Six Hats For Fulfilment And Inner Peace

Knowingly or unwittingly, we are constantly striving for lasting fulfilment in all areas of our lives, including home, work, leisure, and more. When we are fulfilled, we experience a sense of sustained contentment, which translates to peace. The Sanskrit words santushti and sukh-shanti capture the essence of this.


Pleasure, on the other hand, is a short-term experience, which brings its share of pain soon after our desires are met. A more sustained sense of fulfilment leads to peace and contentment. Spiritual texts coax us to seek this with an inner focus through meditation, self-inquiry and a gradual enhancement of our inner awareness.


American investor Warren Buffett stresses the importance of building our 'inner scorecard' as opposed to the 'outer scorecard'. This implies that we identify and choose a meaningful purpose, and a vocation suited to our temperament and aptitude. This propels us to engage in what we love. Devotion combined with prudence in choices we make aids us in pursuing our passions; the why of life takes precedence over how. Comparison with others ceases, replaced with a healthy competition with oneself in pursuing and perfecting what we enjoy and love.


Ramana Maharshi emphasises the importance of understanding our true nature in our evolutionary journey. As we know ourselves better, a shift occurs in how we perceive and respond to events and happenings around us. What appeared significant becomes less critical as our focus shifts to the larger canvas of life.


Nature has designed each of us differently. Our innate tendencies significantly influence and impact our decisions and responses to situations. The model of Six Thinking Hats, developed by Edward de Bono, a Maltese physician, is an excellent framework that helps individuals arrive at prudent decisions. He illustrates this with six coloured hats - white denotes logic, yellow represents unconventionality, green signifies venturesomeness, black suggests caution, red underscores empathy, and blue represents balance.


For instance, logic dominates decision-making in individuals who are white hat oriented. People with a preponderance of unconventional and creative traits belong to the yellow hat category. The green hat denotes a dominant trait of venturesomeness and risk-taking. In contrast, the black hat represents an extreme sense of caution and adherence to norms, as found in people who prefer finance and audit professions. The red hat exemplifies people who demonstrate qualities of care and empathy for others.


By symbolically donning each of the hats and adhering to the defined traits, we can arrive at five different solutions to a context. These solutions exhibit five different biases. The blue hat approach helps attain balance, control temper and optimise the five options, overcoming the tendency of innate individual biases. This model enables effective addressing of diverse and challenging professional and personal situations. Ultimately, the guiding philosophy of prudent decision-making lies in understanding ourselves and others through a candid process of introspection.


All spiritual teachings stress the importance of this inward focus and goad us to overcome the habitual tendency to drift externally. The American preacher William Ellery Channing says, "Peace is the fairest form of happiness." This peace is what each of us longs for through fulfilment at work, hobbies, relationships and acquisitions. The more we strive to combine prudence with devotion in any situation, the better our chances of attaining peace and tranquillity.


Authored by: Vijay Vancheswar