Changing the stories we tell ourselves about ourselves
Daur Bhakta Vrindahi, Daur Viman Vrindahi.
Am I audible to everyone behind? Am I audible behind clearly? Yeah. Thank you. So, I am honoured to be here among all the managers and leaders of the Axis Bank.
And I will speak today in three parts. I will talk about first understanding. I was asked to speak on motivation and ethics.
So, I will speak this in three parts. First is understanding the stories that we tell ourselves about ourselves. Second is changing those stories when it is necessary.
And third is creating a habit of telling ourselves the right stories. Now, what do I mean by stories that we tell ourselves about ourselves? Whatever happens in our life, we interpret it within a particular framework. So, to make this simple, suppose if we come to work and then a colleague starts speaking very sweetly with us.
Immediately our mind makes a comment. What does this person want from me? This person is speaking so sweetly, probably they want something from me. That's why they are speaking like this.
Now, this may be true, this may not be true. But the point is, we don't see the event in isolation. This person is speaking nicely with me.
We bring our own narrative to that story, to that incident. And this narrative can be sometimes positive, this narrative can sometimes be negative. And we all have to do work.
If our narrative towards our work is negative, then the work transforms into workload. The work is something which we have to do, but the load is something which comes when we have a particular narrative towards the work. So, let's consider if there are three teachers and a researcher goes through, a social scientist goes to these teachers and asks the first teacher, what are you doing? Can't you see? I am trying to teach these dumb and lazy and crazy kids and they are not learning anything at all.
The researcher goes to the second teacher and asks, what are you doing? I am earning my living here. Goes to third teacher and asks, what are you doing here? I am helping shape the world's future. I am helping shape the world's future.
Now, if we consider from the objective fact, all three might be true. It might be true that the students are lazy, some of them are crazy also. And the teacher has to deal with the situation.
It's also true that the teacher is working to earn a living. And it is also true that the teachers are among the greatest formative influences for children. So, the teacher's teaching and teacher's behaving is going to shape the children and they are going to shape the future generation, they are going to shape the world.
So, all three narratives are true. So, there is the truth which is not just monolithic. All three things will be true but depending on which of these truths we focus on, the teacher focusses on, the teacher's attitude towards the work will be shaped accordingly.
And like this, whether it is towards our work, whether it is towards our relationships, whether it is towards life at large, we all have a narrative within us. And that narrative shapes our attitude towards the work. We may say you should have a positive attitude.
But we can't pluck a positive attitude out of thin air and put it like we may put some lipstick or some makeup on our face. An attitude cannot be just popped up on our face or on our mind. An attitude grows from the kind of narratives that we are having in our life which we are habituated to telling ourselves.
If the narratives that we tell ourselves are not healthy, then whatever we do in our life, even if we succeed in doing that, that success will not translate into satisfaction. That success will not translate into happiness. And quite often because of the negative attitude, because of the self-damaging narratives that we have, that our mind spins and we accept uncritically, because of that we will not even be able to succeed as much as we want.
So to illustrate how this examining and reforming the narratives that we are telling ourselves, the stories that we are telling ourselves, how important that it is, I would like to tell another story. Once a group of ten friends came from a small city to a metropolis. And they wanted to see around the metropolis and they also wanted the joy of living in a skyscraper.
So they looked where was the tallest hotel, the biggest hotel and they got a room on the 100th story of the hotel. They went in by the elevator, they kept their stuff and they came down and went around to see in the city. And when they came back in the evening, to their dismay, they found that there was no power.
That meant they had to climb up 100 stories. One of them got an idea. Let's all of us, we can tell each other stories.
Each of us, if we tell a story that goes up to 10 floors, then by the time we come to 100th floor, we will entertain ourselves by telling 10 stories and we will reach up. Good idea. They all started telling, first person, second person.
Some of them told longer stories. So they are on the 95th floor, by the time the 10th person's turn came. And they all turned.
So now please tell your story. He says, no, I can't tell a story. Why? He says, the story that I have, it's a tragedy.
If I tell you the story, it will shatter your hearts. He says, no, come on, tell it. I cannot appear to shatter your hearts.
I cannot tell the story. As this to and fro was going on, they are still climbing up. And they just crossed 99th floor and they came to their floor.
