Uncertainty is the nature of the game, of the adventure called Life

The very uncertainty that we fear is what makes Life magical and beautiful.

At a learning forum for managers the other day, one of the speakers championed the need for today’s business leaders to develop the ability to lead through uncertainty. He said that most decisions have to be made today not knowing what will happen. Some of those in the audience disagreed with him. They argued that decisions cannot and must not be made when you don’t know what will happen. The debate continued well past the keynote presentation and spilled over into the drinks and dinner conversations as well.

A senior business leader who was next to me said leading in uncertain times was a very scary experience. “Not many can do it,” he observed.

I disagreed with him. I pointed out that fearing uncertainty is never the appropriate response. I believe that not just managers, everybody on the planet is (and must be) capable of dealing with uncertainty. Uncertainty is unfolding afresh in each new moment and we must face it by looking it in the eye.

Why are we running scared of uncertainty when the very nature of Life is impermanent, fragile, uncertain? In fact, there’s a certainty about death – if you are alive, you will die, for sure, some day. But just because you are born – and alive – does not mean you will go on living. There’s no certainty about Life! From the time you came out of your mother’s womb your entire Life has been a journey through the uncertain. It’s your upbringing, your education and your reference to economic parameters (read a pay check and/or a bank balance) that makes you believe that you are secure and can be certain about the way your Life will pan out. Because you have been raised in a protected environment by your parents and family, because you have been progressing through your academic career in a linear fashion – moving from class to class in a predictable manner – because you got employed soon after you graduated from college; for all these reasons and more, you have come to believe that Life’s happening the way you envisioned it for yourself. You have almost concluded that Life is a straight line! That’s when Life socks you with a pink slip or with a heart attack or a break-up or a death! That’s when you wake up, shocked and dazed, and begin to “fear an uncertain future”.

When you live out of fear, resisting the uncertainty that surrounds you, you will not grow. You may grow older. But you will not grow from within, you will not evolve. Because fear debilitates. It limits. Every aspect of Life is uncertain, unsafe, dangerous – there are so many diseases you can contract and die or your house can be burgled and you can be murdered or you may meet with an accident on the road or your plane may crash mid-air or someone could hack your bank account and siphon off all your hard-earned money…Anything can happen if you actually consider what all can go wrong with your Life. But if you start letting the fear of uncertainty rule you, you can be sure to have ruined your Life.

There’s hope though! You can let go of all your fear and embrace uncertainty. Since uncertainty is the essence of Life, when you embrace it, you are actually uniting with the Universal Energy. That Energy empowers you and gives you the true sense of security – which no insurance scheme, no amount of money and no amount of physical protection ever can. Then a pink slip will not torment you. Then not-knowing-what-will-happen-next will be part of the game, of the adventure called Life.

So, I believe that anyone can lead through uncertain times. Anyone can take decisions even when they don’t know what to do – because leadership is really about seeing what is and mobilizing an appropriate response. All you need to be able to do this, lead through uncertainty, is to understand Life better. Yes, uncertainty can be unsettling and scary when you first notice it. But if you drop the fear, the same uncertainty becomes beautiful – you will realize that Life was always uncertain. This awakening is what makes Life magical. To experience this magic you must learn to live in the moment, soaking in whatever the moment has to offer, in a “not-knowing-what-will-happen-next” mode!

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The way of the empty hand – a spiritual awakening from Karate!

You have nothing to lose, nothing at all, ever in Life!

Someone we know met us for coffee the other day. He felt that Life is so much on the edge. He said he often seemed to be dealing with this gnawing feeling within him, that if he wasn’t vigilant enough, he was going to lose all that he has created in Life. He also added that there’s so much at stake, most of the time for everyone, that there won’t ever be a time when anyone will ever have nothing to lose!

I have a different perspective to offer. From the time we are born to the time we will die, none of us has anything to lose. Because you came with nothing and you will go with nothing. Whatever you have got has been given here – in this lifetime. So, even if whatever you have got now – your assets, cash, family, lover, your reputation, whatever – is taken away from you, you don’t have to sweat over it. Because you will never be able to take them away with you when you die!

