Choose joy, not misery

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Sadhguru Jaggi Vasudev [1]

We know how to be joyful but we don’t know how to sustain it. In other words, when external situations are conducive we tend to become a little joyful; when they don’t we fret.
The external situations will happen the way we think they should only if the scope and play of our life are very limited. Let’s say your whole life is limited to a room — 90 per cent of the things happen the way you want them, 10 per cent out of your control.

If the scope and play of your life become very large — let us say it spreads across the world — then only 10 per cent will happen the way you want, 90 per cent will always be out of your control. So, if you become miserable whenever things on the outside do not pan out the way you think they should, you will be required to limit the scope of your life because it causes suffering to you.
The outside will never be 100 per cent the way you want it to be. Because it doesn’t happen the way you want it, at least the inside should happen the way you want it.
If your body, mind, emotion and energy take instructions from you, you will be joyful. Nobody will have to teach you “please choose joy, don’t choose misery.” You won’t need a scripture like that. But right now, you don’t know how to exercise your choice because even the basic faculties of the body and mind are not taking instructions from you. If they did, you would definitely keep yourself in a pleasant state.
So keeping yourself joyful is not a goal by itself, because only if you are peaceful and joyful will your body and mind work at their best. And that is the basic parameter for your success and efficiency. Your efficiency and productivity are not dependent on your desire to do something; they are dependent on your capability, which is impaired when you are in a state of unhappiness, frustration or depression. So if you are interested in productivity, the first and foremost thing to do is to create a pleasant basis for yourself — that to be peaceful and joyful is not an issue for you.
Being peaceful and joyful don’t depend on anything; it is how you are. In this state your body and mind will work at their best. And effortlessly you can create what you want to create. Look around you and you will see that just to do simple things, people are freaking out. What are they doing in their life? Just earning a living. Look at the kind of circus that people are caught in. They are not carrying the cosmos on their head. Just to earn a living, to reproduce and to die one day, what a fuss they are making.

Sadhguru Jaggi Vasudev, an internationally renowned spiritual leader, is a visionary, a humanitarian, author, poet and speaker. He can be contacted at www.ishafoundation.org