Six Insights for a Life Without Limits From my Personal Experiences

Hey everybody, welcome to The Mind Shift. This is a podcast where we discuss living a life without limits. Today is actually not so much a podcast as a solo cast. The team and I at The Mind Shift got together and decided it would be a good idea for me to do a solo cast this time. The holidays are here, and we thought it was a good time for me to share with you some of the greatest insights and lessons that I've had over the 30-plus years that I've engaged in this work and been on my journey. I want to take some of the most important things and explore those in this episode in the hopes that you will be able to apply them in your life.

The holidays are a time where we reflect on the year just gone—hopefully with gratitude and reflection on what's happened for us and what we've achieved. It's also an opportunity to look at the next year and beyond and say: "What do we really want to create with our life and make this coming year the best?"

It was a bit of a task when I started to take a trip down memory lane and ask, "What are some of those most important elements, insights, teachings, or experiences that I've had?" There was a lot. I thought, "Okay, well, this is going to be too many," so I've sized it down to six really key insights to share with you today. These have helped me move from a very stuck point to a life without limits, considering what was going on then, and to be able to just have so much change and transformation in life.

So we'll jump right in. For those of you that aren't aware—if you're new to this podcast, or perhaps listening for the first time—my backstory is important to give you an idea of where this is coming from. Just over 30 years ago, I ended up in a very dark state. I was hopelessly addicted to drugs, homeless, destitute, and probably worse than anything, I had this internal bankruptcy. I had no sense of self-worth, no sense of value, or any sense of what I could do in this life. I didn't feel like there was anything for me to do, and it wasn't going to be a very good life.

My journey really started on the first day that I was homeless. I had a transformational moment, which gives me the first of these insights that I would love to share with you. It happened for me in a single moment—at least the epiphany did—but it's been a lifetime of more than 30 years seeing how this works.

That simple teaching or understanding is that anything is possible. And I would add: anything is possible for you.

I've heard this so many times, and I'm sure you have too—there are posters on the wall, people saying, "Anything is possible." But if I'm really being honest and look out, there's not a whole lot of people doing the "anything is possible." We say it, we get a temporary feel-good—"Oh yeah, anything is possible"—but then do we really do it? What I now know from this journey is that with certain ingredients, it does take something to realise that anything is possible. But I do know now that it's true.

It started for me on that particular day—the first day I was homeless. I grew up in the US on the southeast coast, in a town called Savannah, Georgia. In those drug addiction years, things got really dark and really tough. With the help of my father, I escaped some things that I really needed to get away from if it wasn't going to implode on me. My father put me on a bus, bought me a ticket, gave me a little bit of spending money, and I ended up closing my eyes and pointing at a map at the Greyhound bus station. I pointed to the northwest—all the way across the country—to a city called Seattle, Washington. I just said, "I'll go there."

It was five days on a bus ride. When I got there, I had nothing left. I had two bags of everything that I owned left. I couldn't carry them around town because I had nowhere to go, so I put them in a locker with the last $5 that I had at the Greyhound bus station. Never went back to get them. So that was literally the day when I walked out of that bus station: I had nothing.

I walked out on these streets and remember just walking around. I had no idea where to go. Someone on the bus told me about a homeless shelter that I could go to and try to get some help from—that was the state that I was in. As I was walking down one of the streets looking for this place, I looked up. There were all these skyscrapers around, but at a street corner, there was a gap in the buildings. In the distance, I saw the Space Needle.

For whatever reason, that was the moment my entire life changed. From somewhere deep inside, I heard this voice within that was unmistakable. It was quiet, but it was so powerful, and it just cut through everything that I was going through—all the despair, all the fear. I simply heard this internal voice saying: "There's an infinite potential for your life, Sridhar, and you're meant to be up there, not down here."

