What is right decision-making? Simply, seeing the past as past, future as future, and present as present is right decision-making. Wrong decision making is infusing past into future and future into past.
The eternal question: are leaders born or made? The truth is, both. Although we are always being urged to "become" leaders, the fact is that you cannot do anything to become a leader. What you can do, is create a space where the qualities of true leadership can blossom naturally.
LET us say your friend left a message for you. He wants you to call him back immediately. Won’t the suspense kill you? Slow down. Watch your mind. Before you pick up the phone to return the call, how many thoughts come into your mind? How many fears does it rise? How many expectations does your mind build up?
If you watch your mind with awareness, you will notice a rush of thoughts, events, and imaginations in your mind. Do you want to know why this happens?
WE WANT to cling to the idea that we’re somebody. This identity seems to keep us alive. As long as we feel we are a separate entity, a unique individual, we will want to hold on to that distinction. We will want to find a distinct place. We believe that we have an identity. But let us be very clear here. It is here that you will run into resistance. You will be resisting yourself.
SOCIETY, in the form of political or religious institutions, controls you through fear and greed. These institutions believe that unless you are prodded by fear and greed, you cannot be effective, productive and valuable. But productive effective and valuable to whom? It is certainly not for any advantage to your own Self, but perhaps to the benefit of these institutions.
EVERY one of us has intelligence. It is an inherent, inborn quality of life. Intelligence is not something to attain; every living being is endowed with intelligence. Most of us have lost touch with our natural intelligence; that is why we are not able to live life to its fullest potential. We constantly mistake our acquired knowledge for intelligence.
PEOPLE spend more time arguing about whether they are driven by destiny or acting out of free will than doing what they should do. They forget that they waste their time of their own accord, their own sweet free will! There is no such thing as future. Future does not exist till you create it in your present moment, here and now.
WE FEEL happy or satisfied when we are running after desires or when we run away from our fears. So every moment, we are continuously either in greed by running after our desires or in fear by continuously running away from something. Our happiness in every moment is measured only by either greed or fear.
LEADERSHIP is the result of a conscious choice made by an individual. Most of us achieve the status of a leader, but not the state. State is totally different from status. Status comes from society. If we are leading a group of people, or if we are forced to take the responsibility of some department or if we take the responsibility out of greed, the status comes.
IN OUR lives we claim responsibility for anything good that happens, but we don’t take responsibility for anything bad that happens. Only if we take up responsibility for everything that happens in our lives will we start growing. Swami Vivekananda says: “Take as much responsibility as you can shoulder. The more responsibility you take, the more you expand. Expansion is the only growth; without expansion, you will contract and die.”
