Srikumar Rao delivers a motivational talk about the illusion of control and how believing one can fully control outcomes causes stress. He defines key concepts—mental chatter (the persistent internal monologue) and mental models (personal, often inaccurate maps of how the world works)—and recommends practices to reduce stress: cultivate felt gratitude daily (not just intellectual acknowledgment) and orient life toward a cause larger than the self to escape a self-centered, mediocre existence.
Chapters
Your entire life has been an attempt to exert control on some part of the universe. You're an entrepreneur. You really want to grow your business. You want to serve a certain number of customers. You want to have certain revenues coming in. Because if all of that happens, you think you're going to feel a certain way, and you really want to feel that way. Your friends, colleagues, society will look at you a certain way, and, hey, that's good. That's what I want. It is an attempt to control your environment. Everything that you do is in some way, shape, fashion, or form an attempt to control your environment. Well, I have some news for you. You do not have control. You never had control. You never will have control. What you have is the illusion of control. The illusion of control comes about because in your life you have set a goal for yourself. And you've said, you know, here's my goal, and if I do all of these things, then I'm actually going to achieve my goal. And guess what? You succeed. And you did this many times in your life, and each time you succeeded. And so you think, gee, I really can do it. I can do it. I have control. And not only have you done it, but you've observed others around you, and they seem to have done it, and they got the results they wanted. So all of that combined to tell you, yes, I can do it. I have control. That is the illusion of control. I'm not knocking the illusion of control. It is a wonderful creation. That's what makes you get up in the morning and strive and do all of the things that give meaning to your life and accomplishment. But it's wonderful to use the illusion of control, knowing that that is the illusion of control. Because when it breaks down, and it will sooner or later in every one of your lives, you don't go to pieces. You simply say, ah, this is where the illusion broke down. Where do I go from here? So given the truth that you never have control, you never had it, how can you eliminate stress and cultivate resilience? Well, I want to share some concepts with you. Concept number one is mental chatter, which is the internal monologue that you have going on in your head all the time. It begins when you get up in the morning is with you right through the day is with you now, when you should be listening to my chatter instead of yours. But in the short time I've been speaking, how many of you have already gone someplace else? What am I going to have for lunch? Who do I have to call? Right. I rest my case. Mental Chatter has always been with you. It's like an unwelcome relative who's shown up in your house and you can't throw him out. So you live your life as best you can, despite your mental chatter. You ignore him, suppress him, work around him. Big mistake. And the reason it's a mistake is because you don't live a real life. You live artificial life. And this artificial life is constructed with your mental chatter. Then we have mental models. And a mental model is a notion you have that this is the way the world works. But this is not the way the world works. It's your model of this is the way the world works. And the more you believe in your model of this is the way the world works, the more evidence you seem to get that this in fact is the way the world works. And very soon you built a silo around yourself that's so thick you can't break out of it. We spend too much of our emotional energy on the two, three or four things that we think are wrong in our lives. And we entirely ignore the 30, 40, 50, 200 things which are pretty darn good in our lives. Everybody in this room is incredibly privileged. And when I point it out, you do recognize that you don't have to bother about whether you're going to have lunch today. You don't have to bother about whether you have a roof over your head or a bed to sleep in. So when I point that out, you say, yes, yes, and you do recognize you are incredibly privileged. The problem is you don't feel that you are incredibly privileged. You feel that you are put upon. Flip this around consciously and do this. Preferably, you know, just before you go to bed, think about the many things in your life that are actually pretty darn good. And I've got to tell you that if you're a type A person who lives in your head, and I'm sure this room is full of type A people who live in their heads, you have a tendency to think gratitude rather than feel gratitude. So you can't go, good health, Check. Bed to sleep in, Check. Roof overhead, check. It doesn't work that way. You have to feel it rather than think it. So if you're a type A person who lives in your head, then it'll take some doing before you get to the point where you actually feel the gratitude rather than think the gratitude. And when you get up in the morning, don't go immediately to the space of, oh my God, there's too much to do. And I don't have enough time to do it all, go instead back to that space of appreciation, gratitude. And eventually you want to get to the point where your default emotional domain is appreciation and gratitude. Now let me give you a little bit advanced version of the same exercise. We begin by being grateful for the many good things that we have in our life. But do recognize that whatever you are grateful for for can go away. You're grateful for good health, you get hit by a truck and you're a quadriplegic. Eventually I would like you to be in a place where you're not grateful for something. You are just grateful, period. And that is when you find that your life truly has been transformed. You know, a few hundred years. Galileo got into trouble because he kind of postulated that perhaps the sun doesn't move around the Earth, the Earth moves around the sun. Every single one of you is convinced that Galileo got it wrong. The Earth does not move around the sun. It revolves around you personally. Think about how no matter what happens, you very quickly bring it down to, what's the impact on me? Your spouse gets a great job offer and you say, gee, how is this going to affect our relationship? Your boss leaves the company and say, gee, who's the new person going to be? And what's my relationship going to be with that person? Or possibly, am I going to get promoted? Or is it that turkey down the hall that's living in a me centered universe? And here's what you need to know. If that is where you spend most of your time, if that is where you predominantly live, you are going to live a life of mediocrity, punctuated with flashes of pleasure, but essentially meaningless. It just comes with the territory. That is the way it is. The only way you're going to be able to bust out of that is if you can find a cause which is bigger than you are. A cause which brings a greater good to a greater community. And you have tremendous flexibility in defining both the greater good and the greater community. But unless you can find something which is bigger than you are that brings a greater good to a greater community, and in the pursuit of which you can subsume your identity, you're going to live a mediocre existence.
