15 Lessons From Chanakya Niti for a Successful Life

Chanakya Niti means policy made by Chanakya. This book includes many chapters and Chanakya’s quotes, strategies, and lessons for a happier and more successful life.

Chanakya Neeti explains do’s and don’ts for everyday tasks, which means everything that you should or shouldn’t do.

Anyone, by following them, can be successful in personal and professional life.

This was originally written in Sanskrit; later it was translated into Hindi, English, and many other languages.

Acharya Chanakya is known as Vishnugupta and Kautilya because he has been India’s greatest strategist, philosopher, economist, and teacher.

He served as a prime minister and is known for his political wisdom, far-sightedness, manipulation, and diplomatic skills.

With the help of Chanakya, the Maurya empire, which Chandragupta Maurya ruled, progressed substantially.

Acharya Chanakya’s life lessons and teaching are taught in management lessons as well, which is called “Chanakya Niti”, most aspects of which you will find in this blog.

15 Life Changing Lessons from Chanakya Neeti

Now let’s understand about 15 main lessons of Chanakya Niti

1. Education Is Your Best Friend

An educated person is respected everywhere. Education beats beauty and youth. Chanakya, by this statement, wants to explain that a person may be weak in terms of strength, or maybe average or below average in looks, or may not have ample wealth.

However, if educated, he will still be treated as a wise person and get respect everywhere.

A rich man can lose his wealth, and beauty over time, and his relations and love may fade out, but education and knowledge never leave a person in any condition.

It can only be increased with time. And it cannot be stolen from you.

2. Learn from the mistakes of others

You can’t live long enough to make thousands of mistakes and learn from them. A person should watch, observe, and learn from the surrounding people and the environment.

It means that it is not necessary to learn from your own mistakes, you can learn from other’s mistakes as well, to not repeat them.

3. Never Share Your Secrets With Anybody

You should never disclose your secrets to others, because you never know, who might use them against you.

Chanakya says that in any circumstance your weaknesses or strengths, you should not share with anyone, so no one can take advantage of your weaknesses, and no one can find a trick to tackle your strengths.

4. Ask These 3 Questions To Yourself

Before you start any work, ask yourself these three questions:

• Why am I doing this work?
• What its results might be?
• Can I be successful in it?

Go ahead when you think deeply about these three questions and find their satisfactory answers.

Before beginning any work, or implementing any strategy or plan, you should always go through these three questions, so that you can know all the pros and cons, and the possibilities of your success and failure.

5. Spread Love

The fragrance of a flower spreads only in the direction of the wind. But the goodness of a person spreads in all directions.

A person should always be good to others, irrespective of the culture or community of the other person.

6. Quality Matters

Chanakya says that a person can die, but his goodness remains forever. His good deeds are remembered for many years to come. A man becomes great by his deeds only, birth has nothing to do with it.

A person, by the kind of things he does in his life, becomes great. These may not decide his greatness wherever he is born, in whatever community he is born in, or in any language he speaks.

He has to prove himself through his way of living and his work toward society and humanity.

7. Humbleness is at the root of self-control.

Life of a successful and happy person can be the best lesson for living, that be as humble as you can.

Your humbleness weakens your enemies, keeps you in control, and improves your self-confidence simultaneously.

Your feelings are your god and your soul is your temple.

8. Find God Within You

When people worship god in idols and keep looking for various ways to please god, Chanakya has a very different point of view.

His Chanakya Neeti says that god doesn’t exist in idols or temples, god is within us. God is present within us, as our feelings and soul is the temple for God.

One need not run behind temples in search of God but treat his soul as a temple, and his feelings and emotions as God.

9. Debt is like an enemy

A person in debt has to face insult and shame in front of others.

One should try not to take any debt, and if in worse situations he has taken a debt, then it should be his foremost priority to repay that debt as soon as possible.

10. Don’t Stop Learning

Learning is like a friend on a journey, a wife in the house, medicine in sickness, and religious merit after death.

