Is Compartmentalization Really a Good Thing?

This is an automated transcript and may contain minor errors.

Vipin: Hi everyone. Welcome to another episode of Upbuilding the Self. So we all do it to some degree, compartmentalizing different aspects of our lives, keeping work separate from home, emotions separate from logic, or certain relationships separate from others.

And on the surface, it can seem like a very useful strategy for staying focused. Avoiding conflict or just getting through the day. But what happens when compartmentalization goes too far? When we start to lose connection between the different parts of ourselves today, we're diving into the dangers of compartmentalization.

Why we do it, when it helps, when it starts to work against us. And most importantly, how can we start living with more integration and wholeness? So I'm here with my partners, Hari Prasada, and Rasanath, and we are going to unpack this together. It's great to be with you, and I'm very excited to talk about the topic.

Likewise, especially because I've often thought about my skill in compartmentalizing, and so I'm a little nervous. That I won't be looking at it the same way after this conversation. So let's start with what do we mean by compartmentalizing and why do people do it?

Hari Prasada: Compartmentalizing is when we take one aspect of our lives or ourselves, and we put it neatly in a compartment where we don't have to deal with it.

That's really all it is. It's just taking something that is facing us and saying, I'm not gonna face this. I'm gonna put it over here and I'm just gonna move on. Period.

Vipin: That seems like a useful strategy in certain cases, to the question of why do people do it? Maybe because I have other things to do that I have to attend to, and so it would make sense to put something in a compartment.

As long as I return to it at some point,

Hari Prasada: yes, it would seem that way. We're going to unpack why it is not exactly what it seems.

Vipin: Okay. What would you say about why people do that?

Hari Prasada: It's a coping mechanism.

It's something which helps us get through life. And that's very understandable. That's even sympathetic. There is a cost to the coping mechanism, especially the less conscious it is. But there's even exceptions to that. Like you had mentioned just a moment ago that you feel good about your skill in compartmentalizing, so that is conscious and the pride in that skill.

It comes with, well, first of all, pride is, is not a quality of the real self when it's all about me, centered on me, me, me. But second of all, and I know you're also very much being humble, vivin. So this is not about you, but you're kindly making yourself vulnerable about a way that you've tended to be in the past before working on yourself so seriously.

And. Yeah, that pride doesn't really belong, but it also brings with it other obstacles because we get habituated. We get habituated to a way of being that is unnatural and it's blocking out what actually is facing us instead of facing it.

Vipin: So very helpful as a start to understand what we mean by compartmentalizing, and maybe you guys could share some common ways that people compartmentalize without even realizing it.

So we have some examples of what we're talking about. Raanana, what would you share about common ways that people compartmentalize?

Rasanath: From my personal experience. I have done a lot of compartmentalization over my life, even without recognizing I didn't have the vocabulary of compartmentalizing until I heard about compartmentalizing, and it was used in a context of how you should be very good at compartmentalizing, which then I felt very good about myself because I have done it this for long in my life.

But over time, something that actually directly put into me was how skillfully I could compartmentalize my shame. The emotion of shame. As an example, when I'm in a meeting and I offered a point and I didn't get the reaction from the room, I experienced a sense of insignificance in the room, and then my psyche is actually working to do something at that point to counteract that feeling.

But I still working very hard. So the first thing that I do is. When I experienced the pinch of shame, put it aside because I have to make a comeback.

Vipin: I was thinking, you have to make another point.

Rasanath: You have to make another point. But now how I make that other point doesn't have the same freedom in the sense that it is not meant to now enhance the necessarily enhanced.

The collective agenda of what's going to happen. Now, it has taken on a, a very different form. It can still guide itself as well. I just wanna serve this team, which is usually how compartmentalization is justified. It needs to be holier than what it looks like, right? Otherwise, it's hard to consciously do it, so it has to be disguised.

But now I'm making a comeback. I'm trying to make a comeback, so. Now that compartmentalization is essentially serving some sort of performance that I need to cater to, and I gave the context of a meeting, but that same principle applies to so many different places in life as an example of how we compartmentalize emotions.

Vipin: I really appreciate this example and my follow up question to you is what would that same scene look like if you were not compartmentalizing? You make a point you don't receive the kind of validation that you were hoping for. You feel some shame, some insignificance. Now, what's the do-over where you are not compartmentalizing?

