Questioner: Sadhguru, today’s children are very smart, aware and extremely competitive. Most of them are self-driven and are a keen to deliver in an extremely competitive world. The only issue I see, is that they are so obsessed to achieve success, that they are not able to accept failure in any situation. Failure, they say is a greater teacher than success. How do we teach our children to accept failure and learn from them?
Sadhguru: I feel accepting failure is a dangerous process, you may get used to it. I know there’s a whole lot of talk going on everywhere in all management schools – you can learn from your failure. I would say, it’s better you learn not to fail. Because – it depends what you’re doing. You’re in the forces – failure may mean death, you can’t learn after that.
So, it’s extremely important that we should learn not to fail, but our idea of success has to be little engineered properly. Because, now our idea of success is about being better than somebody. Our idea of success is about a certain kind of lifestyle. That is why there is so much anxiety about if some things don’t work the way we planned.
The important thing is, we must understand, the most precious thing in our life is life itself – there’s nothing else we have. We may think we have many things, it’s all psychological stuff that we think we have this and that. Right now, somebody thinks he has a billion dollars, somebody thinks he has wealth, somebody thinks he has this and that – if we just fade his memory a little bit, everything disappears. So, the only and only thing that you have is life. Keeping this [life] in its highest possible way, most exuberant and you know, effulgent way, if you keep it that way, this [self] will not be a problem.
Because success and failure is not about one or two events that happen in your life – it is just that no matter what life threw at you, you knew what to do out of it. What life throws is not always our choice, what we make out of it is one hundred percent our choice. If you’re exercising this choice always, you are a successful human being, because then you will know ‘how to be’. This [self] is the only creature which is being referred to as a being. We are not referring to a tiger and saying a tiger being, or an elephant being, or something else. Only this one [self] is a being, because the success of this life is, that you know ‘how to be’. If you know ‘how to be’, you will keep yourself in a most fantastic state of experience, because profoundness of experience is the most important thing.
Right now, you may think your success will – whatever is your idea of success, maybe it is money, maybe it’s a position, maybe it’s an award, maybe it’s something else – whatever is your idea of success, you think will bring profoundness of experience. Somebody thinks it’s money, somebody thinks it’s wealth, somebody thinks it’s alcohol, somebody thinks it’s a drug, somebody thinks it’s love, somebody thinks it’s knowledge, somebody thinks it’s pleasure – but essentially you’re seeking profoundness of experience. Once you know how to sit here with a very profound experience of life, you are a successful human being.
What we do in the world is according to the times in which we exist. It’s 21st century, we are doing a certain kind of activity. If we were here three centuries ago, we would be doing something else. If we were here ten centuries ago, we’ll be doing something totally different. So, what we do is not all ours, it is a consequence of the times in which we exist. But, successful human being means this – that you know ‘how to be’.