These are all true partners. No wonder, time changes, people may change, and situations may or may not be in your favor, but things you learn remain with you forever.

So it is essential to give importance to learnings in life. Your learnings will be your lifelong friend, as important as a wife in the house or medicine during sickness.

11. Over Attachment

A person who is overly attached to his family members, experiences fear and grief, because the root of all grief is over-attachment.

Thus, one should discard attachments as much as possible to be happy. Like Bhagavad Gita, acharya Chanakya also explains, that one must not be overly attached to his family.

Though practicing this may be difficult, it is the bitter truth. A person who is attached to his family, his expectations from the family increase.

These expectations may be in the form of respect, love, sacrifice, or service, but most of the time even family members cannot fulfill those expectations.

This causes grief to that person, which works to break the relationship.

12. Practical Experience is More Important

Actual knowledge is not confined to books and possessions. If this happens, whenever they are needed, people will not be able to use them both.

True learnings and knowledge cannot be stored in books or possessions. Knowledge is meant to be within ourselves and is meant to be applied in every stage of life.

13. Leadership Equals Power

A very important aspect of leadership is that only those people able to go ahead in life have power.

Hence to be successful, it is important to be powerful, and to become powerful, you need to focus on intellectual power.

Today, more than in any previous civilization, we live in the information age. A person with true knowledge and wisdom is sure to become successful in the future.

Because it will be the most expensive commodity, and only those people will be able to progress in the future, who have more knowledge compared to others.

Manpower– The workforce includes all those who work with you, Your customers also come under this, these people’s power will make you powerful. The more powerful your man-power is, the more powerful you’ll become.

Here those powerful people are also included whom you know. Because the more powerful connections you’ll have, the more powerful you’ll become.

Financial power– Many people think that they will work for the betterment of others, and money is not that important to them. Still, the reality is, if your business or company is not making money, then no matter how much you want, you will not be able to help others for very long. Because money is what has the power to convert things into reality.

Enthusiasm and morale: According to research chances of success are high for those leaders, who are, disciplined, and full of enthusiasm, energy, and confidence.

Chanakya says that if a person focuses on this factor, he can focus on other factors as per his will.

Art of punishment: To become a powerful leader, you need to be tough. You need to understand that to achieve your goals you must know when to use stick, to set an example that a leader can be strict when needed.

Surely others will hate him for this, but if a leader acts very sweetly, and never corrects anyone’s mistakes, then no one will respect him, nor will anyone work properly.

Therefore Chanakya says that to be powerful, you must master this art, and you should know when to use the stick.

But not so strict that people even fear to talk about important things with you, and don’t be so sweet that people don’t listen to you.

Staying at the top: For once, it is easy to become a powerful person, but staying in that position is very difficult. Hence, to become a powerful, admirable leader, and to have self-control, you must have control over a few negative emotions.

Control Your Desires- The desire of always get more and more leads a person to destruction. It makes you a part of a never-ending race, so try to avoid it.

Handel Anger: Anger never allows a person to make the right decision. So everyone should protect themselves from it and should avoid it completely.

14. Own law

The reason that we can stick to the ground is gravitational force, it keeps us to the ground. Similarly entire world is running on its different laws, and it is essential that you also have your laws, which keep you in control.

Whether you apply these laws at home or in business.

Power management: A person who can handle any type of situation, is compelling. A leader may have to face two most common situations:

People situation. Anyone who wants to reach the top must know how to handle people. However, every individual is different, therefore, the way of handling them is also obviously different.

Therefore Chanakya’s advice is to better understand and study human psychology. Knowledge situation.

In today’s knowledge economy, companies spend millions on research and development, because to move ahead in life having the proper knowledge is a must.

To gain knowledge by reading books. So, read the summaries that we have on our website. From Chanakya Niti by Acharya Chanakya, these were some most important learnings.

These are helpful for not only management students but also for anyone who implements them. You can achieve everything through Chanakya Niti, no matter your field.