often our own mental models—and how changing our thinking can lead to profound personal transformation. Dr. Rao’s approach combines ancient wisdom with practical daily rituals, showing listeners how they can start living with more presence, peace, and fulfillment right now.
Whether you’re looking to reduce stress, create more gratitude, or discover your life’s true purpose, this episode is packed with actionable insights and timeless truths. Dr. Rao’s signature blend of Eastern philosophy and Western practicality makes these concepts accessible and relevant for anyone seeking a richer, more meaningful life.
In This Episode
- Why your mental models are your biggest obstacle
- How to reprogram your emotional default state to gratitude
- Letting go of attachment to outcomes and finding joy in the journey
- The real purpose of life and living from a state of pure awareness
Your job is to be so firmly anchored in your place of calm, peace, and serenity that you grab them by the throat and pull them into your vortex of calm and peace. And if that doesn’t happen, it simply indicates here is where you have to do more work on yourself.
Welcome to the Wealth Strategy Secrets of the Ultra Wealthy podcast, where we help entrepreneurs like you exponentially build wealth through passive income to live a life of freedom and prosperity. Are you tired of paying too much in taxes, gambling your future on the stock market, and want to learn about hidden strategies for making your money work for you?
And now, your host, Dave Wolkop, serial entrepreneur and author of the bestselling book The Holistic Wealth Strategy.
How’s it going, everyone? And welcome back to another episode of Wealth Strategy Secrets of the Ultra Wealthy.
Today’s conversation is one that could quite literally shift the way you experience life. We’re joined by Dr. Srikumar Rao, a world-renowned executive coach, author, TED speaker, and founder of The Rao Institute. His client base includes high-performing entrepreneurs and CEOs who aren’t just chasing financial success—they’re seeking spiritual clarity, inner peace, and a deep purpose in everything they do.
Dr. Rao has taught at prestigious institutions like Columbia Business School, London Business School, and Berkeley, and created one of the only MBA courses in the world with its own alumni association.
His mission? To help you transcend conventional mental models, let go of stress and suffering, and live in a state of unshakable inner fulfillment.
In today’s episode, we unpack why your biggest obstacle is often your own mental model, the power of reprogramming your emotional default state to gratitude, how to let go of attachment to outcomes, what ancient wisdom has to teach us about navigating today’s chaotic world, and the real purpose of life—and how to operate from a place of pure awareness.
This isn’t a conversation about tactics; it’s about transformation. And Dr. Rao delivers timeless truths that can help you live with more joy, presence, and peace starting today.
If this episode speaks to you, please take a moment to subscribe, share it with someone you care about, and help us spread these vital ideas to more people on their own wealth and consciousness journey.
Let’s jump in. Dr. Rao, welcome to the show.
Thank you, Dave. My pleasure to be on the show.
I really appreciate your time today and coming on the show. I think this is going to be quite insightful for the listeners to hear about your journey and to learn about what I think is one of the most important aspects of life overall—being on this journey and understanding true fulfillment, undergoing personal transformation, and creating that intentional life you want to live.
Right.
That’s so important and having purpose. We always talk about really, you know, creating holistic wealth.
Right.
So it’s not just about financial capital. It’s about spiritual capital, emotional capital, intellectual capital, human capital.
Right.
All of these other components. So I think this is going to be a great discussion about trying to unpack some of your wisdom and how people can become wealthier today by continuing that journey themselves. So, why don’t we begin the discussion—just tell us a little bit about your background and how things started for you on this journey.
All right, let me begin by telling you what I do, and then I’ll lead you up to how I came to do what I do.
Dave, I’m an executive coach with a global clientele, and I have a very specific niche in coaching. I coach people who are very successful—mostly entrepreneurs who are very driven. They want to have an outsized impact on the world, but they also have a spiritual drive—an explicit spiritual drive—that they want to bring into every aspect of their life.
As entrepreneurs and leaders, they have to make major decisions like: Should I invest $50 million in this project or not? Should I hire this person in a key executive role or not? So, how does spirituality come into play when you’re considering decisions like that? That’s the sandbox in which I play.
I’ll begin by telling you how I came to be doing this. What happened is that I was a very bright student.
So I came to America to do my PhD at Columbia Business School. After completing my PhD, I joined Warner Communications and was immensely successful. My career took off like a rocket. At the ripe age of 23, I was head of corporate research for Warner Communications, reporting directly to the president. Heady days.
