They say “what goes around, comes around.”
Turns out, that’s not really what karma means. And I wouldn’t have known that if it weren’t for my meditation practice.
Quick sidebar on that. I’ve been using the Calm app for years. It’s one of the tools that taught me to build a consistent meditation habit, and I recommend it to anyone willing to try. Nobody’s paying me to say that. I just believe in what they’ve built.
So during a recent teaching with Tamara Levitt on the app, she started talking about the origins of karma. And as I sat with it, I realized how deeply the actual meaning of this word connects to the Gold Standard Leadership mindset of reinvention, resilience, and empowerment.
That’s what we’re getting into today.
The Misconception of the Cosmic Scoreboard
Somewhere along the way, karma entered mainstream American culture as a kind of spiritual vending machine. You do something bad, the universe punishes you. You do something good, you get a reward.
The word karma comes from Sanskrit, and it literally translates to one simple thing: “action.” That’s it. Not revenge. Not cosmic scorekeeping. Just the word for your deeds.
In the earliest texts going back roughly 3,000 years, karma referred to the physical act of performing a ritual. It carried no moral or ethical weight at all. Over centuries, the concept evolved. Thinkers and philosophers began connecting the dots between action and consequence. The idea expanded: your repeated choices, your patterns of behavior, your intentions shape what comes back to you. It became a principle of cause and effect applied to human character.
And here is what fascinated me. This isn’t just one tradition’s idea. Hinduism has it. Buddhism refined it. Judaism has its own deeply embedded version called “measure for measure,” the principle that how you treat others is ultimately how you’ll be treated. Christianity captures it with “you reap what you sow.”
Every major wisdom tradition that has seriously examined human behavior has arrived at some version of the same conclusion: your actions carry weight, that weight accumulates, and that accumulation shapes the world you end up living in.
Somewhere along the way, it got simplified to “what goes around, comes around.” Which isn’t wrong, exactly. It’s just incomplete. Because karma was never about waiting for the universe to settle scores. It was about recognizing that you are being shaped by every choice you make, whether anyone is watching or not.
The Science Behind the Ripple
Now, I can already hear some of you. “Daniel, this sounds like spiritual stuff. What does this have to do with leading a team in professional services?”
Fair question. Let’s look at what the research actually says.
The Pay-It-Forward Effect
Researchers at UC Riverside conducted a study in a corporate workplace, assigning employees to perform acts of kindness for colleagues. The people on the receiving end became happier over the following two months. The givers became less depressed and more satisfied with their work. The most striking finding? The people on the receiving end started paying it forward, with 278% more prosocial behavior.
One act of genuine generosity created a measurable ripple through an entire organization. If that sounds familiar, it should. We talked about this back in Ep. 12: From Ripples to Waves, where we explored how small leadership behaviors create massive momentum. Now we have the hard science showing exactly how that momentum builds.
The Karma Mindset Shift
A series of experiments with over 3,500 participants found that simply thinking about karma reduced selfish behavior across religious backgrounds. This worked for people who identified as Hindu, Buddhist, Christian, and non-religious. The effect was specific: it shifted people who were inclined toward selfishness toward fairness. It didn’t change people who were already fair because they didn’t need the correction.
Reciprocity as a Universal Norm
A major review of social exchange theory found that reciprocity, the idea that you get what you give, operates as a near-universal moral norm in human behavior. The research draws a direct line between this reciprocity principle and the concept of karma. And the flip side is just as real: when people give in good faith and don’t receive reciprocity, the result is diminished trust, weakened social support, and measurable stress-related health effects.
That is karma operating in real time, inside your workplace, with data to back it up.
The Pragmatic Question: Why Wouldn’t You Try This?
So the ancient wisdom traditions point to this. The neuroscience and behavioral research confirm it. But let’s say you’re still skeptical. You don’t buy the spiritual framing. You’re not persuaded by a few studies.
Fine. Let me ask you a different question.
Why wouldn’t you try this?
Even if you don’t subscribe to any of these religions, don’t believe in a deity, and think karma is nothing more than a nice idea, the underlying concept is spot on for how we treat one another. The principle that your repeated actions shape your character, your relationships, and your outcomes doesn’t require belief in anything supernatural. It just requires paying attention to how human beings actually work.
In Ep. 35: Why Workplace Civility Training Misses the Point, I talked about how the workplace doesn’t need more corporate policies. It needs more people willing to be decent, direct, and brave. That episode struck a nerve because people are starving for authentic connection. They’re tired of the performance theater and the calculated kindness that evaporates the second it becomes inconvenient.
There’s an incredible book series I want to recommend called The Go-Giver by Bob Burg and John David Mann. The premise is straightforward: a young professional named Joe is struggling with his career and meets a mentor who teaches him five laws of success. Every single one of those laws is built around giving, not getting. Your true worth is determined by how much more you give in value than you take in payment. Your influence is determined by how abundantly you place other people’s interests first. The most valuable gift you have to offer is yourself. It is karma repackaged as a brilliant business parable. I’ve read the whole series, and I’d encourage every listener to pick it up.
