In Chapter 3 of 17 in his 2012 Capture Your Flag interview, leadership philosopher Bijoy Goswami answers "At This Moment in Your Life, Where Are You Seeking Advice and Coaching?" Goswami shares his life model and where he finds himself in it as he continues his journey on understanding his place in the world and how he can realize his potential by living a certain way. Bijoy Goswami is a writer, teacher, and community leader based in Austin, Texas. He develops learning models, including MRE, youPlusU, and Bootstrap, to help others live more meaningfully. Previously, he co-founded Aviri Software after working at Trilogy Software. Goswami graduated from Stanford University, where he studied Computer Science, Economics, and History.
Transcript:
Erik Michielsen: At this moment in your life, where are you seeking advice and coaching?
Bijoy Goswami: you know, I've been on this journey as you’ve been tracking for the last few years and it’s really been interesting, I've realized that, you know, even the last few years I've on a threshold of something very interesting which is, which is what I call Bijoyism or you know, Bijoyist like what is it to be me, you know. What is it to have my own complete philosophy, understanding of the world.
And what I realized is I would go to this sort of three-step process. The, you know, the stage one where you simply live according to other people’s rules. Stage two, you let go of what you’ve been given and then the third stage, you start to really live according to your own aesthetics and your own idea of what is you’re trying to create in the world. So, to me what’s really interesting is, I know a lot of friends who have done that in different aspects of their life, they might be, they might have broken the mold in entrepreneurship, they might have broken the mold in relationships or sexuality or whatever it is and for me it’s just interesting to step fully over that threshold now that all the different pieces have all gotten to this third stage, I feel like.
So, I think what is it to live that fully integrated stage three is really what I'm looking at and I think you have a lot of leadership in stage one, you have a lot of folks that – Stage one is broadly external. How do you create things in the external world, how do you make more money, how do become more powerful, how do you – You do all that. We have a lot of those leaders in that. You have Stage two, which is the spiritual journey broadly speaking. People who have gone in the inner world and I think you have less of the stage three, it is sort of like, it’s like, you know, the population is in this progression. So, I think people like, you know, I think it’s interesting because people like Steve Jobs I think are a stage three person. Where you examine his life, the biography is really great. You look at someone who’s really integrated, you know, spiritual, the material and then he’s creating, he’s just creating, you know.
So, I think it’s interesting because I think there are not as many guides for the stage three way of living and that’s what I'm beginning to curate. It’s like look at how do you – Is there a way to teach that? Is there a way to learn that? Is there a way to articulate it? Who is articulating it? Because most of the time it gets articulated in terms of the other two.