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Do not sacrifice anything in your life. The message may sound absurd and anti-social. But it is a true message, powered with great management insight. If one wants to live happily and peacefully, one should never do any sacrifices for others.

The message is not against sacrifice. But never carry the intent of sacrifice when you do things for others. Let the word sacrifice be the container and pure commitment be the intent or the content. When someone feels that they have made several sacrifices for others but none of them were rewarded, life becomes sorrowful. Then the definition of sacrifice becomes simply an act for happiness but what it has brought at the end is sorrow.

Generally the corporate employees speak a lot about the sacrifices they have done to the organization. But at the end, none of their sacrifices were considered either for their promotion or for salary hike.

When one starts to reminisce about ones sacrifices for others, only self pity and frustrations becomes the counter product.

Look at the animal life. Instead of ‘sacrifices’ they exhibit ‘altruism’. Commitment with consciousness is what one can see in animal world. They never appear to remember or recollect or murmur about their sacrifices to others. They live a life filled with commitment, consciousness, live for the ‘self’ and above all, the animals also exhibit act of altruism as and when required. Many animals have chased and driven away even their biggest predators when they dare to attack their young ones.

If the corporate employees develop such feelings and approach, much of their inner conflicts and confusion can be avoided. Let the act be pure. Nothing wrong if one expects certain reward for some of their acts. If the desired reward doesn’t come, never define such acts as ‘sacrifices’.

All the acts of human being have an expectation and are filled with utter selfishness. The expectation can be happiness or other forms. No one on earth can ever claim that they do many things without expectation or any reward. It is not possible even at the thinking level, let alone in real life.

In life, never attempt to make any sacrifices as it is simply not possible for you as long as you have desire to exist in the same corporate set up. Act for the reward and act with the expectation of reward in your mind, let that be your approach. Sacrifice is not possible even for animals. Instead of making sacrifices, they display altruism at some instance.

If you think you are doing sacrifices to others, you are simply deceiving and cheating your ‘self’. The reward for cheating is nothing but gets cheated. You did not get the expected reward and that is why you are remembering and defining about some of your actions as sacrifices. If your expected result or reward were met, you may not ever remember about your sacrifices.

Stop confusing and cheating your consciousness, start doing things with certain expectations. Feel sad when you did not get the reward and celebrate if you are suitably rewarded. Never feel sad with repentance but feel sad for not getting something despite your effort. That may help you to pursue the same in future. Not your repentance. That is how the animals live.

Dr S Ranganathan, ClinRise Derma Pvt., Ltd.

Learn more from the management book – ‘Jungle wisdom for corporate management – lessons from the university of nature’ by Swami Sukhabodhananda and Dr S Ranganathan