How to HACK Your Mind for Bigger Goals | Siddharth Rajsekar | Episode 11

When I was 13 years old, my father told me, Sid, just make 20,000 rupees per month, build a family and live a comfortable life. Because when I was growing up in the 80s and 90s, 20,000 rupees was the comfortable number to live a family life. But now we know that the world has moved way beyond that. 20,000 rupees is nothing. 20,000 rupees back then was possibly what now is maybe 2 lakhs, 3 lakhs of standard of living that people need to have. In this video I want to talk about raising your aspirations. Even though I come from an entrepreneurial family background, even though my grandfather was really ambitious when my father was bringing me up, the numbers that he planted into my head, the ideologies that he gave me while I was growing up ended up defining my current reality before I started my business. So yes, I got the 8,000 rupees salary in my first job. I got the 16 to 18,000 rupee salary in my first increment, then went to the next level of 45,000 rupees salary. And I felt I had fulfilled my father's original aspirations. And that time I realized that that was not enough money to run the family. And then I went on to grow up the corporate ladder. And you know my story, which I've shared in the previous videos, but I just want to talk about aspirations and why it is important for us to continuously keep expanding our aspirations in a continuously expanding world. Thanks to personal development, thanks to coming in touch with mentors, and thanks to also looking at examples from the outside world of people are able to do amazing things. It completely opened up my mind. And some of you may or may not know this, but my students have collectively generated more than 1000 crores in revenue. At this point of time. As I'm recording this video over the last seven years and even in my wildest of dreams, I would not have imagined that number in terms of the contribution number. And of course our numbers have also been great in terms of the kind of middle class background that I'm been brought up with. I could have never imagined this kind of income. I could have never imagined this kind of a growth. And I'll tell you, the reason why this happens is because of raising aspirations. You see, all of us have a thermostat in terms of how much income we want to earn, what our health is going to be like, what our relationships are going to be like, and in our subconscious we have already set these as benchmarks. That is why if somebody wins a lottery they make say 1 crore, 2 crores. Yes, they would have made a lot of money. But if you go and analyze their life three, four years after that lottery, they would have come back to that same situation where they were because their thermostat has not gone up. So when it comes to aspirations, you need to understand that it is a software programming, just like how your mobile phone needs an update every few months. And if you don't update the mobile phone for a few months, it gets slow, it gets hot and it's not able to function at that speed. That's how we are also as human beings. If we are not upgrading ourselves and updating our software continuously, our aspirations will remain and we will stagnate in a fast paced world. And in this video I want to go deeper into why it is important to raise our aspirations to create a meaningful impact in the world, to create a financial impact for us and our families and ultimately to build a business that thrives, a business that grows beyond us and, and a business that creates ripples across the world. So let's go back to understand from where do these benchmarks get set. It begins with our parents. It begins with what is the dinner table conversation that is happening in our home. The father figure is the one that sets the monetary financial thermostats for the next generation. And then the mother figure, the mother, the nurturer, she sets the standards on family life, how it should be. And if you look at our typical old Indian traditional system, the woman would be at home, the man would be working, and the woman's only job is to take care of the kids and the family and cook for the kids. And so the woman is not having that much of an aspiration because she has responsibilities. And I've seen this in my own family. In fact, I lost my grandmother before I was born. That's my dad's mom due to cancer, because she did not take care of herself because she was overburdened by responsibilities. And now that kind of an aspiration is set into the culture and it gets ingrained into the DNA of family life. Okay, the woman should do this, the man should do this. This is how it's supposed to be. This is how it's supposed to be. So it begins with parents, immediate family, dinner table conversations. And then something happens. You would have maybe one or two of these offbeat family members who did something radically different. And when you have somebody to see that, okay, they did something different, that is one opportunity on where your mind could open up. And that's why? We have seen this back in the day. If one person becomes a doctor in the family, we have many more doctors who will follow in the family. If one person becomes a chartered accountant in the family, everybody becomes chartered accountant because the role model has been established in the family and the aspiration has been created within the family. That was back in the day. The other person that influences your aspirations are your teachers, school teachers. What are they saying to you? What are they tagging you as? I remember my school teacher used to tell me that you're not so good in math, even though I love math now when I look at it. But because of that one statement, I started to live that truth, and that became my thermostat. Oh, I'm not good in math. I'm not good in math right through. And then I ended up failing in Math in my 12th grade, even though actually I have a passion for the