What is your primary inner need? || (2020)

Questioner: Acharya Ji, I have three questions. I think, according to me, all three are co-related to each other. I want to know how to make the best use of resources. And how to manage oneself. And how to be better with decision making. Because on a recent day, I found that I’m not good enough with my resources like time, money. Then, my elder brother said to me that I’m not good enough with my decision-making. And I also admit it.

Acharya Prashant: When you say how should you use your resources, you must, first of all, know what do you want to use your resources for. All your resources are for your sake. Why do you require those resources at all? “Who am I to make use of those resources?” You cannot just arbitrarily put some resource to some use. If I need something to use as a bandage on this arm, then that’s the use I’ll put my resources to. If I need something to carry me from this place to that place, then that’s the use I’ll put my resources to.

Resources come later. The user of the resources comes first. So I’m asking, "To whom are those resources?" If you say, “Here I am. Tell me how to use my resources in the most optimal way?” Then there can be no answer. The answer has to start with you. What’s your life like? What’s your inner world like? What is it that keeps you awake and afraid? Once you know what you are fearful of, you immediately know what you should use your money for. Is that not obvious? But if you don’t want to answer the question “What is it that threatens you? What is it that makes you insecure?” then how will you know how to use your money?

Every resource has to correspond to an inner need. What is that inner need, first of all? No book, no external person can answer that. Only your honesty can answer that. What is your inner climate like? Are you at peace with yourself? Are you envious? Are you hyper-competitive? Are you generally in harmony with the environment around you? What does a certain piece of news do to your mind?

Look at these things and you will come to know what you must use your resources for. In fact, that will also tell you how much of your resources are just redundant. Not needed. That will also tell you what kind of resources you actually need to gather. Most of us do have a lot of resources. For example, knowledge is a resource. But a lot of that knowledge might actually be redundant.

Most of us, being young, do have the resource called time. But if you do not know who you are, obviously you will not know what to use your time for. And then how will time be spent? Time will be spent in a very accidental way. "So things happened and my time went there. Then something happened there, and my time went into that."

Time won’t wait for you. The clock is ticking. You must know what your time is for. And to know what your time is for, you have to first be with yourself and honestly ask, “What do I do every day? What are my thoughts about? What do I feel attracted to? What is it that I really dread?” These are very, very important questions. Unfortunately, our education system is such that the importance of these questions is not drilled deep into us. It is probably assumed that these are such obvious questions that we’ll know the answers to them, or that we’ll know that they must be asked to ourselves.

But we don’t do that. You might be 25, even 45-years-old don’t do that. 65-years-old don’t do that. Start doing that.

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