by Jay Shetty
When we deny fear, our problems follow us. In fact, they’re probably getting bigger, and bigger, and at some point something will force us to deal with them. When all else fails, pain does make us pay attention. If we don’t learn from the signal that alerts us to a problem, we’ll end up learning from the results of the problem itself, which is far less desirable. But if we face our fear—we stay, we deal with the fire, we have the tough conversation—we become stronger as a result.
The very first lesson the Gita teaches us is how to handle fear. In the moments before the battle starts, when Arjuna is overcome by fear, he doesn’t run from it or bury it; he faces it. In the text, Arjuna is a brave and skilled warrior, yet in this moment it is fear that causes him, for the first time, to reflect. It’s often said that when the fear of staying the same outweighs the fear of change, that is when we change. He asks for help in the form of insight and understanding. In that action, he has begun to shift from being controlled by his fear to understanding it. “What you run from only stays with you longer,” writes the author of the novel Fight Club, Chuck Palahniuk, in his book Invisible Monsters Remix. “Find what you’re afraid of most and go live there.”
That day in the basement of the ashram, I opened myself to my deeply held fears about my parents. I rarely experienced panic or freeze reactions, but that didn’t mean I had no fears—it meant I was pushing them down. As my teacher said, “When fear is buried, it’s something we cling to, and it makes everything feel tight because we’re under this burden of things we’ve never released.” Whether you suppress them or run away from them, your fears and your problems remain with you—and they accumulate. We used to think it didn’t matter if we dumped our trash in landfills without regard for the environment. If we couldn’t see it or smell it, we figured it would somehow just take care of itself. Yet before regulation, landfills polluted water supplies, and even today they are one of the largest producers of human-generated methane gas in the United States. In the same way, burying our fears takes an unseen toll on our internal landscape.
TRY THIS: DIVE INTO YOUR FEARS
As we did at the ashram, take a deep dive into your fears. At first a few surface-level fears will pop up. Stay with the exercise, asking yourself What am I really afraid of? and larger and deeper fears will begin to reveal themselves. These answers don’t usually come all at once. Typically, it takes some time to sink below the layers to the real root of your fears. Be open to the answer revealing itself over time, and maybe not even during a meditation or other focused session. You may be at the grocery store selecting avocados one day when all of a sudden it dawns on you. That’s just how we operate.
Going through the processes of acknowledging fear, observing our patterns for dealing with it, addressing and amending those patterns helps us to reprogram our view of fear from something that’s inherently negative to a neutral signal, or even an indicator of opportunity. When we reclassify fear, we can look past the smoke and stories to what’s real, and in so doing, uncover deep and meaningful truths that can inform and empower us. When we identify our attachment-related fears and instead foster detachment, we can live with a greater sense of freedom and enjoyment. And when we channel the energy behind our fears toward service, we diminish our fear of not having enough, and feel happier, more fulfilled, and more connected to the world around us.
Fear motivates us. Sometimes it motivates us toward what we want, but sometimes, if we aren’t careful, it limits us with what we think will keep us safe.
* * *
Next we will look at our primary motivators (fear is one of four) and how we can deliberately use them to build a fulfilling life.
FOUR INTENTION
Blinded by the Gold
When there is harmony between the mind, heart, and resolution then nothing is impossible
—Rig Veda
In our heads we have an image of an ideal life: our relationships, how we spend our time in work and leisure, what we want to achieve. Even without the noise of external influences, certain goals captivate us, and we design our lives around achieving them because we think they will make us happy. But now we will figure out what drives these ambitions, whether they are likely to make us truly happy, and whether happiness is even the right target.
* * *
I have just come out of a class where we discussed the idea of rebirth, Saṃsāra, and now I am strolling through the quiet ashram with a senior monk and a few other students. The ashram has two locations, a temple in Mumbai and the one where I am now, a rural outpost near Palghar. This will eventually be developed into the Govardhan Ecovillage, a beautiful retreat, but for now there are just a few simple, nondescript buildings set in uncultivated land. Dry dirt footpaths divide the grasses. Here and there, monks sit on straw mats, reading or studying. The main building is open to the elements, and inside we can see monks working. As we walk, the senior monk mentions the achievements of some of the monks we pass. He points out one who can meditate for eight hours straight. A few minutes later he gestures to another: “He fasts for seven days in a row.” Further along, he points. “Do you see the man sitting under that tree? He can recite every verse from the scripture.”
Impressed, I say, “I wish I could do that.”
The monk pauses and turns to look at me. He asks, “Do you wish you could do that, or do you wish you could learn to do that?”
“What do you mean?” I know by now that some of my favorite lessons come not in the classroom, but in moments like this.
