As my reputation grew and my speaking invitations increased, I found myself warmly welcomed all over the world. But when the car service drew closer to home on my return trips from the airport, I found my stress level rising and my jaw clenching. I would exchange a cursory, monosyllabic greeting with my wife, check in on the kids, and flee to my refuge in the finished basement. Everything I needed was there. My large home office was on one end of a long rectangular room, while the other side was a state‐of‐the‐art home theater, with seven speakers, a 119‐inch pull‐down screen, and two rows of leather couches. I had a bathroom and a guest bedroom down the hall.

Other than at the height of his manic periods, my son, Alok, had always been very loving and sweet‐natured. But by 2006, while I was finishing Firms of Endearment, his condition had become more acute, requiring him to be hospitalized multiple times. He had cycled through several specialized programs at different schools in the Boston area. The school authorities said that they could no longer adequately meet his needs; he would need to be placed in a residential program. The only one available was the Kolburne School in the Berkshires, 140 miles away from Boston. Keeping him at home was not an option.

Both our daughters had been doing well at school and each had a small circle of close friends. At their ages (13 and 11), they were acutely concerned about being embarrassed in front of their friends. But Alok's condition and unpredictable behavior had made it increasingly hard for them to invite their friends over to the house. We thought that the one silver lining of Alok being in a residential program would be that the girls would have a more peaceful and “normal” home environment.

A couple of weeks after Alok's 17th birthday in June 2006, we drove to western Massachusetts to drop him off. He kept asking, “Why do my sisters get to live at home but I am being sent away?” Somehow, we convinced him that this was a good thing for him, and he trustingly went along with it. We told him that both of us had left home around that age, and that this is what most people did.

“Will the girls also leave home when they turn 17?” he asked.

“Yes.”

“Do you promise?”

“Yes.”

Kolburne (which has since closed) turned out to be a rather grim place. Residents included special needs kids from Massachusetts and New York State, many of whom were much bigger and had more severe challenges than our son. We worried about how Alok would fare in this environment. Residents were subject to forcible holds when they acted out or became physically aggressive. Like psychiatric units in hospitals, they locked the facility from the outside at night.

We dropped Alok off, hugged him, and got back into our minivan, barely able to hold back our tears. He stood there in the twilight for as long as the car was in sight, waving at us. I felt a mixture of guilt, dread, hope, and relief. The girls were quietly crying in the back seat.

Far from thriving, the girls started having challenges of their own almost immediately after Alok was “sent away.” They lost confidence and started withdrawing from their friends. They struggled with depression, anxiety, and school phobia. Over the next few years, despite our best efforts, they spiraled downwards. It was heartbreaking, almost more than I could bear as their father.

I felt additional guilt because as the Conscious Capitalism movement rapidly spread globally, my travels increasingly took me away from home. I can only imagine how challenging it was for my wife to be home alone with the kids while I was thousands of miles away. I was suffering no less for being far away. She could sublimate her anxiety and emotional pain into action; all I could do was spend sleepless nights ruminating and flagellating myself for contributing to my children's suffering.

In hindsight, I understand why the girls started struggling when Alok left. Like many siblings of special needs children, they were experiencing a kind of survivor guilt: “It is so unfair that he has all these challenges, and we don't.” With Alok banished to the Berkshires, these feelings increased exponentially.

Seeking Spiritual Solace

I was hungry for relief, for some way to cope with all the suffering around me and within me. The way many people in my family and the Rajput culture I had grown up in dealt with life's painful passages was through alcohol. I had prided myself that unlike my father, I did not drink every day, usually limiting myself to a couple of drinks on weekends when I was with friends. But now I found myself reaching for comfort in the liquor cabinet with alarming frequency.

I knew I could not continue down this road. I started seeking spiritual experiences, hoping to find wisdom to make sense of my life and have some peace of mind. My spiritual yearning perplexed my wife. “Why are you always searching? What are you looking for? What are you so confused about?”

At my sister's urging, I had taken my first Art of Living course several years earlier, when I started working on Firms of Endearment. A spiritual master from India, Sri Sri Ravi Shankar had started the Art of Living (AOL) Foundation in 1981. It now has a global presence, with centers in 156 countries. In the course, we were taught five simple but (to me) profound principles (see sidebar) and a powerful breathing technique called the Sudarshan Kriya (a Sanskrit term meaning “proper vision by purifying action”). The atmosphere in the course was suffused with love, gentleness, acceptance, and peace – the very characteristics I naturally showed as a child, but which had largely disappeared from my life.

