When Stability Stifles the Soul

In the Asar 2082 (Vol 5, Issue 10) edition of this magazine, readers were invited by this author into a daring metaphor; the idea of living as a startup. That article, The Startup of You: Where Innovation Meets Inner Evolution, was not merely a reflection on economic dynamism or entrepreneurial agility. It was a call to evolve; to treat life as a venture in perpetual beta, where curiosity, adaptability, and iterative growth define one’s identity. With examples drawn from modern startup legends and ancient Eastern philosophy, the piece argued that the most meaningful startup you’ll ever build is yourself. But what if the startup metaphor is only one side of a deeper human dialectic? What if, instead of a startup, you are, or have become, a mature company?

Do you consider yourself matured, well-set, organised, systematic, methodical? Perhaps even proudly so? You’ve found your rhythm. Your calendar is full but predictable. Your job title hasn’t changed in years, and why should it? You know what works for you. You have defined protocols for your mornings, your meetings, even your moods. But pause here. Look closer. What if your admirable stability has hardened into invisible rigidity? What if, like many legacy corporations, your internal systems are optimised not for growth but for control? You may have become like the archetypal mature company; efficient, structured, and dependable, yet paradoxically resistant to reinvention. These organisations often boast refined hierarchies, clear reporting lines, and quarterly targets. They are praised for their consistency, but struggle with agility. The same might be true of you. You may execute tasks with precision, but how often do you question the system behind them? How frequently do you invite disruption; not as a threat, but as a teacher? If the ‘startup you’ was an ‘explorer’, the ‘corporate you’ is a ‘settler’. And that’s not inherently bad. But it deserves inspection.

Maturity, whether in companies or individuals, is often celebrated as the hallmark of arrival. The startup dreams of becoming the corporate. Chaos hopes one day to be order. In Built to Last, Jim Collins and Jerry Porras described visionary companies as those that endure precisely because they institutionalise what once made them great. But in doing so, they also caution against the ‘Tyranny of the OR’; the false belief that one must choose between stability or change, discipline or creativity, structure or freedom. Many corporations; and many people fall into this trap. The systems they design to manage complexity become the very walls that trap them inside it.

Think of your own behaviour. You may have stopped experimenting in your career because the last promotion gave you a title too heavy to fail under. You may avoid vulnerability in relationships because maturity, you were told, requires emotional control. You may eat what’s convenient, not what’s vital; because health, like innovation, demands effort, and the routine you’ve mastered doesn’t make space for deviation. You’ve scaled predictability at the cost of discovery. Clayton Christensen, in his classic The Innovator’s Dilemma, showed how companies that succeeded by optimising existing systems were often disrupted by those willing to reimagine the system entirely. Could your personal life be suffering a similar fate?

Startups take risks because they must. Corporates avoid them because they can. The longer you play it safe, the more safety starts to look like success. But is it? When was the last time you did something in your personal life that scared you, not because it was reckless, but because it mattered? As psychologist Carol Dweck explained in Mindset, the difference between a growth mindset and a fixed one is not talent; it’s the willingness to remain a learner. The corporate version of you may have excellent credentials, but when did you last engage your curiosity; not to prove, but to explore?

Organisational cultures evolve in patterns that mirror human psychology. Edgar Schein, one of the fathers of organisational culture theory, observed that cultures form first to survive, then to succeed, and finally to self-perpetuate. The latter is where stagnation begins. You too build patterns; around habits, thoughts, emotions, expectations, not always because they serve you, but because they once did. These mental models, as Peter Senge emphasised in The Fifth Discipline, operate beneath the surface, influencing behaviour without awareness. The tragedy is not in having them. The tragedy is never revisiting them.

The contrast becomes even more striking when we examine energy. Startups are fuelled by passion. Corporates are powered by process. In your twenties, you probably woke up brimming with ambition. In your forties, maybe you wake up brimming with calendars. Energy, unmanaged, hardens into exhaustion. Passion, un-renewed, calcifies into obligation. Your marriage might have started with weekend spontaneity and now runs like quarterly planning. Your parenting may have shifted from wonder to workflow. Your friendships, once unpredictable like jazz, may now resemble procedural check-ins. If your physical health has become a maintenance activity and your mental well-being a side project, you may already be operating with a corporate mindset.

And here’s the most sobering truth. Just as mature companies often stop listening; to customers, to market signals, to dissonant voices within individuals also stop listening. To their body. To their inner discontent. To the subtle pull of desires that no longer fit the safe script. In Reinventing Organisations, Frédéric Laloux explores how companies can evolve beyond bureaucratic machines into soulful, self-managing organisms; what he calls ‘Teal Organisations’. But his insights apply as much to people as to enterprises. The next level of you will not be built on more structure, more titles, more control; but on more awareness, more trust, and more alignment with who you’re becoming.

So, ask yourself, with the honesty of a founder at a product review: are you scaling a life, or merely maintaining it? Have your beliefs become best practices too outdated to question? Is your learning journey a flat line disguised as stability? Are your relationships KPI-driven instead of heart-led? The very strengths that once helped you grow; discipline, caution, structure, may now be the bottlenecks limiting your next evolution.

But wisdom, like innovation, does not belong solely to the modern world. Long before we began naming our strategies and diagnosing our dysfunctions with frameworks and case studies, Eastern sages were offering timeless insights into the human condition; insights that now whisper urgently into the ears of today’s well-structured yet spiritually starving corporate self.