I got burnt out by corporate politics, so I thought, “Gee, I have a PhD—why don’t I go into universities where there is no politics?” I was sadly mistaken.
Politics is alive and well in academe. So I joined academe, and then basically I stagnated for a while. I was thinking, “Gee, I had such a wonderful career, such great education—I blew it all. I ruined my life. I threw it away.”
It was a pity party of one.
All my life, I’d been doing a lot of reading—spiritual biography, mystical autobiography. They would take me to a wonderful place, and then I’d come back to the real world—and it sucked. I remember thinking, if all of this is useful only when you’re sitting quietly thinking peaceful thoughts, but not when you return to the hurly-burly, then it’s actually quite useless.
But somehow, I knew that wasn’t true. I knew this was very valuable.
I just hadn’t figured out how to make use of it.
So one day, I got my bright idea: Why don’t I take the teachings of the world’s great masters, strip them of religious, cultural, and other connotations, and adapt them so that they’re acceptable to intelligent people in a post-industrial society? The thought of doing that made me come alive.
So I created that course. It did well. I moved it to Columbia Business School in 1999, and it exploded. It was the only course at Columbia that was a university-wide draw.
I had students from the law school, the School of International and Public Affairs, the business school, journalism, Teachers College—all over the place. Columbia is a big international school, so students from other big, well-known business schools came to Columbia on exchange, took the program, and went back saying, “This is a fantastic course, you’ve got to have it.”
So I traveled. I taught it at London Business School, at Kellogg, at Berkeley, at Imperial College. And it’s the only course of its kind that has its own alumni association—my course has its own alumni association.
It also got a tremendous amount of publicity. It was written up in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Fortune, Forbes, BusinessWeek, Financial Times, London Times, The Guardian—you name it. Every major publication in North America and the UK covered it at some point or another.
That gave me a lot of visibility, as did the TED Talk I gave. Then people came and said, “I want to work with you.” I tried to tell them about my course. They said, “No, no—we don’t want to take your course. We want to work with you personally, one-on-one.”
So that’s how I became a coach. It evolved organically, and that’s where I have the specific niche that I mentioned to you earlier.
That’s really phenomenal. It’s so interesting because some of the books I’ve read—one of them being Light on Life—have been very instrumental in my life. There are some amazing insights you can get from these spiritual leaders.
It’s so unique how you’re able to remove any cultural aspect and just take away the real learnings from these major thought leaders—of our time or of other times—and pull that together.
So, Dr. Rao, do you have a particular framework or something like—let’s say I was someone new who was coaching with you—do you have this overarching framework for how you look at a client or areas they should be thinking about in their life?
Well, yes, I can tell you that, Dave. My coaching is highly customized, by the way.
But I have a foolproof, risk-free offer to anybody, which is: coaching really happens at two levels.
Level number one is cognitive, where I mention concepts and show you how they apply to your life. You examine it using your mind and say, “This fits in, this doesn’t fit in. I resonate with this, I don’t resonate with that.” I would say probably 95 to 99% of all coaching happens at this level.
But coaching also happens at a second level—it is a transmission of presence.
At the end of a session with me, my clients feel that they have reached a higher level of consciousness—a higher level of awareness—where they have a clarity they did not have before. They literally feel that they are more serene, more composed, more capable of handling whatever life throws at them.
What I say is very simple: if you don’t feel this energetic transmission, if you don’t feel that at the end of a session with me you’re functioning at a higher level of consciousness, we’re not right for each other. God bless you, and I wish you well on your journey.
But if you do feel this transfer, if you do feel that you have come to a higher level of awareness, then do whatever you can to become a coaching client. Move mountains. Crawl over broken glass on your bare knees and elbows. Walk 10 miles in tight boots.
Do whatever is necessary to become a client. But you only do that after you have experienced for yourself that you’ve reached a higher level of consciousness—which is very valuable both to you personally and to your career and your business.
Can you give the listeners some examples?
Examples of what?
Examples of some of the—maybe the techniques or the approach?
See, one of the things that people do—we always want to do better. And typically, when a person thinks, “I’ve got to do better,” what do they think of? “I’ve got to work harder.” That’s not the solution. You’re already working hard enough. Working harder will probably set you back, not take you ahead. Or, “I’ve got to work smarter.” That doesn’t work either. Or, “I’ve got to think differently.”
