Bringing the Laws of Nature to my Corporate Job

6 min readAug 28, 2024

Through personal observation & experimentation, I found that the laws of nature if applied appropriately in the context of my job, provide me with the best outcomes (meaning of best varies within every context).

Law of Rhythm

This law of nature governs all phenomena. I believe the simplest way to perceive this law is through knowing that nothing is permanent and everything has ebbs & flows. Just like the seasons of nature that change through out the year, similarly everything from rise & fall of nations to highs & lows of emotions to cycles of the economy are governed by this law.

In the context of my own job, it informs me to accept that it is not possible to have a highly productive energy through out the days, weeks, months and the year. It is similarly not possible to achieve similar outcomes within each period. Given my energy shifts from active to passive through out the course of the year & even a single day, it is in my best interest to observe those shifts and align tasks/outcomes to the shifts in energy. During periods of high energy which translates into a relatively joyful emotive, I prefer to engage in tasks that are challenging, require most learning and translate into big outcomes. Similarly, during periods of low energy which translates into a lazier emotive, I prefer to do passive tasks which are more operational/admin tasks that I would usually dread in periods of high energy.

This principle also helps me focus on the bigger picture. I am in a Sales role so bringing in revenue for my business is my number one goal. If I loose some revenue for my business today, it can very well turn into future revenue tomorrow so I can intentionally plan for this. The pendulum is always swinging and you can choose to focus on either side of it, without being consumed by either states. Recognizing that there is a down cycle & an up cycle to everything from loosing & winning deals to having low & high productivity.

This principle also helps me manage inter-personal relationships at work whereby instead of reacting to personal grievances, you zoom out & view your emotions like seasons and address conversations with colleagues with a sense of objectivity. For example, a colleague of mine said something to me in a passing comment that infuriated me. Instead of reacting on the spot, I let the anger settle in, and gave it an entire day. I felt it subside, I knew the season had changed within me. With clouds clearing, I realized that it wasn’t something worth being angry at and it was certainly my own personal trigger, not something objectively wrong.

Similarly, it can also help build character by grounding you. If I am successful on any measured criteria of my job, I know I can be unsuccessful tomorrow, because nothing is permanent. Everything has seasons. Embodying this as much as possible helps me to ground my ego when it can go untethered at praises from my seniors or when I have surpassed my goals or when I receive a raise. This is especially true for money — you can have lots of it today but doesn’t mean you can’t loose it all tomorrow. So this law pervades all facets of my life.

Evolution is the single greatest force in nature

While evolution has always been my top value as long as I’ve been aware of values, I began to look into this principle ever more closely since the time I started reading about Ray Dalio. He is one of my idols in life and not for reasons of his financial success, but for reasons of his acute spiritual intellect that he brings to the world of finance. Evolution places the greatest power humankind possesses in your conscious control, the power to change. It invites you to break through the limitations you thought you were born with — it could be a skill, a characteristic, anything really. In psychology, it would translate into having a growth mindset as opposed to a fixed mindset.

The way I would utilize this in my own job is through active learning. Just because I don’t know something today doesn’t mean I also won’t know it tomorrow so I can work on anything that I believe is a challenge towards my career’s progress. Of recent, I’ve been aware of building my product knowledge at work given some of my colleagues remarked that I needed to strengthen my knowledge of our solutions. Instead of taking it personally or letting that be a limitation, I simply set that as my goal for evolution.

It helps break through patterns that don’t yield outcomes as well. For example, if you find yourself overwhelmed or unproductive or unmotivated every day, instead of accepting that as a reality, you can examine what doesn’t work and seek to change it through the force of evolution.

This is true of business outcomes, personal & professional goals, professional & personal relationships — everything in life really. My own personal hope in life is to always evolve with the times & the information at hand at any given point and when for whatever reason, it is not possible, always know that it is IN MY POWER to evolve.

Interconnectedness of everything

Everything in nature is connected to one another & nothing can exist in isolation. It is the wonder of this interconnectedness that yields the beautiful world that we see before us. This we know to be true in all facets of nature, however, it’s a bit ironical how our egos can persuade us to think otherwise, when it comes to personal achievements.

The way I seek to apply this at my own workplace is through purposeful collaboration. No matter how good I might be at something, I’m always going to be weak at something else. Recognizing that every one has their strengths & weaknesses and I’m not above it, makes me collaborate with vigor. It’s not just a cultural alignment to an organization, it is the very way nature demands us to operate. Accepting that and applying it in the context of my job, has actually helped me build meaningful relationships at work and achieve outcomes that I didn’t think I was capable of achieving.

This again, helps build character, because egos can often fool us into believing that we were alone responsible for a great outcome when in fact, there is always someone or a team of people who help you achieve that outcome, regardless of whose name claims the trophy.

Law of Cause & Effect

This law simply states there is no “coincidence” in this highly complex world we inhabit. It reaffirms Newton’s law, “For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction”. Depending on the data you have at hand, you can trace any effect to it’s cause and vice versa. Nothing escapes this law and while even I don’t understand it in it’s entirety, I gladly accept it for my little ego is tooooooooooo small compared to the grandeur of the mystery of this universe.

In the context of my job, I can seek to apply it by understanding the causes of effects I witness and even hone the skill of taking ownership. For example, if the effect is that I haven’t completed the priorities I set out to do in the day, the cause is that I didn’t prioritize well. If the effect is not doing well at something, the cause is probably that I didn’t invest enough time in it. Everything you feel, do, engage in, is an effect of the causes initiated, whether intentionally by you or not. However, effects can be made intentional by taking ownership of causation where possible. This again has implications on your emotional health as you can examine the effects of any emotion and trace it back to the cause. Sometimes, you won’t see it clearly but it is always there.

While I’m only scratching the surface when I make an attempt to bring the laws of nature to my corporate life, it is a topic I will continue to explore for the rest of my life and share insights as they are revealed to me. These laws are not only helping me in becoming better aligned to my potential but also help me find deeper purpose in whatever I seek to do. At this stage, I have proudly discarded the popular opinion that “a 9–5 is just a job, it doesn’t help you find purpose or meaning. You are simply working for someone else” and similar ones I heard in different stages of my life.

I might have unintentionally even taken it on at some stage but I am rather glad to admit that a 9–5 is as much a play of life as any other vocation. What matters in the tiny speck of time we have is how meaningfully we are able to engage in it.