The teacher told us a story about Sri Sri that struck me. He was teaching in California during the O. J. Simpson trial in 1995. After one of his talks, somebody asked him, “Guruji, what do you think about this murder trial?” He replied, without hesitation, “I am responsible.” People asked, “What do you mean?” He said, “When somebody does something like that, it means that they don't know how to manage their own emotions. We know how to help people regulate their emotions and their anger. If I had worked harder, we could have reached more people. If we had reached him in time, he would not have done this terrible thing, and those two people would still be alive. Therefore, I am responsible.”

I took the course 14 years after my father and I had ended our estrangement. Things had remained intermittently tense between us. I could not fully release the resentment, bitterness, and anger that I had carried toward him. Every time I visited India, some stray comment would set me off and I would be right back in the frame of mind that I thought I had left behind.

Before taking the Art of Living course, I read the book Tuesdays with Morrie and saw the movie based on it. It is about a troubled journalist who learns that his beloved professor is dying and starts flying to Boston on Tuesdays to spend time with him and learn from him. One part stood out vividly for me. Near the end of the movie, author Mitch Albom asks Morrie, “What is the one thing you know today that you wish you had known when you were younger? What would you do differently?” Without hesitating, Morrie replied, “If I could live my life over again, I would forgive everyone for everything.” Holding on to hatred (especially for his father) had served no purpose other than to embitter Morrie's life. I resolved to find it in my heart to forgive my father.

Michael Fischman, my AOL teacher, said that we should accept people for who they are and what they do. I asked, “Is that the same as forgiving them?” He replied, “No. Forgiving someone implies that you are right and they are wrong, that you are above them. Acceptance simply means that you accept that this person acted a certain way for reasons you don't understand. Countless factors affect our behavior, which we don't fully understand: our innate nature, our upbringing, the values that were instilled in us, our circumstances, and many other things outside our control. People do what they do, and they don't do what they don't do. They are on their own journeys learning their own lessons. The best thing to do is to accept it and move on.”

This insight helped me move toward accepting my father and his actions surrounding my marriage. I came to understand that he was a creature of his upbringing; certain ways of being and responding were hardwired in him and he lacked the self‐awareness to be able to change them.

I was enthralled with what I learned in the course and how it made me feel, and immediately signed up for an advanced course the following week in Atlantic City. It would span five days, including three days of silence, and would be led by Sri Sri Ravi Shankar himself. When I called to tell my sister how much I had loved the course and that I was going to take the advanced course, she said, “Please ask Guruji about Alok. I'm sure he can help heal his condition.” My rational mind told me that such things are not possible, but as a father, I couldn't help but hope for a miracle. When I got my few minutes with Sri Sri the following week, I asked for his blessing and his advice about my son's condition. He looked into my eyes and said, “Uski seva karo,” which means “serve him.” “Seva” is a facet of yoga that means selfless service as an expression of compassion for others, expecting nothing in return.

That was not what I was hoping to hear, but his message stayed with me. My son cannot serve himself in most normal ways. I know it is my duty to provide for him financially. But I was now being guided to think that it was my privilege to serve him. That was not an easy mindset to adopt, certainly not an easy one to sustain. I still struggle with it every day.

After the second Art of Living course, I was on a “spiritual high.” I called several friends on the ride home to share what I had experienced. It was around midnight and lightly drizzling when my friends dropped me off at my house. As I walked toward the front door, I noticed something strange: my precious tablas were lying on the grass, completely drenched.

Tablas are Indian percussion instruments, paired small drums you play with your hands. Since childhood, I had loved the sound and had been taking lessons to learn how to play them. Why were they out on the grass in the rain in the middle of the night? Had the kids done this?

It turned out that my wife was upset that I had gone to the spiritual course. Some friends at a dinner party had asked where I was. When she told them I had taken back‐to‐back Art of Living courses, one of them said, “It sounds like he is joining a cult.” That was the source of her anger, which she expressed by throwing out something that meant a lot to me. We got into an argument, and I came crashing down from my spiritual high.