That’s the solution—you have to think differently. You have to think radically differently.
Now, all of us are used to the concept of thinking differently. How many of us, for example, have been told to see the glass as half full rather than half empty? Or that every problem is an opportunity in disguise? So, we embrace the notion of thinking differently. But despite that, most of us have a great deal of difficulty thinking differently—because we try to think differently. And trying to think differently doesn’t work.
I have a process by which I get people to explore the mental models they hold that cause them to view the world in a particular manner. And as you make changes in those mental models, you literally become a different person. And as you become a different person, you don’t have to try to think differently—it happens organically, because you are now a different person, and you think differently.
And some of these exercises are so powerful that people say, “Hey, it changed my life.”
I’ll give you an example. Think of your awareness, Dave, as a flashlight. Okay?
What does a flashlight do? A flashlight illuminates whatever you shine it on, correct? Shine it on the floor—it lights up the floor. Shine it on the ceiling—it lights up the ceiling. Correct?
Your awareness is like a flashlight, and I’ll prove it to you. Right now, I want you to take your flashlight of awareness, Dave, and shine it upon the chair on which you’re sitting. And the moment you do that, you become aware of the pressure of your buttocks on the seat. You become aware of the fabric or the leather pressing against the back of your thigh. Is that correct?
Thirty seconds ago, you were not aware of any of this. Why are you aware of it now? Because you shone the flashlight of your awareness on it.
Where do we typically shine the flashlight of our awareness? Typically, we shine it on the two, three, or four things that are problems in our life—or more precisely, the two, three, or four things that we have arbitrarily decided are problems in our life.
What about the 30, 40, 200 things that are pretty damn good about our lives? We never shine the flashlight of our awareness on them, so they pass by unnoticed.
Everyone listening to this podcast is hugely privileged—as are you, Dave. Do you have to bother about whether you’re going to have dinner tomorrow? Do you have a roof over your head? Do you have a bed to sleep in? You do realize that this is a big deal for many people in huge, huge, huge chunks of the world, right?
Think of your awareness as a flashlight. Most of us shine it only on problems, and never on the hundreds of blessings arounds us.
Absolutely. It’s being the global 1% is right.
I would say that’s not true. It’s probably the global 0.1 of 1%.
Yeah, it’s $31,000 and you’re in the global 1%.
So when I point that out, you say, “Yes, I feel incredibly privileged. I am incredibly privileged.” But you don’t feel incredibly privileged—you feel put upon and stressed.
Why is that? It’s because of where you shine the flashlight of your awareness. It’s a lousy strategy.
Starting immediately—do it today. Before you go to bed, think of all the ways in which you’re truly blessed, incredibly fortunate.
When you get up in the morning, don’t go immediately to the place of, “Oh my God, there’s so much to do. I don’t have enough time to do it all.” Bring up that feeling of how privileged you are. Soak in it. Bathe in it. Shower in it. Marinate in it.
As you go through the day, bring it up constantly. It is my hope that you will get to the point where you live in the default emotional domain of appreciation and gratitude.
And why is that important? That’s important because when you’re in the default emotional domain of appreciation and gratitude, you’re not angry, you’re not nervous, you’re not anxious, you’re not fearful. The two cannot coexist.
It’s a simple concept, but if you apply it properly, it’s immensely, immensely powerful.
And from that default emotional domain of appreciation and gratitude, you’ll then look at your life and say, “These are the areas in my life in which I would like to make some changes.” But you do it from the space of being deeply grateful—as opposed to from the space of, “Oh my God, these are the things that are wrong in my life and I have to fix them.”
You’re really changing the neural pathways that are going on.
Exactly. Right?
No, and this is really what I’ve found—this is actually a practice. This isn’t something you just do overnight. It’s a practice that you constantly hone to get closer to consciousness.
And the more you can change these thoughts into gratitude and positivity—the better. Because our wiring, our innate wiring as humans, is to sense for danger, right? But there’s no saber-tooth tiger coming after us anymore, right?
So we’re kind of looking for danger—whether we’re talking to our spouse or going to work. And it’s not really that type of danger, right?
So our thoughts really start to become our reality.
But if you can rewire that into creating that new reality for yourself—I mean, that is the true heart of transformation.
