My YOGIST sticky note for "letting go" at work

You can earn a prestigious Ph.D. in psychology from Stanford, grow up in Los Angeles, and become a monk in an ashram on the banks of the Ganges in India! This is the story of Sadhvi Bhagawati Saraswati, 55, who has been living in the Himalayas for more than twenty-five years.

Serving as a true bridge between logic, knowledge, the Western way of life, and the spirituality she has embraced over the years, Sadhvi organizes the International Yoga Festival every year.

One day, while she was teaching during a sat sang (a ceremony in which the “sage” answers questions from practitioners who have come to seek guidance), a visitor asked her a question that might seem trivial. In our daily lives and their most mundane details, “how can we remain calm and zen in all circumstances?” ” Her answer was vivid: “In any situation, you can choose to be right in the face of your spouse, your business partner, your employee, your boss—to prioritize your ego, to try to convince the other person and have your arguments and will prevail, sometimes even going as far as conflict… or decide that this matter is simply too insignificant to make a fuss over.”

Your wife wants to order a pizza, but you’re in the mood for sushi? Your boss wants to use red in this presentation, but you’re convinced that blue would work better? In a world where everything is a matter of choice, where even the smallest hiccup in an organization or a relationship can become a battle for “control,” we forget to prioritize the issues that truly matter or have an impact on us. We no longer choose our battles based on what’s at stake, but let our fearful ego seize every opportunity to reassure itself of its power.

I’ve often reflected on this phrase, and I’ve realized that it resonates with so many situations in my daily life. In my company, I could choose to be right and assert my authority, to control everything to ensure that everything was perfect—at the risk of stifling communication—and sometimes deprive my colleagues of any initiative… or to let go of the less critical aspects

Choose your battles: you need your energy to see through the projects that really matter. There’s no point in wasting it on pointless arguments. Before jumping into a debate, ask yourself clearly whether winning this verbal sparring match really matters, or whether you just want to be right. We often talk about “letting go” without really knowing what that term actually means. Try to identify, among your daily struggles, the ones you don’t want to give up—whether rightly or wrongly.

“Leave your ego and your shoes at the door,” as the sign at the entrance to yoga studios in India reads. When you find yourself in a particularly tense situation, whether professional or personal, try a quick visualization: imagine the two opposing sides as two wrestlers in a tug-of-war: each pulls on one end and uses all their strength to push the other to their limit, to win the match.

All it takes is for one of the two to let go of their end of the rope completely for all the tension to disappear. Before getting into a conflict, take a look at this rope and ask yourself if you really need to win the argument by putting up strong resistance, or if you can ease up without feeling like you’re losing.

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