He says, come on, tell your story. He nodded. He says, yes, now I have to tell you the story.
My story is a real tragedy. He says, what is it? I have forgotten the key downstairs. I have forgotten the key downstairs.
So the whole point of climbing up is defeated. The key is forgotten downstairs. So we all are climbing up the corporate ladder in the search for success.
And this is a natural course of growth and ambition in our lives. But we may get so caught in the images. Okay, I have to do this, I have to do that, I have to do that.
That we may not put our attention to investigating whether we are carrying the key with us. That key is the change of the stories that we tell ourselves. Last year I was giving a talk in Ohio State University.
And I was talking about the diet. Just as we are careful about the diet that we feed to our body, like that our mind is also taking in a diet. So I told him, how we need to regulate our mental diet.
If we don't regulate the diet that our mind takes in, then the negative part of the mind gets energised. And the negative stories start becoming very forceful. So after my talk, a young student, an African American student, he came.
And he told me that just before the talk, he had a painful relationship breakup and he was contemplating suicide. But somehow, something within him told him, he just saw the programme and said, let me come here. Let me just attend this programme.
And when he attended the programme, he says, now I have understood, it is not that I wanted to commit suicide, but it is this voice within me which was telling me. That is the monkey mind's voice. The Bhagavad Gita is an ancient book of wisdom which talks a lot about the mind.
And in one of the verses of the Bhagavad Gita, it says the mind is restless. But this restlessness is not like a child's restlessness. The mind is chanchala and pramati.
Pramati means it is like a madman's restlessness. And sometimes in a mental asylum, the person is restless, but the person is also well-made. And sometimes four or five people are required to restrain that person.
So like that, the mind, it can become dangerously powerful. It is restless, but it is also powerful. And that's what makes it especially dangerous.
And when it starts spinning the story, okay, now this is happening. This person is like this. This is like that.
That is like that. And some people say, my destiny is rotten. And things always go wrong for me.
When these kinds of narratives are there, they can become so powerful that they can totally dishearten us. They can devastate us. If we consider the Bhagavad Gita, at its start, Arjuna is a warrior who is about to fight.
And suddenly, inside him, a negative story starts coming up. He starts thinking, how can I fight this war? And he is a battle-hardened warrior. Even when he, if you read the Mahabharata before that, even when he had the severest of moods, he was the epitome of manliness and virility.
So he would not cry even when he had lethal moods. But there, the negative story that the mind was telling him, that reduced him to tears. And he put aside his bow, and said, I can't fight.
I can't fight. So, this is the result of the mind's stories. A hero who would never flinch in the face of the greatest pain, he was reduced to impotence and tears because of the mind's negative story.
And Arjuna's bow, that Gandiva bow which he was using, that actually represents our determination. The Bhagavad Gita is a book for all of us. Arjuna is like every man.
And when we face life's adversities, the problem is out there, but the mind tells a story by which the problem becomes much bigger than what it needs to be. And then that story completely disheartens us. Just as Arjuna put aside his bow, saying, I can't fight.
Like that, we become disheartened. I can't do this. This is just too much.
My life sucks. I quit. We may not say this verbally, but that's what our mind keeps thinking, keeps thinking, keeps thinking, and we become disheartened.
At the end of the Bhagavad Gita, after hearing the message, what happens? Arjuna lifts up his bow. And he's ready to answer the call of duty, no matter how difficult it is. So similarly, the spiritual wisdom of the Gita is one source among many timeless sources of wisdom that can help us restore our morale.
So the Gita has an elaborate philosophy in it, but what it is essentially doing is, the Gita changed the story that Arjuna was telling himself. And when that changed story, whereas earlier he was disheartened, now he was enlivened. So we all need to examine what are the stories that I tell myself.
And after examining those stories, sometimes you may see that when we wake up in the morning, and if our mind is filled with resentment, why did that person speak like this? Why did they do like that? Why? Why? Why? Even before half the day has passed, we feel fed up. We may not be physically tired, but we get mentally tired. That mental tiredness happens because of the story that the mind is telling us.
And that story is the story of resentment. Resentment of reality often hurts much more than reality. The reality may be hurting.