So, the truth is this: you have nothing to lose – ever!

The Japanese martial art form of Karate, now also a major sport, has a deep, spiritual relevance to what we are discussing. The word Karate comes from a root that really means empty-hand. Gichin Funakoshi (1868~1957), founder of the Shotokan style of Karate, is widely credited with introducing and popularizing the discipline on the islands of Japan. Funakoshi changed the way the art form was called, from Karate-jutsu to Karate-do with the do suffix implying that it is a path to self-knowledge and not just a study of a technique of fighting. Karate soon came to mean “the way of the empty hand”. In Karate-Do Kyohan, Funakoshi quoted from the Heart Sutra, which is prominent in Shinghon Buddhism: “Form is emptiness. Emptiness is form itself.” Funakoshi interpreted the kara of Karate-do to mean: “To purge, empty, oneself of evil and selfish thoughts”. He championed that if a Karate practitioner could understand that “empty-handed I come, empty-handed I will go and empty-handed I am here – ready for combat”, then the practitioner has nothing to lose! Funakoshi says one can become a great warrior with this understanding. Then no one can defeat such a warrior, no one can rob him or her – because he or she is empty and has nothing to lose!

When you are willing to live fully, with no fear of losing anything – because there is nothing to lose really – then all you will do is to gain, to attain – happiness, inner peace, fulfilment and bliss! Or simply, when you have nothing to lose, it logically means that you really have everything to gain. As we journey along, let’s always remember ‘the way of the empty hand’!

Please don’t say ‘yes’, when you really want to say ‘no’!

Happiness cannot be faked. You are either happy or unhappy – you cannot pretend to be happy without suffering deep within you!

A reader wrote to me asking what must people, who ‘have to put on a mask of being happy’, do to be really happy.

There is actually a related question here – why do you put on a mask? If you are unhappy, be so, tell the world you are unhappy. Why hide your unhappiness? When you hide how you are feeling, you are actually not enjoying yourself. Inside you, you are suffering, you are feeling miserable. So, faking happiness, trying to please people so that you make them feel good and important, when you feel like a piece of sh*t, is a huge disservice you are doing to yourself.

Being genuinely compassionate about another person, and working to enrich their Life, at the cost of what you want to do, is a different thing. There, an inner joy is driving you to serve someone. You want to do that. Faking happiness is a situation when you don’t want to do what you are doing, but you end up doing something imagining you don’t have a choice.

People who are caught in such situations think that ‘gritting their teeth and pleasing others’ is part of everyday living. I too have done that only to discover that each time I suffered a lot. Then I asked myself why I should be serving someone’s interests when I am suffering? So, over time, I have learnt to be very clear about my priorities. I will not do something just because someone wants me to be nice to them or please them, no matter who they are.

Let me clarify here that we are not talking about having to make short-term adjustments or accommodations so that we can help someone who deserves that space or our understanding. I am referring to situations where, because you were not clear about it upfront, that it was a short-term or a one-time accommodation, the other person starts taking you for granted. And each time the person demands your understanding, your time, your support – at the cost of your inner peace and happiness. That’s how you lose the plot, that’s how you start suffering within and put on the ‘mask of happiness’.

Let me tell you this – it is simply not worth doing anything in Life – even if it is pleasing someone – if you are not happy doing it. Also, let’s understand this better – pleasing someone is very different from being compassionate with someone. When you are pleasing someone, you are unnecessarily choosing to be a  martyr. You are suffering within, feeling wounded and miserable. When you are compassionate, you are being human, you are not just offering to serve of your own will, you are actually offering yourself. There is great joy and there is oneness between you, the one you are serving and the Universe’s energy.

So, to answer the reader’s question, to be really happy, simply learn to say no when you have to say no. Please don’t say ‘yes’, when you really want to say ‘no’!

Don’t crucify Dhoni: the process, the journey, of Life is itself the reward

Winning is not about a acquiring a title, reaching a position or being feted with a reward or recognition. Winning is the ability to enjoy – and trust – the process of Life!