subject, but I was not taught it or reinforced with trust and belief that I actually am good at it. The environment did not support me. So the teachers also influence our standards and our aspirations. Then comes our peer group and our friends. Friends tell us different things. Hey, try this, do that. You're good in this, you're good in that. You're not good in this. You're good for nothing. You know, all this stuff gets into us. And especially if you've been bullied in school, if you've had those kind of traumatic experiences, that gets into the programming. And from there it goes to the next stage is your spouse who you get married to. They either raise your aspirations or pull your aspirations down. Maybe you are having that and you have that big aspiration to do big thing. And maybe your spouse is still not at that same level of understanding. So that needs to be a reset. Or it could be the other way. Maybe your spouse wants you to be more aspirational. They wants you to be more out there doing different things. And maybe the spouse raises your aspirations. For me, that was the case. I just wanted to be simple and, you know, just have a simple life, which I am still living a simple life. My wife definitely inspired me for who I am today because she raised my aspirations. She gave me a new vision of what is possible, and it really inspired me. And then you have the next level. Your bosses, if you're in a job, they set your standards and aspirations, and then comes your mentors. That's why I always say, choose your mentors wisely, because your mentors can either make you or break you. I'm not saying every mentor is bad. But I'm saying there are mentors who project their insecurities onto their students. They project their past experiences into their students and they do not allow their students to create their own standards. And that's why I'm very, very conscious about this. I don't want any of my insecurities or my lack of belief in any area of my life be projected on my students. And. And I'm very conscious that as I'm building my community, I want every student to play their best, to play their bigger game, to expand their horizon. In fact, recently I had one of my students, when she started around four years ago with me, she did not have any background in coaching and training. She started this journey from scratch, not having any money to build this business. Slowly went from 1 to 2 lakhs a month, 3 lakhs a month. And a very proud moment for me happened recently where she sends me a message that she did five crore rupees in one single month and I was blown away. And her journey of transformation and the way that she expanded herself, the way she raised her aspiration, completely blew my mind away. So be careful on who you choose as your mentors. Another area where you would get your aspirations from and your standards from are your spiritual values and your spiritual master. For me, my spiritual master, His Holiness Jayapataka Swami, who is a disciple of his divine grace, AC Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada has been a huge inspiration for me because Srila Prabhupada who started the Hare Krishna movement is gone. As many of you might have heard, his entire lifetime was a preparation. When he was in his 30s, he got an instruction from his spiritual master saying that go to the west and take this knowledge and give this knowledge to people in the west and connect more people to God. Because people in the west were more into materialism at that point of time and they needed to have a spiritual awakening. So his divine grace, AC Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada. His entire life he decoded, he wrote the commentaries of the Bhagavad Gita, the Srimad Bhagavat Bhagavatam. And at age 70, he decides to fulfill the instruction of his master. He was a frail old man, but he was inspired by one of the verses from the Gita in chapter two which says Vyavasayatmika Buddhih AKA Hokuru Nandana Bahusha Kahnanta Buddhayo Vyavasayanam. The essence of that verse, that one who is resolute in his purpose. His focus is one and one whose purpose is many branched. They would never be able to be resolute in achieving their goal. This one verse inspired his divine grace, AC Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada, to go to the west, which is 40 rupees with him and a trunk load of books, which was the Srimad Bhagavatam. He went there, he went to Boston harbor, and he started following the instructions of his spiritual master. And today, in 2025, as I'm recording this, the Hare Krishna movement, this con movement, has millions of followers across the world. It all started with one man following that one instruction of his spiritual master. And when I look at my spiritual master, who is a disciple of his divine grace, AC Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada, in one of his interviews, he was saying he was talking about his interactions with Srila Prabhupada. So my spiritual master got into the movement when he was 18 or 19 years old. He was born in Milwaukee, and when he was 18, 19 years old, in spite of coming from a very affluent family, badger pains back in the U.S. he renounced his life at age 18 and surrendered to his spiritual master. He went through a lot, and he was sent to India by his divine grace, Rla Prabhupada. And. And he literally built an entire community of 8 to 10,000 people, maybe 15,000 people in a spiritual city called Sridam Mayapur. Now I met my wife in Sridham Mayapur, and we decided to get married over there. And I've been going there from my childhood days. Every year I used to go. And when I was observing my spiritual master and how he built this community, that inspired me, that gave me the aspiration to build my community based on what? Those principles, those values. And when he. When my spiritual master used to talk about Srila Prabhupada, in one of the interviews, he mentions that Srila Prabhupada had a conversation