Comment on the “Self management with an Indian insight”
Any leader or manager should be able to manage his own self before managing people and other things. Self management is considered very important in Indian philosophy. What is self management is also discussed at different places in GITA, during the discourses between the Lord and Arjuna. The important lessons taught in GITA are as follows:
- Accepting the SELF and the outer world as it is:
A leader must be satisfied with his own self. If as a leader he is not satisfied with himself, then he will indulge in getting money, power, position, name and fame, to make him satisfied. Thus his life becomes full of stress and strain. Leaders with such disturbed mind can never be successful leaders. Leaders must understand that happiness or satisfaction that one tries to seek in different objects of the world is one’s own nature. It lies within oneself, and one can be happy only if the mind is happy.
Similarly, a leader has to learn to accept the outer world also as it is. He should try to understand that by trying to change the outer world, he will not be happy or satisfied. Instead of this, he should try and change his approach of viewing the world. He should remember the two basic principles:
a) God resides in everybody
b) Every soul is divine.
A leader’s duty is only to bring out that divinity by providing appropriate environment and leadership, by removing doubts, and confusions from the mind of people, and by removing hurdles in the way of performance. It is true that if situation can be changed, a leader must have the courage to change it. But if situations cannot be changed, he must have the courage to accept it.
- Practicing KARMAYOGA in life:
If one understands that one’s jurisdiction is only upto performance of action and result falls in the jurisdiction of laws of laws of nature or God , then one can perform action with full concentration of mind and intellect and can also accept the result- whatever it may be- with balanced mind. Such an individual will be the master of the situation and never a victim to it.
- Maintaining equanimity of mind against the pair of opposites:
A leader must learn an art of living a life successfully against the pair of opposites like pain and pleasure, gain and loss, conquest and defeat etc. Indian philosophy considers work as duty and every soul as divine. In fact work is the only means available to manifest one’s divinity for further growth. It is therefore said to offer action – manifesting divinity – to the God and accept the result which comes according to the laws of nature and hence directly from the Lord Himself as His Prashad, with an equanimity of mind and a sense of gratitude to Him. Such an attitude will help managers in managing all kinds of situations effectively and successfully showing perfect maturity of mind and gaining people’s appreciation for his capability of tackling the situation with calmness.
- Creating Appropriate Mental Attitude:
A leader needs healthy attitude towards life which includes concern for people and service orientation. He is always required to be above average, a man, who has lifted himself from man hood to ‘God hood’. Thus, as a leader one has to keep away from three things.
These three things are attachment (Raga), fear (Bhaya) and anger (Krodh). Generally attachment for desired objects creates the sense of fear for the possibility of not getting the desired objects or for the security of acquired objects. In this situation if anything comes between one’s desired objects, anger will be generated towards that thing. Anger creates delusion and intellect flamed with anger loses its discrimination capacity. Deleted intellect loses control over itself.
Thus managing self is considered very important in Indian philosophy. Today’s dynamic environment poses various challenges to the managers and these can be handled better if one has a well managed self and mind , is not pre occupied with fears and doubts about results, is calm, matured and learns from every experience.
- World vision or Macro vision:
Generally, most of the people suffer from micro vision and self centered views in life and behave accordingly. Instead of this kind of behavior one needs to develop macro vision to manage today’s world and provide effective leadership.
Such a macro vision is taught in Vedanta. It says that I am not a single solitary individual. I am a part of the whole universe. And the universe is nothing but the manifestation of the ISHWARA in different forms and figures. Just as the waves rise in the ocean, play in the ocean and disappear into the ocean, the whole universe arises in Him, exists in Him, and disappears in Him. As a wave is not different from other waves and ocean an individual is also not different from other individuals and the whole universe. As ,water is the essence of a wave and the ocean, ATMAN (divine spirit), is the essence of every individual and the whole universe or BRAHMANDA.
Thus all of us are interrelated with one another and every one of us has a certain role to play, certain responsibilities to exercise according to our past deeds ( KARMAS). Every one of us has the same divine spirit that is ATMAN. This sense of oneness with others will create a service – oriented mind and develop a macro vision in us and this can bring wonderful results in our approach and behavior.
5 Comments