Why Inner Matter Matters

Finishing work with a client, my associate and I were driving down to deliver a talk at a Technical University. Sighting a roadside fruit vendor, and on a hunch, we stopped to pick up some fruits. At the institution, the Dean told us their focus was to help students understand the qualities they need to inculcate to become a successful leader. It was good to know they had widened their horizon beyond the conventional syllabus.

In my talk, I touched on some twenty character qualities that would if developed help the students become good industry leaders. Most people understand but don’t inculcate. Life takes us through the ups and downs. We are tested in the troughs. Our inner self comes out at such times of crises, and that’s why it’s important to focus on strengthening the inner self.

To demonstrate this I pulled out the fruits I had picked up. I asked for two volunteers, and among the many hands, two in the front were Raghini and Amit. I gave a guava fruit to Amit and the sweet lime to Raghini. Then our discussion went thus …

Me: “Raghini, I want you to squeeze the sweet lime and extract guava juice. Amit, I want you to squeeze guava and extract sweet lime juice.”

Amit: “But Sir, how can I get sweet lime juice from a guava fruit? This must be a trick question!”

Raghini: “Yes Sir, how can I get guava juice from this sweet lime? Did you mix up the fruits in your question?”

Me: “What will you get if you squeeze the fruits in your hands?”

Amit: “Guava juice.”

Raghini: “Sweet lime juice.”

Me: “Why can’t you get a different juice when you squeeze these fruits?”

Amit: “How is it possible Sir? He was getting a bit incensed.”

Me: You get the guava juice from a guava fruit and sweet lime juice from the sweet lime fruit because that is what is inside the fruit. When life puts pressure on you, it squeezes you, and what’s inside of you comes out. Say someone says something you don’t like, offends you. And out of you comes anger, hatred, bitterness, fear. Why? Because that’s what’s inside.”

It’s one of the great lessons of life.  What comes out when life squeezes you?  When someone hurts or offends you? If anger, pain and fear come out of you, it’s because that’s what’s inside. It doesn’t matter who does the squeezing - your parent, sibling, children, boss, spouse, government, friend, neighbor, colleague etc. If someone says something about you that you don’t like, what comes out of you is what’s inside. And what’s inside is up to you, it’s your choice what you want to put inside.

When someone puts the pressure on you and out of you comes anything other than love, it’s because that’s what you’ve allowed to be inside. Once you take away all those negative things you don’t want in your life and replace them with love, sympathy, compassion, empathy, concern, help etc. you’ll find yourself living a highly functioning life. And that quality will enable you make better decisions and lead successfully.

How do you change your inside? There are any number of books, audios, videos, etc. and one can make use of this wealth of personal development material. Research has shown that an average person does not read. So imagine if you read one book a week, you would have read fifty-two in a year. In ten years you would have read five hundred and twenty books and in twenty years one thousand and forty. Compare this to an Engineering student who would read about twenty – twenty-five books, and most don’t read after school. So, imagine how much more knowledge you would have acquired in ten – twenty years! So by reading and listening to the right stuff you enhance your knowledge, and more importantly practice it every day to form those new habits.