Our thoughts really start to become our reality. But if you can rewire that into gratitude and positivity, that is the true heart of transformation.
You said it. Look at the Grand—You’ve seen the Grand Canyon, I would presume?
Now, the Grand Canyon is nothing but the Colorado River following the exact same path for thousands—hundreds of thousands—of years, right?
We’ve got a Grand Canyon in our head. It’s not a physical Grand Canyon—it’s a pattern of neurons firing. And they fire the way they do because we’ve been indoctrinated into it.
In my courses, my programs, and my coaching, what I do is show my clients how to form a different pattern of neurons firing. And you have to become embedded in that, which only happens by constant practice.
Well, when you do that, you have a new Grand Canyon. But this new Grand Canyon didn’t happen by default—it happened because you consciously chose to.
And your experience of life becomes immeasurably better.
It’s fascinating, right? I mean, in the course of a day, the people you might meet—you can already tell the level they’re playing at in terms of their emotional IQ, their level of consciousness.
Right.
Where they’re operating—because some people are actually the opposite of gratitude. They’re focusing entirely on everything negative that happens that day and all the energy they put around something negative that happened to them.
And if they really just put it into context—I love your metaphor with the flashlight; it’s so accurate.
They talk about that as if it’s the biggest thing that ever happened to them. And yet, there are other people who don’t know where their next meal is coming from, or they’re in the middle of a war right now in a country—simply because they were born in that country.
Right.
You know, based upon circumstances. So really, reframing that can be massive. I also find it’s fascinating as well that the people you surround yourself with can either elevate you or take you down a level—like one.
I’m glad you mentioned that, because I was going to mention that. Yes, correct. Yeah.
I mean, on one level—a great metaphor is the crabs in a bucket. As you keep elevating your consciousness, you’ll constantly run into people—a neighbor, someone at the grocery store—who just want to talk negatively.
Right.
And meanwhile, you’re making all this progress moving forward.
Forward.
So I think it’s really important to surround yourself with people that are going to elevate you.
Let me share something with you, Dave. Have you ever been around someone who’s so angry, upset, or agitated that just being in their presence puts you on edge?
Absolutely. We’ve all felt it.
What’s happening in that moment is energetic. We’re all vibrating at some level, and that person’s vibration is so intense, it grabs you and pulls you into their downward spiral.
Your job—your real work—is to be so deeply rooted in your own calm, peace, and inner stillness that you become the force. That you grab them energetically and pull them into your vortex of calm.
And if you can’t? That’s not a failure. It’s simply a sign: this is where you still have work to do on yourself.
I love that. And it really creates. This law of attraction as well.
Right.
So you become magnetic.
Right.
For others who want to come to you with this positive energy, and you’re attracted to others who are emanating that positive energy.
Right on.
Yeah.
Fantastic. So what are some of the, like, typical challenges, you know, that people come into your coaching program with? I can imagine there’s, like, a subset of challenges people are really working through in their life, whether it might be relationships, career, health-type issues, everything.
Any and all of those, Dave. My clients talk to me about everything. They talk to me about, “Dr. Rao, I have a board meeting, and one of my board members wants to have more say in operational decisions, and I don’t like that. What can I do about it?” Down to, “Dr. Rao, my son is paying too much attention to the wrong type of small screens, and his grades are suffering. Can you give me some tips on what I should do?” They talk to me about everything.
No, I think in this day and age, it’s very challenging.
Right.
Because we’re reacting to so many different things—trying to build careers, trying to build our wealth. We’ve got dynamics inside of our family, whatever age your children or aging parents really are—working through those generational dynamics. And I think ultimately, we all want to live a better life.
Right.
And be more fulfilled.
And ultimately, Dave, what we want is to be happy. We want to be happy all the time—unconditionally. We want happiness that lasts.
Yeah, Dr. Rao—so how do you see it? Is there a framework that you subscribe to? You know, we’re all kind of familiar with Maslow’s hierarchy of needs and the idea of moving toward self-actualization. But is there anything else you think about when it comes to self-actualization or consciousness? I really love thinking in frameworks because they help you visualize things—how you can have a blueprint or a plan for your life.
Remember what I told you about earlier, Dave—that what I draw my material from are the teachings of the world’s great masters. A lot of people get stuck thinking, “Oh my God, what is the purpose of my life? I need to find meaning.” But actually, there’s only one true purpose in life, Dave: to recognize that you are not this body-mind-intellect complex that you think you are.