Gautam Buddha’s doctrine of Anatta (the non-self) stands in quiet rebellion against the corporate obsession with identity. The mature company, like the mature individual, begins to guard its labels: ‘market leader’, ‘experienced professional’, ‘stable provider’. But Buddha reminds us: the more tightly you hold on to these definitions, the further you drift from evolution. Anicca (impermanence), is not just an abstract truth; it is a lived reality. Mature organisations resist change because change feels like loss. You may do the same. A role change feels like a threat. A relocation like disruption. A new idea like danger. Yet, as Buddha teaches, clinging to permanence in a world of flux is the root of suffering. You are not your résumé. You are not your legacy. You are what you are willing to become next.

Confucius, that master of cultivated order, paradoxically insisted that harmony begins with the self. If your rituals; at home, at work, in the rhythm of your thoughts have lost their soul, they become performance art for an audience that no longer watches. The idea of li (rites and propriety) was never about rigid conformity; it was about restoring meaning through conscious engagement. Today’s corporate self may confuse performance for presence. You attend the meetings, fulfil obligations, say the right things. But are you truly aligned? Confucius believed that xiu shen (self-cultivation) was the first responsibility of a leader. If your calendar grows but your conscience doesn’t, if your influence rises but your insight shrinks, then your success is a hollow vessel.

Lao Tzu would find modern maturity exhausting. The Tao does not reward the efficient or the disciplined. It flows where surrender meets simplicity. His principle of wu wei (effortless action) offers a mirror to the compulsive over-planning that defines mature systems and mature minds. You may pride yourself on your control: deadlines met, outcomes predicted, surprises eliminated. But Lao Tzu would ask: at what cost? Have you lost the poetry of spontaneity? The breath between calendar blocks? The wisdom that arrives when you stop trying so hard to be wise? In a life managed like a Gantt chart, where is the space for serendipity to sneak in?

Zhuangzi would laugh, kindly but piercingly, at the proud rigidity of the corporate self. He would tell you the story of the ‘Useless Tree’; unwanted for lumber because of its crooked shape, yet revered for the shade and peace it gives. In a world that worships utility, he dares you to question what truly matters. Is your obsession with being functional preventing you from being free? Spontaneity and non-contention were not quirks of his philosophy; they were lifelines to authenticity. The individual who becomes too strategic loses their ability to dream. And dreams, Zhuangzi reminds us, are not childish detours; they are sacred blueprints of who we were before the world handed us a script.

The Hindu scriptures deepen this critique with luminous clarity. The Rig Veda declares “Nányah panthá ayanáya vidyate”, meaning, there is no other path but the one of continuous pursuit of truth. But truth does not dwell in comfort zones. It hides in disruption, in contradictions, in collisions with self-imposed limitations. The Isha Upanishad, one of the most radical spiritual texts, warns against knowledge that leads to more ignorance; when information masquerades as insight, and order replaces awakening. The mature corporate self, armed with dashboards and strategy decks, may be rich in data but bankrupt in wisdom. Tat tvam asi; ‘that you are’, is not a declaration of status, but a whisper of potential: you are more than what your systems can measure.

And then comes the Bhagavad Gita, the soul’s management manual. Krishna tells Arjuna to act with detachment; to do his duty, his dharma, without lusting for the fruits. But the mature self, like the mature company, often forgets this. You may be optimising every move for recognition, promotion, or validation. Yet the Gita gently reminds you: action rooted in ego binds, but action rooted in purpose liberates. Even karma, if misaligned with inner clarity, becomes entrapment. True yoga; not the posture but the poise of consciousness, is the union of will and wisdom, of doing and being.

Ultimately, moksha and nirvana; liberation from cycles, require unlearning. The mature self, ironically, must learn to deconstruct its own maturity. Not to regress, but to renew. The systems that once brought success may now be cages. The beliefs that once grounded you may now be ceilings. The relationships that once held you may now be scripts. Real maturity is not a fortress, it is a river. It adapts. It nourishes. And when necessary, it changes course.

So, if you have become a mature company within your own life, ask; not with guilt, but with curiosity; have you stopped growing? Have you mistaken constancy for character? Discipline for direction? Achievement for arrival? Remember, the greatest transformations do not begin with revolutions. They begin with realisations. Ancient wisdom doesn’t ask you to abandon your systems. It asks you to re-infuse them with soul.

So, if you find yourself living like a well-oiled corporation; structured yet stagnant, experienced yet exhausted; know that your maturity is not the enemy. It is your starting point for renewal. Like great companies that reinvent not by erasing their legacy but by returning to their original questions, you too can recalibrate without dismantling. You do not need to abandon your routines, your roles, or your responsibilities; you need only to reawaken the vitality within them. Let your discipline become devotion. Let your systems breathe again. Let your rituals rediscover their soul. For it is not youth that fuels renewal, but willingness. The willingness to listen deeply. To imagine boldly. To move not just with efficiency, but with essence. Maturity, when infused with curiosity, becomes wisdom. Structure, when held lightly, becomes sanctuary. And life, when lived with conscious cadence, becomes a canvas again. So live not as an enterprise guarding its market share; but as a sentient being reclaiming its magic. Because in the end, the greatest legacy you leave will not be what you built or managed or perfected, but what you dared to renew while still being whole. After all, the soul doesn’t retire; it reinvents.

(Khatri is Management Consultant and Educator. He can be reached at sohan.khatri@gmail.com)