When I decided to make India a stop on my tour this year, it was to try to find out why Steve Jobs and other famous people like the Beetles attributed their time in India so much to their successes. On the day I was flying out to India, I was discussing with my friend who was giving me a ride to the airport why I chose India. They asked me, if Steve Jobs was so successful and spiritually in-tune, why did so many people not like working with him?  At the time I didn’t have a good answer, but the question stuck in my head. Was it that Steve Jobs didn’t find his success by following his interests and passions, but by using and abusing people like many CEOs of large corporations? I based my trip to India on the fact that Jobs had said it was influential for his career and I was desperately seeking some type of insight into my career path, but was I idolizing the wrong person? Through my time in India, I found an answer to my friends question of the validity of Steve Jobs’ success, an answer which would also prove insightful at a scale beyond just my career path.

First, what comes to mind when you think of someone who is successful? People’s answer to this question will vary slightly but most likely involve an aspect of 1.financial security and status 2. physical appearance and 3. having a spouse with the first trait (if you’re a woman) and the second trait (if you’re a man).  To be a success, one must be head of a multi-million dollar company, liked by all who meet them, have invitations to dinner with royalty, married to someone deemed physically attractive, and have 2.5 kids, all who are in the 95th percentile, and master’s at the cello and signed by a professional sports team at age 12. We rarely judge someones success based on their personal fulfillment, society will always see someone who lives in a log cabin without electricity as less successful as someone in a multi-million dollar house.

I spent a year living in the UK and couldn’t believe how much people were limiting themselves based on societal ideals (probably a problem in every first world area including my home, but easier to see as a foreigner coming in). From going to a proper pre-school to living in the right neighborhood to having a specific accent to looking to the royals for what to wear, lives were cookie cutter and full of how things needed to be done, leaving no room for people to follow their intuition and find true personal success outside the box. I found it interesting coming across an article studying graduates from Universities across the UK, how those who went to lower class Universities had more career and financial success than those at the prestigious ones. Why? Because the graduates from the lower class grew up with less of the pressure of the “proper” (and often expensive) way to approach life, and could think outside the box. More of these graduates started up their own businesses and took career risks, while the prestigious grads having had their life mapped out for them since birth didn’t have the same out of box thinking style required to be successful once out into the world. Having a strong ideal of what success looks like and how to achieve it ultimately inhibited ever being successful. Now what does any of this actually have to do with my time in India, spirituality, and Steve Jobs?

Lots. These ideals and mimicry of deemed successful attributes are not only limited to the un-spiritual western world, but very prevalent in the world of spirituality. In India this mimicry was often very visible, with physical appearance closely tied with spiritual practice. In the Hindu culture, the color saffron color represented purity and non-attachment and thus saffron colored robes were worn by many following the path of spirituality (or pretending to for begging reasons). I seemed to be the only one who found the irony of being attached to wearing a color to symbolize non-attachment completely comical. If one has reached the spiritual state of non-attachment to the material world, would what color they wear remotely concern them? There is also a strong stigma around a spiritual master and what they can and cannot do; they must be celibate, have no earthly desires, and can never make a mistake. We hold on to these almost impossible ideals of what is necessary to be spiritual, then find ourselves discouraged when we fail to meet them. We think we should see white light and auras, talk with other consciousnesses, and have no desires when we reach a spiritual state, and in our journey when we don’t experience these things we worry and think we are not on the right track.

These spiritual ideals are no different than the western ideals of success, and their impact on our lives and actions are one of the same (we just think we are better off than the guy taking a loan out to buy a fancy new car). The ideals lead us astray and away from our intuition. Spirituality has many different faces, and wearing a orange robe chanting mantras everyday will not make you more spiritual if the reason for the action is based in fear. Many people will feel stuck in their life and/or spiritual practice and think that is has nothing to do with their actions, that it is the universe playing some cruel joke or that they are just destined to lead an average life. Being stuck is actually a sign your making the wrong decisions, rather than your choices being based on your intuition and personal truth they are shrouded with what you think is needed. Its like solving a basic math problem, but instead of reading that its a + sign, you think its a – sign as someone told you their problem had been a +. Though you are trying to solve the problem, you are only getting further from the answer. The problem is not changing or getting harder with every attempt you make, you just keep repeating the same mistake and getting frustrated that you still haven’t gotten the right answer without ever properly reading the question.

So should we really be looking at Steve Job’s external life as a measure of his success? Is a spiritual master less of a master if he doesn’t walk around in an orange robe? What I realized what the most important was to look at how he lived life. He never set out with the intention to become a billionaire, and that is probably the biggest reason he did end up so financially successful. He didn’t build any of his products with the goal of making the most profit he could, he made the products as innovative as possible with a complete disregard for costs. He did the best he could in that moment without thinking of what future gains or falls it might bring (and yes, some of his choices ended up being poor, but instead of regretting them he saw them for the value they served for learning). As per being liked by his peers, from a psychological standpoint one of the first signs of success will be having people strongly dislike you. Dislike has nothing to do with the person you have that feeling towards, but stems from yourself. To have a strong dislike of a person is a reflection of yourself, that person is exhibiting a trait you hold yourself back from embracing. Many find themselves jealous of successful people following their dreams and passions as they are too afraid to follow their own.

What I learned is to let go of the idea of what success or spirituality looks like, to learn as much as I can at every opportunity without wondering when and how it might benefit me in the future. To make choices based on the best I can do at the present moment in time, not basing a choice for some possible outcome that may come as a result. How often we think in stories when making decisions in any aspect of our life; if I do this, then this will happen, then this will happen, then this, and then I will be happy. Lots of times this happens subconsciously if we haven’t put the self work in and started to understand the basis of why we do and think what we do. How often do things go to plan and we even get to that second story layer, the first then this will happen? Never. Life is unpredictable and changes rapidly. All we can do is make the best choice right now.