Who you truly are is awareness. Who you are is pure spirit. And the only purpose of human existence is to realize that truth—that you are not this personality construct we call Dave Wolcott, who has a podcast, talks to people, and is an entrepreneur. That’s just a role, a soap opera you’re playing out.
Play that role with enthusiasm, with full engagement—but always with the deep understanding that your true identity is pure being. Becoming anchored in that awareness is the real purpose of life, because that’s the only way to free yourself from suffering. That’s the only way to go beyond sorrow—permanently.
And here’s the kicker: when you truly realize this, you’ll also know that you never die. You are immortal. The body you’re referring to exists within time and space—it will go. But you are not that body.
Interesting. That brings me to really think about time—how we experience it, how we relate to it, and how it shapes our perception of life.
Right.
So how do you really think about, you know, the past, the present, being mindful and being living in the present versus the future.
Right.
Moving towards maybe.
Time is an illusion, Dave. We are very firmly rooted in it. We believe that we were born, we go through. Time is something which is flowing from the past to the future in an inexorable stream, and that’s how we experience it. That’s false. We know it’s false because the hardest of hard scientists—physics—has already proved that. As Einstein said, there’s no such thing as space and time. There’s only spacetime.
Feynman proved that any equation or transformation you can think of in terms of particles breaking up works the same forward or backward. Mathematically, it’s exactly the same. Time is fiction, but we don’t experience it that way. We experience that time is going on—we’re getting older, we’re getting more infirm. That’s a misconception. But getting rid of that misconception is not that easy because we’ve been so strongly programmed into it.
What all of the great teachers—the Buddhas, the Jesus, the Ramana Maharshi—what they have done is they’ve transcended this limitation, and they are in the forever now. And not only are they in the forever now, but they’re inviting all of us to come join them in that.
So it’s our job to follow the teachings to get there. And we’ve been programmed so long in the wrong direction that it’ll take some work to get rid of our programming.
It’s hard to change the Colorado river, right?
Yes.
Well, in my experience, it’s interesting this time construct.
Right.
Because I’ve noticed that, you know, especially people who are in that, let’s say a negative state or negative energy, they tend to focus on the past.
Yes.
And they’re always reliving experiences about the past. They still have relationships from the past. Whereas entrepreneurs, thought leaders, high achievers are really focused on the future and trying to change things for the future because they’re very driven. So then they start to actually become their future self and go through this transformation.
Right.
Becoming someone with even greater purpose, with even greater impact, and kind of moving along that plane while still being cognizant of being in the present, being mindful. But they have this growth-oriented mindset, correct?
Yes.
Okay, interesting. And how does that—does that—how does that tie in really to your assessment through your teachings and everything around time? Fits in perfectly.
Because what I do is I encourage them to, each day, live each day as if it were your entire life. And each day is your entire life in miniature. You’re born when you get up in the morning, you die when you go to bed at night. And in between, the time that you have is all that you have. Make the most of it.
So what do you think listeners could really do today? We’d love to make this podcast really actionable for people so they can walk away and have some insights to try to make some change today.
You make today, decide today is going to be the best day of your life. You’re going to have a terrific day every day.
And how do you decide to have it, how you can have a terrific day every day? You get up in the morning and the first thing you do is decide today is going to be a terrific day.
Let’s say you’re getting up in the morning, you’re running late to work, so you grab a cup of coffee as you’re leaving the house, and unfortunately, your hand slips and you get coffee all over your new suit. You brush it off, but there are coffee stains anyway. You don’t have time to change.
You get into your car, you drive out. Just as you’re coming out of the driveway, somebody comes by and swipes you and moves on without stopping. You’ve got a brand-new BMW, which now has a deep dent all the way and the mirror is broken. You go to the office and you find you’re late as a result of all of this happening.
You find that a major client has come for an appointment, and he’s annoyed and has stormed out.
Now, all of this should make a bad day for you, right? But if you look at it and say, “This is stuff that happened. Am I going to allow this—whatever this is—to steal my good day from me?” and you say, “No, I’m not going to let this steal my good day from me,” then all of this simply becomes stuff which happened and you have to take care of, as opposed to, “Oh my God, my day is ruined.”
