You Can't Help People Until They Are Ready

"A seed sprouts when it is ready," Dr. Srikumar Rao reminded me earlier today, explaining that things happen when the conditions come together for them to manifest. A seed planted in dirt, given water and sunshine, is likely to sprout; others missing one or more of these conditions will not sprout.

People are a bit more complicated. "There are people who've known about me for ten or fifteen years," says Dr. Rao, "And all of a sudden they say now the time is right to work with me. The time is right when it's right."

Dr. Rao is a speaker, former business school professor, and head of The Rao Institute. Today, he spends most of his time coaching highly successful leaders who really want to make a dent in the universe, and who also have an explicitly spiritual bent that they would like to bring to every aspect of their life.

I've known Dr. Rao since 2015, and last year took his three-month Creative and Personal Mastery program, which I found extraordinarily valuable. Today I circled back to ask him how I can help more people find meaning and purpose in their lives.

He told me the same thing about 12 times: when they are ready, you can help them. Not before.

Again and again, I circled back. He didn't budge. You can't help people until they are ready.

To share my own perspective on this, the corollary of this truth is: no one can help you until you are ready to do the work.

To illustrate what he was trying to convey, Dr. Rao shared the following observation, "I say coaching happens at two levels. Level number one is cognitive, where I present ideas and you examine them based upon your life experience, your education, the context of your life. But level number two cannot be described. It is a presence that is transmitted, that you feel. You cannot describe it, but you feel it. You actually know that you're functioning at a higher level of consciousness. If a person doesn't feel that, then they're not a good coaching client."

In other words, until you are ready, you won't be able to sense such a presence; the conditions just won't be right.

I'll leave you with one other critically important lesson Dr. Rao has helped me to internalize: none of my problems or challenges are "out there" in the world. They all exist inside me. In a similar manner, all my answers exist inside me.

The same is true for you.

Thank you, Dr. Rao, for your time this morning.

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To understand ways in which I can support you, please stop by Kasanoff.com . If you would like an introduction to Dr. Rao, please use my contact page to send me a note.