Applying Bhagavad Gita in Corporate Setup

Learnings from bhagavad gita

I have been working in Australia for over 7 years now, switching across many companies. Many migrants like me would concur that one of the major challenges of working here in Australia is adapting to the work culture. A common mistake that I have made in the past was that every time I landed a new gig in a company, I used to always look for a better experience in terms of the work culture, better team dynamics, and a more mature way of operating in the organization. More often than not, that wasn’t the case. Once I found out that it was not matching my expectation, I tried hard to apply my past experience and look for ways to improve the way the company works. The success of this approach would depend on two things: people’s adoption and your position in influencing this decision. Not just me, i have observed this among other folks too. For example, you would come across new folks who have joined your team often making remarks : “In my past experience, this used to be handled in a much better way,” or “My previous company had a much more mature environment.”

But this post is not about the org's way of working. It's a constantly changing environment. I would be digressing if I make it one !

It’s about how we adapt to this changing environment. This is about how the mind works when it tries to find a comforting space in the new environment. When it doesn’t find one, it tries to bring in past history/experience and try to retrofit it in the new environment. We start making judgements quickly and start contemplating if we have landed in the right place. This only stays for a few days until you get into the grind of the work. That uncertainty period is also caused by the fear of judgement in the new environment.

The solution to this conundrum is beautifully addressed by Shri Krishna in Chapter 2 in the following shloka:

vāsānsi jīrṇāni yathā vihāya navāni gṛihṇāti naro ’parāṇi

tathā śharīrāṇi vihāya jīrṇānya nyāni sanyāti navāni dehī

Shri Krishna gives an example of the changing nature that a soul goes through across multiple lives. Just as we put on new clothes by discarding old ones, Krishna infers that we too go through multiple transitions in physical form to achieve what we are meant to do or until we reach our destination.

To put it in the context of the above situation, we try to operate in our old clothes even in the new environment. We hesitate to shed old clothes because the mind's very fundamental nature is to resist change and not to recognize the changing nature of everything around us. Failing to adapt quickly to a changing environment will lead to a lot of impending stress, and the mind keeps wandering, looking for contentment. The best approach, as Krishna infers, is to keep unlearning and learning, adapting to the changing environment but never to compromise our values or our strength.

Happy learning :-)

P.S: Concept of Soul is very abstract. I am not an expert. It needs guidance of a Guru for subtextual understanding.

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