Is Confidence Needed to Walk Through Life? Sadhguru Answers

Sadhguru: This is not a simple problem. People suffer from this all their lives without managing it. You are whatever age you are and you still don't know how to use your thoughts and emotions.  If you see everything as it is, everything has immense value.  Life is not a race. If

life

is a race, you must reach the finish line soon. Speaker (Naina): I often find myself in a situation where I am not happy with myself.   I compare my skills, achievements, and even my appearance to others.   And I think that's one of the reasons for my low self-esteem.  How do you think I can increase my self-esteem and get rid of my self-hatred (Sadhguru laughs)?

Sadhguru: Well, this self-esteem, this self-

confidence

, all these things have unfortunately been sold a lot on the planet. Why do you need esteem?  Why do you need esteem? Esteem is because you always want to be ahead of another person all the time.   Unfortunately, our educational systems were created like this: since kindergarten, who is first, who is second, who is third? You want to be the first. So your feeling of happiness only arises when everyone else is doing worse than you.  What kind of

life

is that? (Applause) Why... why are we structuring our lives this way, that if everyone does poorly, I'll feel great?

I think it's a disease. Hello?   Do you think it is joy or illness, please tell me? If all of you are doing poorly, I feel great because I'm number one now. No. This should go away. Unfortunately, from an early age the idea that one must be above others is imposed on the child's mind.  This is like... I want you to imagine if this happened to other creatures... let's say it happened to plants, trees, and animals.   If an ant wants to become like an elephant, it will be a terrible anthill, won't it? Suppose a mango tree wants to become like a coconut tree, it will be a horrible mango tree, because with a branch like this, no mangoes will come out of it.

A mango tree is like this. A coconut tree is like that.  This is how it should be. This has happened because in many ways people have put these things in your mind: what is good, what is bad, what is high, what is low, what is above, what is below.   That's why you've never paid attention to all aspects of life in the sense... maybe people from the humanities and lawyers... (Speak aside: What are you? Hmm? Ah, accounting people) (Laughter).  You never paid attention to these things. I spent a lot of time paying attention to all kinds of creatures: ants, grasshoppers, worms and all.

If you look, let's say an ant or let's pick up something little more than an ant, like a grasshopper. It's easier to see. If you look closely, whoever created this grasshopper has paid as much attention to a grasshopper as this one. Please pay attention and you will see. When the source of creation has given equal attention to the ant and you, who the hell are you to think that an ant is a humble creature and you are a superhuman being? (Applause) Why do they make this judgment?  Creation has not made this judgment. You may think you're superior simply because you're... blatantly

walk

ing this planet, but that's not true.

The crux of the matter is like this.   Look, if all the worms on this planet, right now, if they all die, all the worms, in approximately twelve to eighteen months, all life on this planet will cease, everything including you and me.   Suppose all insects die today, in about two and a half to four years, all life will cease. But if all human beings die, the planet will flourish. (Applause) Yes, we make good fertilizer. If humans disappear, trees will grow through this building, right? Yes or no? Everything will flourish. So who the hell tells you that you are the most important life?

This idea that the cosmos is human-centered is a stupid idea.   In this cosmos, even this solar system is a small particle. Tomorrow morning, if the entire solar system evaporates, no one will notice. That's how small it is. In that small speck, planet Earth is a micro speck. At that micro point, Bengaluru is a super micro point, in the sense that you are a very big person with high self-esteem. (Laughter/Applause/Cheers) This is... this is not a simple problem.  People suffer from this all their lives without managing it. Essentially it's just this: you've gotten into a place where... most human beings are in this place.

You get into a place where you can't manage your own thought process and emotions. That's all. You meet people in their fifties and sixties, who still haven't figured out how to manage their thoughts and emotions. These are basic faculties. When the hell are you going to learn to use your thinking and emotion?  Suppose you are twenty years old and you still don't know how to use your fingers, people will tell you, “You are disabled,” right? No matter how old you are and you still don't know how to use your thinking and emotions, are you also disabled?