What does that look like?

Rasanath: The first thing I have to realize and acknowledge is I'm feeling ashamed. It's actually living right now.

Vipin: So it's an explicit awareness of it, but often something you're reacting to without awareness. I.

Rasanath: It's an explicit awareness and an acknowledgement of it, a personal acknowledgement of it.

Now, usually when you acknowledge it, there is a way in which it's possible that the acknowledgement will instantaneously overwhelm you, and which then I'm just peeling out everything that's going on at that point in time. Right now, when you get overwhelmed, then you are no longer in the meeting both for yourself and for the rest of the team.

You're no longer actually present to do what needs to be done. So many times you have to ask yourself the question, well, what is the best thing that I can actually do in the service of the team and myself? And that's a very important question to ask. And sometimes the response to that would be, you know, I probably should just sit back and really listen to what people are saying.

So that meant maybe I can contribute. More effectively. Sometimes it may look like I can't let this overwhelm me at this point because I have to be paying attention to what's going on because I will have to respond to certain questions that are being asked of me in this room. So let me set it aside, but I have to come back to it to really understand it deeper.

So that it doesn't just unconsciously live in my system. So there is a commitment that you need to make at that point to return to what you're setting aside. Yeah. There's not a suppression of it. There is not a suppression. There is also not an avoidance of it. It's not a permanent locked away because we can't really lock things away.

They just show up in other ways. And this is, we'll talk about one of the harmful effects of compartmentalization. So. There are different ways in which we can work with what is coming in a healthier way that doesn't avoid or suppress.

Vipin: Very, very helpful to hear you play this scenario in two different ways.

Uh, I really appreciate that and I think what, what you said. That's an example that you could play out a hundred times over with different emotions in different settings. But that's kind of happening a lot when we think about compartmentalizing. So you are already pointing to how it can become harmful, and we're gonna go much more in that direction.

But before we do, when can compartmentalizing be helpful?

Rasanath: This is where I wanted to just touch upon a nuance here. So going back to the example that I gave, I. Sometimes, many times when we talk about not compartmentalizing, and the examples that I shared with the examples that I shared, the typical way in which it can be received is, oh, so are you saying that I should speak about my emotions immediately?

Are you saying that I should just say, okay, let's pause this meeting because I have this thing and you know that I really needed to share, and I'm gonna say, well, you know, I'm just gonna share it so that it's not compartmentalized again. That may also not be appropriate. So the question that we have to ask ourself here is, and this is a very important question, what will really serve everybody around me and myself at this point in time?

And the question that is attached to it is, when will I then honestly look at what I experienced So when we don't ask those two questions. Then we tend to respond to what we are experiencing at that point in time, inappropriate way, it doesn't really serve anybody.

This leads to your question, well, when is compartmentalization helpful? And my immediate answer would be never because by the sheer dent of compartmentalization, there is a conscious and and unconscious notion that I'm not gonna deal with what I experienced at that point in time. But setting aside something in the service of what is needed at that point in time is a very different approach that is not compartmentalization because that emotion still lives.

What I choose to do with that emotion is to handle it differently in the sense it is still a part of me. I've acknowledged it and I'm going to go back to it to actually integrate the full experience that I had. So I would say it's suspension and not com compartmentalization. There is a difference between the two.

Hari Prasada: See, life doesn't just fit neatly into different compartments that I can put away and, you know, not have to deal with. It's not the way that things work. So when we're talking about being present. That's not the same as compartmentalization. Doing a meditation doesn't mean like, oh yeah, I'm really good at compartmentalization, so I'm a really good meditator, or something like that.

Being present is not the same thing. You may have to choose to not let something disturb you in the moment so that you can be fully there and as Rasanath was saying, serve best. That doesn't mean, oh, I'm good at compartmentalizing. That might be very painful for you to do. I know it is for me, but it is required.

It's a worthy sacrifice, and it's not about suppressing or avoiding compartmentalizing in the way that we are talking about it as we understand it. It means always necessarily there's some suppression or avoidance, so then it's never a good thing, but. To decide, I'm not going to deal with this right now, or I'm going to try not to let it affect me, or I'm going to acknowledge that it is affecting me and try to do my best to be freer so that I can serve.

