Stress: Dealing with Expectations
Entrepreneurial Stress: Dealing with Expectations
Questioner: A main stress point for any manager or an entrepreneur is to manage peer group relationships. After all, many enterprises start with friends and family. We find that entrepreneurs go through a lot of stress and anxiety when they are building their enterprise, especially when the enterprise is doing well. The whole burden of [...]
Sadhguru Jaggi Vasudev
The first Wednesday of November is celebrated as Stress Awareness Day. Studies show that one of the leading causes for stress among entrepreneurs comes from having to deal with expectations. In an interview with Forbes, Sadhguru answered a question on this issue. Let’s see what he had to say.
Questioner:A main stress point for any manager or an entrepreneur is to manage peer group relationships. After all, many enterprises start with friends and family. We find that entrepreneurs go through a lot of stress and anxiety when they are building their enterprise, especially when the enterprise is doing well. The whole burden of societal expectations – whether it’s from family, friends, or even the media - can be fairly onerous. What advice would you give entrepreneurs who have to deal with balancing relationships at one end and yet keeping the focus on performance?
Sadhguru:One thing entrepreneurs should understand is the meaning of being an entrepreneur. An entrepreneur is someone who has chosen to do what he wants with his life. When you’re doing what you want with your life, that is the greatest joy that you can have. But slowly, you forget that you are doing what you want. You start working for somebody else’s expectations. That’s not the way. The meaning of being an entrepreneur is that you are doing what you want to do, and you should continue to do that all your life. Success is not only in terms of size. Success must also be looked at in terms of finding full expression of who you are, your capabilities and your competence. If any human being finds full expression of who he is, always, he will find success. If you compare yourself to somebody in another completely different area or arena of activity, and put the numbers together, those numbers may be bigger – that’s not the point. In your area of life, finding full expression is success.
The meaning of being an entrepreneur is that you are doing what you want to do, and you should continue to do that all your life.
So there is no need to be pressured by peer groups, media, this and that, as long as you are able to find full expression to who you are through the work that you’re doing, and above all, establish your way of being. An entrepreneur does something that he cares for, that he wants to do. So it matters to him. His work is important. Once your work is important, the most important thing is, you must work upon yourself. This is completely missing. Managing a business essentially means you are managing thousands of minds. If you can’t manage yours, how will you manage theirs? If you manage yours, where is the question of pressure? Where is the question of stress? There is no such thing. Work is not pressure. Work is not stress. It is your inability to manage yourself which is the stress.
Most people think it is their job, their family, their life situations, the taxes and the unpaid bills that are causing stress. But essentially, stress is your inability to manage your own system – your body, mind, emotions, and energy.
Stress is like friction in a machine. In other words, there is not enough lubrication in the system to function smoothly and easily. In everyone’s life, situations occur, but each person manages them differently, depending upon how smoothly his or her own system functions within itself. If you know how to manage this human mechanism, there is no question of stress. How successful you are in the world essentially depends on how friction-free your own mechanism is. You can bring your system to a frictionless state of function with simple practices. The yogic sciences offer you tools for a stress-free life.
Nadi Shuddhi – Yoga For Peace
The term “nadi shuddhi” literally means cleansing the nadis. Here, we are not talking about the 72,000 nadis. These 72,000 are only a branch-out of the two basic nadis, the pingala – the right or masculine energy channel – and the ida – the left or feminine energy channel. This is the energy physiology of a human being.
With nadi shuddhi, we are talking about cleansing the pingala and ida so that the energy system works in balance. There is a connection between your breath and your mental structure. To bring balance to your thought is a very important step that you need to take if you want to bring balance to your activity, your emotion, the results of your life and the impact you have on others’ lives.
Work Hard or Work Happy? Sadhguru on Stress and Time Management
n this conversation, Piyush Pandey wonders how Sadhguru manages his time between global travel, golf, motorcycling and much more. Sadhguru shares that most people in the world are not really busy, just preoccupied with their thoughts and emotions. He explains that if your body and intelligence are working for you, you can work joyfully and […]
n this conversation, Piyush Pandey wonders how Sadhguru manages his time between global travel, golf, motorcycling and much more. Sadhguru shares that most people in the world are not really busy, just preoccupied with their thoughts and emotions. He explains that if your body and intelligence are working for you, you can work joyfully and stress-free.
How Yoga Makes Stress-free Living Possible
Sadhguru answers a question on stress relief and describes how yoga makes it possible to live a life free of stress. Banishing myths about stress relief and stress management, he explores how taking stress out of lives is entirely in our hands, if only we empower the body, mind and energy with the right kind [...]
