5 May 2016 - QA 4

What is the place of the discipline in life?

Sri Sri Ravi Shankar:

Discipline is essential. Without discipline, nothing can work. At the same time, creativity needs some space. Creativity needs freedom while productivity needs discipline. If you don't have freedom you can't be creative, and if you don't have discipline you can't be productive. So, life is a balance of both - creativity and productivity. You can come up with a great idea, but to realize that idea you need discipline. You know, many young people have great ideas, but they don't have the discipline to translate them into reality. And there are some people who are great managers but they don't have the time to even think about something more. These people cannot rise up to the occasion when there is a crisis, because crisis management requires creativity. Most of our education is not tuned to educate in crisis management. And when we don't know crisis management, there is always some fear and uncertainty. So education should combine these two things in such a manner so that there is a space to create and at the same time a discipline is also followed, because if it is only discipline, it will stifle you. You become so regimental that you cannot do any crisis management. So this is a very fine balance that one has to strike - freedom and discipline.