Of course, that was metaphorical, but to this day I still call my pursuit in life "My Space Needle Life"—the life that's up there and full of everything we desire, and not down in the dumps, which is obviously where I was when I got to Seattle. In that moment, it was like time froze, and I had this glimpse of all the different ways that my life could go. I can still close my eyes and see it. It was like this myriad of limitless possibilities for my life. I saw one where I continued on the path that I was on, and it ended very grisly and nasty. And I saw a life full of success and full of fulfillment and full of all the things that I would love and could dream of.

I knew in that moment—I just had a knowing—that any of those possibilities were available to me, and I just had to make a choice of where I wanted to go. It was that day that I made a choice: I was going to live that Space Needle life. I was going to live my best life.

It took me a little while after that to get off the drugs, to get some help, and to start changing my life. But today, when I look at what's happened... if you're new to the work or the podcast: today, I have an amazing life that I absolutely love. I have quite a successful business where I work with thousands of people over the years, including some of the most successful people in the world. I have a wonderful marriage that's nearing on 25 years now. My financial life has been transformed. And, most importantly, I feel really good in life; I feel fulfilled, and I love my life. I can't wait to get up in the morning. I can't say that just over 30 years ago—life was a dread, and I just didn't see any possibility for it.

So when I say that anything is possible, I now know that to be true. What happened in that moment was something just changed in me, and my pursuit changed. The first thing that I would share is: I hope that if you're not already, get really, really clear on the pursuit that you would love to go for. I know sometimes it feels like we're not at a place where we can do that, but I'm here to say it doesn't matter where we're starting from. Where I was starting from that day, it was the lowest of the low, and I literally had nothing. So if I can go from that to what life is like today, then there's no one that can't get on your path to your "anything is possible."

What I did that day was I just made a decision. It came from within me. But if it's not happening from within you, I hope that this is the thing that you will hear today: that anything is possible for your life. I'm just going to pause and say it again: anything—and I mean anything—is possible for you and your life. You just need to make a decision. You just need to get in here to cut through all the noise, cut through all the voices in the mind that tell you otherwise, and give yourself the honour by connecting with your own heart, with your own truth, and figure out what it is that you'd love to do with your life. Where do you want to be? What kind of success and fulfillment do you want to have?

For me, it was a gift that day. I could see some things about the future. I could see being successful in a business kind of thing; I could see doing this type of work. I even knew at that point I wanted to help other people. I had no idea how I was going to get there—absolutely none—but I just knew that that's what I was going to do. That's what we need to find: that knowing, that certainty within ourself.

I know that from getting clear on that, I just had to make a choice of where I wanted to go. And then it's so fascinating who turned up—the opportunities that turned up, the most amazing people that started to get on my side, my first teacher. And then the direction—how I just got guided in what to do: go back to university, do this course, study that, pursue this for a living, go and see this teacher because they have something really great to say. My life has been an unfolding. As long as I stay on that connection with "anything is possible" and I don't let the voices in my mind take me out of that, then I keep finding that person after person shows up to help me, opportunity after opportunity helps me on my way. It's been long enough now to know that that's not a coincidence; it's a regular occurrence.

So whatever you might be—you might already be successful but have bigger dreams, or you might just be like I was, not feeling that there's possibility for life or that you're worthy or capable—I'm here to tell you that is just simply not true.

If you can conceive it, then you can achieve it. I'll say that again: if you can conceive it, you can achieve it. I remember hearing that years ago, and I thought, "Wow, that really resonated with me," and I now know that it's true. If you can think of something that you love—and it doesn't matter if it's work or business, money, a relationship, amazing parenting, a health outcome—you can do it.

I now know, looking back on all the work that I've done with people over the years, how many amazing things people have done. They've showed up to the work having relationships that were just never going to work again, but they didn't want to give up on them. Once they get clear that anything is possible and they get committed to that, I've seen them turn that around. I've seen people turn health conditions around. Once we start changing our mind, understanding anything is possible, and deciding that that's the way we're going to go, then the whole world becomes available to us.

