3 Qualities That Make a Great Leader: Sadhguru Tips

3 Qualities That Make a Great Leader

Sadhguru talks about the three I’s that are needed to become a successful leader in any realm of life.

Introduction: If you want to maintain a status quo nothing new will ever happen. A leader means you’re a madman who is always wanting to step into something new. Your life is an adventure.

When everybody is looking up to you in case you fall it’s very bad, so it’s very very important you upgrade the machine.

To really build a DNA of success these are the three things you need: Insight, integrity and Inspiration.

Inspiration: If you want to be inspired, the first thing is you must find something larger than yourself to do, something which is bigger than yourself to do. If you choose things which are safe and nice and easy which will make you some money, you may make some money, I’m not against it. That’s the goal, it’s fine, but you will not be inspired.

Living an inspired life and living (for lack of vocabulary I’m using this not as an insult to any profession) a clerical kind of life. When I say clerical it is all set you do this you’ll get your salary that’s it. No risk, the last generation of people in this country would always say first thing is that government employment that was the aspiration always. Why? No risk whether you’re capable, not capable. You have a 40-45 year work span. Doesn’t matter whether you deliver you don’t deliver you can even get there every day or not still you got a job. You will never be fired, no risk.

If there has to be inspiration within you, there has to be an element of uncertainty. Without uncertainty, there is no inspiration or risk or danger. Where there is no danger there is no adventure. Where there’s no adventure nobody will be inspired by you. If people don’t see that you are willing to step into something that they are not willing to step into, you cannot inspire anybody. People should see what they’re afraid of stepping into you’re willing to step into. Well, when you take a risk you may get burnt. Yes, it can happen that’s what danger means that there is a risk. That’s what risk means, sometimes it can go dead wrong. Yes of course we calculate the risks. We’re not going to blindly walk into something but there is a risk where there is no danger, there is no adventure maybe you’re risking your money. Maybe you’re risking your reputation, maybe you’re risking a loss of time in your life. 10 years of your life may go without any product, possible. When you start a venture it is possible 10, 15, 20 years of your life went into nothing. That risk is there, you may not get killed like jumping off a mountain, but loss of life is there in many different ways.

Integrity: So inspiration if it has to come one basic element is integrity. Where there is no integrity, you cannot inspire, Integrity means just this. Don’t think integrity is a bundle of morals, values, ethics, No. Integrity means, your commitment is larger than yourself. Maybe it’s your business, maybe it’s your community, maybe it’s your nation, maybe it’s the world, we don’t know what, but something larger than yourself, you’re committed to that. Then people see you have integrity. People experience integrity because you are committed to something beyond your own self-interest. If they don’t see that then you cannot inspire anybody, and if you do not inspire people around you, if they drag their feet, your life is finished. Just know this and these dragging feet people will make your life miserable in every possible way. You’ve seen them. So now the only way is if you drag your feet i’ll fire you, if you drag your feet, i’ll fire you. That you can do to some extent, with that you are not going to produce the best in people. It is not just they are not dragging their feet. It is just that they are going beyond their limits and doing something only then something wonderful is happening around you, only then you being there in that activity it’s worth getting up tomorrow morning pull on. Otherwise, after being successful for 5-10 years you will ask to be or not to be. You may not articulate it, but it will show in the length of your face. Yes that shows. There is a question mark. Whether what is the purpose of my existence, question mark has come. Maybe it’s not entered your head and become words, but the question mark is there in people’s faces. A face where if we had seen you when you’re five-six years of age it was like this now slowly. This means the question has risen somewhere, not it articulated maybe, but the question has come. Why the question has come is, there is no inspiration.

Inspiration is not just all yours. The atmosphere around you should be inspired. For that without a very extreme sense of integrity, it won’t happen. If your integrity is just of morality and ethics people will feel sick of you. Because it’s very hard to live under a moral shadow. Very hard. It is life taking. But your integrity is because, your commitment is larger than your personal well-being. That is when everything around you is inspired.

Insight: Coming to insight this is the tricky part. Insight means you are able to see something that others could not see. You’re able to see things ahead of other people that’s important thing. Everybody sees everything at some point. But the thing is you saw it before them. That makes a world of difference. If you were in a battle it would decide whether you live or die. If you’re in a business it decides whether you’re really successful or just about making it. If you’re in a spiritual process, is worse than battle. If you have no insight of any kind or if there’s nobody around you with any insight, then it’s lifetimes of drudgery. If you’re not able to grasp any insight or if there is nobody around you with deep insight, you’re just doing a spiritual process. Now you are for lifetimes of slavery. That is why they become the most serious kind everywhere in the world. So if insight has to come, one important dimension is the reason why there is no insight is, people are largely trying to function with their intellect. This is a unfortunate consequence of the type of education that’s been important everywhere. Where your intellect is seen as a prime value.

To understand the mechanics of how your intellect functions. Your intellect is in function only with the data that has been fed into it. Data means memory. Somebody’s memory or your memory. Memory means things that have already happened. So if you function from the data that you have, you can do permutations and combinations of this data and make it look like magic for some time. But one thing is very clear nothing new will ever happen. Because you gotten enmeshed in your own data. So insight means, that you do not get identified with something limited. Your identities with limitations essentially comes from the data that you gather. Right now you are identified with let us say your own personal qualifications. Now what you identified with that’s what you become. Or let us say you’re identified with your community or with your nation and that’s what you become. What you identify with you become that. In that sense you are not able to look at life just the way it is. If you’re not able to look at things just the way it is. This is simply because you have given more significance to memory than to human attention and intelligence. Human attention and intelligence is of far more significance than your memory. You heard of andrew Carnegie? Andrew carnegie started making lots of money in the United States. Those were not the days of uh these bezos and the musks and uh whatever all these other people, nobody was making billions. People always made money in an incremental way. But this guy started making enormous amount of money. So naturally there was a suspicion where is it coming from. Because these 20s 30s there were lots of ponzi schemes in America. So they thought he is doing something. So a group of congressmen were formed to investigate Carnegie. This investigation went on for some time and they found nothing wrong. Then they called him. And in the investigation they asked him, we don’t find anything wrong there must be something wrong because you’re making so much money in such a short time. There has to be a crime somewhere here. Where is it? They’re asking him. So he said, see I can pay absolute attention to anything that I see for up to five minutes. Can any of you do that? That rubbish what five minutes can’t we pay attention. Tell us what is it? So he set up an experiment. Five minutes. Nobody could pay attention for more than few seconds. Their attention all over the place. Then they realized they’re not able to pay attention for five minutes. Then he said, you should not be running united states. It’s not going to go anywhere if you guys run this country. Because human attention can open up doors in the existence. Human memory will just recycle the past. Unfortunately, right now data, data, data, is becoming very big. But anyway data people will sync once the more artificial intelligence becomes more prevalent. My phone has more data than all of you put together. Yes it is capable of earning a PHD a day. Yes it has enough information. So do not mistake information and data as intelligence. Intelligence is sharpened only by attention, not by thinking. Thinking means recycling data. I am not saying data is completely irrelevant. It is. If you want to maintain a status quo data is important. But if you want to be a leader. A leader means you’re a madman who is always wanting to step into something new. Something new means you want to get into unfamiliar terrain all the time. Unfamiliar terrain means you are consciously stepping into danger. So your life is an adventure. Because it’s an adventure everybody is looking up to you. When everybody is looking up to you, in case you fall is very bad. So it’s very very important you upgrade the machine before you upgrade the activity.

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