I spent almost my entire professional life in sales.
My career began by selling consumer durables across small towns. It involved heavy travelling, meeting new people every day, and explaining why they should buy what I was offering.
Almost ninety percent of my sales calls ended in rejection.
In the beginning, I thought people were rejecting me.
Some days passed without a single sale. I returned feeling disappointed, questioning my own ability. At times, I felt tired enough to wonder whether I was meant for this profession at all.
Fortunately, my seniors had already travelled this road before me.
They never taught me how to avoid rejection. They taught me how to observe it.
They were teaching me about human behaviour. They were revealing assumptions I did not know I was making.
Most of my efficiency came not from the sales I made, but from the sales I lost.
I slowly began storing every rejection in my mind. Each conversation became information. Information slowly became patterns. Patterns became understanding.
I started talking more with customers who refused to buy than with those who agreed immediately. I was no longer looking at rejection as failure.
I began looking at it as an opportunity to reduce my ignorance.
I realized that failure is visible. It tells me exactly where Reality disagrees with me.
Ignorance does not. Ignorance remains silent. It waits, sometimes for years, while I continue believing I understand.
Most of my important lessons never arrived through success. They arrived through outcomes I did not want.
Those outcomes forced me to observe more carefully. Failure became fresh information. That information became understanding. Understanding improved my next decision.
Only much later did I understand another verse from the Bhagavad Gita that described exactly what I had been experiencing.
सुखदुःखे समे कृत्वा लाभालाभौ जयाजयौ ।
ततो युद्धाय युज्यस्व नैवं पापमवाप्स्यसि ॥
Sukha-duhkhe same krtva labhalabhau jayajayau;
Tato yuddhaya yujyasva naivam papam avapsyasi.
“Treat pleasure and pain, gain and loss, victory and defeat alike. Then engage in your work, and in doing so you shall not incur bondage.”
For years, I measured every effort through success and failure. My attention was never fully on understanding reality. It was on protecting myself from failure.
Years later I realized that my sales career had been teaching me the same lesson in a different language.
The moment success inflated me, learning slowed down.
The moment failure discouraged me, learning slowed down again.
Both success and failure had become emotional distractions. Learning required something different. It required the mind to remain available for observation.
Only then could feedback become understanding. Only then could understanding improve my next action.
I slowly realized that the real danger was never failure. Failure was simply reality correcting my assumptions.
The greater danger was ignorance. Ignorance allowed me to repeat the same assumptions without ever questioning them.
Looking back today, I no longer see failure as the opposite of success.
I see it as one of reality’s most honest teachers.
Perhaps the real danger is not failing.
Perhaps the real danger is remaining comfortably ignorant.
—Kartikeya
Inquiry in Silence. Yoga in Practice.
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