So that is my first message: anything is possible. And my challenge for you over the holidays—or whenever you want to do this—is: if you knew that absolutely anything is possible, what would your "anything" be? I would encourage you right now—pause this if you need to—write it down. Write it down right now: "My anything is possible." Don't let fear stop you from writing it. Write it down. Look at it and connect, because there's something special with that. When you connect with "anything is possible" and what that looks like for you, it's a special moment. Nurture that and take it forward in your life.

The second insight for living a life without limits is to find your own truth—to find who you are.

Maybe I had a bit of an advantage in this regard because I grew up in the US to Indian parents. I grew up in quite a traditional household, mixing the traditional Indian lifestyle with contemporary America back in the 60s and 70s. I grew up really confused as to who I was. I remember one time when I went back to India to visit my heritage, someone asked me, "Who are you?" They were asking, like, "Are you an American? Are you an Indian?" And I just said, "Well, you know, it's a really good question, and part of my reason for coming here is to discover that."

It led me to a deeper question: Who am I? We get so many messages in life of what we should be doing, what's the right thing to do, how should we live? Many of those people are really well-intentioned—family members, parents—but at the end of the day, as well-intentioned as they are, they don't know who we are. Only we can do the digging inside to uncover who we are.

What I would say as a very, very important insight is that every single one of us is unique. There's not one way to go through this life; there's just your way. One of my favourite songs is "My Way" by Frank Sinatra. If you take the depth of that understanding—life is meant to be lived your way—what does that look like? It looks like discovering your own truth.

I'm going to be honest: it's not the easiest pursuit. We gotta hold up a mirror. We have to really discern between all these voices telling us what we should be doing. But here's something that I've learned: your truth isn't in anyone else. It's not in a book, it's not in someone else; it's inside you. I feel incredibly fortunate to be forced to go down that road, because if I was going to have my life turn around, I needed to, by necessity, discover who I was and find the strength that was there to take me past all the limiting constructs.

So it's to look within, to have the courage to say, "Okay, I can learn from people out there, but at the end of the day, no one can tell me how to live my life, because only I'm here to live my life. Only I know what's inside of me. Only my own heart tells me what I stand for and what I'm dedicated to and what I would love my life to be." So I would encourage you to find your truth. Yes, learn from other people, but don't be limited by those teachings.

When people come to do work with me, I say the same thing. Some will ask, "What do you think I should do?" I can't tell you that. I can help you discover that within yourself—that's what we do here. I've learned questions, I've learned how to look at things to help you get to the heart of you. That's the only job that I can do, because no one has the wisdom for your life except you.

As part of that, what I would suggest is to choose fulfillment over success.

When I grew up, it was like: "To get through life, be successful. You want to be the greatest at your work." So we're all chasing success. But I've now learned, because I work with some of the most successful people, that no one is actually happy or fulfilled with just that success. That's why they come and say, "Well, look, I'm really successful, but something's missing." The something that's missing is fulfillment.

I've worked with people over a long period of time now, and I'm my first client, so to speak. I'm the first one on the list to say I want to be fulfilled in my life. All the time during these 30 years, I've always sought fulfillment over success. And what I can say is that when you go for fulfillment over success, you'll get more success than you can imagine. You'll get way more than if you just chase success. But you'll be happy.

One day, it's all done—we get one shot at it. For me, fulfillment is the best pursuit that we can have, and we know that we're fulfilled when we feel it in here. It's not just incessantly chasing people to admire us or like us. If we look at movie stars, singers, public figures that have the greatest admiration... from the outside, they have everything. But if you look under the hood, you'll see depression, unhappiness, lack of fulfillment, because those things on the outside don't fill us up on the inside.

What we need to do is go within, really get clear: "This is my life. I'm here to love it. What does that look like for me? What's my pursuit?" And just don't let anyone, including yourself, take you from that once you find out what that is. If we want to blossom our real potential, our unlimited self, then it has to be genuine. It's got to be who we are. If we're not genuine, there won't be fulfillment. If we are genuine, we'll be much more fulfilled in life, and we will find that success goes through the roof.

