Be competitive, but happily

[1]

Sadhguru Jaggi Vasudev [1]

Right now we live in a world which we think is very competitive. I want you to understand that the world has always been competitive. Whether you were fighting for a piece of meat when you were a caveman or you are fighting for a piece of Mars now, it’s not different in any way. It’s the same emotion and same struggle. It’s only that the means and capabilities have enhanced, so it has all become big but the world has always been competitive. It’s just in a magnified version now but it’s always been the same as far as the human beings were concerned. It was always competitive and it will always be so and there is nothing wrong with that…
Even monkeys compete with each other, like who peels more nuts in a day. Isn’t that active competition? It’s just that when joyless human beings compete, they make the situation ugly and when joyful humans do it… they make the situation beautiful. Hence, competition is never the problem.
Though people are trying to paint competition as something very ugly, it is not so. It is just that if two happy people are competing with each other they would compete in one way. If two unhappy people are competing with each other then they become mean in their competition. If you are happy and you are competing with somebody who is also happy, then sometimes you win and sometimes you lose because that is the nature of the physical existence. My profit is your loss; your loss is my profit. This is the way every transaction is, whether it is within the home or office or in the outside world.
So that’s how the world is. It is just that because you are in a certain level of unhappiness, when you don’t get what you want, you become mean. You want to kick somebody in the face simply because you are unhappy. When you are happy haven’t you seen that you are a very generous and wonderful person? When you are happy, have you noticed what a wonderful person you are? In fact anybody is a wonderful person when they are happy. And when they are unhappy, they can be very mean. Isn’t it so? So it is the joylessness which is the problem, not the competition.

— Sadhguru Jaggi Vasudev, a yogi, is a visionary, humanitarian and a prominent spiritual leader. An author, poet, and internationally-renowned speaker, Sadhguru’s wit and piercing logic provoke and widen our perception of life. He can be contacted at www.ishafoundation.org [2]