Yes, I have problems. There is a particular person who has dealt with me in a bad way. It's fine.
It's not a good thing. But that's what it is. But the resentment of reality hurts much, much more than reality.
I'll give you an example to illustrate this. Suppose, we are going for a meeting to some destination. When we are going for the first time.
It's like I was coming here for the first time. And somehow, the driver takes a wrong turn. And I get to some other place.
And I'm going to be late for the meeting. Normally, if this happens to us, what do we do? We might be frustrated. Why did I get late? But then, we simply turn around the car, get to know the right path and reach the destination.
Just because you have gone a wrong turn, that's not the end of life. But, when it happens with respect to events, when it happens with respect to the way people behave or the way we respond to them, resentment means, rather than correcting the wrong track, we keep resenting the same thing. Why did this happen? Why did this happen? If somebody has gone to a wrong place, why did I take the wrong turn? Why did I take the wrong turn? Okay, Baba, you took the wrong turn.
Now, take the right turn and come back. This is very simple with respect to geography. But, it is not so simple with respect to psychology.
When the mind makes us a wrong turn, first, it makes us do something. If something happens, it tells us a wrong story. And then, we get stuck in that rewinding tape of the mind.
And thus, we end up frustrated. We end up de-energised. So, how do we change the stories that the mind tells us? That we have habituated ourselves to.
There was a survey done in Princeton University about preteen children. They had an experiment. This is called the Marshmallow Experiment.
Those of you who are interested, you can go on YouTube and search for the video of the Marshmallow Experiment. They had small children, between the ages of 3 to 7. And these children were told that they were given a marshmallow. Marshmallow is a kind of sweet.
And they were told that you have to sit with this sweet for the next 30 minutes. And, if you can wait for the next 20-30 minutes, we will come back and then we will give you two sweets. Instead of one, you will have two.
And, if you don't, you can just eat this sweet right away. So, I think they had this video. Some children.
Even before the researchers were going out, pounds of the sweet, they started eating it. There were some other children. They were looking at the sweet.
Picking it up. Now, putting it back again. Some of them, scratching it a little bit.
Some of them were trying to go to sleep. Some of them were trying to drum their fingers. Going through a whole mess.
So, they found that almost 75% of the students just grabbed the sweet and ate it. And around 25% of the students, these are kids, small kids, 3 to 5 years old, they waited. And they waited and eventually they got the two sweets.
So, researchers divided these students into two groups. One was called the grabbers and the other was the resistors. And then they followed these students in their life 15 to 20 years later.
And they found that these children who were grabbers, later when they grew up in their life, they had difficulty in doing any kind of long-term project. Anything that required patience and perseverance, they couldn't do it. And whenever things would go wrong, they would go into a blaming mood.
They could not sustain any long-term relationships. And in terms of academic performance, other parameters were equal. They found that on an average, the resistors had a SAT score of 250 points more than the grabbers.
And Dr. Daniel Goldman, he reports this in his book Emotional Intelligence. And he says that probably there is no skill more important for self-growth than the ability to resist impulse. There is no skill more important for self-growth than the ability to resist impulse.
So, what was the difference between the grabbers and the resistors? The grabbers were caught in a short-term picture of things. This is the sweet, I want it, I'll take it. The resistors could see things in the long-term.
I can get one sweet now, and I can get two if I am patient. And when we talk about the stories we are telling ourselves, if we can learn to see the big picture of life, then the same story which we are telling ourselves, this is not such a big problem. This problem is there, but the problem will come, the problem will go.
I was just addressing a medical consultancy a couple of weeks ago, and this was a rural medical consultancy, and one of the doctors was telling over there that there are some kind of leeches, and when the leech catches the hand, it starts biting, the normal impulse is to try to pull out the leech. But there are some breeds of leeches, they hold on to the skin so tightly, that if you try to pull out the leech, the leech will pull out the whole skin, and severe damage. So what is the solution? So this doctor was saying, just wait, just wait.
So you can actually sense the leech sucking the blood, but how can you wait? But actually, the leech's capacity for sucking blood is not unlimited. It has its tubule, and once its tubule is filled, it will itself let go. And once it lets go, we can just flick it, and it will fall off.