So that's the first two: just understanding you're limitless—you don't have limitations except for the ones you think you've got—and the second is finding your own truth. It's not in anyone else; it's inside you.

Number three of these six insights is: be open and ask for help.

When I was coming up, there was this feeling that I needed to be right. I didn't want to be vulnerable, I didn't want to look stupid. I wanted to look like I had it all together. That's what I learned men were supposed to do. I think women, it's the same for you, but in a different way—you have to look a certain way, act a certain way. It just made me closed. It made me feel like I had to know everything. But I knew I didn't. I didn't know anything; I knew enough to get me on the streets, homeless and destitute.

What we know has got us as far as we are. In the long time that I've been doing this work, what I have discovered is that people want to be a lot farther than that. There's more that you want to do with your life. I would encourage you: once you find out what it is, seek people out, be open.

I'm more open today than I ever was, because I know that the more I go, the more there is to learn. The more I find out, the more I learn that I don't know hardly anything, and the more there is to find out. That's a great frame of mind to come from. Don't be afraid to ask for help. Ask, ask, ask.

I'm thinking now about some of the amazing teachers I've had in my life. That's how I've got to where I am. When I found somebody who had some knowledge or some experience that I wanted to learn from, I would just keep asking and asking and asking. I would badger them because I wanted to know. There's a way to get to where you want to get to, and other people have done it, or parts of it. Seek them out and ask them.

The fourth really key insight is something that no list would be complete without: perception is everything.

That's true on so many different levels. The way that we perceive the world is the way that it shows up for us. If I look out in the world, I see people living in a world where anything is possible for them, and they just go for their dreams. We say, "Well, they're lucky," but they weren't lucky. They just perceive a world—consciously and unconsciously—where they can achieve everything that they want to.

And there's a whole slew of people—unfortunately, it occurs to me that it's the majority—that have some sort of limitation. "The economy is not good enough for me to do what I want." "Oh, that person's not really going to like me, so I'm not going to bother pursuing any kind of relationship." "I'm too old, I'm too young." There are just so many different reasons that we don't believe that we can do things, but all of those are just perception.

One story to share is that when I grew up, I have a brother a few years older than me, and he was quite a superstar academically. My family was very much about education, study, grades. My brother was just amazing at it; he excelled right from the start. I came about four and a half years behind him, and I kind of felt intimidated by that. I didn't even know, but I was like, "Well, he's already done it. There's no way for me to do better than that." And I just shut down from a very young age.

I decided very young that because my brother would get the "Look at him, he's doing well" positive attention, and I went in a different direction, I got the opposite. I got things like, "Why can't you be more like him?" And I interpreted that to mean "they don't love me, they don't want me." If you can remember being a child, it was painful. It was that pain that, when I turned 13 and tried my first drug, got numbed for the first time that I can remember. Which is why I was off to the races.

So I grew up believing for decades that my parents didn't love me, didn't want me. That perception really cost me my happiness, my self-propulsion, my self-worth. When I looked back and investigated perceptions... I realized it wasn't ever that they didn't love me. That was such a farce. What I learned was, in fact, they loved me so much, they were just worried for me, and they didn't know how to express it because they were panicking. They went from India to America, watched their son getting caught up in exactly the opposite of what they had hoped, and they were really worried. When I look back, they had reason to be, but I didn't see it at the time.

When I changed those perceptions—and also the perceptions that I didn't have value—I started to own my own value. I started to own who these people were in my life, how much they stuck by me. I started to realise I just created this whole story. I now know, after over 30,000 consultations, none of these stories turn out to be true. They're just perceptions that we make up.