Sadhguru answers a question on stress relief and describes how yoga makes it possible to live a life free of stress. Banishing myths about stress relief and stress management, he explores how taking stress out of lives is entirely in our hands, if only we empower the body, mind and energy with the right kind of capability.
Full Transcript:
Questioner: Good afternoon Sir. Can you tell me that the work pressures are going on and because of that, stress is created? So that one is what do you do about the stress; second is how do you differentiate and leave the stress of that work pressure in the office and go back home and forget about it?
Sadhguru: (Laughs) Stress – you know a few years ago or many years ago when I first went to United States, wherever I went people were talking about ‘stress management’. I couldn’t understand this. Because in my understanding we manage things which are precious to us, which are valuable to us – you want to manage your family, your wealth, your business, your organizations – but why would anybody want to manage stress? This is something that I couldn’t understand. It took me a while to understand that these people have assumed that stress is a part of their life.
Stress is not a part of your life. Stress is not because of the work that you’re doing. Stress is just your inability to manage your body, your mind, your emotions and your energies. If your mind took instructions from you, would you keep it stressful or blissful? What’s your choice? What's your choice? If your mind took instructions from you, would you keep it stressful or blissful? Blissful. For yourself definitely it's blissfulness. What you want for your neighbor may be debatable but what you want for yourself is definitely highest level of pleasantness, isn't it?
So why is it when you are seeking pleasantness, your mind is creating unpleasantness? Stress means unpleasantness. Why is your mind creating unpleasantness for you? Your mind is supposed to be working for you not against you. So if it is working against you, we haven’t figured something about this mind, isn't it? Something very fundamental we have misunderstood about the nature of the mind,; how it functions and what we can do about it. So stress is not because of the nature of your work because you go and ask a chaprasi, he is stressful. You ask the Prime Minister, he is stressful, he looks stressful. In between everybody is stressful. So which job is not stressful? It is not the job which is stressful; it is you who is stressful. Job is never stressful, isn't it? It is just that your mind is not taking instructions from you.
So we need to read the instruction manual - we’ve done something fundamentally wrong as to how to handle this human mechanism, it’s a very complex technology. We need to address it with little more attention. (Applause)
Yoga: An Antidote to Stress – Podcast Tuesday
Sadhguru explains how stress is a certain kind of chemistry in the body, just as peace and joy are other kinds of chemistries. He explains that yoga is a technology to create the kind of chemistry within yourself that you want. [powerpress url=”http://sadhguru.podomatic.com/enclosure/2015-01-05T22_34_41-08_00.mp3″]
Sadhguru explains how stress is a certain kind of chemistry in the body, just as peace and joy are other kinds of chemistries. He explains that yoga is a technology to create the kind of chemistry within yourself that you want.
How To Cleanse Your Body and Detox Naturally At Home
Sadhguru: Essentially, the body is a play of the five elements – water, earth, air, fire and space. It is very common in India to refer to the body as a puppet made of five elements. By composition, the body is seventy-two percent water, twelve percent earth, six percent air, four percent fire, and the [...]
Sadhguru Jaggi Vasudev
Cleansing the body periodically is an essential part of making it available for greater possibilities. It's always best to detox your body naturally, and this can start right at home. Yogi and mystic, Sadhguru, gives us simple methods to cleanse the five elements of the system and looks at how to detox and cleanse your body naturally.
Sadhguru: Essentially, the body is a play of the five elements – water, earth, air, fire and space. It is very common in India to refer to the body as a puppet made of five elements. By composition, the body is seventy-two percent water, twelve percent earth, six percent air, four percent fire, and the remaining six percent space or akash.
How these five elements behave within you will determine just about everything. “Bhuta” means elements; “bhuta shuddhi” means to become free from the taint of the elements. It means to become free from the physical. Bhuta shuddhi is a basic sadhana in yoga to transcend the limitations of the physical and to become available to a dimension beyond the physical.
There are some simple things you can do to do bhuta shuddhi in a very natural way. It is not the ultimate type of bhuta shuddhi, but you can do some cleansing of the five elements.
Water
Among the five elements, our biggest concern is water. You must take enormous care about water because it is seventy-two percent and it has tremendous memory. One thing you can do is just put some neem or tulsi leaves in it. These will not remove chemical impurities but they will make the water very vibrant and energetic. Another thing is to store water in a copper vessel so that the water acquires a quality from the copper which is beneficial.
Earth
Earth is twelve percent. How food goes into you, from whose hands it comes to you, how you eat it, how you approach it, all these things are important. Above all, the food you eat is life. Other forms are giving up their life to sustain us. If we can eat with enormous gratitude for all the living things which give up their life to sustain our lives, food will behave in a very different way within you.