That is not the same thing, and that's not. Pretending that I can put that neatly in a box it, it doesn't work. So what we're talking about is that tendency, first of all, unconsciously as a defense mechanism, a coping mechanism, and then potentially even consciously that, oh yeah, yeah, yeah. I'm not going to deal with this.

I'm really good at plowing forward. No, no, no. That's not what we want. What we want is to acknowledge, okay, I don't wanna be dwelling in this. I don't want to be consumed by it. It's affecting me. And there's another way here I can try to acknowledge and loosen its grip on me. And as Raad mentioned, in many cases, that means setting a time to deal with it.

In other cases, and there are many of these cases as well, it's not setting a time to deal with it. Why? Because this is sort of just life. We're affected by things all the time. We couldn't possibly deal with every little thing that's affecting us. So we just have to acknowledge it and say, ah, you know what?

I don't wanna let this hold me back. Let me try my best.

Vipin: Okay, so you both are aligned. Your answer to this question, when can compartmentalizing be helpful as never. And so you've also succeeded in already dismantling my notion of skillfulness in compartmentalizing that I was, uh, I had, uh, some.

Premonition that this would come maybe very soon in this, but I feel I have the company, I have Ross, not your company, of also being a skillful compartmentalizer at some point in your life. So, okay, so now we've established that compartmentalizing is never helpful, but then let's get more into what are some of the biggest dangers.

Rasanath: my personal experience is the loss of your heart, and it happens ever so silently because by the definition of compartmentalization, when we don't return to those parts that are experiencing certain emotions.

Then they get suppressed, they get pushed down below. And then over time, just imagine how many parts of the heart just silently disappear that way. And

Hari Prasada: are these always issues of the heart?

Rasanath: For me, compartmentalizing in many times usually has to deal with our own emotions. Sometimes when we say compartmentalize certain relationships, it's also because certain relationships are more difficult to deal with, so they still bring up emotions at its core level.

Ultimately, compartmentalization has to do with challenging emotions that we experience internally, and when we don't return back to integrate them, to understand them and integrate them, essentially they become disintegrated, which means we are living a disintegrated life.

Vipin: Can you say more about an emotion that becomes disintegrated?

Rasanath: when we compartmentalize, we are not going back to then open the compartment and seeing, okay, what's in here and how do I actually bring this back, process it in a healthy way so that this compartment.

Doesn't exist anymore.

Vipin: Let me just ask you a question. So let's take the example you gave earlier, the shame compartment, but you may experience shame a hundred times in a week. So then, I mean, meaning not you one, I should say one may experience. And so then when you're talking about this disintegration or that you sort of don't return to it, are you saying that typically once we put.

The experience of shame in a compartment, then every time we experience that emotion, we put it in the same compartment

Rasanath: To me many times we don't even know we are dealing with the same emotion. We don't even know what we are dealing with. we essentially box instances and our typical way of returning to them is, I don't explore the emotion necessarily. I explore the strategy.

I should have said this, instead of saying that, that is the, uh, replaying of the instance. Is usually like, okay, this is what I should have done. That's the lesson learned. Next time, that's what I'm going to do.

Vipin: I've certainly done that.

Hari Prasada: I mean, lesson learned is a good thing, and figuring out the strategy is a good thing.

But when it is done outside of understanding what is confronting me, what am I going through, doing it unemotional without my heart, then it becomes. Just a way of feeding my ego and divorcing myself further from myself.

Rasanath: So many times I compartmentalize instances, and so there are many instances that I've compartmentalized, essentially dealing with the same core emotion, but I've just compartmentalized instances.

And one of the reasons why that is how it happens is because I'm refusing to look at the core emotion. Sometimes I go back to those instances and I figure out a strategy. But what is interesting is it is still compartmentalized because I have avoided something. I have avoided looking at something.

I wanna add something to this portrait. So when you think about compartmentalizing. Many times we're thinking like, no. But I do go back to the compartments. You know, I have my work compartment, I have my home compartment, and I just switch them off seamlessly, and it's great.

Hari Prasada: It works really well, and I just keep going back to them, so I'm dealing with it. What we're missing is what else is getting compartmentalized, which is, as we've been speaking about our hearts. Why it's so seamless, quote unquote, as we like to convince ourselves that it is, is because our hearts are not in it.