He says, “Think about your motivations. Do you want to memorize all of the scripture because it’s an impressive achievement, or do you want the experience of having studied it? In the first, all you want is the outcome. In the second, you are curious about what you might learn from the process.”
This was a new concept for me, and it blew my mind. Desiring an outcome had always seemed reasonable to me. The monk was telling me to question why I wanted to do what was necessary to reach that outcome.
THE FOUR MOTIVATIONS
No matter how disorganized we might be, we all have plans. We have an idea of what we have to accomplish in the day ahead; we probably have a sense of what the year holds, or what we hope we’ll accomplish; and we all have dreams for the future. Something motivates every one of these notions—from needing to pay the rent to wanting to travel the world. Hindu philosopher Bhaktivinoda Thakura describes four fundamental motivations.
Fear. Thakura describes this as being driven by “sickness, poverty, fear of hell or fear of death.”
Desire. Seeking personal gratification through success, wealth, and pleasure.
Duty. Motivated by gratitude, responsibility, and the desire to do the right thing.
Love. Compelled by care for others and the urge to help them.
These four motivations drive everything we do. We make choices, for example, because we’re scared of losing our job, wanting to win the admiration of our friends, hoping to fulfill our parents’ expectations, or wanting to help others live a better life.
I’m going to talk about each motivation individually, so we get a sense of how they shape our choices.
Fear Is Not Sustainable
In the last chapter we talked about fear, so I’m not going to dwell on it here. When fear motivates you, you pick what you want to achieve—a promotion, a relationship, buying a home—because you believe it will bring you safety and security.
Fear alerts and ignites us. This warning flare is useful—as we discussed, fear points out problems and sometimes motivates us. For instance, the fear of getting fired may motivate you to get organized.
The problem with fear is that it’s not sustainable. When we operate in fear for a long time, we can’t work to the best of our abilities. We are too worried about getting the wrong result. We become frantic or paralyzed and are unable to evaluate our situations objectively or to take risks.
The Maya of Success
The second motivation is desire. This is when we chase
personal gratification. Our path to adventures, pleasures, and comforts often takes the form of material goals. I want a million-dollar home. I want financial freedom. I want an amazing wedding. When I ask people to write down their goals, they often give answers describing what most people think of as success.
We think that success equals happiness, but this idea is an illusion. The Sanskrit word for illusion is maya, which means believing in that which is not. When we let achievements and acquisitions determine our course, we’re living in the illusion that happiness comes from external measures of success, but all too often we find that when we finally get what we want, when we find success, it doesn’t lead to happiness.
Jim Carrey once said, “I think everybody should get rich and famous and do everything they ever dreamed of, so they can see that it’s not the answer.”
The illusion of success is tied not just to income and acquisitions but to achievements like becoming a doctor or getting a promotion or… memorizing the scriptures. My desire in the story above—to be able to recite every verse from the scripture—is the monk’s version of material desire. Like all of these “wants,” my ambition was centered around an external outcome—being as impressively learned as that other monk.
American spiritual luminary Tara Brach, founder of the Insight Meditation Community of Washington, DC, writes, “As long as we keep attaching our happiness to the external events of our lives, which are ever changing, we’ll always be left waiting for it.”
Once, as a monk, I visited a temple in Srirangam, one of the three major holy cities in South India. I came upon a worker high up on a scaffold applying gold powder to the intricate details on the temple’s ceiling. I’d never seen anything like it, and I stopped to watch. As I gazed upward, a dusting of gold floated down into my eyes. I hurried from the temple to rinse my eyes, then returned, keeping a safe distance this time. This episode felt like a lesson torn from the scriptures: Gold dust is beautiful, but come too close, and it will blur your vision.
The gilt that is used on temples isn’t solid gold—it’s mixed into a solution. And, as we know, it is used to cover up stone, to make it look like solid gold. It’s maya, an illusion. In the same way, money and fame are only a facade. Because our search is never for a thing, but for the feeling we think the thing will give us. We all know this already: We see wealthy and/or famous people who seem to “have it all,” but who have bad relationships or suffer from depression, and it’s obvious that success didn’t bring them happiness. The same is true for those of us who aren’t rich and famous. We quickly tire of our smartphones and want the next model. We receive a bonus, but the initial excitement fades surprisingly fast when our lives don’t really improve. We think that a new phone or a bigger house will make us feel somehow better—cooler or more satisfied—but instead find ourselves wanting more.
Material gratification is external, but happiness is internal. When monks talk about happiness, they tell the story of the musk deer, a tale derived from a poem by Kabir, a fifteenth-century Indian mystic and poet. The musk deer picks up an irresistible scent in the forest and chases it, searching for the source, not realizing that the scent comes from its own pores. It spends its whole life wandering fruitlessly. In the same way we search for happiness, finding it elusive, when it can be found within us.
