“Resistance is the biggest synonym for this world – your purpose here is to break through the shackles of all the myths that hold you back.”

—Sam Adettiwar

How many times have you heard this from self appointed gurus or agony aunts in Sunday columns – that you must slow down or the stress will kill you. What in fact could kill you is this kind of facile advice. A 1998 study1 of 30000 adults in the US examined the relationship among the amount of stress, the perception that stress affects health, and health and mortality outcomes in a nationally-representative sample of U.S. adults. It concluded that individuals who perceived that stress affects their health and reported a large amount of stress had an increased risk of premature death.

Contrary to popular belief, stress does not equal to bosses or partners from hell; it is actually a set of physiological symptoms that arise in response to challenging situations. So stress is experienced as heart palpitations, sweating palms, adrenaline rushing through your blood, and so on. These are value-neutral and not intrinsically bad – quite the opposite really. These responses are priming your body to protect itself through flight or fight response. Mahatman says train your mind to get out of this binary and choose ‘face’. So it is possible to face or confront the challenging situation in a way that channelizes your body’s stress response into powerful resources.

Countless young lives have been misdirected as a result of this particular myth. When your parents told you that you had to get a degree, a steady job, and then keep saving all your life – they were just thinking the best for you from their limited world view. But the whole point of Mahatman is to push your personal horizons to the maximum. So while a college degree definitely adds to your knowledge base and no kind of education goes to waste, remember these are not the only ways to become successful. You also need to think creatively, take chances, and look for guidance from mentors to realize your full potential. The surest path to stagnation is to do nothing but to ‘save’. If you are working a job merely to hoard your checks in the bank account, you are not just paralyzing the economy but your own financial future as well. Instead, pay for your living expenses and then use what remains in wise investments. Like my mentor, Tony Robbins outlines in his best selling book Money, the only way to absolute financial freedom is not to work for money, but to make money work for you.

What is all this noise about work-life balance and to measure out equal chunks to devote to your job, family, hobbies, etc? If only life could be sliced up like a pizza and consumed like one too! parceled out life may be good to feel at peace but that is not the Mahatman ideal. If feeling peaceful and comfortable were the only states worth experiencing, then it would have been enough to remain a snail perhaps – how calmly the creature moves, eats, and then slides back into its home for a nap! Away with such restrictive ideas – wake up from balance and peace to power and obsession. Anything that is worth striving for and achieving can hardly be attained by balance and relaxed measures. You have to develop the Obsession for it, the unflinching drive to Strain and Hustle – all these are part of Great Wealth practices of the Mahatman philosophy. 

In 2007 a book titled The 4-Hour Workweek Escape 9–5, Live Anywhere and Join the New Rich hit the stands. Written by Tim Ferrel, it claimed to offer a “lifestyle design” that would enable people to get rid of long working hours in order to save and realize a “deferred life plan”. Now I believe that this book has done more harm than good to young generations. They now look for shortcuts to success, mistakenly believing that smart work like outsourcing and selective ignorance can replace hard work. On the contrary, actually. There is just no fast food recipe to success and if you think that you can work for just four hours in a week, you will never be able to achieve your goals.

This myth is really allied to the one before. People who set a lot of store by quick success schemes believe that being smart and talented is enough. There is no more blinkered vision of the way the real world works. Skill and talent mean nothing unless you are willing to put in hours of hard work to achieve your goals. Indeed I believe that talent is overrated – it is so common, talent is everywhere. Every year there are millions of students passing out from colleges and universities all over the world – don’t you see the virtual flood of talent pouring into the global workforce? But why is that there is only one Steve Jobs and only one Elon Musk makes it to the top of the food chain. The simple answer is because they did not stop at their talent – they worked weekdays, weekends, holidays, and sick days – all the time to put their ideas in action. Greatness can manifest only when you live your actualization 24/7 – each of your waking moments and even in your dreams when you sleep.

The most dangerous myth perhaps is this one – that the self must be negated in order to serve a community, cause, or an ideal. Unfortunately, this is one of the ways that self-serving dictators, politicians, generals, and religious gurus have been swelling their ranks of followers. They exhort people to put aside their own growth and actualization and instead sacrifice their physical, financial, and psychological resources. We have seen the worst consequences of such mentality in dramatic events like suicide terrorist attacks and mass suicide by cults. But on a less noticeable scale, this self-negating mentality is happening all around you, like in the patriarchal oppression of women and younger men in traditional cultures. So Mahatman says, build your Self Esteem and Self Confidence to such an extent that you cannot be swayed by exploitative ideals and practices. Hone your skills and knowledge to such levels of personal mastery that you need not depend on anyone for personal and professional validation.

This urban myth needs to be quashed right here and right now for all time to come. How many dreams have failed to take off and goals left to dissipate for fear that there isn’t enough money to make them real. Mahatman says get on with the business of planning and working hard rather than wringing your hands and worrying where the money will come from. If you are sincere and ready to work your butt off, have no fear. You will find a way to realize your goals and money will come to you from some quarter or another. There are so many philanthropists and generous souls around who are simply waiting to write you a check. But before that, you have to prove to them and more importantly to yourself that you have the vision and the obsession to make it happen. So stop making a lack of money an excuse to take it easy. Get up and get started on your journey for Self Actualization – the money will follow. 

The concept of Emotional Intelligence has been doing the rounds of corporate boardrooms for some time now – people are worried about what they are feeling, how and why. As if this wasn’t enough – they now even have to be responsible for what and why the other person is feeling. What an inordinate waste of time, effort and energy!

Mahatman believes that Emotional Intelligence is all very well to lead lives of Happiness, Balance and Peace but falls way short of achieving Greatness. If you are perpetually worried about how to restrict your own emotions and manage those of others, how can you even give your all to the project of Actualization. 

Let me tell you, emotions are a powerful source of energy and by all means, express them with force and purpose. When you think, feel and act intensely you are making way for the enormous psychic energies that lie hidden within your subconscious and buried even deeper within your unconscious self. Intensity helps this energy push through layers of conventionality and tradition till it bursts forth into the world as creative brilliance and purposeful action. Here let me give you the example of a legendary inventor and entrepreneur – Steve Jobs. He dreamed and worked with such intensity that he gave the world designs and devices that no one could have dreamed of before. He could never have achieved such heights of greatness by being mired in the drama of managing emotions. Seeking to control, soothe and manage emotions – your own as well as of those around you –  is a criminal waste of time and energy – that is much better spent at dreaming big and achieving bigger. So use emotional intensity not just to unlock your potential but propel it out to the world where it can power your dreams and goals to Greatness.

It is important to understand the influence of myths and axioms – so often we grow up hearing fables and anecdotes illustrating the supposed danger in being ambitious, adventurous and non-conformist. Mahatman recognizes that the real purpose of such urban myths is not to keep you safe and protected but rather to bury your potential and clip your wings. So starting from today, break the shackles of the 8 urban myths discussed above and use the Mahatman Great Health, Great Wealth and Great Wisdom practices to unlock your potential and soar your way to Self Actualization. 

Reference:

1. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3374921/