When our hearts are in it, it's never seamless. It's always messy. Everything that has to do with our heart is messy, period. It cannot be any other way. Emotions are complex. They're layered, multifaceted, overwhelming as we've been speaking about. They make me feel things I feel uncomfortable to feel, and for many of us, we feel uncomfortable to feel period.

What to speak of at work when you're told you shouldn't be feeling. You should just do right. A culture of compartmentalization where we're all complicit and we think it's the greatest thing. It's such a skill. That's how we get a lot done.

So this idea of clean compartmentalization is a myth, and as soon as you think that it's seamless. That is the clue that we're buying into a myth. That means we've compartmentalized our hearts in addition to our work life and our home life or whatever else we're compartmentalizing these relationships versus those.

If it's clean like that, we're missing our hearts. It cannot be any other way.

Vipin: When we introduced this topic, we introduced it as the danger. Of compartmentalizing, and as I'm listening to you both thinking, actually we could have called this how to process your emotions out of the dangers of compartmentalizing.

And I was thinking about how our kids are in school having all this social emotional learning about how to name emotions and process them. But most of us, even with all that education, we don't really figure out how to do it because there's enough. Conditioning in the environment to get us to not, well, first of all, we never learned that in our generation, but even now, I wonder, I was thinking as I'm listening to, I really want my kids to listen to this episode.

I, I hope they will do it because there's so much in it for them. Hearing you both talking about what does it mean to compartmentalize the heart

Rasanath: that it happens, uh, I see that happening in many times. Our oldest She's five and a half, and there are certain things that I know she doesn't like doing because she doesn't like failing.

And then she will actually make `excuses as to why that shouldn't be done at this time, and they're very thoughtfully given. It is amazing to see how the arguments are so well, so clear. So clear, so well and so well presented I would say. And. One of the things that she knows when she presents them to me is she's also, I can see she's afraid of that being dismantled.

And so what she'll do, she'll present it until she'll say, okay, but I really need to be honest. I really need to be honest. I'm afraid of doing, 'cause I think I'll fail. And then I tell her, well, when you fail, you experience something called shame. And what I want you to do is to actually name it and talk about it and understand why I.

That's the new phase that we are starting to develop in our relationship that we have to talk about because I understand that shame is a, it's going to be an emotion that she'll have to make lifelong friendship with.

Hari Prasada: How amazing to have a father like you. And it must be challenging for her to present her arguments at the same time, which means she's becoming even better at doing so.

Rasanath: And you know what? She doesn't have when she's not slept enough. She'll usually tell me, go away. Go away. And it's very strong. She'll say, go away, because she feels very confronted and she's upset.

Vipin: We get that with our children, but I associate that with something else.

Rasanath: So to your point, I think it takes a long time for us to learn how to work with these emotions, right?

How to work, how to process in real time. Without it actually being like this big thing, you know, that that just spoils the party, so to say. There is a way in which when you have to develop the muscles of recognizing, naming, holding, being able to process it real time so that you can show up to serve well.

Hari Prasada: I want to take this even further. So Vipin, you said. You may experience shame a hundred times a week, and Rasanath, you humbly said, I do. I do. Really what we're talking about there is conscious instances of shame, not shame itself. Shame itself is happening all the time, and for some people, even more than for others.

More as a central force than for others, but shame is there for all of us all the time. The question is how is it affecting us and are we aware of it? Compartmentalization is, yeah, I don't need to know. I don't need to know. I'm good. Look, see, that's how good I am. I don't even need to know what I don't know because I'm so good.

Rasanath: Thank you. What is in interesting about the instances of shame is the fact that those instances are so painful because I'm unaware of how I'm experiencing them all the time. They have to be brought out by an instance, so the compartmentalization has already happened and the instances are only bringing them to the fore.

Hari Prasada: Like knocking on your door. I'm still here. I. Yes. Now, why is the shame present all the time? Because we are not our egos. We are not the identity of who we think we should be. We are something else. We are the self. We're the core that is completely different from all of these projections that we want to prove and defend to be enough in this world.

