Book 102 - A Year of Magical Learning

Reflection Title – I’m done with setting goals!

Book – The Bhagavad Gita Introduced and Translated by Eknath Easwaran

Book Description: The Bhagavad Gita (the song of the lord), often referred to as the Gita, is a 700-verse Hindu scripture that is part of the epic Mahabharata (chapters 23–40 of book 6 of the Mahabharata called the Bhishma Parva), dated to the second half of the first millennium BCE and is typical of the Hindu synthesis. It is considered to be one of the holy scriptures for Hinduism.

The Gita is set in a narrative framework of a dialogue between Pandava prince Arjuna and his guide and charioteer Krishna, the Supreme Personality of Godhead. At the start of the Dharma Yuddha (righteous war) between Pandavas and Kauravas, Arjuna is filled with moral dilemma and despair about the violence and death the war will cause in the battle against his own kind. He wonders if he should renounce and seeks Krishna's counsel, whose answers and discourse constitute the Bhagavad Gita. Krishna counsels Arjuna to "fulfill his Kshatriya (warrior) duty to uphold the Dharma" through "selfless action". The Krishna–Arjuna dialogues cover a broad range of spiritual topics, touching upon ethical dilemmas and philosophical issues that go far beyond the war Arjuna faces

Reflection:

I must thank my hair stylist, part time therapist, and book buddy, Marta, for suggesting I take on The Gita as a part of my Year of Magical Learning Journey. She’s becoming a great source of book suggestions for me to check out, and I love talking to her about them as she is cutting my hair every other week. The Compound Effect in action at its finest!

I could probably write a 100-part reflection on The Gita, study it, and live it for the rest of my life to even come close to comprehending what I just read. It was a powerful text, and I get why it has had such an impact on this world after reading it. For the purpose of this journey, I’m going to try and pick the one thing that stood out to me that I can take and try my best to live in real life through my actions. That thought is to Renounce and Enjoy!

I want to renounce the outcomes of my effort and just enjoy the work.

My whole life before I met Emilia, I’ve been obsessed with setting goals, completing tasks, receiving rewards, winning competitions, and being “right”. I would life with the wild swings of achieving or failing toward these goals. I would be crushed if I lost a tennis match, lost a poker tournament, didn’t get the top spot on the charts for % to goal in my sales roles, failed in a new business venture, didn’t get the promotion I sought, etc. Feeling like I was making “progress” and marching toward some objective or goal was everything to me. That progress was my measuring stick as to see if I was living a “good” life or not.

In my 30’s, I took it to a new level. I started to spend the last 5 days of each year between Christmas and New Year’s Eve evaluating my previous year and setting my goals for the coming year. I would rate myself in every dimension of my life and identify where I had room to improve. I would set some high-level specific goals and spend the rest of the next year in pursuit of that goal. Shocker alert, I never achieved them and this practice didn’t make me any happier.

That all changed when we lost our daughter. EVERYTHING that I used to do seemed beyond pointless. Who the hell cares? It all felt so meaningless when I know knew that the world can literally change in the blink of an eye. I like to think of it as an atomic bomb blew up my universe and left me staring at the rubble of my life. All the things that used to matter…didn’t anymore and never would again. Being stripped of everything forced me to shift my paradigms as to what really mattered in my world and how I would be able to keep marching forward in fighting the good fight to live my life on this Earth.

So what did I do? In the rubble of my life, I found my purpose and my core values. That purpose was to “Live for 2” in Emilia’s honor. It was to take the lessons she showed me on how to live a life of courage, strength, and virtue and to do my best to apply it to my life going forward in her honor.

I stopped setting goals. I stopped caring about achievements. I stopped marching toward some next step. I stopped evaluating whether I was living a good life or not based on some results I couldn’t control. I decided to live my life solely dedicated to the pursuit of performing as many actions each day that supported my purpose and demonstrated my values to the world.

That was when everything changed in my life. It was easy to do this because I actually cared about the actions I was putting out into this world. These actions are my art. These actions are a reflection of myself and my purpose and that is all I needed to feel “good”. I stopped caring about if these actions would produce anything of value…I just worried about doing as many of them as I could each and every day of my life.

Ironically, in living this way, the “achievements” I began to rack up amounted to more than I’ve ever accomplished in my entire life. I didn’t care, but that’s the point.

Then, I heard in The Gita, “Renounce the outcomes of your effort and just enjoy the work”, and it brought it all full circle. This isn’t wisdom that is unknown in this world. People have been preaching this since time began, and it is true. If you want to be fulfilled, stop focusing on goals and start focusing on actions that reflect your values!

Question: How does your work reflect your values?

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Links:

What is The Year of Magical Learning? An Introduction

YOML Podcast Discussion - The Bhagavad Gita

YOML Bookstore - The Bhagavad Gita Introduced and Translated by Eknath Easwaran