The chasm between us grew.

For the first time in my marriage, I contemplated moving out. One evening, I searched for apartments online. But with my children's ongoing challenges, it felt selfish to focus on me. I thought, “I cannot do this now.” Unfortunately, I didn't close the browser window with the Apartments.com website, and my 14‐year‐old daughter, Priya, later saw it. She didn't mention it to me but went to her mother in tears.

This incident planted a seed of deep insecurity in her. For the next several years, until I finally did move out, Priya lived with the daily fear that she would wake up and find me gone. She became hypervigilant, expecting the worst. She stood on the other side of the door when my wife and I talked. She checked my wife's email to see what she was writing to her sisters. She took the burden of the entire family upon her young shoulders. She worried about our marriage, her brother, her sister. In all this worry, my poor daughter lost focus on her own growth and happiness.

This is one of my great regrets: that my carelessness caused so much uncertainty and anguish in her young life.

I have learned that sacrificing one's own happiness and well‐being for the sake of others (even those we love) rarely works. In my family, each of us was sacrificing our happiness, but to no higher end; nobody in the family was thriving. I was deeply unhappy and desperately wanted to leave, but felt that I could not. Priya was sacrificing herself by worrying about everybody else. Maya internalized the pain around her and became depressed. Our son bravely endured the loneliness and harshness of his residential school.

We were wounded, unhappy people unable to help ourselves or each other. We needed to break the cycle and start healing. But we didn't know how.

Could I Be Happy?

With all the pain and tumult around and inside me, I doubled down on my spiritual explorations. After Dr. Shrikant's wake‐up call about the wisdom in the Bhagavad Gita, I started to explore Indian wisdom. I read a translation of the Gita and immediately understood why Dr. Shrikant had seen parallels between it and the principles of Conscious Capitalism.

I also dipped into the Vedanta, which literally means the “end of knowledge.” It is a distillation of the purest wisdom in the Upanishads. I learned from deep thinkers on the subject and helped organize a conference at the Indian Institute of Management in Kozhikode, Kerala, on what the ancient wisdom of India offered modern business and leadership.

These experiences gave me new insights into life and a modicum of inner peace. I was at peace while attending the programs but couldn't sustain that when I dropped back into my daily life. I still could not say that I was happy.

Like most people, I had always been driven by external goals, milestones, and recognitions. First, it was about getting a job after college. Then it was about finishing my PhD. After that, it became all about attaining tenure, the ultimate prize for academics. I used to have fantasies about my serene and relaxed post‐tenure life. I imagined I would take up golf, not be so frenzied about my work, lose my anxiety about finances, and live happily ever after. None of that happened, of course. My struggle in my marriage and having a special needs child had a lot to do with that.

I looked at my friends with happy marriages and thriving kids and wondered what that felt like. I became convinced that happiness was simply not an option for me – not in this lifetime. This lifetime was a harsh sentence to be endured, duties to be fulfilled, sacrifices to be made. The best I could hope for was not to give in to despair.

Still, I kept reaching for that next milestone, that next accomplishment that would make me content. Would it be when I became a full professor? No. Getting an endowed chair position? Nope. What about when I published my first book? Not then either. Then I got it in my mind that if I published five books, I would finally have arrived. What if I got my net worth up to a certain number? None of it mattered.

There is no shortage of books on happiness. I read my fair share, but none of them made a dent. Then I was invited to an event in Aspen. One participant arrived late and apologized: “One of my kids was having a crisis and I couldn't leave. You know how it is: You're only as happy as your least happy child.”

The parents around the table (including me) nodded, readily identifying with that sentiment. But later I thought about the implications, not only for parents but also siblings. If each person in a family system only allows himself or herself to be as happy as the least happy person in that system, then everybody will always get driven down to the lowest level of happiness. From that place, how can any of us lift another up?

After returning home, I read Gay Hendricks's book The Big Leap. He writes of the “upper limit problem,” about the constraints many of us place on how happy and successful we feel we deserve to be. It is not about what we are capable of; it is about what we feel we deserve. The upper limit could be set by our parents, our siblings, the culture, or other factors. Gay cites his own example. When he published his first book, he joyfully brought a copy to give to his mother. She said, “That's nice,” and put it down on the table. Gay was deflated. His mother did that because she didn't want Gay's brother (who was also in the room) to feel bad. She had placed an upper limit on how happy or how successful Gay could feel.