Completely different. So we will always feel shame because we are never who we purport to be. We are trying to pretend we are these identities, and it's never convincing enough. So there is always shame, and how do we know that It's never convincing enough, even for the person who's killing it in the world, because you have to keep doing more and more and more and more, and if you pay attention to the rest of your life, you'll see how the shame is leaking out.

Again. I often think about celebrities and how they make it look so good so many times. Just examine a little bit what's going on behind the scenes and you'll see it's not what it seems like I was saying at the beginning. Compartmentalization is not what it seems. Our whole world is made up of people compartmentalizing and being rewarded for it, and blocking out the shame of not being who I think I should be as my ego.

Vipin: We've been speaking about how this can be dangerous. so if we've compartmentalized our hearts and we have a lot of unprocessed emotion there, what's the effect of that on our relationships and what's the effect of that on our sense of self?

Rasanath: It's layers and layers of forgetfulness. And think about calcification, right? Think about how when you have repeatedly compartmentalized, there is a price that you pay when you compartmentalize, which is.

You are detaching yourself from the heart. The heart is the conduit for relationships. The heart is the conduit for experiencing my sense of identity. The heart is the conduit for experiencing a sense of belonging. And so when each time we compartmentalize, when we are cutting off parts of our heart, really not processing it and reintegrating it, we are left with very little to experience any of the three that I mentioned, our sense of identity, our sense of belonging.

Our connection and relationships, which makes us a shell of a person. Really, that's what we live with. We live as a shell, which is why we also experience this. Sometimes when we interact with people, we can't experience the real human, what we experience this shell, and while the shell can be very amped up and project energy, and then everybody then gets amped up by the projection, the sense of connection, actual connection.

The sense of actual belonging doesn't really happen.

Hari Prasada: Essentially what's happening here is we settle. We settle for what is good enough. We settle for what is pleasant enough and easy enough or where I have a lot of momentum in my life already.

And yeah, I can work my butt off. Yeah, I can do all kinds of things that people are like, how on earth did you do that? Potentially, or I survive. Things that people wonder, how on earth did you survive that? But that stuff is relatively safer and therefore more within my wheelhouse. Then the actual work of discovering who I am and being that.

So when we compartmentalize, what we're doing is we're settling. We're settling for a shallow version of reality,

Vipin: This has gotten really serious all of a sudden. And, and it's very sad also, uh, very much a reality check.

I felt that emptiness when you were talking about how we can become a shell of a person. And it, I was thinking about the what nu you shared connection, identity, and belonging. And I was thinking about how much we crave belonging. We do so many things to try to find belonging. But if you're saying we're cutting off our hearts, we're cutting off important parts of ourselves that help us feel that belonging, it's directly counter to what we're seeking.

Rasanath: Yes. And also at a certain point when we have done enough number of times, we don't even know how to go back. See, that's when it gets really sad because it is just the enormity of it. Like what I have to do to really like look at it. Just becomes so overwhelming that I'd rather choose to live my life this way.

Just keep moving forward, just keep moving forward than numb. I just numb myself. This is the, essentially it's, there's no real life there. And you know what's crazy? I'll be very functional in this world, but I become that is is precisely the definition of a robot. I'll be very highly, very functional, but there is really no trace of, uh, the humanness anymore.

It's a shell.

Vipin: You hear this a lot when it comes to, someone might be feeling this way about their career, their professional trajectory, but to look at it very closely would be very scary. And so instead, I'll just keep trucking on instead of acknowledging that. I find no purpose or no meaning, no satisfaction in what I'm doing, and instead of opening that box, I'd rather keep it closed than just proceed in the hopes that I will never actually have to contend with this.

Same thing in relationships that can happen in, uh, intimate relationships for long, long, long periods of time. And it's, it's safer not to really open the box

Rasanath: and then. It colors my perception of life in such a way that I'm giving that advice to other people too. Right? Yeah. This is just life. It's nihilistic.

It actually becomes nihilistic because that's how, that is actually, that starts to become my experience of life because the heart is not, the, no, heart is really not present anymore.

Hari Prasada: We're all reinforcing a culture of compartmentalization wherein we take our hearts out of it, and then we all collectively are responsible for the consequences of that.

