The role of Values in Life
We often come across people who achieve an incredible degree of worldly success, but remain under tremendous pressure. They remain mentally stressed and physically drained. Though they achieve growth and take up additional responsibilities, their mental pressure also increases proportionately. With all the success and glory they achieve, you will find them struggling with an inner thirst for fulfillment, a hunger for personal congruency and a deep need for developing their relationships with other people. The reason for this paradox is that the fundamental values and principles of life and living that they have focused upon and much less understood.
We take it for granted that right living comes naturally as we grow up; but that does not happen. Living is a science as well as an art. To be dynamic in your field of activity and at the same time maintain peace of mind you have to be an artist of life, a technocraft of your personality. It requires specific training and education. You need the training to know the technology of life and to gain mastery over yourself and your life.
In the untrained process of living, people are craving for two things – success and peace. Success is the tribute that the world pays to excellence. True success and enduring happiness is a result of incorporating and integrating the time tested values and principles of life in every fibre of your activities in your day-to-day living
What matters in life is not what you possess or what resources you have, but how you make the best of the circumstances of your life. It is not how best things turn out that matters, but how you make the best out of the way things turn out. You need to assimilate the higher values to make the best out of the way things turn out. Success is not a chance but a choice. It is something to be fabricated through conscious, deliberate choice and conscientious effort. Everyone sets goals and lays down plans of action. They perform vigorous actions. They put in enormous effort. They struggle hard. But the result they get is not commensurate with the effort and struggle. Effort has neither high productivity nor lasting satisfaction. Human life has lost its proper direction and deeper meaning. In the struggle there is competition, bitterness and suffering. Remember, to excel, you need not work better than anyone else. You need to work better than yourself. I have found that excellence is not so much a battle you fight with others, but a battle you fight with yourself, by constantly raising the bar and stretching yourself and your standards. It is a fight against your inequities and weaknesses. If you wish to change your life, the change must begin with your inner self. That is the best and the most satisfying and challenging part about excellence. In the words M.K. Gandhi “Be the change that you wish to see in the world”
We often hear some of the painful questions in life from people who are in the professional and business world. Some of the questions are :
- “I set goals; lay down my action plan and get all psyched for action, but when I get to work I get too impatient for the result. I expect too many things to happen too quickly. I develop anxiety and impatience. I then lose my enthusiasm. What is wrong with my approach, action and effort?
- When I start working, even the small jobs weigh me down. Little jobs seem too heavy. I get exhausted too soon.
- How do I switch off my mind from worries and anxieties while I am engaged in my work? I am not able to switch off my mind from worries related to work when I am with my family or in social engagement.
- In spite of my outward success there is still a thirst and hunger for fulfillment and personal satisfaction. Tremendous insecurity haunts me. I often experience sleepless nights. How do I find total satisfaction and fulfillment or meaning and purpose in my life?
- My work, business as well as family life has become routine and monotonous. I am not able to sustain the job, energy and enthusiasm that I had at the beginning of my career and in my relationship with my spouse.
- How do I instill the right mental attitudes to my workers? They seem to suffer from an attitudinal handicap with respect to their work. I get so frustrated pushing them to work.
- I know that without challenges, life will have no progress. But I do not have the mental stamina to accept the fact and face it. How do I bring about the stamina and stability to face and overcome the indomitable challenges of life?
- I have tremendous professional success, but at the cost of my personal joy, family life and marital harmony. My marriage has gone flat and insipid. We do not fight but there is no joy anymore in living together. The relationship has become mechanical. How do I rekindle the marital bliss and find a balance between my professional life and domestic living.
- I am very active and dynamic and have even achieved a great deal in my life, but I am not able to maintain mental equanimity while I am working. Why is it that, as my responsibilities increase, the stress, worries, anxieties and inner pressure also increases?
- Everything is all right in my life, but if only my spouse was more understanding and co-operative things would have been so much better!
- I did everything to provide all the conveniences and facilities for my family and children but they still do not live upto my wishes and expectations. My children are tempted to all kinds of vices. They are rebellious and I have lost control over them.
- All is well with my job. But I cannot tolerate a particular colleague. That person always gets on my nerves.
- I often regret having done what I thought was right. I go through feeling that I should not have done it! Why did I do this? I should not have agreed to that deal! I should not have given into the demand. In this way I often go through the pain-of-regret.
These are some of the problems and painful questions in the minds of modern people. These are problems that cannot be solved by altering, manipulating or even improving outward conveniences. These are the diseases that can be treated only by one’s own journey within through the process of self analysis. These are the difficulties that can be resolved only by gaining the mastery over one’s own self and over your life.
We try to analyses the inner software of the individual. It enunciates the value systems that will enable you to meet the challenges of life. It examines the above questions and brings out insightful and practical solutions. It enunciates the laws and the principles governing them. It elucidates the rules and regulations supporting them. It paves the ways to fulfill your aspirations in life. It explains the formulae and techniques of dynamic action and productivity without the shadow of stress, strain and burnout stalking it.
The art of effortless effort
There are three criteria for worldly success:
- First of all, the effort must be enjoyable
- Having put in the efforts, you must achieve the object of the desire or reach the goal and target you set
- Having achieved your objective, you must continue to enjoy whatever you achieved.
If you fulfill these three conditions, then you can claim to be successful. Unfortunately, most people today claim they are successful just because they are able to achieve their target, they earn the object of desire. In effect, they are not only one third successful, for they fulfill only one criterion. Their effort is painful; they struggle and toil to achieve success. Having achieved, they often do not enjoy their achievement. If you had to ask a young man who graduated from university with flying colours about his days at the university and whether would he be willing to go through it again, he would probably say that he would not even want to think about it! This is because the effort was not enjoyable, although they have managed to achieve the objective. Then having achieved their objective, they not continue to enjoy it. How long do you enjoy the thrill of having a brand new car? A few days or weeks, perhaps! Thereafter, the novelty is lost, or you get neutralized to the joy of the car. Similarly, we do not enjoy other accomplishments that we desired so intensely such as a promotion in a job, a new house, family, wealth, a dream car etc.