Hello?   Are you or aren't you? Participants: Yes. Sadhguru: You are, you are crippling yourself. The reason this has happened is simply because you have made unnatural divisions in existence that do not exist anywhere else except in the human mind. Yeah! Nowhere else does it exist except in the human mind.   Oh, because you're a girl.  Can I call you girl?  Participant: Yes, you can. Sadhguru: I tell you guys, she is not a little girl. For me, she is a girl (Laughs).   When my daughter was little, she grew up with me traveling everywhere.   When she was three and a half months old, she traveled alone with me.   I'm driving all over India with her in the... (Laughs) strapped into her car seat.   So she grew up like that.

In... every day we are in a different family.   People are wonderful, but there is a problem with adults. The moment they see a child, they want to teach her something that has not worked in her life (Applause). You should see that this impulse is so compulsive, the moment they see a child, they have to teach... they have to teach (Laughter). So I made a rule: "Look, you can play with her all you want, you can talk to her, but no one will teach you anything about her."  "But Sadhguru, she won't learn anything. ABC, at least one, two, three?"  I said, "No one, two, three." Then they said: "She won't even know how to count her fingers."  "I don't care.

If she doesn't know how to count her fingers, as long as she knows how to use them, I don't care. She thinks she has a million fingers, what's my problem?" (Few laugh) But they want to show one, two , three, ABC, Mary had a little lamb. (Few laugh) I said: "I don't care if Mary had a lamb or not. (Laughter) They're not going to teach her anything." So no one taught him anything. She is all ears.  All treated...because if you have nothing to teach, you have to teach...she treats someone like your equal. Then she grew up.

When she is two and a half or three years old, she can talk in terms of remembering between seven hundred and eight hundred names, all adults, she believes that they are all her friends (Laughter), because they all spoke to her as if she were a adult. And she wouldn't have sent her to school, but my schedule went totally crazy and I had to put her in some school.  Then, when she was twelve or thirteen years old, one day she came home and something that happened at school disturbed her. So, she came and...she came to me and said, "You're teaching so many...everyone so many things.

You're not telling me anything." I said, "Look, I don't do it without being asked. Now that you've come, just sit down. This is all you have to know: never admire anyone." She looked at me like, "And you?", something like that.  I told him, "Especially me, because the moment you admire me, you will miss it completely. If you look at me as I am, it has a lot of value. If you admire me, what will you do? You'll probably take my photo and pin it." on your wall, like you nailed so many people who are valuable in this world.

Just look at me for what I am. Don't look down on anyone. This is it. Never look down on anything. As it is, everything has immense value. Everyone has a place and value for their life, doesn't it? Every creature has value – because we didn't realize that, how many things have we destroyed in this world? because we think this is valuable, it is not. There is nothing here that is not valuable. Everything has its value. Maybe you can't see it like that: you versus the rest of the world. It's a bad competition to participate in. .You want to be number one on this planet.

It's a horrible place. Everyone below you and you above, is it a good place to be? I think it's a sick place. This attitude of wanting to be ahead of someone needs to go. Well, for fun in a game or something, you compete, that's different. Life is not a competition. Life is not a race. If life is a race, you must reach the finish line soon. (Applause) Yes...  if you believe that life is a race, today you must be at the finish line. I can tell you how. (Laughs) Do you want to go there? No. This is not a race.

This is a tremendous privilege that we have achieved as human beings. This means that our ability to experience life is of a much greater proportion than that of any other creature on this planet. That is the meaning of who we are. Yeah? We can experience life in ways much more vivid than an ant, a grasshopper, or anyone else can. This is our privilege. Instead of experiencing life, we try to win the race. If you win the race, you should be at the crematorium today. (Few laugh) You don't need any self-esteem. In this culture, if you don't know, there may be people with names like this, there will be a Ramadas, a Krishnadas, one whatever.

What this means is that people are consciously taking on the name of slave, because a happy and willing slave is a tremendous human being.   Just someone who has been enslaved by someone is a different matter, but willingly, I am willing to do whatever is necessary in this world, he is a wonderful slave, right? (Laughter) I am one. (Laughter/Applause)