That like, yeah, it's a functional world, lot happens, but you see also all the dysfunction and a lot of the times it's trying to be hidden, but it's in vain. It's in vain, and it's not fulfilling. It's a world that we sort of tacitly agree to settle for, as I mentioned earlier, and then we think there cannot be anything else.

Or if we deem that there could be something else, it's too hard, or this is another thing that happens, that we get a little taste of something in the right direction where. We have an emotional exchange and we think, oh, that's it. No, wait a minute. There's much more to this discovering who we actually are, embodying the self.

So much more than just like the flickering pleasure we get from having an emotional experience. That is not the goal. The goal is not to have emotional experiences of life to uncover. The self is so much bigger and so much more powerful than that infinitely. So.

Vipin: So you both have mentioned how it can be difficult to go back.

We've done this over a period of time. We become numb. How can we start integrating the different parts of our lives in a healthier way so that we're more in touch with our real self

Hari Prasada: It always starts the same way. We have to see what we're doing. First, we have to see the habitual way that we're operating and own it. So C, oh yeah, we are compartmentalizing. Aha. There may be some consequences to that. How is that showing up in my life? And then I have to own that I'm doing this and that it's creating these consequences.

That's the only way that there's any skin in the game and there's any reality to the kind of move away from compartmentalization towards an integrated life. Without that, life will just take over. Everything else will be more urgent and important.

Start with practicing how to not compartmentalize in a situation where you see it coming up, or especially take a pattern where you're repeatedly compartmentalizing. Then C, what would it look like to not compartmentalize there? Do I have the courage to try that on?

Now, of course, there's situations where people expect you to compartmentalize so hardcore, like our workplaces, for example. So maybe you don't wanna start with the hardest. Thing, but everything can be done without compartmentalizing, and that's where we want to get to. Being able to show up. I mean, this is now a buzzy thing, like showing up as your real self at work.

That's not your real self by the way, but that because we have shut our hearts down so much, people are waking up to the fact that, yeah, yeah, we should go more in that direction towards, at least towards. Being more ourselves. And so that's a good thing. But there is a way to be in this world and acknowledge what's happening without avoiding and suppressing.

It's really that simple. I can say when I'm in a meeting to myself, I don't have to announce this to the world. I can say to myself, ah, I'm feeling the pain of a conversation that I had with my wife, or I'm feeling. The weight of all of the responsibilities that are on my shoulders at this moment, or I'm feeling afraid of how people are going to look at me in this very moment, or I'm afraid that my life is not mounting to what I was hoping that it would.

All of these things I can acknowledge and then I can still move and do the job. I don't have to plow through and be proud of it. I can actually just say, yeah, that's there. And prayerfully, yes, prayerfully say, I am going to try my best not to let this hold me back. And if you can actually make it a prayer, it's very good.

It's very humbling and it helps a lot. You can get help, grace. So we want that. We want to be able to acknowledge what's happening rather than throw it into a neat compartment and then be proud of plowing forward. That is not something to be proud of.

Rasanath: I very clearly remember when I was going through my training on the Enneagram and.

Teacher Russ Hudson was talking about my specific type on the Enneagram and he said something very powerful that keep very close, and he was saying how the redemption of the type that he was talking about, which is my type, he said they make a commitment that they will never abandon their hearts again.

And I remember the instance when he said that, and the simultaneous sadness and joy. That I experienced hearing that because that's where it all begins. It requires a commitment to actually live fully, honestly. And when we don't make that commitment, then we are actually living dishonest lives, really.

And without that desire, then no work can really begin. The other point that came to my mind, Sal, as you were sharing, is the messages that we send. We have become such a compartmentalized society where we look at family, we look at schools, we look at family, we look at education, we look at work as separate compartments.

The common thread in this is that it's a human being across the board. And the more we continue to look at that as separate, the more we will reinforce the compartmentalization. And when we are saying, well, when you're at work, you have to leave. You can't come in as a human being is the message. What we are emphasizing, which is uh, which is not how we would like to say it, is that you just be subservient.

What is the goal at work? You are just an object to actually realizing what needs to happen, and as long as you continue to stay an object, you will be useful here. The moment you stop being an object, you're done. And when that is the message that gets reinforced in all different ways, even in schools, right?

If you are not performing, if you're not showing up a certain way, then then we don't want you in this place.