I certainly had an upper limit problem, probably several of them. My father had called me selfish and self‐centered so often that I deemed myself unworthy of being happy, and felt guilty about doing anything for myself. Gay wrote that the siblings of special needs kids are especially susceptible to this. I was sitting next to Priya while I was reading this. I asked her, “Priya, do you think you have the right to be happy?” Without hesitation, she replied, “No.” Startled, I asked, “Why not?” She said, “Not everyone deserves to be happy.” She couldn't explain it beyond that. My heart was crushed.

The experience of having a special needs child had been so overwhelming that I hadn't thought enough about the impact on our other children. When Alok was first diagnosed, the girls attended a single hour‐long class for siblings of special needs kids. After that, we focused our energy and attention on dealing with Alok's challenges. Concerned about hurting Alok's feelings, we told the girls to hide any significant milestones or achievements – anything worth celebrating – from him. For example, if they were learning how to drive, had done well in school, or were going on a trip, they were not to mention it in front of Alok, because “your brother will feel bad.” While well intentioned, this culture of secrecy made the girls feel even more guilty than they already did about anything good in their lives.

Soon after that exchange, I went to John Mackey's ranch for a Conscious Capitalism board retreat. John had met Priya and had bought courtside seats for us at a Boston Celtics basketball game because I told him she loved sports. I told him what she had said. He said, “I want you to give her a message about happiness from me.” I had him record it on my iPad. Here is the gist of what he said:¹

Hi Priya, I wanted to talk to you about happiness, about depression and things that I've learned in life that hopefully will be useful to you. But that's for you to say.

One thing I know is common in life is that we have a certain amount of guilt for our own well‐being because others, perhaps family members or friends, do not have it so good sometimes… So it's not uncommon for people to basically damper down or not allow themselves to be happy and joyful in life.

What I've learned is that this is a mistake, that ultimately, happiness is a choice that we make. It's a way that we see ourselves and how we see the world. If we damper back our own happiness, not only do we make ourselves miserable, we also make other people around us unhappy. What I've learned is that we have an ethical responsibility and obligation to be happy. Because when we are happy, we help others to be happy. We give them permission to be happy, we role model it, we show that it is okay.

The opposite is also true; if we're unwilling to be happy, then we make others around us unhappy. By really opening up to the joy and beauty in the universe and letting it flow through us, we are giving one of the great gifts that we can give to others. We are giving them the opportunity, the permission, and the role modeling they need to live a happy, joyful life.

John's message was for Priya, but it applied to me as well. I had heard about the idea that everyone deserves to be happy. I also knew that we can choose to be happy. But the idea that we have an ethical and moral duty to be happy was revelatory to me. I used to feel a twinge of guilt when I experienced moments of joy, which usually had to do with the impact my work was having on people and what those people said to me. My thought was, “What right do I have to be experiencing joy and receiving accolades when my children are suffering?”

John's message was a plea to elevate my gaze from the very real difficulties and challenges that brought me down, and look at the larger reality. Instead of focusing on what was lacking, I could will myself to put things in perspective and look at all that was beautiful and right in the world and in my life.

I learned to look beyond the short‐term struggles my children were going through. I came to realize that each one of my children's souls was a gift that I would continue to unwrap for the rest of my life. They were my teachers as much as I was theirs. Every exchange with each of these beautiful souls was an opportunity for each of us to learn and grow.

Growing … and Sinking

My work remained a source of meaning and fulfillment, more so with each passing year. I developed a deeper understanding of the pillars of Conscious Capitalism and could convey the message in ways that caused genuine shifts in people around the world. I wrote several more books that explored deeper dimensions of Conscious Capitalism. It seemed like every time I went to India, I had a new book that I could present to my parents. My father would look somewhat stunned and set the book aside, while my mother beamed with pride, even though she couldn't read the books. On one of those trips, my father paid me a rare compliment: “It is amazing that you're able to do all of this despite all your challenges in your personal life.”

