Empower Yourself to Empower Others

Question: How can we make a difference in today’s world where so many people are suffering so much misery and pain?

Sadhguru: Only if you are joyful, only if you know what it means to live beautifully, you can create this for somebody else too. Let’s say half the world is miserable right now—it actually is. Now, if you make yourself also miserable, you are only adding to the problem. They are miserable for one reason, you are miserable for another reason. This doesn’t solve the problem. How can you make it happen for someone when you don’t even know yourself what happiness is? You will think, ‘If I dump food there, it will be okay’. It will not be okay. That is how the world has handled it. They think if you throw some aid, it is going to be okay. It is not going to be okay because you yourself do not know what it means to be okay. So, if you are concerned about life around you, the first thing is you must be concerned about this life —yourself. Only if you know how to keep this one in the best possible state, you also know how to take care of that one. Otherwise, with good intentions, you will cause misery to everybody in the world. More misery has happened on this planet out of good intentions than out of bad intentions.

We are working in Sierra Leone. I have dropped people there who have spent four-five years training themselves to do this. Now they went there. They have made such a difference because they know what to do with themselves and what to do with other people. If you do not invest this time in yourself to enhance your capabilities, if you just go with great emotion, you will get lost in the problem. Just good intentions will not do it.

If you want to make a difference, you need capability. Otherwise you will sit in your house and crib about everything in the world and nothing happens. So the first thing is to see how to enhance your capabilities, your own ability to deal with life. Otherwise how are you going to reach out to anybody and do anything? In the remotest part of India, at every street corner, if you go and sit in the tea shop, right there revolutions happen; they change the world. Right there everything is happening—they know how to run the country, they are advising the Prime Minister, they can be batting coaches for Tendulkar. But the moment the tea is over, the revolution is over. So just being concerned, just being emotionally charged about a problem is not a solution. Solutions will come only when we empower ourselves.

Out of good intentions people have done more horrible things than out of bad intentions. So if you are concerned about humanity, please empower yourself, so that no matter what kind of situation you are placed in, you are not going to be broken and shattered by the situation, you will do the best you can do. First empower yourself. Is that a crime? That is yoga—a technology to empower yourself.

The writer is a world-renowned spiritual leader. www.ishafoundation.org