Last evening (IST), in a last-ball turn of events, West Indies defeated India, in the T20 game played in Florida, USA. Had anyone else been the cause of India’s defeat, we cricket-crazy Indians would have perhaps shrugged it off. But the man that fell to the wily Dwayne Bravo was MS Dhoni, our Captain Courageous, Captain Cool, World’s Best Finisher….and the Mr.Infallible! A Twitter post that surfaced within seconds of the game finishing, read: “Is it the end of the Dhoni era when he causes an Indian defeat?” And this morning’s Times of India led with this headline: “India done in by Dhoni!”

Very uncharitable, avoidable sentiments, I thought.

The reactions to this game’s outcome reflect how culturally unforgiving we are as a nation, as people, and how obsessed we are with winning and success that we find it difficult to be graceful in defeat or failure. It is this attitude that’s evident in all that we do – we are so driven by wanting to succeed, wanting to win all the time, in whatever we do, that we are quick to pounce on anyone who slips, stumbles, falls and make them feel incapable and incompetent. And because we see so much of this happening to so many people around us, when we do fall, we are very harsh on ourselves too. Such rabid stances are totally irrelevant and uncalled for in Life.

Life, like cricket, is just a game. In cricket at least you can go on appeal to a Third Umpire or a Match Referee. In Life, there is no appeal possible, no review possible. You simply have to keep on playing the game, keep on living with what is – no matter what happens! Over their lifetimes, everyone gets their share of glory, their share in the sun, their moment in the spotlight. In fact, after you journey through Life long enough to have seen success, money, name, fame, love, loss, sorrow, shame and awakening, you come to a conclusion that it’s the process of Life that makes it interesting. The process only involves living Life well, enjoying each moment by living it fully, thoroughly. In the end, it will not matter what you won, how much you won, who you defeated and how you lost or how much you lost. The only regret that you may find meaningful enough to review – and perhaps traumatic to handle – is of the Life that you did not live. So, our only focus and priority must be to live the Life that we want to live. And live it very, very well – each day doing the best you can in whatever you love doing. If you are an actor, be the best actor you know – it doesn’t matter if you get an Oscar or not. If you are a gardener, be the best gardener that just immerses herself in her plants – don’t worry or bother whether others think highly of you and your choice of vocation. We must have the spirit that Jalaluddin Rumi, the 13^th Century Persian poet spoke about: “I want to sing like the birds sing, not worrying who listens or what they think.”

My own awakening has led me to believe that in Life, the journey, the adventure is the reward. Success, failure, win, loss, victory, defeat, these are just social labels. They, without doubt, come in the way of happiness. And so these labels must be expunged. Only then, to quote Rumi again, can we “enjoy the pure wine being poured without complaining about the dirty cup!”

Faith is a deeply personal resource within you

When you can’t find a way forward, when it is absolutely dark, look within. That’s where you will find the light. That’s what is called faith. 

A young friend’s Facebook status this morning read: “Digging deep to dig yourself out of a hole.” I commented as follows on it: “Vaani and I can relate to this – I see it as digging in deep with faith – faith in creation, that if you have been created, you will be taken care of, provided for…as for the getting out of the hole, well, that’s what keeping the faith is all about!”

We have, for long, been conditioned to understand that faith is what we have in an “external” energy or object, oftentimes a.k.a God. So, in times of crisis, when Life comes to a grinding halt, when you are circumstantially cornered, your faith, as you understand it, also becomes questionable. The external energy, God, whatever, doesn’t physically come to your rescue – at least not in the way you expect it! And so, you question whether there really is a God? Whether there really is a Higher Energy? We have all gone through these tests. We have all, in a fit of rage, when it appeared that Life was most certainly over, declared that God is blind, that the God-theory is all hog-wash and that your faith has been misplaced. There’s nothing wrong with such a response to Life in trying, and excruciating, hopeless, situations. It is but natural to vent your frustration especially when matters relating to faith are concerned.

So, is keeping the faith a really futile exercise? Actually, to answer this question, you must re-examine how you define faith.