So, he was talking of medical context, but I applied it as a good example for how we too can deal with problems in our life. There are times, where problems just come in our life, and they are like leeches. And where the problem comes, and we overreact.
We react in an impulsive way. We succumb to knee-jerk reaction. That's like trying to pull out the leech.
And when we pull out the leech, what is happening again? The story we are telling ourselves is, this leech is going to kill me. I have to save myself. I have to pull out this leech.
We are caught in the short term. We are caught in the short term narrative. But if we can see a bigger picture, this leech is not going to suck out all that blood.
It's not going to kill me. It's going to hurt, but it's going to be there for some time. If we have that knowledge to know the bigger picture, then the leech will not get so disturbed by it.
And we will watch it. Problems are like that. When problems come, they are like leeches.
And if we have the big picture of life, spiritual wisdom is what helps us to get the big picture in life. When we have the big picture, how to clean this problem? If I look at my life, there have been many big problems in my life. At that time, I felt this problem is the biggest problem in the world.
But it has come, it has gone. Similarly, the present problem has come, it will go. And tolerance.
Tolerate doesn't necessarily mean being passive. Toleration means simply to not let our impulse interfere with our purpose. I have a particular purpose and I will not let my impulse interfere with my purpose.
So I conclude with two last points. First is that there are problems which are too big and there are problems which are too small. We tend to tolerate.
But something which comes in the intermediary, we become very resentful of that. So for example, if suddenly there is a cold wave, it can be very inconvenient. Some of us have bodies which are very susceptible to cold.
We may have to wear multiple layers of warm clothes. But we know we can't change it. So we accept it.
So we unconsciously understand this can't be changed. So what cannot be cured has to be imbued. We accept that.
This cold season is not going to be forever. So we unconsciously itself understand this is like a lynch, I can't do anything about it. Let me live with it.
Similarly, if we get some disease, we understand, okay, I've got a flu. In 2-3 days I'm going to be down. We may resent for a little bit but afterwards we accept it.
But in between, when it comes to actions of other people, the way other people behave, that is where we become highly resentful. Why is this person doing like this? Why is this person doing like this? And that negative story is what crushes us. So when we are resenting others, often we are cultivating revenge fantasies.
I'll get back at this person. I'll do this, I'll do that, I'll do that. But all this revenge fantasy, it is essentially like we are drinking poison and hoping the other person will die.
We are drinking poison ourselves and are hoping the other person will die. All that it happens is, it hurts us. So if we can get this big picture of life, yes, okay, this person is there, this person is troubling me.
But nothing is permanent in life. This person may go somewhere else, I may go somewhere else. I don't have to let this person control my mind and control my life through it.
Okay, I have some hostility over that, let me see how I can deal with it. But there is no need to let that become a perpetual negative story. So spiritual wisdom, when we take a regular dose of it, that enables us to remind ourselves of the big picture.
And as soon as we are reminded of the big picture, then we can change the story that we are telling ourselves. And once we change the story that we are telling ourselves, we can actually become very empowered. So the second point which I'll conclude with is that actually, we may say there is so much negativity in the world, there is so much workload, there are so many things wrong in life.
Now even if I develop a positive attitude, even if I change the story that I am telling myself, what big difference is going to make? The world is a rotten place, it's a cruel place, it's a jungle out there. Now, suppose, right now when we are here, see the power goes off. Now there will be a few groans, a few curses, but what will you do after that? Probably you will take out a flammable light and turn on the flashlight.
The flashlight does not replace the room lights, but the flashlight is enough for us to see the things around us. So, that flashlight will help us. Okay, I'm here, I can take one step forward.
And then the flashlight will show on the next, and the next, and the next. So, when there is darkness, it's very easy to curse the darkness. But it is far more helpful to turn on one flashlight.
And if a hundred people turn on a flashlight, there can be abundant illumination. And it can be a beautiful sight, you have so many flashlights, everybody is guiding each other. So, just as when there is darkness, we don't just groan and curse the darkness, we turn on our flashlights, and we turn on, we illumine the area around us.