Air
Air is six percent. In that, only one percent or less is your breath. The rest is happening in so many other ways. It is not just the air that you breathe that affects you, it is the way you keep the air within you. You must take care of that one percent too but if you are living in a city it may not be in your hands what kind of air you breathe. So go for a walk in the park or along the lake.
Especially if you have children, it is important that you take them out at least once a month – not to the cinema or somewhere like that because the limited air in that hall gets affected just by the sounds, intentions, and emotions that are happening on the screen and reflecting in people’s minds. Instead of taking them to the cinema, take them to the river, teach them how to swim or climb a mountain. You needn’t go all the way to the Himalayas. Even a small hill is a mountain for a child. Even a rock will do. Go climb and sit on one of them. Children will enjoy it immensely and will become fit. You will become fit, your body and mind will function differently, and above all you are in touch with the Creator’s creation which is the most important thing.
Fire
You can also take care of what kind of fire burns within you. Get some sun on your body every day because sunlight is still pure. Fortunately, nobody can contaminate it. And what kind of fire burns within you – is it the fire of greed, fire of hatred, fire of anger, fire of love or fire of compassion. If you take care of that, you needn’t worry about your physical and mental wellbeing. It gets taken care of.
Akash
Akash is an intermediary situation between that which is creation and that which is the source of creation.
If we keep the other four elements well, akash will take care of itself. If you know how to get the cooperation of akash into your life, this will be a blessed life.
Editor's Note: This article is an excerpt from an upcoming book which looks at more methods to naturally detox and cleanse your body. It also explores cancer from a yogic perspective. Stay tuned for its release in the coming months!
Your Body – Shava or Shiva?
Sadhguru: The most important aspect of your existence is your physical body. When we look at the body as an instrument, different instruments are created and calibrated for different types of activities. When it comes to physical prowess, the human body is not comparable to any animal. If you take an insect, a grasshopper for [...]
Sadhguru Jaggi Vasudev
Sadhguru guides us in an exploration of the possibilities of physicality: are our bodies as limited as a “shava”, meaning corpse, or can we harness the capabilities of this miraculous tool to reach the Ultimate, “Shiva”.
Sadhguru:The most important aspect of your existence is your physical body. When we look at the body as an instrument, different instruments are created and calibrated for different types of activities. When it comes to physical prowess, the human body is not comparable to any animal. If you take an insect, a grasshopper for example – whatever the length of his body, he can jump almost 50 to 100 times that length. If you are five or six feet tall, you would have to jump 500 or 600 feet. If you hold Olympics by the standards of an earthworm, a termite, a grasshopper, a tiger, a deer or an elephant or any other creature on this planet, you are nowhere near that.
Survival at one time meant just getting one or two meals a day. Today, survival means a BMW!
In terms of physical prowess, we cannot compare ourselves to any creature on the planet. But we came with a certain capability to do something beyond our instinct of survival; that is the most important thing. You as a human being can look at life and handle life beyond the needs of survival. Unfortunately, instead of looking beyond the needs of survival, all that most human beings have done is raise the standards of their survival. Survival at one time meant just getting one or two meals a day. Today, survival means a BMW! This is an unintelligent way of using the human mechanism. This mechanism has come with a different possibility.
Physicality: Just a Stroke of Paint
In yoga, we refer to the human spine as the Merudanda, which means the axis of the universe. How can one’s spine be the axis of the universe? Today, modern science sees the whole existence as a vibration. Or if you go deeper, the same energy is reverberating in so many ways. We also know today that whatever you call as creation is held in the lap of vast nothingness – which scientisits are trying to find names for like dark energy; But beyond that, we know there are still totally empty spaces. From the grossest physical entity to what you call the Divine, it is just the same basis. It is just like a long paint stroke – first it comes out thick, then gets thinner and thinner, and becomes nothing. In the process of creation, you as a human being are a little closer to this emptiness.
The essential reverberation in the human being is generated from the spine. The subtler it gets, the further it goes.
The essential reverberation in the human being is generated from the spine. The subtler it gets, the further it goes. If it is gross, it hangs around only to a certain extent. If it gets very subtle, you can throw it all over the place. Once your reverberations spread themselves all over the place, your ability to perceive is also all over the place. Right now, what you call “myself”, in terms of your limited existence, is whatever is within the boundaries of your sensation. Whatever is within the boundaries of your experience is you. Whatever is outside your boundaries of experience is someone or something else. By refining your reverberations, you can extend the boundaries of your experience endlessly. When we say, “Shiva opened his Third Eye,” it means he extended the boundaries of his experience in an unlimited way. Then the whole existence is just a part of him and naturally he is the center. But how do you know he is the center?