So if you want to have a good day every day, get up in the morning and decide you’re going to have a terrific day. And you’re not going to let anything steal that terrific day from you.
Think about it this way, Dave: shit is going to drop from the sky. It’s the nature.
When shit drops from the sky, you have two basic opportunities—two basic ways in which you can go. You can get messy, or you can put up your transparent plastic umbrella and say, “Look at the pretty shades of yellow and brown.”
I would say it’s a much better idea to put up your transparent plastic umbrella and say, “Look at the pretty shades of yellow and brown.”
That’s a good one, for sure. Like it. Well, I know you also often teach about letting go of attachment to outcome. Why do you think this is so critical for high performers?
It’s very critical because outcomes are not under our control, Dave. Anything that you do can come unstuck immediately. They’re not under your control. You think you have control — you don’t. You only have the illusion of control.
People say, I want to climb Mount Everest. How much time do you spend on top of Mount Everest? A few minutes to a half hour at most. You get on top, your buddy takes a picture of you. Your buddy gets on top, you take a picture of him. You’re on your way down, and you hope you don’t get killed in an avalanche. So if you’re going to climb Mount Everest, you better enjoy the weeks and months of acclimatization and Base Camp 1, Base Camp 2, and all the rest. Correct?
Works the same way in life. Whether or not you reach the goal that you want is beyond your control. Any number of things can happen. I went to Israel on a long-planned vacation. We were going to go all over the place. We were going to go everywhere — from the north to the south to the Dead Sea — and then cross over to Jordan. We happened to land in Israel, in Tel Aviv, on October 6, 2023.
October 7th is when the Hamas raid happened. We were lucky to get out. Unexpected stuff happens — it’s the nature of life. So when unexpected stuff happens, if you recognize that you never had control and you never will have control, you simply say, okay, stuff happened. What do I do now?
But if you focus all of your actions, all of your emotional energy into one of the things that I can do now, then you’ll find that you actually start enjoying the journey. And the journey is the only thing you have. The destination, the outcome, is a mirage. You get there, you tarry a few minutes, and you go someplace else.
But here’s the funny thing, Dave: the more you focus on what am I doing right now and what can I do about it, the more you find that the probability you will actually reach the outcome you want increases dramatically.
I think it was John Wooden who said, whenever I start working with a new team, I never talk about winning or outscoring opponents. I always talk about: when it’s over and you look in the mirror, did you do the best you were capable of? If you did the best you were capable of, the outcome doesn’t matter. But I suspect that if you did the best you were capable of, you’ll find the outcome to your liking.
Perfect example: invest in the process. Do not invest in the outcome. The purpose of washing dishes is not to get them clean. The purpose of washing dishes is to wash the dishes. The byproduct is they get clean.
Yeah, that’s great. I think it’s sage advice for all of us — no matter what it is. Whether it’s health and you’re trying to eat better, exercise, or all those things… or wealth — we talk about that as well.
And wealth, it’s really a process. I know a lot of people can get frustrated because they want to be at that target number they’re thinking about, whatever that might be. But it really is just a process.
And then the outcome becomes a barometer — really — of your success and what level you’re truly at.
Bingo.
Dr. Rao, how do you personally stay grounded and aligned with your purpose, even as you navigate all of the complex decisions?
You have constantly read the work of the great masters, Dave. And when you read their words and they’re so uplifting, all of a sudden you realize how much of a journey you yourself have to make. And I don’t do it from the sense of beating myself up. I simply do it as, you know, we’re all on the same path, and they are there to inspire us and illuminate the path. So travel it with gratitude. Travel it humbly. Travel it with respect.
What do you think are some of the biggest mental traps that hold people back?
The biggest mental trap is: I did it. I am doing it. You’re really not doing anything. There is some force, some powerful force—you can call it God, if you will; call it the universe, if you’re an atheist—that is orchestrating all of these matters in a precise fashion. Recognize it, use it, be grateful to be the instrument through which change is happening in the world.
Yeah, love that. And from like, on the personal productivity side, is there if you could recommend to the listeners just one habit that could really, you know, help them in this journey?
What would it be? It’s a question you ask yourself. Let me tell you a story first. It’s an ancient Sufi tale. It talks about a man and his son who lived in a beautiful valley. They were very happy, but they were very poor. The man decided he would become a rich man, and he would do that by breeding and selling horses. So he bought a stallion.
