A Renewed Sense of Exuberance for the New Year writes Sadhguru

Sadhguru: If you look at life in its full depth and dimension, life is a certain amount of space. If you look at life in a linear fashion, life is a certain amount of time. If you look at life from your psychological perspective, life is a certain number of problems. Every day I meet all sorts of people and the variety of problems they have is unbelievable. Birth is a problem, death is a problem, and in between there are a series of problems.

Now, a new year is coming. This is the choice you have: are you going to invest your thought, emotion and energy towards making up problems or creating solutions? This does not mean you have to take a resolution to stop creating problems.

There is no need to make any resolutions. You make a resolution because you want to do something you are not naturally inclined towards. But the simple thing is, are you naturally inclined to be joyful or miserable? Think about when you were a child – you were joyful. Someone had to make you unhappy. The natural inclination of life is for pleasantness and exuberance.

So how joyful shall you be in the coming year? Just keep accounts. Many people who are in business think they should keep accounts only for the sake of Income Tax. No, you keep accounts because otherwise you do not know whether you are making a profit or a loss. To know whether you are moving forward or backwards, you need an account book. Just check at the end of the day, “Am I a little more joyful today than yesterday?” If you had done this since you were five years of age, you would have been ecstatic by now.

Every day, every month, just keep accounts, “Am I becoming more joyful or less joyful?” There are only two things to keep track of – how joyful you are and how much joy you give to people around you. People are keeping accounts of their money but the real wealth of life is how joyful you are, how wonderful and profound your experience of life is.

This is our time on this planet. Are we going to make this into an exuberant, joyful, wonderful planet, or are we going to make this into a miserable, horrible one? We are free to do this either way – the choice is yours.

Ranked amongst the fifty most influential people in India, Sadhguru is a Yogi, mystic, visionary and a New York Times bestselling author. Sadhguru has been conferred the Padma Vibhushan by the Government of India in 2017, the highest annual civilian award, accorded for exceptional and distinguished service. He is also the founder of the world’s largest people’s movement, Conscious Planet – Save Soil, which has touched over 3.9 billion people.