If something is limiting you, I'm all about living an unlimited life. And the only thing that stops us—and I really mean this—is a limiting perception. It's the way that we view things. My strong encouragement, if you want to live a life beyond limits, is to find a way to get past those so that you can start deeply seeing things differently and waking up to the world that really is full of infinite possibility.

One of the key things I've learned is that all my life, all of that suffering was caused by me. It was my mind and what I was thinking and believing. I blamed everyone else for it. I know that for some of you, some real things have happened in your past. But I've learned now, beyond any shadow of a doubt, that it's not what happened to us that's limiting us; it's what we're still carrying around from it in our own minds. So shifting your perceptions has to be one of the most important keys to move into your life beyond limits.

It reminds me of the "Five Regrets of the Dying." A palliative care nurse named Bronnie Ware interviewed terminally ill patients and asked them, "What do you regret most in your life?" They just regretted not living a life that they came to live. They didn't live a life that was true to them. I thought, "How horrible would that be?" I said, "You know what? That's not going to be me." I can't imagine getting to the end saying "I missed it."

Number four has to do with the only thing that's limiting us: most people give up. If we're going to achieve our "anything," we have to find something that we're just not going to give up on. As part of finding that truth, find that something that there's no way for you to give up on.

I went through the greatest challenge period I've had since I started this work a while ago. It just seemed like nothing I was doing was cracking me through in this particular very important aspect in my life. Everything in me just wanted to give up. Every sensible part of myself was saying, "Just give it up." But I found something that's so important to me it wasn't an option to give up. That in itself is an insight: find something that's so truly important to you that nothing is going to stop you.

Perception is everything. I would recommend that you just start working with your mind and start creating more fulfilling, more conducive perceptions in your life that lead you on a path of fulfillment and not on a path of limitation, giving up, fear, and misery. Change the channel. That's what I did. I filled my life up with amazing people, amazing teachers, books, podcasts. I just kept turning that on instead. If it came to fear, I still don't do it to this day—all the fear-mongering stuff that's out there. I don't need it.

We can't change the past, but we can definitely change how we view it, and we can definitely change how we view our future, ourselves, and our opportunities.

Along that line, another really major thing that I've discovered is that life is actually happening for us, not to us.

For so many years, I believed everything was happening to me. My upbringing happened to me. Bad things happened to me. I'm so thankful I've had teachers point me in this direction. I now look at all those things—go back in my past, find all the things I think were bad or failures—and I dig until I find the hidden blessings, to see why they were actually happening for me.

We don't live in an isolated world. We're not alone. The world is actually helping us. If we open our eyes and open our minds and learn to shift our perception to ask, "Why is this thing happening for me and not to me?", and we ask that question in earnest, we will find the answer.

A great case in point for me was my addiction. People say, "Sridhar, why do you talk about your addiction and homelessness so freely? Aren't you ashamed of it?" Absolutely not. I've worked with people from all walks of life, and something people have always said to me is, "I don't feel like you're judging me." How can I? I know what it feels like. That period of addiction has shown me I can relate and connect with people no matter what they're going to. And it also woke me up. Without that, I probably just would have gone through life never really digging deep, never inquiring.

Your past doesn't have to define you in a negative way. I have a habit of it now: when something happens, I look at it and think, "Okay, well, why is that one happening for me?" As the answers get revealed, that becomes fuel and momentum for creating the life that I'd really love to live. It wasn't a barrier at all; it was exactly what I needed to be able to continue to move forward.

One of the key insights is: things are happening for us, not to us. Don't just do it on a surface level. "Oh, everything happens for a reason" never really made me feel better. It wasn't until I saw what the reasons were—to dig in and do the work of "what are the reasons?"—that it became a transformation. It takes something that was blocking us and turns it into the new pathway to a greater existence.

Number five is discovering that everything is happening for us and not to us, and utilizing that to keep propelling forward no matter what happens in life.

It's a great segue for the last one. Last, but certainly not least, is the power of commitment and courage.

