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2021: Creating a Lexicon of Future
Z is for Zero
Flipping the Script: From ‘Hero’ to ‘Zero’
When Gandhi went to London to negotiate with the monarchy regarding India’s release, a British journalist asked him: “what is your secret?”
In other words, how does a 90 pound Hindu ascetic with homespun clothes and no shoes bring the largest empire in history to its knees?
Gandhi’s answer was simply 6 words: “I strive to make myself zero.”
By “zero”, Gandhi was referring to arriving at a place of such selfless love that each thought, word and deed was motivated wholly by the welfare and well-being of others, and not for his own gratification. He didn’t claim to have arrived at that place, in fact he often admitted quite the opposite, but he was striving.
I believe this is the missing link in leadership today.
One does not arrive at “zero” without a significant amount of inner work.
It requires letting go of the need for validation and approval (quite a task in today’s social media world), and abandoning the need for self-aggrandizement. This is especially difficult — and now even more important — in our celebrity-centric culture that would have us believe that contribution follows significance, instead of Gandhi’s paradigm: significance is the unsought-for-by-product of contribution. ~ The Secret to Gandhi’s Power: Element Zero
