How to stay motivated

When I am demotivated, when I face some failure, when things don't work out or take too long, how do I keep myself motivated in life?

Sadhguru: If we motivate ourselves or get motivated by someone, there could always be someone else who will demotivate us. If something flips us up, something can always flip us down. What motivation means is that you build a false sense of confidence. One seeks confidence only where the necessary clarity is missing. Where there is clarity, you do not need confidence. If I ask you to walk somewhere where it's well-lit, you don't need any confidence. But if I ask you to walk where it's dark, suddenly people need confidence because there is no clarity.

Unfortunately, people have begun to believe that confidence is a substitute for clarity. No, there is no substitute for clarity. If we do not strive to bring clarity in our lives, if we try to live our lives on a puffed up sense of confidence, someone is always going to prick it and bring it down – or life situations will do it anyway. Let's say you were at work, and someone said you are the most wonderful human being on the planet. Then you floated up to cloud "whatever number". Then you came home and people told you who you really are – down it goes!

It is very important that individual human beings should strive to bring clarity to every dimension of their life. If we try to run on confidence, which is motivated either by situations, people or whatever we think we are going to get at the end of the race, this motivated confidence will always come down. This is not a substitute for clarity. Clarity is the only way if one has to walk through this life with ease. Clarity does not just come to you as a gift. It is something that we have to work at. There is a whole system of how to bring clarity, but because our education systems have become a heap of information, we are now trying to run on confidence. If our education system was about sharpening the tools of our perception, then we would definitely have come to clarity. It is very important that as individual human beings, you invest towards bringing clarity to your life.