Hari Prasada: I think there's a place for if you're not performing, perhaps you don't belong, or even definitely you don't belong.

I think that has to be done with care because first of all, that person is human, and second of all, so worthy of care. If one is human, if one is any living, being is worthy of care, human or not. So first of all, that is there, but then second of all, they're not gonna be happy and fulfilled if they're holding everybody else back.

What? That would be inhuman. Why would you want to hold everybody else back or to not try to realize more of your potential, even if it's just about you, which is not the case, but. Perhaps in a school system, let's say in education, you wanna realize more of your potential. That is a good thing, right? So there has to be some care involved.

We are not meant to be transactional. Nobody would argue that we are meant to be transactional, and yet we argue that the workplace has a very transactional nature to it, and we accept that. We're missing out on what is possible, what is the potential and what actually inspires people, builds trust, gives them more empowerment and motivation to do their best.

So we're actually cheating ourselves from the very thing that we want. We want results. Results, results. How do you get the best results when people are inspired and they can give their hearts? Leadership. Leadership is inspiring people to give their hearts, not in a manipulative way, in a genuine way. So that's really what's at stake in so many ways.

And someone may give the counterpoint, like, let's take the example where we were speaking about this earlier. This was very much in my mind before the podcast recording that a surgeon has to be. Compartmentalizing. Otherwise, how can he or she perform their job? If your emotions are wrapped up in every surgery, you won't be able to do it and what to speak of if you lose patients, my God, you know, how could you do it?

There are so many other examples where this is prominent, but I think a surgeon is a quintessential one. It really is helpful to understand this. Yes, there is a truth to the fact that if you let your emotions hold you back, then you won't be able to do your job. But that's exactly what we're not talking about.

We're not saying let your emotions hold you back. Dwell in it. Dwell in it. Dwell in it. Be dysfunctional because your emotions are paralyzing you. No, what we're saying is care. Be with your heart and then do what is best with your heart when you're performing a surgery. If you're a surgeon, you do it with that care, with that heartfelt motivation.

The problem is we get so jaded we don't even think that that would be good. We think, oh, that would be, that's the danger is if we were to perform surgery with our hearts. No, the danger is that we don't. That is a healing profession. Healing means with my heart. It's really that spirit that is most healing, and this is why in the Veda culture, which is a spiritual culture, the culture of the Bhagavan Gita, where we understand the path to attaining the self, that up build is really based on in that culture.

Surgeons or doctors always had to be extremely refined, heartfelt, thoughtful people who were leaders of society by example. They were so fully inhabiting themselves that they could heal other people through that dedication, that commitment, that expertise, and that care that the other could feel So. We know that a child without hair will die without the spirit of care.

If it's transactional, the child will die. Why do we think it should be so different when we're adults? This goes for all spheres of life. I'm just giving the example of a surgeon because it's so pointed. Why do we think it's okay? There is so much untapped potential here. If we stop compartmentalizing and we start moving towards who we are, which is a spiritual thing and requires spiritual frameworks and practices, then we will realize increasingly that potential, that's the path.

Vipin: So if I'm listening to this and I'm thinking, okay, what's one step that I can take today to not abandon my heart?

Can you give us some guidance? That feels like it can feel amorphous. It can also feel really big. How do I take one step in this direction?

Hari Prasada: Very simple. Very simple. Don't deny the consequence of compartmentalizing. Humbly accept that I'm doing this because I'm afraid. Because I'm afraid of the emotions.

I'm afraid of the overwhelm. I'm afraid of all the things that I'm not looking at. That immediately puts you in touch with your heart. When you can feel the fear and the shame and the discomfort, when you can viscerally feel that and be humbled by it, you are in touch with your heart. You can't fake that.

Vipin: Thank you. Thank you both so much for this conversation. This was certainly a conversation that I didn't anticipate for where we started, where we would end, and I really appreciate the gravity of what. You both are, are sharing how relevant it is for every single person, not just those of us who tend to ha pride ourselves on our ability to compartmentalize.

I feel very motivated to follow Russ Hudson's advice to you, Rasanath, which is do not abandon your heart.

Never for a moment, abandon your heart So thank you both so much for your wisdom and your experiences and for everything that you've taught me and anyone who's listening.