Why Fast Minds Need to Master Slowness?
Questioner: Namaskar Acharya ji. I am second year undergraduate student of department of Metallurgical and Materials Engineering. My question is that everything I do, I think, it needs to be perfect. Due to this, I end up procrastinating a lot of things and focus only some minor ones which I do almost perfectly and feel satisfaction in only those things.
But I am still not happy that I am not focusing on main things that I think are, like, main in my life. How should I, like, get out of this trap?
Acharya Prashant: You should be perfect in the perfect work. First of all, your choice of what you are doing needs to be perfect. If I make a very imperfect choice; at the first place, and pick up some trivial work to do, and then I excel in that trivia, what have I attained? Excellence is important but in the right field. What will you do by excelling in let’s say, hunting rats?
A fellow might say, “I am the world’s best rat hunter.” Some talent show will come and pick you up and say, “You know, his name needs to go to the Guinness Book. He is a great rat hunter.” Most people who we admire as very talented people or high achievers, are exactly this — rat hunters! No doubt, they have excellence.
But must we not bother to ask, “Is this the field you needed to excel in? Is this the field you needed to excel in?” If I, if I…Sahil, right Sahil? Sahil, if I present a number to you, I present a number to you, some random number of let’s say six digits and I say, “This is the money I am going to give to you.” And I say, “You have the choice to change any one digit in this number.”
It’s a six-digit number. It is the money I am going to give to you, and you have the choice to change any one digit in this number. What would you do?
Questioner: Change the first one to nine
Acharya Prashant: Change the first one to nine. Straightaway. So, you know where to excel. Why didn’t you change the last one to nine?
Acharya Prashant: Because you don’t want to be a rat-hunter, right? That’s what most of us waste our lives doing. If life is a six-digit number, we pick up either the last digit or the second last digit and we spend all our energy and time trying to maximize it. What’s more, we succeed in maximizing it. What do we get? What do we get? The real thing never gets done.
The top digit never gets addressed. Because society has conditioned us to never look at what is the most important. That goes abegging, unaddressed. And we remain fiercely concentrated on the trivial things in life. And we excel there, and we are fitted and admired, felicitated. So, the delusion that we are somebody and we have achieved something, gets even more reinforced.
I think I am somebody. Even the society thinks, I am somebody. See what kind of respect they are offering me! See the magazines are carrying my pics and interviews! See they are calling me the ..the young leader of the decade. Before you excel, ask yourself, “What must I excel in? What is worth it?” Before you speed down a road, ask yourself, “which road to take?”
Speed comes later. The choice of the right road comes first. It’s far better to be slow on the right road, than to be lightening quick down the wrong road towards your own destruction!
Questioner: Acharya Ji, you talked about choosing the path first. Choosing the work that we want to put in our efforts. And that has to go by tackling the problem of perfectionism. Since either it is a thirst of the ego or maybe it is the thirst of the consciousness itself that we have to be perfect at that particular work, then only we will move forward. But if that work is not yielding something..
Acharya Prashant: I repeat, you see, making the perfect choice is far more important than being perfect at the perfect choice. Pick up the right project even if you can’t initially excel at it. Instead, you are taught to choose as per your strengths. Because that’s what the society and the body want. They say, “Pickup something you can excel at, that’s a very, very bad way of decision making.
They say, “Identify your strengths and make your decisions based on your strengths." No. What you are actually saying is, “I cannot tolerate being bad at what I do. Therefore, I will just pick up something I can be good at.” You are giving prime importance to your ego. You are saying, “If I’m doing something I must be good at it. Else, I will feel bad, I will feel low, I will feel insulted and nobody will respect me.” No. No.
First of all, realize what is it that really must be done, must be done. And then, pick it up even if you cannot excel at it. Slowly, you will learn. Its far better I said, “To be slow on the right road, than lightening quick down the wrong road to your destruction. Being slow is alright. Being on the wrong road is not alright.”
I’m not saying, “You should be deliberately slow.” I’m not saying, “You should be slow for want of effort. I’m not giving you a license to be lazy.” What I’m saying is that the right goal might indeed be so demanding, that you might not be able to excel at it, at least initially. The right goal might not correspond to what your established strengths are.
Therefore, you might find yourself struggling initially if you pick the right goal. It does not matter. Stay put. Stay put even if you find yourself failing repeatedly. All this comes in the domain of perfection. You are still perfect. How are you perfect? Irrespective of my repeated failures, I have perfect patience. Irrespective of being beaten twenty times, I am still perfectly in the arena. I have not run away. This is deeper perfection.
Perfection is not just about winning the championship quickly. Perfection is also about trying again and again, not running away, being the perfect loser. I lose again and again. But I know that this battle is important. Therefore, I’ll stay put perfectly. This is perfection.
Perfection does not lie in the output of the work. Perfect lies in your intention. Your intention, your direction should be towards liberation. That liberation itself is called perfection. As long as, your intention is directed towards liberation, you are working in perfection. Even if, in the eyes of the world, you are a defeated one, even if the worldly scorecard shows you to be a continuous loser, you are still in perfection.
So, be in pursuit of perfection by choosing the right work. And, the right work is that which leads to perfection. And then, do not bother about the result. If you have to lose, keep losing.
