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Available for over a year

Imagine being led by someone who puts your needs before their own, who operates with a clear mind, fearlessly does the best thing for the most people, and is motivated and nourished by unconditional love. These are the characteristics of what the Vedas call a Rajarishi - a divinely inspired servant leader. I sometimes catch myself thinking it would be great to have a wider choice when it comes to leaders. But I also think that whether we are choosing for a small team or for a country, we have a lot more input into the quality of our leaders than we realise. Something the pandemic has highlighted is that financial success is not the only thing that’s important to us. But is this a message that we live by, raise our children by and send throughout our communities? Every leader I’ve met in both clinical and personal settings, whether they’re responsible for a nation or an individual is a product of their upbringing, the influence of their peers and the leaders that have gone before them. These influences occur long before anyone takes on any type of leadership role. So, in this way we are all already shaping our leaders long before they know they are going to become one. Many political leaders over the years have expressed how they went into politics to make a difference, but the short-term electoral cycle can frustrate those goals and ideals. I think it’s challenging for anyone not to be distracted by short term loss and gain, but I believe one answer is to nurture the spiritual side of life. The Vedic text the Srimad Bhagavatam speaks about how paying attention to the spiritual paradigm makes us sarve sukhino bhavantu - attuned to other people’s needs; in other words, when we are spiritually healthy we are content within ourselves, we don’t play into fear based decision making and we can then skilfully deflect conflict and misfortune. A more generous society is one which has less need for austerity. Investing in spiritual health I believe is a lifelong process which ideally starts in the womb. I think if we practice it consciously in our homes and communities we might feel happier in ourselves, be more resilient through austerity and enable our leaders to raise standards.