Jean interviews Suneel Gupta, who tells you how to find everyday dharma in the midst of a challenging life. It is not measured by outward success, nor by achievement, but by finding your essence.
Jean Latting (author of Amazon Best Seller Conscious Change: How to Navigate Differences and Foster Inclusion in Everyday Relationships) interviews Dr. Suneel Gupta (author of Everyday Dharma: 8 Essential Practices for Finding Success and Joy in Everything You Do)
Jean 00:16
Dr Suneel Gupta asked, "How can organizations excel on the outside if people are exhausted from the inside?" Let's listen to what he has to say about that.
What led you to write a book called Everyday Dharma in the first place? What led you from wherever you’re from, where you were, to here?
Suneel 03:07
I wanted to write a book that I would feel fulfilled giving to my daughter.
I grew up in Detroit in the 1980s when it was thriving, and went back to New Delhi to go spend time with my grandfather. He pointed to the middle of the Indian flag; in the middle is a navy wheel. It is the Wheel of Dharma, and Dharma is your essence.
Suneel 05:37
What is that thing about me that is true no matter what, whether I succeed, that thing that makes me light up. So for me, for example, I know that my essence is to tell stories. And once we can connect to that essence, then what I think we can do is find all these different ways to express that essence.
Suneel 08:05
Every year that wheel starts to turn faster and faster and faster. We don't have time, necessarily, to reflect on our essence.
Be aware that that's going to happen. It's never too late to take a reflective moment and to come back to who you really are. When you're expressing your essence, you come alive in a brand new way. You feel creative, you feel lit up, and you feel integrated.
The great thing about dharma is that when you're finding a way to express your essence, you give everybody around you a contact high.
Suneel 13:50
I work with lots and lots of leaders. I say tell me about what's going right, what's going wrong? What's going wrong will be very, very clear. But what's going well is usually pretty vague. And the punch line to all this is that we tend to skip over the moments in our day that are lighting us up, because we're so gravitated towards focusing on the stuff that we want to fix, the stuff that's not necessarily going our way. Most of us are so fixated on fixing things that we miss out on the whispers.
Jean 18:45
I want to distinguish between what brings me joy and what I might be good at. Because most people choose what they think they're good at which may not bring them joy.
Suneel 19:07
What I think we're here to do is not to achieve necessarily with our essence, not to hit some destination with our essence, but to express our essence.
Suneel 20:33
If it's only external validation, you’re making yourself reliant on all these systems that are outside of your control.
Suneel 21:37
The point of this book is to add the engine of internal validation.
Suneel 22:17
You have this fuel inside of you that is keeping you going.
Suneel 24:01
Toni Morrison was a single mom. She would write on the bus every single day. These little pieces of paper that she would write on the bus ended up forming into paragraphs and eventually into chapters and eventually into books.
Suneel 24:47
The point is that it is much, much better to be partially scheduled and full hearted than it is to be half hearted and fully scheduled.
Jean 26:40
Yes, because I paid myself. I paid myself first.
Jean 28:20
Don't wait until you have time.
Jean 28:59
Second place where people get stuck: this one thing at a time
Suneel 31:26
I have come around calling this thing a tiny contract. I'm making a tiny contract with myself to be really committed, dedicated and devoted to this thing for a certain period of time.
Suneel 34:20
Let me commit wholeheartedly, full heartedly to something, but let me do it for a fixed period of time, knowing that this thing that we are committing to has an end date, and I always have the ability to re-evaluate.
Jean 35:25
I did. I was in academia for 35 years, one year at a time. Every year I said, I think I'm gonna do this another year. And I did that all the way up to various promotions and all until I retired.
Suneel 37:09
I've talked about this idea of the game of now, and the game of now is a mindset. And the mindset is that you don't have to wait for courage in order to take action. You can take action, and you can let courage catch up along the way.
Jean 41:13
That's my book that was just released in July. I said this book needs to be written, but I don't have time to do it. And then one day I said, well, let me write these people and see if they'd be contributors. And then people responded. And then I thought, I don't have time. And then my co-author from my first book retired, and it was during COVID, and said, Jean, can I help you do your work? And I said, this book!
Suneel 42:14
You don't have to have that courage first.
Suneel 44:23
We are as a society, I think that is almost addicted to planning, to projections, and so if you don't know what that last step looks like, then clearly you must not know what you're doing. But the truth is that very rarely does a plan go the way it was intended to go.
Suneel 46:28
I sat down with Bill Gates, who said that failure is not something that you necessarily look out for, but the one thing is that it's a very, very good teacher. And success is a lousy teacher. right?
Suneel 47:34
My goal was to go write a book. What if instead my goal was to become a better writer?
Suneel 49:23
People ask, how do I know my essence? One practical activity is to jot down the little moments in your day that are bringing you joy. Cus D'amato, Mike Tyson's boxing coach, would always look for the little spark inside an athlete. And once he found that little spark, he could turn that spark into a flame, and he could fan that flame and turn into a roaring fire.
Jean 52:32
Why do I have to write it down anyway?
Suneel 52:40
We are not very good at storing good memories. We're very good at storing negative memories, but when it comes to positive things, we can dismiss them very, very quickly.
Jean 55:22
What are three takeaways you want listeners to think about or do?
Suneel 55:30
Action leads to courage.
Suneel 57:03
Tune into your energy.
Suneel 59:00
Bring a sense of play into your work.
Jean 61:51
How can people reach you?
Suneel 61:56
Go to my website, Suneelgupta.com.
Jean 64:37
What he's saying is so intertwined with what we're saying in Conscious Change. He provides the framework for thinking about it in terms of your energy, finding your dharma and so forth. We talk about the specific skills to make it happen. I hope you pick up a copy of his book, Everyday Dharma. And of course, I hope you picked up a copy of our book, Conscious Change and email me your comments, we would love to hear. Thanks for listening.
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