Career, Competition & Conscious Living

This installment in Sadhguru’s popular “Youth and Truth” series finds him at the Indian Institute of Management in Bangalore in lively conversation with three student moderators who ask questions of their own and take questions from students in the audience. Topics range widely, covering questions related to academic setbacks, FOMO (fear of missing out), employment vs. entrepreneurship, the potential transformative power of cinema, the concepts of fate or destiny, and much more.

As usual with this series, the result is an honest and engaging conversation about issues important to young people today, as the excerpts below show.

Part way into the discussion, Sadhguru is asked how to deal with the Fear of Missing Out (FOMO). He replies: “You cannot be everywhere in the cosmos, so you are always missing out on something. So, this is a psychological state. So never misunderstand your psychological drama as reality; if you do so you will become a psychological case…. The moment you are not the director of this drama, that is called madness.  Everyone is at different levels of acceptable madness. We are poking ourselves with our own thoughts, nothing external is doing this to you…. Our own thoughts are cutting us into pieces. We are working to mitigate this by creating a certain solution called ‘Miracle of Mind’. Human mind is the greatest miracle on the planet. Unfortunately these days, nobody has told you how to hold this. Everybody is telling you how to conquer the damn world. Nobody is telling you how to hold this. The quality of your life depends on how you sit here, right now not in terms of what you own.” 

Another student asks, “As leaders of tomorrow, we are well aware that we’ll be dealing with a lot of stressful situations… This might give rise to a lot of negative emotions as well, like unresolved anger, jealousy, greed. So, as leaders, when people look up to us tomorrow, how do we deal with this negative emotions such that it doesn’t hamper ours or also our team’s performance?” Sadhguru explains, “ In our life there are situations and situations. Have you seen, in the same given situation, one person is stressed, another person is breezing through joyfully. So, no situation is stressful, a situation is simply there. It’s for you to stress or not to stress…. Why are you making such a choice?…. You’re calling yourself a leader, why are you looking for friction? It’s inefficiency. Will we achieve some perfect level of efficiency ever? No. We’re always striving. Always striving to get it better, get it better, get it better. But this is the nature of human intelligence and human existence…. If you’re joyful, whatever you do is pleasant for yourself and everybody around you. If you’re miserable, everything that you do is stressful… So what happens within you, you must take this in your hands. That means, there is no such thing as stressful situation and blissful situation. You are stressful or blissful, this is your choice.”

Later in the conversation, a timeless question arises about fate and destiny, to which Sadhguru responds, “Destiny essentially means, people are imagining there is a fixed destination, that you may get to no matter what. Yes? There’s a fixed destination, anyway you’re going to get there, no matter what. Try this now. Today, you do one thing…. You want to go home, close your eyes, anyway your home is your destination. I will get you an astrologer who will tell you, you will live to be 80 or 85, whatever. Definitely, you will live very well with your wife and children, whatever else you have in your life, everything will be fantastic. I’ll get all the predictions. Just drive your car with eyes closed. Let’s see how far you get. I think we know where to pick you up, and on the way many other unfortunate people also. So, only because you open your eyes and drive carefully, you may get home. There’s no guarantee. Just because I’m a good driver, there is no guarantee, I’m going to definitely get home. I may get home, I want to make sure I get home, that’s a different matter, but there is no guarantee. Anybody has come here with a guarantee card? There’s no such thing. So, destiny and fate, these are all engagements for vain minds who don’t want to strive to create anything. They think somebody has fixed it, and it’s going to happen. This will destroy all human potential.”