“Equanimity of mind”- 17 November 2015.
I received a wonderfully unexpected response to my last piece in this column on how the boss should handle himself. Many a bosses responded with their problems acknowledging their short comings and agreeing that they were not sure how they should change that and manage themselves. That was wonderful indeed! It was a good response for me not because I like appreciation but because acknowledging your limitations is the first step towards change. Becoming aware of your weaknesses and understanding that somewhere you need to make changes within you and your habits is the starting point of a good personality. It also speaks about the openness of mind for it means you are agreeing to change your habits.
It has never been easy to mould habits and more so when something becomes your second nature. For example, a businessman who lives next door is prone to finding faults with others and hence criticising everything that others do. He perhaps thinks of himself as the most competent and efficient person and considers others as idiots. Hence it seems as if he wears black coloured lenses and everything outside his gambit appears black to him. How simple! He refuses to see goodness in others and their actions as well as intentions. I could easily say that he is paranoid but no he is not for he if he is in awe of someone he will not see any black there but only a ‘golden halo’ around that person. Any amount of reasoning or rational discussions becomes impossible with a person like that. I am sure he is a terror with his staff and in his business dealings. And from the reports we know he is a sort of failure for he is undergoing huge losses. We all know that it is a stressful time that judges the character of a person. People who have enough stress bearing capacity to manage bad times and themselves in such times can turn things around and sail through the turbulence.
Human nature and its’ peculiarities are many. Managing work through good and bad times is something everyone must learn. Many new achievers cannot handle their newfound success as the money rolls in and society starts looking up to them. They want to show off their wealth, they want to boast off their new acquisitions such as their new Mercedes, or their new Rolex or their new home! They lose all sense of balance as they may jump around with their new toys with blaring loud music to show to the world their arrival. They are unable to contain their sense of importance and want to declare it to all and sundry. On the other hand some people cannot handle bad times and want to blame it all on others for their failure and their black magic! They would move around with wounded ego’s feeling worthless and humiliated. They behave badly too with others for they must throw their anger at others for no fault of theirs. There is a third category who cannot handle success nor failure and neither can they handle themselves at any times. Such people have a personality disorder and need counselling and psychotherapy to bring about lasting changes in themselves.
What people need is equanimity of the mind. You could call it maturity too. Whatever may be the conditions of life, good, bad and ugly, the only way to sail through the journey is with a spirit that is resilient and sturdy. Such sturdiness comes with a properly balanced rational approach to life. Your thought process has to be straight and simple, your emotions have to be honest and truthful and your intentions have to be clear and uncorrupted. The means (actions) to reaching your end (goals) have to be sincere and honest too. The end does not justify the means as most would think in today’s time. The methods are equally important too. A person has to continuously work on himself to evolve and grow into a better human being. Just earning money is not the end (goal) of life and never was. With success in the material world each must care of the psychological growth of the of mind with a continuous refinement of the mind, as well as the spiritual growth of the self, which certainly does not just mean just blowing loudly conch shells, lighting the incense sticks and spending huge amounts on lighting up your walls. The light has to be inside and should get radiated outside. True growth is always from inside to outside.
