Fear of failure || Acharya Prashant (2023)
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LearningTranscript
00:00What is it that you love playing?
00:06Any sports you are interested in?
00:07I love cricket.
00:08You love cricket.
00:09Tell me of something that you are just not interested in.
00:14I am not interested in basketball.
00:17And somebody just pushes you hard to become the top basketball player in the country.
00:32And you prepare and train for six months just because you have been pushed to do all that.
00:46And then you go for the trials and selections and you are rejected there.
00:54Should you be depressed or should you celebrate?
01:05So in that case I will just try again.
01:08You will try again for something you have no heart in?
01:13I will try something that my heart goes into in the first place.
01:16So how do you deal with that rejection?
01:18You got into, you went to basketball trials.
01:24And you went to basketball trials just because, let's say, your family told you that it is
01:29a tradition in our family.
01:32We all have been basketball players.
01:36That's your grandpa.
01:37Look at the huge thing in his hand.
01:39That's supposed to be basketball.
01:43Then that's your granny.
01:47She too was a basketball player, the top one in her village.
01:55So it's a tradition.
01:56You have to do it.
01:58So you go for it and you try for six months and then you get rejected.
02:06Apply your wits.
02:08Is it a matter of mourning or celebration?
02:18That's how you deal with rejections.
02:21You anyway never wanted those things.
02:29So many people write the UPSC.
02:31The fact is they actually never wanted to clear it in the first place.
02:50When I was writing one of these exams, I do not remember which one, one of the all India
02:56exams, probably UPSC, UPSC civil services, I think my father, he said, the number of
03:05candidates that are appearing appears to be in several lakhs.
03:12But it's not against several lakhs you are competing.
03:16The number of seats that particular year had been drastically reduced 200 or 300 seats.
03:25That's all.
03:26The number of applicants was what, 5, 8, 10 lakhs something.
03:33Then you are not competing with those many.
03:37For these 200 seats you are competing with at most 2 to 4000 students, applicants.
03:46Because the others are anyway appearing for namesake.
03:54They have filled up the form because their fathers wanted them to or because they had
04:00nothing else, nothing better to do in life.
04:04And everybody was all the time poking them, what are you doing, what are you busy with?
04:14So they filled up the form and now they can respectfully say, I am a UPSC aspirant.
04:25If these people get rejected, why must they be depressed?
04:30You anyway never wanted it.
04:33Are you getting it?
04:37It appears amusingly stupid to not to want something and then get depressed upon not
04:50getting it.
04:54Think of the situation.
04:55There is something that you never heartfully wanted.
05:00Had you heartfully wanted it, there is a great probability you would have obtained it.
05:08The fact is you were pushed into it or you just drifted into it.
05:15Knowing nothing else to do, you just drifted into it.
05:19Some unconscious type of desire pushed you towards a particular target or object.
05:32Your heart was never into it, your consciousness, your discretion was never into it.
05:39And that's the primary reason you don't get it.
05:42Obviously, there can be other reasons also.
05:47But the primary reason generally is that you never put your whole energy, your entire
05:55self into it because that was not something that you loved from your core.
06:09The kind of energy that is needed to uplift life can arise only from a loving core.
06:20In some sense, it is only love that can never be defeated or is very very hard to defeat.
06:28That which you call as normal desire is so easy to defeat.
06:33You are desirous of one thing.
06:37The salesman displays something more attractive to you.
06:40What do you do?
06:42Your desire immediately flips or does it not?
06:49The same thing does not apply to love.
06:54Because love involves consciousness.
06:59You have chosen something after due discretion.
07:06You are going for something because you know that the thing is indispensable.
07:16It's not just random whim, fad, fetish.
07:23It's a thing of the heart.
07:25I know myself, I know what I need and I have to go after it.
07:31Now, who can stop me?
07:37Mostly, your rejections are worth celebrating.
07:59Those were needless burdens, responsibilities put upon you by authoritarian and deceptive forces.
08:24Indian poet Kabir Das, there is a beautiful one from him, Bhala hua meri matki bhooti,
08:35ab mai paniya bharan se chhuti.
08:39He is not getting depressed.
08:40He is celebrating.
08:42And if somebody else had put this pot on my head and entrusted me with the responsibility
08:51to daily fetch water from some far away well or tank or something.
08:59And my success was to be measured against my quickness in fetching the water and the
09:10fullness of the pot that was supposed to be a determinant of how successful my life is.
09:19If I can quickly rush and fetch a lot of water and make multiple trips to that well,
09:23get a lot of water and do that quite rapidly, then I would be declared successful.
09:30But even if the world declares me successful because of all this pot business, does that
09:37fulfill my core?
09:39Does it?
09:42So one day that pot falls and breaks.
09:49And the poet sings, bhala hua meri matki bhooti, great that I have now been defeated, ab mai
09:58paniya bharan se chhuti.
10:01This was an external imposition.
10:03This is not something I was doing out of love.
10:09An artificial duty had been imposed on me.
10:12You have to be successful this way.
10:15Great that now I have met defeat.
10:19Kindly relieve me, declare me a failure, tattoo it on my forehead and let me go.
10:28I am okay.
10:30Call me a defeat, call me a failure, call me a reject, call me whatever you want to,
10:40but spare me.
10:41Let me live freely.
10:49On the other hand, if your target is arising from your core, then it is the love for the
10:58target that keeps you going all your life.
11:03There can be no rejection because there is always a continuous attempt.
11:10So how can you be depressed?
11:15You want something so wholeheartedly that you will never stop trying for it.
11:19Now tell me where is the rejection?
11:22Tell me where is the final failure?
11:27And that's probably the only way to live, especially as a young person, to be in love.
11:36To do something only because it deserves to be done and it's so lovely, so compelling,
11:45so beautiful that it becomes irresistible.
11:49You cannot not do it.
11:52You cannot not love it.
11:54Now tell me where is failure?
12:00So the problem does not lie in defeat or failure or rejection.
12:07The problem lies in the choice of the goal.
12:10Are you getting it?
12:12The question has to be where are your goals coming from?
12:18How did something become your goal?
12:21How have you started wanting something?
12:25How exactly does that happen?
12:29And the quality of your choice depends on the quality of your being, the quality of
12:34the chooser within.
12:37If you are inwardly asleep, then all your choices will arise from very nebulous, very
12:47vague kind of criteria.
12:51They would not be choices in the real sense of the word.
13:00They would be like the toss of a dice, a three could show up, one could show up, six
13:07could show up.
13:08Have you chosen?
13:09It's a blind toss.
13:10Anything can show up.
13:14You have not chosen something.
13:16Randomly stuff is happening with you and in biological life there is only randomness,
13:24just randomness.
13:30In conscious life, there is conscious choice arising from a single criteria and that criteria
13:42is freedom.
13:46Randomness has no criteria.
13:47If there is some criteria, it can no more be called randomness.
13:53In internal life, there has to be a single criteria, a single criteria against which
13:59you determine your choices.
14:01What is that criteria?
14:03Freedom, betterment, liberation, growth.
14:07Is this making me better?
14:10Is this widening, deepening my consciousness?
14:15Am I learning something from this?
14:19Am I becoming more fearless out of this?
14:23That's what should determine the choice.
14:29And when your choices come from there, then you can take defeats in your stride.
14:36Then you say, fine, it's a lifelong journey.
14:43It's something I have to continuously do.
14:46It's such a humongous project, it can never get over.
14:49Will you ever say that your love for something has exhausted?
14:55You don't want to say that, right?
14:57So the project has to be an eternal one.