Meet Dr Rakesh Sinha, the orator surgeon who teases Guinness

How he got hooked on the path of self development
I got exposed to self-development in 1989. I was in UK, visiting a hospital and I came across a video cassette by Tom Peters called In Search of Excellence. It educated me a lot and I realised that just as business people get educated, I needed to learn a lot about self-development as a doctor. I had my Masters degree in gynecology, but I was looking at what else could I do to improve my social, management and strategic skills.

Dr Rakesh Sinha

Sharing the knowledge
I started speaking at Rotary events. I was the president of the Rotary club of Bombay, Bandra chapter. In 1997 I met Mr D Shivanandan in one of the programmes. He was then an additional commissioner with the Mumbai Police. We became good friends and soon I was addressing large groups of IPS officers, senior cops and even CBI officers about self-development and management.

How management helps in surgery
I am a trained surgeon. Yet, one day I realised that as I developed my oratory skills and spoke about management, it was helping me manage my surgeries better. My decision-making abilities improved. When that happens, your strategic thinking improves. In so many cases in the OT, I have to instantaneously take decisions. Self-development helped me greatly.

Being interviewed by Jack Canfield
Jack Canfield is very renowned for his Chicken Soup book series. He also does interviews of celebrities, who are well-recognised all over the world in his TV programme called Success Profiles. I had attended one of his Train the Trainer programmes, where he noticed me and asked whether I wanted to be a part of his success profile series. He interviewed me and we now have a DVD of that interview available in India, called The Anatomy of Success.

Constantly reinventing himself
I have run four full marathons till date. I am 56 now. The first time I ran a marathon was at the age of 47. All the orthopedic surgeons tell me not to run. They tell me I am damaging my knees. But I tell them, I have a choice - either I damage my heart or I damage my knees. I can replace my knees. I cannot replace my heart. So I run.

Entering the Guinness Book of Records - twice
It was just an incidental thing. I had finished a surgery on December 25, 2000. We weighed the fibroid and realised that it weighed 3.4 kg. I remember saying ‘Oh my God, this is very, very big.' We sent a letter to Guinness and we were in the book for having operated upon the world's largest fibroid. Then in September 2009 I took out the largest uterus that weighed 4.1 kg.