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Every day at least one person asks me what is my true purpose in life?
And I’ve struggled with this question myself because I’ve had a reasonably successful business career with Procter & Gamble, Boston Consulting Group, Kraft, etc. And I’ve had a good writing career with my three novels. And I still continue to have both. So I often ask myself is it business or is it writing?
What is My True Purpose?
And I’ve reached to a conclusion that I would love to share here today with anybody who’s struggling between two passions. Or has neither passion and is trying to figure out what their purpose is. So to understand that let’s use once again an Eastern thought as a frame and you’ve to understand two concepts. One is Dharm or Dharma and the other is Karm or Karma. And let me deconstruct both concepts and how they relate to this question.
So Dharm is really the innate tendency of every being. Right, and that innate tendency, for example, for a tree is to grow and bear fruit. A tree is not going to dress up and go to the office. That’s not the Dharma of a tree or the innate tendency of a tree. The water quenches your thirst. The ice melts. An animal hunts. So there’s an innate tendency that every being has in some or the other. And similarly, every human also has, based on the cycle of cause-effect over multiple lives or Karmas, whatever you believe in. Everybody has some kind of a thrust or an innate tendency. And if you’re acting in line with that innate tendency then you’re living your true purpose. And we see that often in this world when you see an exceptional sports star. Or like a great business person.
Then you again see that they’re acting completely in accordance with their tendency. And if you’re in that position then you should take every risk you want to in order to live that purpose because you will be exceptionally successful at it because that’s what your innate thrust is. But for most people, they’re in the cap that they don’t feel they have that innate thurst or they don’t know if they have that innate thrust and they feel they’re either going against some tendency by working in their job that they’re doing right now. Or they know what the tendency is and because of material reasons they can’t focus on that. So they’re going completely in a different direction and they’re frustrated because of that. So if either is the case with you what comes in now is Karma. Or the law of cause and effect. And now people often misunderstand Karm to be action only. But what Karma starts with is thought. Right, so thought is the first unit of Karma, you have a certain thought. That leads to a certain action. That action leads to a certain reaction and both gross or a physical level and as well as a subtle level. So let’s kind of take this as a practical example. You are in a job that you don’t like. You don’t like your boss. Your thoughts are very negative about it. Right? And with that negative thought, you do work and even if you work very hard you will have a positive, physical reaction to that work. You’ll get promoted or get a good salary. But the subtle reaction to that negative thought is that there’s going to be a lot of negative energy in your life. Right? So you’ll either feel extremely– You’ll continue to feel very trapped. And you’ll continue to operate with that negativity. And that negative energy will come back. So that cause, effect cycle loop will keep going on with no release for you at all. And now if you approach it in a completely different way And you approach it either with a very positive thought like a compassionate thought. That I would want to do this work for the service of, I guess, my team or whatever. Or you approach it completely neutrally. Neither positive nor negative. Kind of like a tree who’s growing and bearing fruit that has no positive or negative intent. It’s just that they– It’s doing the work. So if you approach it with that complete, I guess, thoughtlessness, if you will.
Then once again the work will have its physical reaction. But at a more subtle level, You’ll have a lot more space and emptiness in your life which in turn will lead to other thoughts that will, in turn, shape another action. And will lead to another destiny altogether. So said in another way, if you have a positive thought towards a negative action or towards an action that you think is negative. Or if you have a neutral thought. Then it leads to either opening up more positive energy or opening up of more space in your mind and that leads to some other thoughts which takes you down a different action-reaction path. And that, in turn, shapes your Dharma. So your tendency or Dharma is not a static concept. It’s actually a dynamic concept. And you can make that dynamic concept happen to you by releasing your mind of the negative energy that captures you and doesn’t allow you to explore other dimensions. Like so, if I take my own example, I had a very good successful career with P&G and then I think over the last two or three years of the five-six years that I spent there I started to get into this mode of being just a medium for my work. I liked my work and I was just doing that work without thought of like promotions and getting anywhere and all of that stuff. Or any negative thoughts about my boss or the environment. I would just do my work. And what that led to was that there was suddenly more space in my life, from a thought perspective. And I started to kind of dabble in writing. And that led to a career as a writer. And then once again I saw the same cycle in writing.
In the beginning, I was very attached to outcomes. I wanted to be a best-seller. I wanted to be this, I wanted to be that and slowly it kind of drifted to just wanting excellence. And just wanting to… Kind of almost like the yogi’s actions are neither white nor black. As they say, they’re colorless. I kind of reached the same point in which I just wanted to write with excellence in mind. And neither wanting to have a very positive outcome in terms of the results of becoming a bestseller or even write a great novel or have like the negative effect of like you know being frustrated because nobody was buying my books or whatever. Any of those positive or negative effects didn’t occur at all. And that again lead to more space in my life which led to meditation and then now I’m in the meditation camp again. And again that will open up new paths. So in a sense, my Dharma is not a static Dharma at all. So till the time I’m doing my business and writing with neutral or positive energy I feel it will lead to more thoughts which are neutral and positive which will, in turn, lead to different actions. And which in turn will end up shaping a different destiny. So I don’t know where I will be and I’m not forced upon myself to make a choice. Between either, or and have a very defined purpose.
My only purpose is to act and whatever is in accordance with my tendency right now. And act completely neutrally. But honestly, I’m not even positive or I don’t even think positively anymore. Like I just feel like, I just have to act in accordance to this spirit and be completely kind of like a yogi. In terms of neither white not black. Just be colorless in my action. And that in turn frees up a lot of space to start thinking of new things. So the next several years your true purpose in life is to act in accordance with your tendency. And if you don’t have a tendency then act with either neutral or positive energy. So that you start developing more space or positivity in your life to open up doors to new tendencies. And that is your purpose in life.
I hope this is helpful and I’ll see you next week.
This is Karan Bajaj and I want to offer you my free meditation video course today.
Subscribe to my channel for your free startup and meditation course and 3-5x weekly videos on startups, success models and writing, https://www.youtube.
