How To Achieve Your Goals

Sadhguru: Ninety-five percent of the people live and die without ever realizing what is their unique genius. People don't know what to do, because we have not handled the most fundamental. You must just tweak your competence. Wherever you are, you will know how to do. You will function to the best of your intelligence and capability. Jonathan Coslet Chief Investment Officer at TPG Global Interviewer (Jonathon Coslet): One of the things that someone that we actually met couple of weeks ago, the Dean of Harvard Business School, said to me – we were talking about leadership, and he was sharing his philosophy about leadership as the dean of a major business school, and he sort of said, "For me, it's about knowing, acting, being, having some real knowledge and expertise to lead, taking action upon it and then living every day that way." And one of the things that I think has been the most amazing about Sadhguru's journey is the actions that he has taken. You saw some of the programs up there (Referring to the video) but maybe you can describe some of the things that you have going on in the world because it's not just about coming and talking and meeting and philosophizing, it's actually about taking action. So maybe you can tell us some of the things you have going on around the world and how you get them resourced? Sadhguru: When we say being, we're talking about the fundamental nature of our existence. The quality of our existence will determine the quality of our perception. And the quality of our perception will determine the quality of what we know and what we do not know. Action is a consequence of this. If you put it upside down, then it's like saying – fruit, tree, root, soil. That's not how it works – soil, root, tree, and then fruit (Laughs). If you put it upside down, you may pull out something forcefully, but the damage is there. Today, I… I'm (Laughs)… I'm working with a whole lot of business leaders in the world, both in India and outside. I wouldn't like to generalize this but I would say at least sixty to seventy percent of them, by the time they're forty-five, they're seriously damaged in many ways. Either they have become emotionally stifled because of their… a certain type of activity or many of them are suffering from various types of physical ailments, which is essentially they believe is a natural consequence of the kind of job they're doing because you're doing things forcefully. If you do not understand the natural order of things as to how life blossoms, if you want the fruit first before the tree, obviously (Laughs) it involves forceful ways of doing things. When you do forceful ways of doing things, one thing may be achieved but the rest is damaged. Most affluent societies in the world, everywhere, not just here, are going through this. They have become affluent. But the idea, the fundamental idea of seeking affluence, either in individual life or in a society or in a nation is because it will give us a choice, fundamentally of nourishment and lifestyles. This is the reason why human beings seek affluence, so that it'll give us a whole choice of nourishment and lifestyles. Now, if you look at people's lives, these choices are not something that they're enjoying, these choices are just freaking them out (Laughs). People don't know what to eat, people don't know what to do, because we have not handled the most fundamental. We… We want to be on the racetrack, but we don't want to build a machine for it, we just want to win. Nobody wins a race because they desire it. Who doesn't desire victory (Laughs)? Everybody does. But only competence wins in the end. So whether it's in a school or in a college or in a professional atmosphere, instead of tweaking our competence, we're tweaking our desire, which we call as ambition or goal-orientedness or whatever. You are tweaking your desire without tweaking your competence or you may be tweaking your confi… competence but it's coming behind the desire. No, you must just tweak your competence. What you can do, may be beyond your desire or it may be little less than that, we don't know. But without tweaking your competence, you're trying to tweak your desire, which causes an unnecessary sense of stress when you do well. Look at (Laughs) the pain of that. You're… You are suffering your well-being. This cannot be excused because (Laughs) our well-being is coming at a great loss and pain to every other creature on the planet. And we are suffering it, simply because we are putting the cart before the horse. So, you cannot do, being in the end. Knowing… Doing, knowing and being – no, no. Being first, how to be. If you don't know how to be, wherever we put you, you will suffer. If you know how to be, whether you work here in San Francisco or you have to work in the Mars, it doesn't matter. Wherever you are, you will know how to do. What will you do? You will function to the best of your intelligence and capability. That's all you can do. In our lives, if we do not do what we cannot do, it's not a issue; but if we do not do what we can do, we are a disastrous life. That's all we're trying to avoid, that we don't end up not being able to do what we can do. But once you create this unnecessary, completely avoidable stress, that your desire is bigger than your competence… Without tweaking the competence, instead of focusing everything and tweaking the competence, we are tweaking the desire. Now, you're creating a situation where there is stress. Stress means you're moving towards incompetence, not towards competence. Any machine on the planet will function at its best only when there is no sense of friction. The least amount of friction means that machine is the most efficient machine. Why is that not true for human mechanism? If this (Referring to oneself) functions with least amount of friction, this will function at its best. Will I be as good as you? Maybe not, but I will be at my peak and that's all. And every human being has come with a certain genius. But I would say, because of the type of schooling that we have taken to in our… a… across the world, not in anyone place, and the way we're approaching life, I would say ninety-five percent of the people live and die without ever realizing what is their unique genius. Only two to five percent of the people realize the genius of what they're capable of. Rest will all do something that somebody else is doing, they want to do that. They want to do that better than them. That is their idea of well-being. Because of this, a tremendous amount of human genius is simply lost. And that is the biggest crime on the planet, that human genius is stifled because everybody is trying to be in one basket and be on top of everybody else. This is a very rudimentary way of functioning in the world. Unfortunately, that's become the way everywhere. We're trying to do something but that's in small scale. The large scale schooling and education and professional