Live Your Yoga: Making A Decision, Part 2

This is part of a three part blog, Live Your Yoga: Making A Decision. Check out Part 1 here.

Making decisions – especially big life decisions – can be very challenging. We can feel pulled in every direction. Which choice is “right?”

The Bhagavad Gita offers us insight into how we can live our yoga in the midst of our daily life struggles and choices. In this epic story, our hero (Arjuna) is counselled by Krishna (his charioteer and the voice of Arjuna’s “higher power”) on how he can live yoga and still take action as a warrior. Yoga isn’t only for peaceful times; it’s for every moment of our lives. Especially those times that seem full of conflict.

Path 2: Karma Yoga

Krishna schools Arjuna on three types of yoga. The second form of yoga, karma yoga, is the yoga of action.

“Yoga is skill in action.”

Krishna dismisses the idea yoga can only happen when we’re meditating. “Aren’t we always in action?” Krishna asks. “No one is free from action.” In other words, rather than avoid choices (“I just won’t do anything!”), we must recognize that living involves action, choice and engagement. We simply can’t avoid it!

This understanding frees us from the idea that yoga “really” happens when we are sitting quietly in meditation, or zonked out in a good Savasana. Yoga isn’t just for the peaceful times; it is for all the times.

Not only that, but we each have a dharma – a life’s purpose – that we must follow and fulfill. Since Arjuna is a warrior, his highest good is fighting. For you, your life’s purpose may be caring for your kids, elevating your community, exploring new worlds, creating connections, or excelling in your work. Your dharma is the thing the compels you, lights you up, aligns with your values, and gives your soul that little “ahhhhh” sound of satisfaction. Your dharma can change over time. At one point your dharma may have involved your work, but now it involves your family. (And don’t worry my friends: for many of us, our dharma sometimes is just figuring out what our damned dharma is!)

However, Krishna cautions that we are going about “action” wrong, which is what causes all of our suffering.

“You have a right to your actions, but never to your actions’ fruit.”

What does he mean?

Krishna is saying that you must act. You have to act. And you are responsible for how you act. However, you cannot control the results of your actions.

Here’s a few examples:

• You have a huge exam coming up. You study your ass off. You do your best. But you still fail.
• You feel wronged by a family member. You try to bring up the issue compassionately. It all goes to hell.
• You have a big work project. You do your best. At the 11th hour, somethings goes wrong and your team misses the deadline.

According to Krishna, success or failure isn’t the point: what is important is that you took action to the best of your ability. The world is far too vast and complex for us to take responsibility for everything that happens. The wise person cultivates equanimity in the face of success or failure.

This part of karma yoga is sometimes misunderstood: it’s not that we don’t care about the result or try our best; it’s that we recognize that we can’t take responsibility for everything that happens.

And here’s a finer point, my friends: sometimes what is beyond our control is actually something that is within ourselves.

Let me give an example.

• I do my best to have a loving relationship with my family.
• Everything that is under my conscious control I direct towards the highest purpose of love, connection, and respect.
• Sometimes I have forgotten myself and gotten really angry and had fights or said dumb things.
• When I was a kid, I had an argumentative family and sometimes those old habits just seem to come out of nowhere.

Our conscious mind (and the part of us that is connected to aligning with our highest selves and our dharma) is one piece of who we are. But there is a vast part of our mind/body that is unconscious. After all, your heart beat and your blood flows and you can’t really control that. Similarly, you have some deep patterning that your conscious mind is not aware of. And in yoga terms, you’re carrying around karma from your past lives to boot.

So sometimes, we are beyond our own control.

Doing your best may mean that this old patterning surfaces despite your best, conscious intentions. And you must let go of the results even so.

Let me be clear: this does not let us off the hook. We can’t run around acting badly and say, “My karma made me do it.” We are under a divine contract to do our authentic best and learn from our actions. However, what it does mean is that you have to stop beating yourself up for all those times that you feel like you may have fallen short. How much time have we wasted in dwelling in the past? We our missing our ability to do our best in this moment when we get stuck dwelling over something that has gone wrong.

We must accept that we are mysterious sometimes – even to ourselves.

Your job: do your best, and let go of the results.

Try it: Journal

Take ten minutes (yes, ten) and do a free write, stream-of-consciousness about your life’s purpose. See where it takes you.

Try it: Yoga in Action

Today as you move through the world, pause and ask: is this my very best?

• Set an intention to do all actions according to your personal best.
• AND (don’t forget) practice letting go of how it turns out.

One last note: Krishna says, “It’s better to do your own dharma poorly than to do someone else’s dharma well.” I love this. Krishna loves you for trying. You do not have to be the best at what you do. You simply have to be your best you. 

And that is enough.

Are you a teacher teaching the Bhagavad Gita? Check out my discussion notes and study guide.