KARMA -THE DRIVERS SEAT
TRANSFORMATIONS HAPPEN IN THE DRIVER’S SEAT : KARMA
India, the hub of spiritual wonder has fascinating lessons for life and business transformation. The Gita, our big scripture is set on a battlefield called ‘Mahabharata’, where absolute peace is being propagated in the midst of havoc. Contradictory as it may sound, the scripture shows that it is our duty to maintain inner calm in the wake of worldly noise to be able to perform at our best as a human being. It assigns duty or karma the highest place in human life. In a battle between brothers, the good and evil, Lord Krishna asks his disciple Arjuna to follow his duty as a Warrior. On the one hand is the dampened spirit of Arjuna who is not able to reconcile to the fact, that he is destined to kill his own kin. On the other hand, his advisor Lord Krishna, teaches him Karma of a Warrior i.e. never to back off in a battlefield. In the end, Arjuna follows the path of duty to be transformed from an ordinary warrior to elevated being, known as the biggest warrior in Indian Scriptures.
Gita teaches the big lesson on ‘Perspectives’. What we see in a given situation as against what we can possibly see, creates the massive space where all ‘transformation’ in the human mind takes place. How we perceive life is what gives it any meaning and how we respond to what we perceive is what ‘causes’ anything in our lives. How can this help women to transform their personal and business lives? Embracing a duty driven perspective is the ultimate TRANSFORMATION tool, for it defines what is right for us and what we choose to perceive as not right. It is empowering in as much as it asks us to be in the Driver’s Seat of defining perspectives. If we were to follow this simple lesson from the Gita, we can know for a fact that we are under no obligation to perceive things as they always have been. We are also under no obligation to respond to all perception in the way it has always been done.
1.Pause and play to break patterns: Our minds are conditioned to react and define things. If we paused before reacting and chose a response instead to gender situations, what would change? Everything! E.g. Women in general are desirous of more but fear being perceived as ambitious, reacting in ways so they could never fully express that desire. What is our duty and towards whom? We know we have a duty towards ourselves. If we never insta-played to perceptions, instead pause and then play our own empowering duty driven perspective, we will see ourselves transform for we live with what empowers and nothing else.
2.Relationships mean reformation: The ones we feel right in and the ones we do not feel right in are all of reformatory value. Relationships are the primary mental-emotional interaction field. The best and worst relationships shape our perspectives about people. We choose the best relationships to continue with and avoid the ones that are not so great, but we must never discount the importance of the worst ones. Why? They are the key creators of the personality perspective of who we do not want to be. What is our duty? Have evolving relationships that transform and reform.
3.Business is organic, So are you: A business does not need a mere academic business perspective. With an identity, life, growth of its own, business is itself an organic process. Needless to mention, it is driven by an organically growing individual, the woman herself. Which one takes precedence is the question? Duty is the answer. Business makes its own rules dependent on the capacity and perspective of the business owner. Both grow with each other and how many rules one must make or follow depends on the organic duty requirement in any given moment. The inter-dependence makes the rules and causes transformations.
Why follow duty? Duty boils down to giving without knowing what we will get it return. Give to who and for what? The answer may sometimes be ‘nothing’ at all, from the world perspective. But from our inner perspective it is ‘giving’ to ourselves for our inner and outer transformations. A duty is always a responsibility towards ourselves, nothing less, nothing more.
More on this in my Book NUCLEUS: Power Women, Lead from the Core