Faith is not what you project externally. Faith is a deeply personal resource which can be found only when you look within. You don’t normally understand this because of the way you approach Life. Consider this: something challenging happens in your Life – you lose your job, you suffer a serious health setback, you lose someone you love, your business is badly hit or any other context. Immediately, the focus, the examination of the event, is through external reference points. Any effort to deal with the situation is also driven by external coordinates. Rarely is there an inquiry within. I remember, when things started going wrong in our business, we went around on pilgrimages for months on end. We went to people who advised us how the apartment we lived in needed redesign (actually, re-engineering!), how our Firm’s name had to be changed and so on. We were taken to someone who advised me to wear rings on my fingers, in both hands. I have nothing against any of these efforts that we undertook or the advice we received. Except, to complete the story, none of these efforts helped our failing business – and we eventually went bankrupt! But I am not bitter or ridden by guilt over what we tried. I am only transparently sharing here the journey we undertook, to reinforce my point that we always look outside for answers, for solutions.

My learning from Life has been that faith is knowing that “if you have been created, you will be provided for.” Now, sometimes, what you are provided for, is not what you want or expect. At such times you have to remember that this is what Life has planned for you – so that you can learn and grow from each experience.

I am not against religion or an external-God theory. But I will champion any day, from personal experience, that in Life’s darkest hours, the road that you will find fully illuminated, and inviting, is the one that leads you within. Being on that road does not mean that all your problems in the material world will cease to exist. Being on that road, however, surely means that you will be more capable, and feel more confident, of dealing with all those problems. Because that road always leads to inner peace – the most precious reward that those with faith can ever hope to get!

Every minute of Life spent postponing happiness is a minute that’s unlived

Being happy is neither an act of selfishness nor of irresponsibility.

Someone in the audience at a Talk I delivered the other day asked me if it was not ruthless, and selfish, to be happy when people around you are having their own Life challenges. Specifically, he wanted to know, if I was not feeling guilty that I was able to be happy, even as I owed people money, which, in return, may well be causing them pain.

I am glad I was asked this question. In fact, people close to me too often allude to this point. My take on this comes purely from my experience.

For the longest time, I have felt guilty and grief-stricken over being unable to repay people that we have borrowed from. Surely, several of them have given us money despite their own challenges. They have done that while blindly trusted us. Money is money after all. Everyone can do well with a little more. Yet, there are some who have loaned us money, who need it – and we know they need it – but they have never asked for it back because they know our situation is unique. They know it oscillates between being grave and being in survival mode most of the time. They implicitly believe we are fighting a good fight and that Vaani and I will claw our way back from here and repay them. Now, when you think of how compassionate and understanding people are, you do feel guilty. Earlier on, up until 5 years ago, I would have let that guilt and grief get to me. We have a poster pasted inside our closet, in our bedroom, which has the names of all the people, 179 of them, to whom we owe money. (I talk about this poster in my Book Fall Like A Rose Petal  too – Westland, 2014) We open the closet several times in a day. And each time we see the poster, we send out a prayer in gratitude to the people who wait patiently for us to repay them. I carry the poster on my phone as well. And when I am sitting idle, waiting for meetings to start or when commuting, I pray to these 179 Angels again. Through this process of continuously visualizing that we will repay everyone, not just once daily, but several times, I have personally let go of that debilitating feeling of guilt and grief. Because deep within me, I know our intention, and integrity, will be rewarded by Life. Besides, both Vaani and I don’t let this long, disappointing spell, of our sincere efforts to put our business on track not yielding expected results, depress us. We own our intention to such a serious extent that we are wary of depression setting in – after all, the only chance we have for recovery, and our creditors have for getting their money back, is for us to hang in there and keep making efforts till the last rupee is repaid. We have realized that the key weapons in our arsenal, that keep depression at bay, are our inner peace and happiness. Only by being happy and anchored, are we able to focus and take diligent measures to do what we can do best to overcome our situation – daily. It’s our happiness that gets us out of bed every morning and gets us a good night’s sleep no matter how harrowing the day has been – facing legal proceedings on some days, encountering rejection on the business side on others and dealing with numbing cashlessness on several other days!

