If we want to live well, both externally and internally, how well we live here simply depends on how well we manage our surroundings and how well we manage ourselves. Fundamentally, life is management. The quality of your life depends on how well you manage your body, your mind, your emotion, your situations, your home, your communities, nations, your life in general and the world. But generally we are thinking of management only in terms of business management, or industry management; generally we are talking management only with economic situations, not life as a whole.
What I see is, people who have failed in their lives are suffering their failure. People who have succeeded in their life are suffering their success. If you suffer your failure it is okay, because failure comes easy. But something that you worked for, something that you always longed for, something that you wanted to create in your life, when this happens, if you start suffering it, that is the real tragedy of life. You educate yourself, pursue careers, build families, run after your ambitions – you do so many things because somewhere you believe that fulfilling those things will bring you happiness. After doing all that, if happiness is not multiplying, if it is going down, that means you are a bad manager of yourself.
Anybody who does not know how to manage his own body, mind, emotion and energies, if he is managing outside situations, he is only managing them by accident, not by intent, not by the way he wants it. When you manage situations by accident, you exist as an accident. When you exist as an accident, you are a potential calamity. When you exist as a potential calamity, being anxious all the time becomes a natural part of life.
Fundamentally, management means we want to decide the course of our destiny. You want to have a certain kind of situation, both inward and outward. So everybody is a manager in his own capacity, but in different levels and different types. Whether you manage a kitchen where you cook for four people, or you manage a large industry where ten thousand people work, fundamentally if you want to have a good kitchen or a good industry, you must be a good manager of that situation.
If in the process of managing a situation we are destroying human beings – which is happening right now – then this kind of management is no good, because after all, the basic intent of every management is human wellbeing. People should rise to their full potential, not just in terms of work, but as human beings. If people work together, they should be able to rise to the peak of their love, peace, compassion within themselves.
If this kind of management has to happen, you have to spend a certain amount of time in focusing on your inner management. If this does not happen, you will only manage situations by accident. Lots of people have understood management as a way of throwing their weight around.
If you manage a situation, people should feel elevated just being in that space. Above all, you must feel wonderful being there. So, if this has to happen, you need an inner dimension. As there is a management science for external wellbeing, there is also a management science for inner wellbeing. It is just that most of the time we have not approached it scientifically, we just believe that by doing something, somehow everything will be okay.
People are learning management as a science to apply to outer situations; I would like them to understand that there is a whole science of inner management also. If you don’t learn that, you may manage businesses, you may manage industry, but still you will not live a life of fulfillment and wellbeing. If you want to live a life of fulfillment and wellbeing and offer the same to people around you, it is extremely important you know what it means to manage your interiority.
Ranked amongst the fifty most influential people in India, Sadhguru is a yogi, mystic, visionary and bestselling author. Sadhguru has been conferred the “Padma Vibhushan” by the Government of India in 2017.