The best workplace advice: Work only to show your inner perfection, Part 2

Dear friends,

I apologize that you received an incorrect version of this weekly post last night. Here’s what I’d love for you to read!

Last week we talked about one of my two favorite pieces of advice from the Bhagavad Geeta on how to manage our karma or work life well: your duty is to do your work and never focus on its results. Here’s the second piece of advice that has never failed me and can never fail anyone ever for that matter, in life:

Work only to manifest your inner perfection.

Yes, toss aside all other goals—impress the boss and the management team, gain more popularity among colleagues, get a raise, or win the employee of the month or year recognition.

Work with the sole idea of expressing through your karma or actions, the perfection within you, says the Bhagavad Geeta.

I stumbled upon this advice in 2013 while sitting under this cherry tree hovering over my favorite thinking spot in the world—lake Centennial behind our home.

I was in a tough proposition at the time. Not only was my work commute a nightmare—well, a standard by the Washington, DC area standards really, at a 3-hours minimum back and forth—but a colleague had turned foe on me, teaming up with someone else to make my work life difficult. It was tedious because we shared projects and as I had confessed in my earlier posts, I am not cut out for workplace politics. Much later, I realized it was insecurity and some jealousies that dictated her actions. I loved the job though, and I was doing well at it.

On an afternoon I was particularly feeling defeated, I tucked the book, Happiness Through Integration under my arm and walked toward my thinking spot. Upon reaching it, I opened the book to a random page—I often do that as a way to open myself to the universe’s energy and advice—and lo and behold, I fell upon a chapter titled, “The Secret of Productive Work” wherein I found this advice that stuck: Work only to manifest your inner perfection. The advice worked wonders at the time as I literally—like a strict dose of medicine ordered by the doctor—ignored everything at the workplace except doing my job of managing the education curriculum product well. This meant ignoring comments, unfriendly body language, petty lies, claiming work done by me as someone else’s—all of which I acknowledged, but let go and strictly did my best at work. Lo and behold, I landed up making the most revenues for the product in my last three months at that job. Even today, this advice works with everything in life. Take cooking, sometimes a chore for working mothers. When I cook, I simply remind myself that I am not cooking this to my best to please my spouse or my son, but because I have the ability to do so and because I am a good cook. That reminder makes me want to cook well. When I write an article on climate change and the slowly sinking archipelago of Maldives, I will research yet another source to understand the linkages of bad trash collection practices with climate shocks because I trust my Self and my instinct as a writer to believe that it will lend an added touch to understanding the article. Cooking to work deliverables, the advice works!

Work only to manifest your inner perfection.

The Self is Perfection
Yes, inherent to this advice is the assumption that the Self is perfect. It is a key concept in the Vedanta philosophy that the Self is Brahman, the Self is Divine.

The second assumption, a lower-hanging fruit to understand, is that we are using our workplace to develop spiritually. Why not? Kill two birds with one stone, I say! Evolve at work, evolve through life.

In Vedanta, the Self is an infinite pool of wisdom that keeps giving. It’s a blank slate of perfection we are given. However, as we go through life, it is subject to layers and layers of conditioning in the form of thoughts, beliefs, and opinions, with the ever-ready equipment of the body, mind, and intellect such that we start losing touch with our Self. And, we often ignore it or keep running away from it, mostly because we confuse our Self with our body, mind, and intellect. I have discussed this in the post, Be the thinker, not the thoughts, remember?

What is the Self? In Vedanta, we find the truth by eliminating the false. So, the best way to understand what the Self is, is to understand what it is not.

The Self is not the body, mind, and intellect. That’s the self with a small ‘s’. The root cause of our suffering in life comes from identifying with (1) our body—it is fat, too thin, etc.; (2) our mind—what a crappy day it was because of the weather or I am so happy because I just found the perfect dress for my friend’s party; (3) our intellect’s ups and downs—yeah, I did so well on my presentation or I wish I was less awkward talking to my boss about my project roundup. Since these three entities are always in a constant state of flux, identifying with them takes us on a ride of highs and lows in life.

If not the body, mind, or intellect, who are we? The Self in the Vedanta is pure awareness—that which never changes, and that which is a witness or a Sakshi to life. I am aware that I am crying, I am aware that I am happy, I am aware that I am dejected. When we become aware of our emotions, thoughts, and feelings, it infuses more distance between the experience of the moment and your Self, and it infuses more objectivity into your behavior. We identify less with the emotion or experience triggered by our body, mind, and intellect. In the process, we move closer to our awareness of it or our Divine Self.

Back to the workplace, if our real Self is neutral awareness or a Sakshi, and a blank slate of perfection, we can never really be a bad coworker, writer, architect, friend, or anything bad or negative for that matter. We have an infinite ability to do brilliantly in life, since we have a perfection that’s innate to us. It’s our mind that comes in the way and pigeonholes us into thinking, I am good at this or bad at that. If we set aside our thoughts and our mind, and just do our work to the best of our ability, we can shine and let our Self shine in all its glory.

“The Self is the light reflected by all. It shines, and everything shines after it.”
— Katha Upanishad

So, without any hesitation, let’s let outshine ourselves, for as Swami Gnaneswarananda says in “The Secret of Productive Work”:

“Reward is not what you are striving for, but the unfoldment of your own inner perfection.”

There is one pre-requisite for the Self to shine through in your karma and that is, your field of work should be best suited to your temperament or svadharma. We will get into that the next time.

What’s helped you get through your workplace woes? Does this advice resonate? Do share your thoughts.

Meaningfully yours,

Anu