Ingredients for success in life and work
Events and happenings outside of our control often lead to success in life and at work. Are these mere coincidences? Can we nurture such serendipitous events that enrich our lives?
Srijan has done fairly well as a company in terms of revenues, people & culture and the nature and quality of work we do. The journey since our starting up in 2002 has been slow and not without pain. Some key risky decisions in 2010–12 helped the struggling and ailing Srijan get out of the hand-to-mouth survival pit that we were in, and move forward towards success.
But there was much more to simply great decisions and smarts & guts that got us here. There was a lot of serendipity operating, and if i may, Grace!
Early on in my entrepreneurial journey, some wonderful people came along in my life who helped be become the man i am today — and fairly strongly linked with that — Srijan the company it is today. My mentor and friend J Sengupta, my first life coach Ravi Chhabra and then my two business coaches Darshan Bhatt and Ram Gopalan (who is also now Srijan’s leadership coach) are ones i must mention in specific. At each stage life brought someone who was just right at that point in time — and i did not go seeking any one of them. They happened! A friend’s reference, a chance meeting at a conference, a conversation, a liking for each other’s value systems — and we started working together in some form or another.
Can you nurture serendipity?
Philosopher UG Krishnamurthy once asked Ramana Mahrishi —
“…this enlightenment — can you give it to me?”
“I can but can you take it?”
This is where the idea of ‘Supatrata’ (सुपात्रता) — the ability or readiness to receive — comes in.
In Abrahamic philosophies (Judaism, Christianity and Islam), Grace (or mercy) is something one receives (inspite of being a sinner, of being undeserving) magically as a result of worship of the divine by the work of the divine.
In Indic philosophies and spiritual traditions you have to work for it. Kripa (कृपा) or Grace is not something you receive from some divine being, it’s actually all around us all the time — you simply have tune into it.
And you tune into it by self-effort…by working on the ‘Self’…‘Inner Engineering’, as my Guru, Sadhguru Jaggi Vasudev terms it. You work on the Self by effortful practices of Yoga — Dhyana (ध्यान) or Meditation and Asanas (योगासन) for instance.
There are forces outside of us that offer the promise of making our life pleasant and much more enriching than we can ever imagine for ourselves. Our intellectual unnecessary rationalisation needs to get out of the way and effortful work begin.
