Taking charge of your life

Whenever things don't happen the way you want them to, there is a temptation to name it destiny. This is a way of dealing with failure. People are trying to console themselves to your present condition. Whatever situations you are living in, to be human means that you can mould the situations the way you want them.

But today, most people in the world are moulded by the situations in which they exist. That is simply because they exist in reaction to the situations they are placed in. So their question will be, "Why was I placed in such a situation? Is it my bad luck, is it my destiny?"

Everything that you know now as "myself" is just an accumulation. Your body is just an accumulation of food. What you call "my mind" is an accumulation of impressions that you have gathered through the five senses. What you accumulate can be yours, it can never be you.

What is you is yet to come into your experience. It is in an unconscious state. You are not even 100% conscious of what you have accumulated. You are trying to live your life through what you have gathered, not through who you are.

You have acquired certain tendencies depending upon the type of impressions you have gathered. This can be changed. Irrespective of your current tendencies or your past experience of life, your genetics, irrespective of who your parents were, where you were born or where you grew up, if you do certain things with yourself, you can change this. You can completely rewire yourself in twenty-four hours' time. Any number of people have become totally transformed that way.

So what is wrong with the way you are? There is nothing wrong. If you ask me what is wrong in being limited, there is nothing wrong with it, it is just limited, that's all. Unpleasantness is happening to you in the form of anger, fear, anxiety and stress, because your basic faculties – your body, your mind, your emotions and your life energies – are doing their own thing as if they don't belong to you. Your mind and your body are here to serve the life within you.

When it comes to outside realities, all of us are differently capable. What you can do, somebody else cannot do, what someone else can do, you cannot do. But when it comes to inner possibilities, every human being is equally capable. You are not any less capable than a Buddha or a Jesus or anybody for that matter. All of us have the same inner capabilities – unfortunately never explored, never accessed.

As there is a technology to create outer wellbeing, there is whole technology to create inner wellbeing. If you explore this, only if you explore this, you can make yourself the way you want yourself to be. You can determine the nature of your experience and your ultimate destiny.

Ranked amongst the fifty most influential people in India, Sadhguru is a yogi, mystic, visionary and a New York Times bestselling author Sadhguru has been conferred the Padma Vibhushan by the Government of India in 2017, the highest annual civilian award, accorded for exceptional and distinguished service.

(Sadhguru, Isha Foundation)