Question: Sadhguru, why do people criticise?
Sadhguru: Criticism and denial always tend to look more intelligent than acceptance and creating something. Always, the opposition sounds more intelligent because they only criticise, they are not doing anything. Those people who create something, they do not look intelligent because when you create something, you will make many mistakes. Some things go right, some things go wrong. One who just sits and criticises suddenly sounds so intelligent, but very few of them are really creating anything.
It’s fine if they question it, but some people blatantly criticise everything because demolishing something always seems more powerful than constructing something. If I nurture you to grow, there is nothing dramatic about it. But if I come and knock you down in front of ten people, that is dramatic. That is why knocking someone down is always dramatised in the movies everywhere. Without knocking someone down there is no movie because there is something dramatic and impactful about it. It is the same with criticism. Criticism is a way of knocking down someone or something.
A negative stance always appears more intelligent than a positive stance that one takes. It is a certain reasoning, but it is immature reason. When your reasoning is immature you can deny everything. When your reasoning matures, then you learn to accept everything because you understand the process of life. You are not just going by logic, you are going by the reasoning of life. You have more life sense in you, not just logical sense.
Question: How can I overcome laziness and stop procrastinating with everything?
Sadhguru: If you are postponing something, it obviously means you are doing something that you do not want to do. If this was something that you really wanted to do, tell me, would you postpone it or prepone it? Of course you would prepone it!
Have you noticed, if somebody is waiting for someone they want to see badly, in just ten minutes they will look at their watch twenty-five times! Why? Because they want to prepone it. You want to postpone things because you are doing something that you don’t want to do.
Why are you doing something that you do not want to do? If you are doing it only because you think you will get something out of it, let me tell you, there is really nothing to get in this life. Either you lived this life in a profound and intense manner or you did not. What will you get in the end? Either they will bury you, burn you or throw you to the animals, depending on which culture you come from. Or do you think they will give you a prize at the end? Nothing will happen in the end. What matters is how wonderfully you lived through the process of life.
So, you must find what is it that you really want to do. If you find that one thing, you will always prepone everything, you will not postpone things.
Question: In some situations we may lose our temper but it is only later that we realise our stupidity. By then it is too late. How can we avoid anger completely?
Sadhguru: Whether it is stress, anger, fear or whatever negativity you go through, there is only one basic cause – you are ignorant of yourself. You are simply in ignorance. Anger, stress and fear are all words that have been invented by modern societies because they neither like the word ignorance nor do they like to see themselves as ignorant.
If you knew how this system functions and how to manage this system, why would you create anger? Why would you create stress? Anger and stress not only damage the external situation, they also damage the internal situation. People cause enormous amount of stress and anger within themselves and create health problems like cancer, heart ailments and drive themselves crazy. Accordingly, there will be consequences in the external situations also.
In external situations, there is an unavoidable consequence to every action that you perform. When you cannot avoid the consequence, action should be controlled and actions can be controlled only if a human being is controlled within himself. Only when he is in perfect balance will he perform harmonious action.