Happiness and fulfillment come only from mastering the mind and connecting with the soul—not from objects or attainments. Success doesn’t guarantee happiness, and happiness doesn’t require success. They can feed each other, and we can have them at the same time, but they are not intertwined. After analyzing a Gallup survey on well-being, Princeton University researchers officially concluded that money does not buy happiness after basic needs and then some are fulfilled. While having more money contributes to overall life satisfaction, that impact levels off at a salary of around $75,000. In other words, when it comes to the impact of money on how you view the quality of your life, a middle-class American citizen fares about as well as Jeff Bezos.
Success is earning money, being respected in your work, executing projects smoothly, receiving accolades. Happiness is feeling good about yourself, having close relationships, making the world a better place. More than ever, popular culture celebrates the pursuit of success. TV shows aimed at adolescents focus more on image, money, and fame than in the past. Popular songs and books use language promoting individual achievement over community connection, group membership, and self-acceptance. It’s no surprise that happiness rates have consistently declined among Americans adults since the 1970s. And it doesn’t just boil down to income. In an interview with the Washington Post, Jeffrey Sachs, director of the Center for Sustainable Development and an editor of World Happiness Report, points out: “While the average income of people around the world definitely affects their sense of well-being, it doesn’t explain all that much, because other factors, both personal and social, are very important determinants of well-being.” Sachs says that while generally American incomes have risen since 2005, our happiness has fallen, in part because of social factors like declining trust in the government and our fellow Americans, and weaker social networks.
Duty and Love
If fear limits us and success doesn’t satisfy us, then you’ve probably already guessed that duty and love have more to offer. We all have different goals, but we all want the same things: a life full of joy and meaning. Monks don’t seek out the joy part—we aren’t looking for happiness or pleasure. Instead, we focus on the satisfaction that comes from living a meaningful life. Happiness can be elusive—it’s hard to sustain a high level of joy. But to feel meaning shows that our actions have purpose. They lead to a worthwhile outcome. We believe we’re leaving a positive imprint. What we do matters, so we matter. Bad things happen, boring chores must get done, life isn’t all sunshine and unicorns, but it is always possible to find meaning. If you lose a loved one and someone tells you to look for the positive, to be happy, to focus on the good things in your life—well, you might want to punch that person. But we can survive the worst tragedies by looking for meaning in the loss. We might honor a loved one by giving to the community. Or discover a new gratitude for life that we pass on to those who have supported us. Eventually, the value that we see in our actions will lead to a sense of meaning. In the Atharva Veda it says, “Money and mansions are not the only wealth. Hoard the wealth of the spirit. Character is wealth: good conduct is wealth; and spiritual wisdom is wealth.”
Purpose and meaning, not success, lead to true contentment. When we understand this, we see the value of being motivated by duty and/or love. When you act out of duty and love, you know that you are providing value.
The more we upgrade from trying to fulfill our selfish needs to doing things out of service and love, the more we can achieve. In her book The Upside of Stress, author Kelly McGonigal says that we can better handle discomfort when we can associate it with a goal, purpose, or person we care about. For example, when it comes to planning a child’s birthday party, a parent might be more than willing to endure the unpleasantness of staying up late. The pain of lost sleep is offset by the satisfaction of being a loving mother. But when it comes to working late at a job that same woman hates? She is miserable. We can take on more when we’re doing it for someone we love or to serve a purpose we believe in rather than from the misguided idea that we will find happiness through success. When we perform work with the conviction that what we do matters, we can live intensely. Without a reason for moving forward, we have no drive. When we live intentionally—with a clear sense of why what we do matters—life has meaning and brings fulfillment. Intention fills the car with gas.
THE WHY LADDER
Fear, desire, duty, and love are the roots of all intentions. In Sanskrit the word for intention is sankalpa, and I think of it as the reason, formed by one’s own heart and mind, that one strives for a goal. To put it another way, from your root motivation you develop intentions to drive you forward. Your intention is who you plan to b
e in order to act with purpose and feel that what you do is meaningful. So if I’m motivated by fear, my intention might be to protect my family. If I’m motivated by desire, my intention might be to gain worldwide recognition. If I’m motivated by duty, my intention might be to help my friends no matter how busy I am. If I’m motivated by love, my intention might be to serve where I am most needed.
There are no rules attaching certain intentions to certain motivations. You can also perform service to make a good impression (desire, not love). You can support your family out of love, not fear. You can want to get rich in order to serve. And none of us has just one motivation and one intention. I want us to learn how to make big and small choices intentionally. Instead of forever climbing the mountain of success, we need to descend into the valley of our true selves to weed out false beliefs.
To live intentionally, we must dig to the deepest why behind the want. This requires pausing to think not only about why we want something, but also who we are or need to be to get it, and whether being that person appeals to us.