My first mentor helped me get off the streets. He helped me when I had absolutely no sense of self-worth. He believed in me so strongly that I began to believe in who I was based on his belief. He sadly died a few years into our relationship. My whole life had changed by that time—I went from being addicted to drugs and homeless to graduating with honors from university. Without him, it just never would have happened.

One of the last things he gave me was a framed copy of a quote by a philosopher named Goethe. It's about the power of commitment. It basically says that the moment we truly commit ourselves, then the entire universe moves too. "All manner of unforeseen circumstances, material assistance, chance meetings occur and rise in the favor of the one that's committed." In other words, everything that we need comes to us when we've made a commitment to doing something.

One of the famous lines from that is: "Boldness has genius, magic and power in it. Whatever you can do or dream you can do, begin it now." I've had that framed copy in my office for 30 years, and I've never forgotten it. I've seen the power in it: that when we truly commit to something, everything happens for us to be able to do it.

But we can't fake that. It's got to be an unfailing "I'm committing to this. I am certain of it. I have no idea how it's going to happen, but it's going to happen."

So commit to something. You're not here to waffle in life. You're here to do something great. It could be build a great business, create a fortune, live the best life, have experiences, enjoy great health, get the most out of connected relationships, spiritual adventure, mental growth. There are so many different pursuits. Stop lying to yourself out of fear and do the work of connecting with what that really is. Fear is a strong pull—we don't want to fail, we don't want to lose things. But the worst thing we can do is not pursue our greatest pursuits, because we lose those things within ourselves.

Find what you love to do and then just wholeheartedly commit to it.

And the last, but absolutely not least, is to have courage.

What distinguishes people that do from those that don't is they have the courage. Once they get clear about what they want and commit to it, they have the courage to do what comes up. Once we know what we want to do, we get guided—we have a knowing of what there is to do. But so many people, out of fear, don't do those things. They don't take that step. Maybe they're fearing they're going to fail. But all great pathways are filled with things not working out. I don't even believe in the word "failure" anymore; failure just means something didn't work out. Well, keep going, and then it will.

If we don't get stopped by the times they don't work out, we keep going, then we'll get the prize. If you hear everyone that's had great success, that's what they'll tell you: they didn't give up. And it takes courage to keep going.

One of the questions I ask in the work is: "What's the worst thing that can happen?" Go to the worst thing that can happen and ask yourself, "Well, am I still okay if that happens?" And you'll find out that you are. And then if you ask yourself, "What am I going to do after that?", you go, "Oh, I'll just keep going." Most fears never come true, but even if they do, you're still okay.

It reminds me of a quote from Michael Jordan when he was asked about success: "I've missed more than 9,000 shots in my career... I've failed over and over and over again in my life. And that is why I succeed." They just come in pairs. If we have the courage to keep going and take that next step, and we have that commitment, then that's where anything becomes possible. Your dream actually becomes your reality. I've watched thing after thing in my own life become my reality.

So those are the six things. My whole dedication in life is to connect with who we really are and to live a life without limits.

1. Anything is possible.
2. Find your truth and live it. Connect to who you are.
3. Seek fulfillment over success.
4. Ask for help. Stay open.
5. Perception is everything, and life is happening for us, not to us.
6. The power of commitment and courage.

If you can do these things, I promise you, the pathway of commitment and courage opens all doors in your life.

As always, I want to thank you for listening in. It's been 30 years of experience to share these things with you. I hope this might be one that you've taken some notes on, because all I know for me is that it's changed everything about my life—absolutely everything. And from the people that I've worked with over the years, I know that when they've applied it to themselves, it's done that for them as well.

Thank you for watching this podcast. We're going to come back in the new year with more amazing guests and more people sharing insights. I wish you the best of the end of the year and a Happy New Year. Happy Holidays to you, and I hope your 2026 and beyond is everything that you want and beyond limits. I look forward to seeing you then and on the next episode of The Mind Shift.