The result of action can neither enhance you nor reduce you

The following is an excerpt from a samvaad (dialogue) session with Acharya Prashant.

Question: When I want to do something, I plan a lot. But in the spiritual domain, it is said that planning is bad. What should I do, because when I don’t execute my plans, I don’t get the desired outcome?

Acharya Prashant (AP): No, plan fully and execute fully with all your mind but remember fully that neither the action nor the result of the action, can mean much to you. Neither can it reduce you, nor can it enhance you.

What’s the fun in playing the game if you are not playing wholeheartedly?

Even if you are playing with a kid, the kid feels insulted if he comes to know that you are not playing with all your heart. Even in the most casual of games, you must be fully engaged. So, be fully engaged, give everything, every ounce of your energy, every last drop contained in your cells to what you are doing, apply all your intellect, there is no need to detest planning; plan with all your might but in the middle of all this, remain fully convinced that this cannot give much to you nor can it take away much from you — which will be little paradoxical, a little hard to manage, right?

So you are playing the game with all your might and yet are a little away, a little unconcerned, you are fully concerned yet you are remembering that it is just a game.

We often wonder whether that would take away our intensity? No, it does not. All it takes away is the noise surrounding your intensity. When we work towards something that matters a lot to us, there is not only the application of energy but also a lot of dissipation of energy.

Have you not noticed that?

Have you ever seen a man trying hard to arrange or manage or execute something that is really meaningful to him? Have you seen how much energy he wastes, and this wastage, he includes as a part of his application. He says, ‘See how hard I am working’.

The fact is that out of 10 units of time, energy, and attention that you give to the entire work, only 3 or 4 really went into the work. The other part went into worrying about the work, worrying about the consequences, licking your own wounds, shouting…