Dr. Srikumar Rao discusses several key ideas that might just change how you have been approaching goals, passion, and creating your ideal life. He shares how we can have ambition but not be defined by it, how we need to invest in the process but not the outcome, and how your ideal life is not something you find but something you create.
After you listen, let me know your most important takeaway or a-ha moment from this conversation. Email me at ImperfectActionPodcast@gmail.com or tweet to @brocedwards.

Dr. Srikumar Rao, Author, Coach, Lecturer, and Happiness Guru
 
Srikumar S. Rao has helped thousands of executives all over the world discover deep meaning. His methods have enabled them to achieve quantum leaps in effectiveness. Graduates of his workshops have become more creative and more inspiring leaders. Above all they have developed an inner serenity, born of the knowledge that they will be able to appropriately handle whatever comes their way be it a small wave or a tsunami. They become resilient and bounce back nonchalantly from reverses that would floor most peers.  
 
He received his Ph.D. in Marketing from the Graduate School of Business, Columbia University. He has a degree in Physics from St. Stephen’s College, Delhi University and an MBA from the Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad. He conceived the innovative course Creativity and Personal Mastery. Students found it so overwhelmingly powerful that it remains the only business school course in the world to have its own alumni association. Dr. Rao’s work has been extensively covered in the media including the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, the London Times, the Independent, Time, the Financial Times, Fortune, the Guardian, Forbes, Business Week and dozens of other publications. These articles, interviews and other details about his work are at The Rao Institute website.  
 
He has done pioneering work in motivation and helps senior executives become more engaged in work and discover their inner purpose as they go about their tasks. He also works with teams and groups and has been extraordinarily successful in using group dynamics to foster lasting personal change. Many who have been through his program experience exponential jumps in personal and professional productivity. Dr. Rao is the author of “Are You Ready to Succeed: Unconventional Strategies for Achieving Personal Mastery in Business and Life”, Hyperion, 2006. The book is an international bestseller and has been translated into many languages and distributed in all continents. His latest book “Happiness at Work: Be Resilient, Motivated and Successful – No Matter What”, McGraw Hill, 2010, is also a business bestseller and has been translated into more than a dozen languages.  
 
He is a powerful speaker and his talks are hosted on many sites including TED and Thinkers 50 Interview. He has conducted workshops for and spoken before executives of Microsoft, Google, Merrill Lynch, McDonald’s, Chubb, IBM, United Airlines, Allstate, Johnson & Johnson and dozens of other companies. Dr. Rao has also spoken at countless conferences including the Society for Human Resource Management, Betterworks, Entrepreneurs Organization (EO), Young Presidents Organization (YPO), WorldBlu, Vistage, Conscious Capitalism, Awesomeness Fest, and the Dubai Government.  
 
He has been a contributing editor for Forbes and writes regularly on management practices, leadership and personal mastery. He is a member of the American Society of Journalists and Authors. Dr. Rao was an executive with Warner Communications, Continental Group, Data Resources and McGraw-Hill and has consulted with such companies as RCA,