A thief had been lurking around the shadows for the past week, trying to find the perfect mark. The king’s soldiers had made his job much harder over the past few weeks. Sometimes they disguised as merchants and sometimes beggers to tease him out of his hideout and capture him. The king’s painters had created a hundred sketches and pasted them across town.

All this fame came about because he had recently graduated from robbing small town merchants to a nobleman who happened to be visiting the kingdom. This nobleman visited the king the next day and made a big fuss of being robbed at knifepoint and feeling unsafe. He threatened to return to his native land and inform all traders that they may need to reconsider trading with the king. The king deployed his best soldiers to bring the thief to justice, and the thief had lain low till he ran out of money and food.

Finally, he risked the streets again, and when he did not find any victim, he leaned against a wall and collapsed out of hunger and exhaustion. A few minutes later, a drunkard passed by and saw this thief. He assumed the thief was a fellow drunkard and had passed out after excessive drinking. He checked his pockets for any remaining alcohol and moved on when he could not find any.

Next, a gambler came back after losing all his money at the den. He mistook this thief to be a fellow gambler. He sympathized with him because he assumed the thief was afraid to show his face at home after losing everything. He checked the thief’s pocket for coins and left when he could not find anything.

A few minutes later, a lover with a broken heart walked past him. He loved a dancing girl who was entertaining a different customer today. He was nursing his pain by painstakingly looking at the moon. He mistook the thief for another lover who had lost interest in the world due to heartbreak. He gave the thief a sympathetic look and walked away, crooning a song.

Finally, early in the morning, a saint walked this man. He was rushing to the river to offer prayers to the rising sun and mistook the thief for a Yogi. He mumbled, “This man seems like a true saint. He is lost in the longing for the divine. I am still caught up in all these rituals and far away from god.” He bowed to the thief and returned home to lead a life of devotion and contemplation.

Applying the Story at Work

The modern workplace is one where you are constantly bombarded by feedback. You are given 360 feedback from peers, performance feedback from managers, survey results, personality tests, and many other tools to help with your journey of self-awareness.

All these are fantastic tools, but if you are not careful, you start seeing yourself as a sum of other people’s viewpoints. You spend so much time and energy creating and managing your brand that you are too exhausted to perform your actual job.

I know many people who are paranoid about how they are perceived. It starts when we are young and want to keep our parents happy. Then, we want our friends to love and respect us. We want to be considered “cool.” As we grow up, we evolve to try and ensure the opposite gender finds us attractive. Over time it becomes second nature to forget our true nature and constantly adapt to meet other people’s expectations.

Morgan Housel, the author of the bestseller, Psychology of Money, talks about his experience working as a valet for seven years.

Morgan makes a critical point. Almost everyone spends most of their time thinking about themselves. Yet, they are constantly worried that others are always judging their performance and appearance at work. The truth is that people are too busy with their lives to think about you for most parts. Even when they think about you, it’s tough for them to truly understand you. They can only view you through the lens of their life experience and pass a judgment. The best thing you can do is to be self-aware. Personality tests like NBI and DISC helped me get started, but meditation and Sadhana really helped me go deeper. The self-awareness these practices generated gave me a window into my mind. I could then evaluate feedback critically and choose which items I need to accept or reject mindfully. Most importantly, meditation helped me divorce my self-esteem from other people’s opinions of me.

Esoteric Meaning of the Story

The best way to explain the esoteric meaning of this story is to share another story narrated by my spiritual guru Om Swami.

My guru explained that supreme detachment is the only outcome when you walk the path of Shiva. A typical man dresses up like a king when he gets married. He then wears nice clothes at home for a couple of weeks before descending to shorts and T-shirts.

Lord Shiva did not do any of these things. He went to his wedding wearing the same clothes he wore every day. He took along with an army of Ganas that had always served him. These Ganas had come to him after being shunned by society. He accepted them, and they became his army. He did not leave them behind, thinking they would not be welcome at his wedding. His greatest attribute was his complete detachment, and the divine mother Uma’s greatest attribute was accepting Shiva wholeheartedly for who he was. That’s why she becomes his consort.

He added that the urge to be respected and liked by society is hardwired into human beings. Anyone who has risen above this has achieved Shiva and thus achieved liberation.