Like that, even if there is negativity in the world around us, that's like darkness, we can change the story that we are telling nonsense. We can, rather than ask, what does it mean to turn on the flashlight? Turning on the flashlight means changing the question that we ask ourselves. As soon as we ask the question, why? Now, why is this person doing like this? Why is this happening? Why are things like this? Quite often, the why questions have no easy answers.
People are what they are, the economy is the way it is, society is the way it is, we don't have the power item given. Instead of the why question, we just change it to the how question. How can I best respond in a situation? Now, we are all meant to serve.
There is a whole and we are parts of the whole. We are meant to contribute to the whole through service. And as soon as we ask the how question, how can I best respond in a situation? That how question will become like a flashlight.
Okay, I can do this one step. I take this one step, I can do this second step. I can do this third step.
And this how question will free all the pent up resentment that is there within us. And we will find ourselves energised with reserves of energy that we didn't even know that we have. And thus, we too will be able to raise our metaphorical goals rather than being disheartened, we too can become encouraged and march forwards in life.
So I'll summarise. I spoke in three parts. I spoke about examining the stories that we tell ourselves.
In that I said, I gave an example of a teacher. Three teachers having three different attitudes towards their profession. And how the stories can sabotage whatever success we achieve.
I told the story of going to the 100th floor and forgetting the key downstairs. So like that, if we have negative stories going on inside us, then no matter how high we rise in our life externally, we will never find contentment. And to avoid negative stories, we need to avoid negative sources and expose ourselves to positive sources around us.
I told the example of Ohio State University student who was suicidal, but then he heard a spiritual talk and he is inside. It's not that I want to do this, rather there is this voice inside me which is telling me to do this. This is a negative story that is coming to me.
And then, how do we go about changing the story that we are telling ourselves? I talked about how the Bhagavad Gita is actually an example of how a battle-hardened warrior would never cry reduced tears because of a negative story. And here in the Gita's wisdom, the bow which he has put down, he lifted it up and became ready to fight. So his bow represents our determination.
So life can put us in perplexities where we become disheartened. We lose our will to fight. The problem is out there, but our mind spins a narrative that crushes us.
So reality is a problem, but resentment of reality is a bigger problem. And it's the resentment of reality that crushes us. And how do we avoid that resentment? By seeing the bigger picture.
And for seeing the bigger picture, how seeing the bigger picture changes things, I give the example of the Princeton University study of kids, grabbers and resistors. So those who were caught in the immediate things. I want this national law right now.
Even when they grew up 15 years later, they were also caught in the immediate movement. Long-term projects, long-term relationships, patience, they remained their weak areas. The other hand, those who could wait 20 minutes at that time for the marshmallow, they have developed the capacity to see long-term and do long-term things.
So how do we learn to see long-term? That is where spiritual wisdom comes into picture. Spiritual wisdom helps us to understand that we are bigger than our circumstances. We at our core are spiritual.
And whatever situation is there, we are bigger than that. And whatever negative circumstances are coming in our life, they are like leeches. Rather than trying to pull out the leech, just let it do its business, it will fall off on its own.
Like that when we face problems, if we have a short-term narrative going on, we feel this problem is going to crush me and we succumb to a knee-jerk reaction. But, if we have a long-term view of life, this problem, let me calm down, let me respond in a mature way. So there are some problems like environment problems, we understand that they are not in our control and we tolerate them like we tolerate leeches.
But when it comes to relational problems, we often become impulsive in our reactions. So essentially, changing our narrative, seeing the bigger picture means focussing not on the impulse but focussing on the purpose. Not letting our impulse determine our decisions but letting our purpose determine our decisions.
And how do we go about creating a habit of changing our stories? That is where exposure to spiritual wisdom comes in. The more we are exposed to spiritual wisdom, we learn to see beyond the immediate to the ultimate. We see the bigger picture of life and that will enable us to see the short-term and navigate the short-term without getting work run by it.
Can we make a difference? Yes, we all can. Just as there is darkness, we may not be able to remove the darkness by our power, but we can illumine our vicinity with our flashlight. Similarly, by changing the stories that we are telling ourselves, we can at least illumine our life.
And, as we become radiators of change, we can change others around us also. In this way, we all can, by changing the stories we are telling ourselves, change the bigger story of what is happening in the world around us, in the society around us. In that way, we all can become agents of positive transformation.
Thank you very much.