This aligns perfectly with what we explored in Ep. 25: The Power of Giving, where we discussed that leadership is defined by what you give away rather than what you accumulate. Giving compounds like interest. The delayed return is often more meaningful than the immediate one.
The point is this: whether you call it karma, measure for measure, the ripple effect, or just being a decent human, every framework arrives at the same conclusion. How you show up for other people is the single most reliable predictor of how your career and your life will unfold over time.
The Leadership Application: Patterns Over Perfection
So, how do we apply this to the Gold Standard Leadership framework? It comes down to your patterns.
The “karma” of your career is the accumulated weight of your patterns
We talked in Ep. 8: What Is Your Legacy? about how you want to be remembered. Karma is the mechanism that builds that legacy. It is the accumulated weight of your daily micro-decisions: how you treat the junior analyst, whether you give credit in meetings, what you do when nobody’s watching. People are always observing, evaluating, and responding to your patterns. Your reputation is being built by those patterns, whether you’re aware of it or not.
You are not permanently defined by your worst decisions.
One of the most powerful ideas of “measure for measure” is the concept of course correction and genuine repair. You are not locked into your worst patterns forever. You can acknowledge harm, repair relationships, and change the behavior. The test is real: genuine repair requires you to face the exact same situation again and choose differently. That’s how you know the change is real.
For leaders, this means extending grace to your team when they make mistakes. It means holding yourself to the same standard. When you’ve been the one who caused harm, whether through neglect, poor judgment, or simply not showing up when it mattered, the karmic question isn’t “will I get caught?” The question is: “Next time I face this same situation, what will I choose?”
“I Got This” is karma in action.
In Ep. 37: The Leadership of “I Got This,” we talked about what it looks like to absorb someone’s burden in a single moment. Taking the weight off your team’s shoulders so they can focus on their best work is karma in action, one decision at a time. When that becomes your pattern, when “I got this” stops being an isolated moment and starts being who you are, that’s the leadership of karma at work.
When Reciprocity Fails (And What It Demands of You)
I’ll be fully transparent with you. Part of what drew me to this topic is personal.
I’ve been in professional situations where I have invested significant time, energy, and good faith into business relationships that did not reciprocate. I experienced what the research describes as failed reciprocity, where you give in good faith, and what comes back doesn’t match what you put in.
There’s no doubt that this stings because you start questioning whether doing the right thing actually matters.
And here’s where the real meaning of karma saved me from a very bad headspace. Because karma doesn’t ask: “When will they get what’s coming to them?” That’s revenge, not karma.
Karma forces you to ask: “Did this experience change who I am, or did I stay consistent with my values?”
My most trusted team member is fond of saying, “If you put enough good stuff out there in the universe, you’ll get good stuff back.” For a long time, I heard that as a nice, optimistic sentiment. But I hear it now as a behavioral strategy backed by thousands of years of philosophical insight and confirmed by modern psychology.
The people who consistently put good into the world, who invest in others, who act with integrity even when it’s inconvenient, they don’t always win in the short term. Over time, the accumulation works in their favor. Not because the universe is keeping a ledger. Because people are. Because your team is. Because your own character is.
The Choice Is Yours
There is no scenario where leading with genuine care, consistent integrity, and radical engagement is the wrong strategy. The “universe” doesn’t need to keep score. Your clients, your peers, and your team are already doing it.
Karma is what happens when your daily micro-decisions accumulate into something bigger than any single moment. It’s what happens when “I got this” becomes who you are.
Reflection Questions:
What patterns are you running as a leader right now? If someone studied your last 100 micro-decisions, what would they conclude about your values?
When was the last time you did the right thing knowing you’d never get credit for it? How did that feel?
Are you leading with an attachment to recognition, or an attachment to the work itself and the people doing it?
This Week’s Challenge:
This week, do one thing for someone on your team or in your professional network where there is absolutely zero expectation of a return. A genuine act of support because it’s the right thing to do.
Then notice what happens. Not to them. To you. Notice how it shifts something internally.
That is karma working in real time.
Until next time, lead at the gold standard.
Resources Referenced:
Calm App, Tamara Levitt meditation on Karma: calm.com
The Go-Giver by Bob Burg and John David Mann (2007), and the full Go-Giver series
Chancellor, Margolis, Bao, & Lyubomirsky (2018). “Everyday Prosociality in the Workplace.” Journal of Positive Psychology. (UC Riverside study)
White, Norenzayan et al. (2019). “Thinking about karma reduces selfishness.” Journal of Experimental Social Psychology. (N = 3,591)
Gouldner (1960). “The Norm of Reciprocity.” American Sociological Review.
Adam Grant (2013). Give and Take: A Revolutionary Approach to Success.