On a broader plane, why should anyone feel scared of being happy? Please understand, happiness is who you are. If you postpone your happiness because you are waiting to solve all your problems and dissolve all your worries, you may just die unhappy. Every minute of Life spent postponing happiness is a minute that’s unlived. And with each passing moment, you are closer to your death than you were before. So, postponing happiness is very poor judgment; postpone worrying instead! Only when you are happy do you deliver peak performance in whatever you do. This is an unalterable law of Life. Check it out for yourself. In whatever you do, when you are doing it with inner joy, you lose yourself to it. And it turns out very well – whether it is painting, singing, cooking, preparing a presentation or writing a report or even having sex! There’s also the other argument that people try to kid themselves with – they want to sacrifice their happiness for another’s sake. Now obviously, we are not talking of a immature choice to party when someone you are close to is very, very sick. I am referring to the urge to proclaim martyrdom, of choosing to deprive yourself of your inner joy by unnecessarily being willing to adjust and accommodate for another’s sake. This is not uncommon. This happens every time you give up what you believe in, what you love doing, only so that you look good in front of someone. That’s why, on all such occasions, you end up suffering and why such sacrifice is meaningless.

Please seize the message, and the moment, my friends. Your happiness leads you to living a fuller, more productive and profitable (in all aspects) Life. For this, however, you must make the choice to be happy. You must help yourself to happiness!

Why Life has to be gone through with Faith and Patience

Don’t try to make sense of Life. But, yes, you can be sensible with Life. At least, with your Life.

Yesterday I delivered my signature Fall Like A Rose Petal  Talk to members of TiE, Chennai. A young member of the audience, over coffee, wanted to know if there was a thing called destiny and if karma played a role in shaping our lives.

I asked the young man, in return, a few questions. What is the point in trying to know of something when you can’t do anything about it? Just by knowing that your Life is pre-ordained can you change anything? Just by confounding yourself with issues like impact of a past Life, assuming that you give the karma theory full credence and want to believe it, on this lifetime, how do you think you can live your Life any better? So, I advised him to live with what is, working on changing it if he didn’t like it, but learning to do it peacefully, happily. This process of learning, which involves continuous unlearning and relearning, often takes an entire lifetime. Which is why Life has to be gone through with Faith and Patience.

However, in a way, so that we all appreciate Life better, I will use a contemporary analogy here. We are all like pre-paid SIM cards, launched into this world with a pre-ordained set of features and an intelligent design that we are not aware of. It is when we try to seek certain features that we are not designed with that we suffer. Without realizing the pre-paid nature of our existence, we punish ourselves by cursing our fate or we try to unravel the destiny or karma theories or we blame (a) God for being partisan or even non-existent. We also suffer endlessly because we compare ourselves with the features endowed in other creations. Just as a pre-paid SIM card can be recharged or re-equipped only if the Operator allows it to be, and never by the customer alone desiring it, so it is with Life. We will do well to embrace, appreciate, celebrate and internalize this truth.

To me, personally, Life is the Higher Energy that powers this Universe, Life is my teacher, Life is my God, the cosmic network Operator, if you like!

You and I are just a part of a larger, inscrutable cosmic design. Our roles are both inconsequential and crucial at the same time. This paradox is again part of Life’s mysterious design. At one level, we cause nothing to happen on this planet, because we are pre-ordained to live in a certain way. Yet, we are part of whatever happens, to us, around us, in our lifetime – be it success or failure. We also have a huge responsibility towards (our) Life. Which is toward action, toward doing what we can, in any given situation, dutifully. It is, for all these reasons, and more, as the Bhagavad Gita reminds us, we must stay detached from the outcomes while willing to be accountable on our actions. Again paradoxical. But such is Life. Revisiting this truism on a daily basis, helps us stay anchored and humble.

Life is the way it is with a reason. If you realize what the reason is, it will cease to be a mystery. So don’t go after Life, don’t try to find the reason – you simply can’t. Instead just be. Live with what is. If you want to change your current reality, first accept what is, then go to work on it happily. Keep the faith and be patient with Life. This, interestingly, is the only sensible way to live a Life that you can’t ever make sense of!