Manager's Mental Health

Sound mental health is the very goal of any human activity more so management. An expert describes sound mental health as that state of mind which can maintain a calm, positive poise or regain it when unsettled in the midst of all the external vagaries of work life and social existence. Internal constancy and peace are the pre- requisites for a healthy stress-free mind.
Some of the impediments to sound mental health are :
* Greed -for power, position, prestige and money.
* Envy -regarding others' achievements, success, rewards.
* Egotism -about one's own accomplishments.
* Suspicion, anger and frustration.
* Anguish through comparisons.

The driving forces in today's rat-race are speed and greed as well as ambition and competition. The natural fallout from these forces is erosion of one's ethico-moral fibre which supersedes the value system as a means in the entrepreneurial path like tax evasion, undercutting, spreading canards against the competitors, entrepreneurial spying, instigating industrial strife in the business rivals' establishments etc. Although these practices are taken as normal business hazards for achieving progress, they always end up as a pursuit of mirage -the more the needs the more the disappointments. This phenomenon may be called as yayati-syndrome.

In Mahabharata we come across a king called Yayati who, in order to revel in the endless enjoyment of flesh exchanged his old age with the youth of his obliging youngest son for a mythical thousand years. However, he lost himself in the pursuit of sensual enjoyments and felt penitent. He came back to his son pleading to take back his youth. This yayati syndrome shows the conflict between externally directed acquisitions, motivations and inner reasoning, emotions and conscience.

Gita tells us how to get out of this universal phenomenon by prescribing the following capsules.
Cultivate sound philosophy of life.

* Identify with inner core of self-sufficiency
* Get out of the habitual mindset towards the pairs of opposites.
* Strive for excellence through work is worship.
* Build up an internal integrated reference point to face contrary impulses, and emotions
* Pursue ethico-moral rectitude.
* Cultivating this understanding by a manager would lead him to emancipation from falsifying ego-conscious state of confusion and distortion, to a state of pure and free mind i.e. universal, supreme consciousness wherefrom he can prove his effectiveness in discharging whatever duties that have fallen to his domain.

Bhagawan's advice is relevant here :
* "tasmaat sarveshu kaaleshu mamanusmarah yuddha cha"
* 'Therefore under all circumstances remember Me and then fight' (Fight means perform your duties)
* Management Needs those Who Practise what they Preach

Whatever the excellent and best ones do, the commoners follow, so says Sri Krishna in the Gita. This is the leadership quality prescribed in the Gita. The visionary leader must also be a missionary, extremely practical, intensively dynamic and capable of translating dreams into reality. This dynamism and strength of a true leader flows from an inspired and spontaneous motivation to help others. "I am the strength of those who are devoid of personal desire and attachment. O Arjuna, I am the legitimate desire in those, who are not opposed to righteousness" says Sri Krishna in the 10th Chapter of the Gita.