Product Description

Srikumar Rao teaches a hugely popular course at both London and Columbia Business Schools. He helps his students define their personal ethics and goals, and how to reach them, and starts them on a journey that will last them a lifetime. Now, in this extraordinary book, Dr Rao's unique approach is available to a far wider audience. Using his own unconventional methods, including exercises and lessons adapted from many traditions, he explains how to: work out who you are, and where you are going; find out how you really view the world; discover the joy of effortless action; sharpen your ability to focus; and, discover true freedom and happiness. "Are You Ready to Succeed?" is in a different league altogether from most business books already on offer. If you too would like to be in another league, this fresh, accessible and groundbreaking guide to a meaningful and successful life is the one for you.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #106942 in Books
• Published on: 2007-06-07
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 272 pages

Marshall Goldsmith, Editor of The Leader of the Future and Coaching for Leadership
Srikumar Rao is one of the greatest teachers I have ever met - read this book!

N R Narayana Murthy, Chairman, Infosys Technologies
Professor Rao's course is not just an ethics course; it is a forum for self-exploration

Frances Hesselbein, Chairman, Leader to Leader Institute
Professor Rao's book is a great gift to leaders everywhere. I treasure it.

Customer Reviews

It will make a leader of you, if you let it.
"Life is short. And uncertain. It is like a drop of water skittering around on a lotus leaf. You never know when it will drop off and disappear. So each day is too precious to waste. And each day that you are not radiantly alive and brimming with cheer is a day wasted"

Who wouldn't be interested in what this man has to say, right? You'd have to lack a pulse not to want - better, profoundly yearn for - the life affirming perspective and deep joy in being alive he describes.

But have you or I got the vision, guts and discipline to commit to what it's going to take? That's the central question this book poses on every glorious and uplifting page.

Like Stephen Covey's "Seven Habits", Rao proposes that meaningful change happens from the inside out: You'll recall Covey's first 3 habits are about "Personal Victory".

This book is more powerful because it doesn't deal with practices - "habits" - for cognitive behavioural change, like Covey. No, Rao challenges the fundamental fabric of our life experience: our very consciousness.

In one sound bite, the rallying cry of this book is: "live a conscious life".

I'm excited by this. As someone who has lived in a coma - mindlessly propelled by the "conveyor belt of life" - and has jumped off, this resonates very deeply with me.

But this isn't a quick fix. Rao invites you on a very tough spiritual journey that will last a life time.

Brutally simplified, he invites you to become conscious of your self-limiting, self-defeating models of the world, your judgmental critical dialogue, and to develop insight to shift these, partly using the meditative practice of mindfulness.

The outcome: "Gradually, you get to the point where you can control what you are consciously comfortable with letting into your mind. And that is how you start straightening out of your life"

But that's not the tough part. What comes next is far more challenging. What if you believed the Universe wasn't "a dumb, insentient mass" but "a conscious entity that is intimately intertwined with you and not separate from you. It wants to give you what you desire and you can influence it"

Wow! If that was your operating principle, just imagine how different would life be? How much more time and energy would you spend focusing on and manifesting what you want in life instead of worrying and complaining about what you don't want?

Most of the rest of book is dedicated to building the "Benevolent Universe" model. Rao coaches us on how to let go of guilt, blame, destructive habits and anxiety about what we can't control. This all uses up valuable energy and makes us feel powerless: far better to channel energy into constructive and resourceful practices that serve us.

Specifically he shows us how to use the "Law of Increase", the reality that "Whatever you are truly grateful for and appreciate will increase in your life" and how to manifest our deepest desires simply by being resolutely and single-mindedly focused on them with a deep conviction that they are already ours.

Freedom and happiness? We already have them: they're inside, not outside us.

Thinking we have to "acquire" something to be free or happy is misguided, according to Rao: "The talons of our addiction shred our minds and wreck repose... There is nothing you have to get in order to be happy"

Why go on this journey at all?

Because fundamental to our purpose is contribution: the unique gifts we're on the road to discovering and manifesting in the world will contribute to the greater good: literally make the world a better place.

"When you stop explicitly focusing on yourself, on what you want and don't have, and start focusing on how you can be of service to a larger community, then you set loose some very powerful forces"

The reward of accepting the challenge in this book is enlightenment: a deep understanding of your purpose in life and the insight to manifest it.

If you are ready for some change in your life...
I personally took Professor Rao's course, which has had a profound effect on me and on the increasing network of professionals who have had the opportunity to cross his path.

The tools he provides and the frameworks he proposes are as challenging as they are breathtakingly life changing. His transformational course helped me become much more effective in my professional and personal life.

My day to day existence is more satisfying and my outlook has changed dramatically making me more capable and determined to realize my full potential in all areas of my life

This book is a distilation of his course.

If you are ready; that is if you have an itch that your life - both professionally and personally - should be much better and you are willing to practise the exercises he proposes (avoiding the temptation to just read the pages) I can guarantee that his book will have a deep effect in your perceptions and actions, making your life so much more satisfiying and enjoyable all round.