One step at a Time

Goal setting is a common process to utilize when thinking about accomplishing something.  Above-average athletes, successful businessmen, achievers in all fields set goals. The process of setting goals helps us navigate to where we would like our life to go.  Whether it is focusing on eating a healthy diet, exercising, doing yoga practices or performing better at your job. Setting goals helps to keep you moving in that direction.

But sometimes, distractions lead us astray as we become fixated on the goal and the progress, rather than the steps needed to continue.  Sadhguru offers wisdom on how to cultivate inner growth.

Sadhguru: “Wherever you are, do you understand that right now, you exist within certain limitations? If there is a limitation – a boundary – there must be something beyond the limitation? Whether the boundlessness exists or not, at least you can perceive that if there is a boundary, there must be something beyond the boundary. Right now, your spiritual process is just to work from one limitation to another limitation. You break this limitation, move into the next level of limitations. You break that and move into the next level.

You do not know whether the Ultimate exists or not. You don’t have to imagine or mentally create the Ultimate – this destroys many possibilities within you. Just see that you are existing in certain limitations right now and how to break those limitations. If you break it, you will move into the next prison – a bigger one. If you break that, you will move into the next one. As you keep breaking it, let’s see where the hell it goes. At least let’s move into a better prison. That’s all you are trying to do with every aspect of your life – just trying to take one more step, isn’t it? Even with the spiritual process, just take one more step at a time.

Some years ago, the Indian cricket team beat the Australian team in Australia, which had not happened for 22 years. I was reading in a magazine about the player – who comes from Bangalore – who scored 233 runs. When people asked him “How do you play? Do you play to win the game or the series or what?”, he replied, “I try and play one ball at a time. I’m not playing the match. The most important thing to realize when you are batting is that the only thing that decides your fate, your score, your career or anything else, is that next ball.” He said, ‘If you can do that over a long period of time, you will succeed. It is not an easy thing to do, though.” This man got it, because you can only play one ball at a time. But he says it is hard because he is trying mentally.

So, right now, you just play one ball at a time. Right now, if your problem is you can’t stand the person who is sitting next to you – you just work on that! Don’t worry about reaching God or attaining liberation. Just work on this little problem that you have. This is the way you will grow. If you imagine something big out there, it all feels great for some time, but you are back again. Whatever you might imagine, whether you are imagining God or you are imagining Devil, life will anyway give you the works! Learn to handle life. After all, the issue is life. Only when you begin to know life and understand the limitations of life, the longing to go beyond life arises. If you are not intimately in touch with life, your longing to go beyond life is just a falsehood; all you are looking for is a drink.

Just work one ball at a time. Right now, what is your limitation, how to go beyond this. Whatever methods have been given to you, are they breaking some of your limitations? That’s all you have to see. If they are breaking, it’s fine, continue to break. Don’t worry about the ultimate. If it’s one ball at a time, doubt is no problem.”