The Quest For Personal Mastery by Srikumar Rao is the most thought-provoking 45-day quest I’ve taken on Mindvalley. It’s a deep quest where you look at your beliefs and behavior and move towards a life where you are more resilient and capable of overcoming issues that get in your way. I found it to be life-changing, so I obviously recommend you take this Mindvalley quest if you are interested in it. Following are some quotes that are taken directly from the quest to show you just how helpful it can be to your way of thinking and life as a result.
1. The Depressing Downward Spiral Often Comes From External Factors
Our mental and emotional domain is hijacked by (external factors) and we go on a depressing and downward spiral.
This is true. Without awareness, you are easily hijacked by external factors.
I remember when I was young and lacked awareness around myself and others, which resulted in low confidence. And I took everything personally and would often go down that depressing spiral.
As I’ve gotten older and developed more awareness, I take more ownership over my mental and emotional domain.
The Quest For Personal Mastery helped me take even more ownership, and I know that as I practice the concepts found inside, I’m eventually going to end up having way more control over how I feel, despite what is happening around me.
2. You Can Change Your Mental Models
You have the choice of determining what is the emotional domain you occupy.
Srikumar Rao talks a lot about mental models in The Quest For Personal Mastery. And, through his lessons, you start to understand how you can change your way of thinking to change the way you feel.
It’s true that you have a choice when it comes to how you feel.
For instance, if someone pushes you out of the way while walking, your default way of thinking may lead you to think that they are a rude person who doesn’t care about anyone but themselves. That makes you angry and you yell at them or seethe in anger as you continue on. But, if you try on another mental model for size, such as thinking ‘Maybe the person is desperate to get somewhere and isn’t thinking straight’, then you can get out of that angry state and just let the situation go.
You have a choice when it comes to how you think, but you need to be aware of that choice and actively look for something better.
I’ve found that once you start to look for different stories than what you are used to coming up with, you start to feel much better about things that used to make you extremely angry or upset.
3. It’s Not Terrible Until You Make It So
Suffering does not happen when an event occurs. Suffering begins at the instant you label that event bad.
This is a deep concept that Srikumar Rao teaches in this quest. It didn’t take me long to realize that this is true because just before this lesson I was going through some serious suffering because of an event.
We have a line of credit that we’ve been paying off for years. We should have paid it off years ago, but we’ve been paying the minimum payment and that’s it. One day, the bank called us to ask us to make bigger payments. Christmas was coming and we said that we were not able to make bigger payments. The next day was payday, and when my husband’s check got automatically deposited, the bank automatically took 50% of it out for ‘payment’ towards the line of credit. We didn’t realize that until later in the day, but as soon as we realized it, the suffering began. It didn’t start when they took the payment out. It started when we labeled it as a bad event.
Now, I’m grateful that the bank did this at the same time I was taking The Quest For Personal Mastery. The experience was a huge personal example to draw from when I thought about the lessons that Srikumar Rao was teaching. Because of that, I no longer label it as a bad event, so I no longer feel suffering over it.
I think about this concept every time I experience suffering, and then I try to label the event in a way that usually stops the suffering instantly.
4. Enjoy The Process
It is not the end result which blesses you, it is the task itself, which will bless you depending upon your attitude and what you bring to the task.
This lesson from The Quest For Personal Mastery came in handy when creating my goals for 2019. It drilled into my mind that my writing is about helping other people, and that’s what I need to focus on.
I was caught up in the process of how much I needed to write. It was so overwhelming that I stopped writing altogether for a while. But, when I remembered why I started blogging and creating websites in the first place – to inspire or motivate myself and other people – I realized that the writing is what’s important, not the amount, and it took a ton of pressure of me.
Ironically I started writing more when I focused on the process and not on the outcome.
5. It’s Never Good Enough
Our life is an endless story of wanting more.
I’ve found that without the awareness of this quote, life is never good enough.
We always want more. Even when we get something huge, we want more.
But, with this awareness, we can realize that, again, it’s not about the outcome, it’s about the process. We need to enjoy what we are doing now because that’s how to end the cycle of never reaching what we want.
6. You Can Be Happy Right Now
There is nothing you have to get or do or be in order to be happy
This quote pretty much sums up how to be happy. Stop acting like doing something or being something will make you happy. We all know that half the time it doesn’t. The only time to be happy is now. Enjoy yourself, what you have, where you are, and who you are.
7. Communicate Better By Remembering This One Quote From Srikumar Rao
The purpose of conversation is not to be understood, it is to understand.
After hearing this, I’ve gone into every conversation striving to understand more than I strive to be understood.
It has been life-changing.
It’s helped me get closer to people I love and understand them better. It’s also helped me resolve small problems that would have otherwise turned into gigantic problems.
8. Stop Striving To Be Someone You Are Not
You can only act from the level of consciousness where you are.
I love this quote.
As I’ve worked on my personal development over the last 20 years, my consciousness has increased. I’m much more aware of myself and the world around me than I was. But, I’m nowhere near perfect.
It would be ridiculous of me to try and act like Srikumar Rao. I can’t. He’s on a different level than I am. Maybe one day I’ll be like him, but until then I can only be me.
9. Why We Get Angry
There is only one reason for getting angry, and that is because you have anger inside of you.
Yesterday I went to a very busy mall. I was annoyed by the people around me and I felt some serious anger. But, there were other people who were not angry. They didn’t even care about the annoying people around them. That’s a good sign that anger is not a result of anything other than the feelings inside of you.
I think that The Quest For Personal Mastery as a whole is great for reducing that anger, along with other negative emotions. The lessons you learn pop into your mind at the times you need them most, just like it did yesterday for me, and you can bring yourself out of a negative state and into something more positive.
Srikumar Rao’s The Quest For Personal Mastery Is Awesome
If you want to learn more about these concepts and more from Srikumar Rao, then The Quest For Personal Mastery is what I recommend. I’ve taken it, and I loved every second of it. It’s a quest that I will refer back to again and again until I master the concepts the inside. You can take a free Masterclass with him here to learn more or you can learn more about the quest itself here.
