Everyone desires success, and somewhere, many people believe aggression will lead to success. Aggression may sometimes lead to success but not always – and you could get killed with your aggression! What leads to success is your intelligence, clarity of vision and competence. So, instead of trying to bulldoze your way through the world, it is better to work on your competence because success does not come just because you desire it. Success comes because you make yourself competent.

Let us say you want to run a hundred-meter race. You have to work on your legs, lungs and muscle. If you are seeking success, the foremost thing is that as a human being, you should function at the fullest. If that has to happen, you need to enhance your physical and mental capabilities. But the most important task is that there are other dimensions that one needs to explore – the science and technology for inner wellbeing. Unfortunately, although this science has been the mainstay of Indian culture for thousands of years, we are largely losing it today. We have to bring this science back into our lives. The very way this culture was structured was such that it is all about the human being. This is the only culture that spoke of how you can actually evolve to another dimension of existence. Even an illiterate person in this land is aware of this. If I go into a village and talk to an illiterate person, he will not ask me, “Give me a golden horse.” He will say, “Mukti venum ayya.” He wants mukti – Ultimate liberation. Nowhere else on the planet will you find this intention in such a large segment of the population to break their present dimension of existence. This was bred into this culture so deep. We should not lose it. This was not just an idea or philosophy – there are technologies to take a person towards Ultimate liberation. If you became free from the process of your body and mind, if what is you and what is your body and mind are clearly separate in your perception, you would work with them in the best possible way. You would be able to use this body and mind to the fullest only when you clearly see that they are not “myself.” The body and mind are powerful instruments and they can be employed the way you want only when you have “outside access” to them. You are a phenomenal supercomputer. The problem right now is that you do not know where the keyboard is. When people think hard about something, they scratch their head. It does not work like that! There are proper technologies that one can make use of to access the keyboard. These technologies can be offered to those who are willing. So instead of seeking success, seek competence. See how to enhance your body, mind and energy to a higher level. If human beings are phenomenally competent, wherever you put them, they will anyway succeed.

(Sadhguru is a Yogi, mystic, and Padma Vibhushan awardee, also known for his New York Times bestselling books. He founded Conscious Planet–Save Soil, the world’s largest people’s movement, impacting over 4 billion people)