Part Two: Personal Power for Success

In Part Two below as Sadhguru explains how to develop personal power within yourself:

“You definitely have noticed on a certain day when you are anxious, you feel exhausted. Don’t you? I want you to observe your day to day life, a simple thing: Just let’s say how many words do you utter in a day? You never counted? Oh, you should. You should. Just make an estimate tomorrow, from morning to night how many words you utter. Day after tomorrow, cut it by fifty percent and say the same things. You’re not cutting off communication with people, you’re still communicating, but with fifty percent of the words. Your language skills will improve for sure. And you will see, you will develop so much of personal power within yourself.

This must be always understood, power is not about domination. Power is about becoming effective. Power is about becoming empowered. It is not about sitting on somebody’s head is not power. If you are not empowered, everything that you do will be weak and meek. Your presence in the universe is not even felt. Insipid life it becomes. If you do not aggregate your energy into a certain level of power within you, being here will not be worthwhile. When I say here, I mean being alive here in this world will not be worthwhile because once there is no personal power within you, you will live by other people’s opinions: what somebody says will either make you or break you.

When you have no opinions about anything or anybody, you will not be bothered about other people’s opinions either, because such a thing doesn’t rule your mind. Your mind should be largely used to simply take in what’s around you, not to going on in cyclical thought process. This cyclical thought process is taking away, see there is scientific evidence to show, at least twenty percent of your energy right now, as you sit here in a restful state, is being consumed by your brain. If you bring this down, that your brain is not unnecessarily fluctuating and, you know, hopping mad. All the time. If it learns to still, be still and do only what’s needed, an enormous sense of personal power will develop.

Reducing Unnecessary Words and Movements

You can’t do this with your mind right now. If you try to stop it, it’ll hop even more crazy. At least do it with your body. Your words and you physical movements, reduce it by fifty percent. Like this, just reduce it by fifty percent. If you want to look at this, look at this, if you want to look at that, look at that, don’t do this, this, this (Looking all around). The same with your words, with your body and your utterances, if you do this, slowly it will also start manifesting in your mind: it will not do unnecessary things.

When you don’t know unnecessary things, the energy that you have slowly transforms itself into potential power. Only when you carry the potency of this power within you, you walk through this life, it doesn’t matter where you are placed in the society, it doesn’t matter financially where you are, materially where you are, you walk like a king. Because, the power within you makes you walk like that, it is not what you carry. What you carry will only be burdensome. And only in comparison to somebody who has less that you feel good. If somebody has less than you, if you feel great, you are sick. Not powerful. Isn’t it?

It’s a kind of sickness, that you enjoy what other people do not have. Because if you live by opinions and comparisons, that’s the only way you can exist. That you will always enjoy what someone does not have, not what you have. And the only thing that you have is truly yourself. Other things are just appendages. Unfortunately you need them.

If you could do without a home, without a car, without these clothes, without all this if you could simply be, it would have been great, but it’s not possible right now. You need all those things. It’s okay. These are necessary evils that we have to gather in our lives. We need money, we need a credit card, we need stuff, it’s fine. But this is not what makes you who you are. These are appendages unfortunately we have to carry living in this world.

Standing on 1000 Legs

Your qualifications, your bank balances, your relationships, your possessions, are all appendages that you unfortunately need. Suppose you could be here without any need for anybody or anything and you feel wonderful within yourself. That would be the best way to live. It is not possible, so you take on those things, it’s okay. If you’re not able to walk by yourself, you hold a stick, it’s alright, but don’t think the stick is the power. It is not the power. It is who you are is the real power. Instead of enhancing this, we are busy enhancing appendages. We are busy enhancing crutches and supports for ourselves. If you can stand with minimum, does it mean you have the strongest legs, or if need a thousand-leg table to stand on, does it mean you’re strong? If you can stand with minimal, that means you’re strong, isn’t it? That means you can go anywhere. That means you can do anything.

But without these thousand artificial legs you cannot stand, that means you can do very little in a society where somebody has 999 legs, you feel better than him because you have one leg more. One more extra than others. This is a poor way to live.  How powerful this is, is how much it will live.  That will be the profoundness of its experience.  How weak it is will determine how profane the experience of life will be.  The yoga that you practice is essentially to develop this power.