He didn’t have enough money to buy a stallion. He borrowed heavily from the neighbors. The very day he got the stallion, it kicked the top bardoos from the paddock where he housed it and ran away. All the neighbors came around and said, you were going to become a rich man, but your stallion has run away and you still owe us money. You’re screwed. The man shrugged his shoulders and said, good thing, bad thing, who knows?
That stallion fell in with a group of wild horses close to where the man lived. He was able to entice them into his paddock, which he had repaired, so escape was no longer possible.
Now, all of a sudden, he had his stallion back, plus a dozen wild horses, which made him a rich man by religious standards. The neighbors came around and said, we thought you were destitute, but fortune has smiled upon you. How lucky you are. He shrugged his shoulders and said, good thing, bad thing, who knows?
The man and his son started to break the horses so they could sell them on the market. One of the horses threw the man’s son and stomped on his leg. It broke and healed crooked. The neighbors came around and said, he was such a fine young lad and now he’ll never be able to find a girl to marry him. How sad.
The man shrugged his shoulders and said, good thing, bad thing, who knows?
That summer, the king of the country declared war on a neighboring country, and press gangs moved through the villages rounding up all the able-bodied young men to serve in the army. But this man’s son was spared because he had a crooked leg. The neighbors had tears in their eyes as they came around and said, we don’t know if we’ll ever see our sons alive, but you still have your son. How lucky you are. He shrugged his shoulders and said, good thing, bad thing, who knows?
And it goes on like that forever. There’s a powerful story in there.
Can you recall any time when something happened to you that, at the time, you thought was terrible? But now you can look back upon it and say, hey, that wasn’t so terrible after all. Maybe it was even good. Everybody can.
So this thing today that you’re about to label bad — is it possible that in a few years it could turn out to have been wonderful? Is it possible? Just ask yourself that question. Is there any possible scenario in which, in X years, you can look back upon this and say, it’s wonderful? If the answer to that is yes, why do you label it bad?
Understand, suffering only happens when you label something bad. Let’s say you get fired. You now have a lot of spare time. But if you get fired and say, oh my God, what am I going to do? How am I going to meet my mortgage payment? This is terrible.
The moment you say this is terrible, at that instant suffering begins. Suffering doesn’t begin when you get fired. It begins the instant you say this is terrible.
But if you step back and ask yourself, is there any conceivable way in which, in X years, this could turn out to be good? Just asking that question moves you to a different emotional domain.
If you then go the next stage and say, what can I do proactively today in order to actually make it good, you move seamlessly from the realm of despair to the realm of possibility.
You’ll find nothing bad ever happens to you because you never label anything bad. You simply say this happened and follow it up with, what do I do now? It’s an immensely powerful technique.
Excellent.
Yeah.
What a great story. I can completely see how that can really transform how you think about things and how you label it in your own mind because your thoughts, right, really become your emotions which become your reality.
Yeah.
Excellent. Dr. Rao, it’s been such a pleasure having you on the show. I can’t thank you enough for your time and your wisdom and such a unique niche that you have to be able to impart your wisdom from so many, you know, other kind of founding fathers before that and to kind of carry on that tradition and really tie that eastern wisdom, you know, with western success. It is really neat to see. If people would like to learn more about your coaching or your books or anything, what is the best place that they can connect with you?
The best way to connect with me is to send me an email. My email is my name, Sri Kumar — S R I K U M A R — at raoinstitute.com. They can go to my website, which is therauinstitute.com, and there’s a place where they can sign up, in which case they’ll receive my blogs and information about my programs. If you go to YouTube and put my name in the search engine, hundreds of videos will pop up. They can watch whichever one they like, and if they’re interested in exploring coaching with me, they can go to my website and fill in the application form. Go to therauinstitute.com/coaching and all the details will pop up.
Excellent. Dr. Rao, thanks so much. Really grateful for your time.
It’s been great talking to you and can I wish you a wonderful rest of your life?
Thank you. Thanks for listening to this episode of Wealth Strategy Secrets. If you’d like to get a free copy of the book, go to holisticwealthstrategy.com. That’s holisticwealthstrategy.com.
If you’d like to learn more about upcoming opportunities at Pantheon, please visit pantheoninvest.com. That’s pantheoninvest.com.