My spiritual insights and personal growth were helping me show up with greater equanimity and impact in the world, but my marriage was still sinking. After 28 years of being deeply unhappy, I just couldn't do it anymore. In late 2014, I made the wrenching decision to leave my marriage. I found an apartment in the same building where a close friend lived, bought furniture, and made plans to move in mid‐January, after a trip to India. But a deep sense of unease grew in me, becoming markedly worse while I was in India. I had a constant pit in my stomach and an intense, visceral feeling of guilt. Being around my father didn't help. I imagined how he would react to the news. On the one hand, he would be triumphant as that had been his prediction and hope all along. But he would also be witheringly critical of me for taking such a drastic step, mostly because of what the “community” would think. He would hold it up as another example of my selfishness.

My misgivings grew. Had I done everything I could to save the marriage before taking this drastic step? We had intermittently been to couples counseling for many years with different therapists, to no avail. But my wife had recently spoken of a therapist who did online counseling and supposedly worked miracles. I had declined to try it. Now I thought to myself, “Maybe we should try that before I give up.” So after I returned to Boston, I canceled the lease on the apartment, returned what furniture I could and put the rest in storage. I told my wife about my decision and asked her to set up the online counseling. I also asked if she would read a book that I had recently read called Leadership and Self‐Deception, which had introduced me to the idea of “putting people in a box”: prejudging them without giving them a chance or being open to their potential transformation.² I thought that we might have fallen into that pattern with each other.

Over the next few months, I waited for my wife to do those two things, but she did neither. Slowly, I started shifting mentally from whether to how: what would be the least painful way for us to separate? In early 2016, I told my wife that I would move out later that year. I suggested we work with a family therapist to prepare for this big change in all our lives. I wanted our daughters to express what they were feeling, rather than keeping their emotions bottled up. We decided not to include our son, which, in hindsight, was probably a mistake. Still, the therapy was helpful. The therapist met with all four of us on multiple occasions, sometimes with one of us and the kids, sometimes just the two of us, and sometimes just the kids. With the therapist's approval, I asked my daughters to help me choose an apartment that would be comfortable for them.

I moved into my new place on September 1, 2016, 30 years and six months after getting married. I was dreading the first night, anticipating the return of that pit in my stomach and the accompanying feelings of guilt, regret, and shame. But, to my surprise, I slept peacefully. I believed I had done everything I could before taking this major step.

For the first time in decades, I started looking forward to coming home to my cozy apartment overlooking the Charles River. There was no tension and conflict awaiting me, and I had the freedom to do what I wanted.

With space and distance, I continued working on myself to be a more positive, peaceful, and happier person. But I soon realized most of what I was doing was to trick myself into feeling and behaving differently. I was still ignoring some underlying realities; there remained many blind spots and buried landmines in my psyche. Most of all, I had traumas I had never adequately acknowledged or dealt with. Reckoning with those would be the next step of my journey.

Reflections

Perhaps because of my nomadic childhood, or because of my discomfort around my father, I have never felt fully at home anywhere. I am now trying to create a feeling of “being home” wherever I am, as well as co‐creating a physical space that truly feels like home.

What comes to mind when you think of “coming home”? Is there a place you can truly relax into being yourself? What would it take to create that?

Many of us implicitly believe that if we sacrifice our own well‐being, others will benefit. But that is usually not the case. Many of us also believe that it is selfish to prioritize our self‐care over that of people close to us, including our children and spouses. But that too is a false belief. The most important thing we can do is to work on our own healing and growth. That equips us to help others in much more effective ways.

Have you made yourself into a martyr so that others may flourish? In which areas – physical, mental, emotional, spiritual, social – have you been neglecting your self‐care?

Most of us also believe that we will be happy when we achieve some external milestone. Happiness becomes an ever‐receding goal, always out of reach, just over the horizon. Many have now realized that success does not lead to happiness; rather, learning how to reside in a state of happiness fuels our ability to succeed. This requires us to cultivate gratitude, mindfulness, and service to others.

What is your relationship to happiness? Are you always delaying gratification to some future date when you will “deserve” it? How can you make your default a state of contentment and happiness?

Gay Hendricks's concept of the “upper limit problem” had a profound impact on me. After realizing this universal tendency, I consciously strive to eliminate this artificial “glass ceiling” on my well‐being.

Do you have an upper limit problem? Can you trace where it comes from? How will you remove it?