with him where Srila Prabhupada would tell him, think big, think big, think big. Because sometimes we feel that when it comes to spiritual life, we got to minimize everything. But the essence of spirituality is minimizing our personal needs and our personal interests. Yes, we need to have vitamin M for ourselves. We need to have money, we need to have our basic needs and everything else. But when you have a bigger vision to expand and grow. In fact, RLA Prabhupada's vision was to have and is, I mean, what he has shared in all of his Teachings is to have at least 1 million gurus on this planet. And here, guru does not mean a person who just wearing saffron and teaching all over the place. We are talking about every single human being being a teacher, being somebody who is walking the talk, who's nurturing others, who's mentoring others based on spiritual values. And Srila Prabhupada was such a person where people from all religions, all backgrounds would come to him and he would tell them, please chant the names of God whichever path that you follow, whether it's Allah, whether it's Jesus, Jesus is the son of God, whether it's Jehovah, Christos, chant the names of God. That was his instruction. And he literally brought together people from all different cultures of the world, like the United nations of the world. Now why am I sharing this is because to raise our aspirations, you would get your highest aspirations and your deepest aspirations from a plane of spirituality. Whichever school of thought that you're following, whichever process that you're following, whichever religion that you're following, if you go back to the essentials of religion and if you compare all the scriptures, it all boil down to the same thing, which is love. Love and connection to our Creator. And that would be the highest aspiration. So let's come back to business over here. How does this connect to business? I want you to first evaluate from where are you getting your standards? Who are setting your standards? What did your parents tell you? What if your relatives told you, what have your school teachers told you, what have your mentors told you? What have your masters told you? And I want to put all of that into a document and start questioning that. If that is really you, are you living according to your standards? Are you living? Or are you living based on somebody else's standards and map it back to clarity. Is that what you really want to do in life? And what I've come to realize is that once you are able to map your gifts, your talents, your abilities with your own aspirations, the magic will start to unfold at that point of time. So for me, for many years I had this internal dissonance, if I should say, when it comes to building wealth materially along with spirituality, I always had this thing, okay, maybe I should not get too material. But then my spiritual master gave me the inspiration that, you know what? Do whatever it takes, but do it for the Lord. Do it for a higher purpose. And this and even Srila Prabhupada and his teachings, he would talk about something called Yukta Vairagya. So Vairagya is a word which we say, renunciation, renounce everything and go away. But Srila Prabhupada never encouraged that because today we're living in a world where you can't just go and sit somewhere and not do anything. He talks about this concept called Yukta vairagya, which is where we utilize everything that we have, our talents, our skills, our abilities for the greater good of humankind and ultimately using all of this for the service of our Creator of the Supreme Lord. Now these are my aspirations. I'm operating from this space and I just wanted to share that with you. Now each one of you would have your own aspirations. When you raise your aspirations, then you will start to develop an internal charge inside you which will take your commitment to a whole different level. You will not run your business just for the sake of making more money or generating more profits. That will be the outcome. You will not just show up every day in your community just because you have created a call and you have to show up for the call. It is mission. You're going to do this because it is aligned with your sole purpose. Now, even if you do not know what that sole purpose is, even if you feel that it is not very clear. One of my mentors, Blessingary, says that when you throw yourself in the service of others, you will automatically be living your purpose, whether you know it or not. I'll repeat that. When you throw yourself in the service of others and the service of our Creator, you will not only raise your standards, but you will automatically be living your purpose, whether you know it or not. I hope this video inspired you. I want you to have a clean slate and put down your new aspirations. I want you to think big because we have a lot of work to do and the world truly needs you, whether you know it or not. And every day that you're delaying your action, there is somebody out there who's getting deprived of your knowledge. Think about it that way. Every day you delay your one step towards becoming a teacher, a leader, an inspire. There is somebody out there who's getting deprived of your knowledge. Today, as I've been building this community for so many years, when I see stories of people who have gone from nothing to building massive impact, I'm so proud to see that the thing that really took them from where they were to where they are now was raising their aspirations, trusting the process, surrendering to the system, believing in themselves, taking action with a lot of passion, building their business not for the money, but for the purpose, for the mission and most importantly, loving themselves. Because if you don't love yourself, you will never have high aspirations. So be awesome, love yourself. And keep watching the next video as I unfold more truths, more insights to help you become a leader. I'll see you in the next video.