The Anagogic Banker – How often you are unhappy with things you don’t get, things you don’t really want

Heng Films photo

By

Siddhartha Rastogi

Why the hell did s/he not inform me earlier!

I know what I am doing, who are they to tell me!

I am the boss here, how dare s/he not consult with me!

I earn for the family and I work hard, they had better listen to me!

Sounds familiar?

Common reasons of misunderstanding / dissatisfaction.

Small useless, unwanted thoughts with constant unsaid words turn into monstrous feelings and finally separation and the end of a relationship. This can happen in personal private life or in professional life.

In this article, I will cover 3 aspects:

First, what exactly happens within us?

Second, why does it happen to us?

And third, the basic methodology of how to avoid it.

Here’s a narrative using a mythological story from the Mahabharata.

After 12 years of exile and one year of staying incognito, Pandavas came back to Hastinapur to take their kingdom of Khandavprastha  which they had converted into Indraprastha. Yudhistira, the eldest of five Pandavas wanted peace at any cost and wished to follow his Dharma. But Duryodhan was unwilling to part with Indraprastha and refused to give anything to Pandavas. To pursue peace, Sri Krishna offered to Duryodhan to give away only five villages instead of the entire kingdom built by Pandavas. But Duryodhan didn’t relent and roared away in misogynous ego that he will not even give away land as much as head of a needle.

Did it really matter to Duryodhan, if he would have given away those villages?

Did he really want to own those five villages?

Post which, everyone knows what happened to the Kuru dynasty, which turned out to be Duryodhan’s destiny. In the process, millions of soldiers lost their lives as well.

Exactly the same thing happens to each one of us and we bring our inner Duryodhan out, getting unhappy with things which we don’t really want or wish to own.

Shifting gears now to focus on the second part – Why this happens to us.

Let me digress to give a little background. Going back 60,000 years, humans could only understand two major emotions. Love and Fear. Fear took prominence as it was critical for existence and determined ‘now’. Whilst Love determined the future and longer term aspects of life. This is the single reason why most of the time, people react out of fear and not love. You want your child to study not because you want him or her to be more knowledgeable and enjoy his learning in future but to make sure he learns and have capability to earn and your fear that he should not be dependent on you in the future. Similarly, you work and pursue your service/ profession not because you enjoy doing what you are doing but for the fear that if you don’t work you won’t earn to survive or maintain your status in society, etc.

Coming back to the topic of wanting and having unwanted, undesired things… you need them so as to have instant appeasement of your false EGO and to curb the possible fear of someone overpowering you or your unsaid rule.

Life and the future are unpredictable but the sense of fear looking at the present forces you to try to control every possible aspect of the future, including the people who will be part of it and their behavior. In your zeal to achieve indisputable supremacy, you keep pushing for things which you actually don’t value or need nor do they bring any happiness to you in the present or future.

Some of these statements reflect why in a simpler manner:

1. You constantly feel jealous and compare yourself with others.
2. Your definition of happiness is that of a perfect moment when you have achieved everything you desired, hence you keep walking forward worrying about things rather than enjoying the journey.
3. You keep carrying grudges and past baggage and hence keep spoiling future possibilities of life.
4. You are way too busy to enjoy anything and when you see people around who are enjoying life and enjoying the work they do, you feel agitated.
5. You are really bored of your work as the only thing you need from your work is to earn money.
6. You think comfort and complacency is happiness and hence you focus on controlling others than finding the true you.

Finally, what could you do to overcome this challenge?

Shift from the Primary emotion of Fear to Love. For anything you do or seek, ask why are you doing it?  If you still don’t get the answer, ask yourself, given a choice will you like doing it throughout your life. The biggest challenge of the Primary emotion of fear is that humans just can’t be with it for longer periods of time. If they do, they will fall ill or get mentally senile. When fear hits humans, the entire body’s growth gets curtailed and energies get channelized to fight that fear and hence can’t be sustained over long periods of time.

If you keep doing more and more things which you love doing and which you can do for the rest of your life, you will end up reducing most of your unwanted activities and needs, which in turn will make you a better person and a better human being.

The same is applicable for Investments as well. Most inspiring investors invest in things which they understand and follow the investment process which they love following year after year. They then take concentrated bets and focus on the input without worrying about profits or share prices. As they love doing what they do, they love holding what they buy for longer periods of time till it matures and, in the process, making humongous profits.

Thus the Anagogic Banker says, “If you spend too much time thinking and doing things which you really don’t want to, you will end up repenting when you are on your death bed.”

Siddhartha Rastogi

Siddhartha was born to a learned middle class educated family in Semi Urban India. His father was an extremely honest man who because of his honesty had to pay the price in corporate world. Mother is a determined woman who ensured that children are being well taken care off. After a few years of birth, doctors called Siddhartha, a slow child having flat foot. He would fall more than he could walk. Determined mother ensured all therapies for her son to come out strong to fight the world. Siddhartha joined swimming when he was in 6th standard. Seeing other children of his class, he jumped in 10 feet deep pool and learnt swimming on his own, the very same day.

From that day there was no looking back. He topped his city in 12th and went to score highest in his B school exams. During his profession as banker, he became youngest branch manager of a MNC bank managing their biggest wealth branch in the country. There he found love of his life and got married. His love of his life emerged in the form of his daughter who completely changed him for good.

Siddhartha Rastogi is Director for a boutique Investment bank in India.

Siddhartha is a forward looking thinker & writer who has written a book on decision making. 8 Simple steps to effective decision making.

He writes on various social and current issues via his blog and can also be found on twitter.