Leadership Lessons from The Bhagavad Gita #40 – Transforming

Translation – By divine grace comes the peace in which all sorrows end, and the intellect of such a person of tranquil mind soon becomes firmly established in God.

The link to the page is – https://www.holy-bhagavad-gita.org/chapter/2/verse/65

My interpretation – These two verses come after the verse where Lord Krishna speaks about the negative  impact of anger. In these two verses he offers a solution to deal with the anger – transforming the energy !

I will take Osho’s help again and his e-book “Next time you feel angry …”.

Osho has these beautiful lines – “..First thing: in control you repress, in transformation you express. But there is no need to express on somebody else because the “somebody else” is just irrelevant.”

“The first thing in transformation then is to express anger, but not on anybody, because if you express it on somebody you cannot express it totally.”

Osho says anger is energy, just like sex is energy so they should only be transformed and not controlled. Thousands of years back, Lord Krishna seems to be saying the same thing to Arjuna. Transform the energy that goes into anger and you find God. What we need to understand is, the concept of God is very limiting and it seems prescriptive. The essence here is to transform your anger-energy into love, compassion, good energy and Osho has given us a simple process to do that – vent the anger on something inanimate or expend the energy by running or talking a walk and slowly the energy is transformed without causing damage.

I have tried writing as a way to dissipate my anger … when am uncontrollably angry, I simply open a word document and write whatever comes to my mind. I have titled this as my “Rant Book” – it has utter trash and things I would never say to anyone when am calm. Its a safe release of my anger. Doesn’t work all the time, but it does help  every time I use it.

Think of having a small “rant” book or corner or room at work – when you see yourself getting really angry, retreat to this corner or room, and wait for the energy to transform. Anger at work is devastating, its a career limiting emotion and can damage working relationships forever. The high stress environment that most executives are exposed to also leads to flare ups, so its essential to have a “vent” or “rant” valve that you can use. I had suggested in a blog that I wrote long back about having “venting” buddies at work – co-workers with whom you can safely defuse your anger.

So lesson for the day – transform the anger-energy, don’t control it, but express it safely and transform it into a positive energy.