A Healthy Emotional Diet For The Mind (Part 3)

In yesterday’s message, we saw the impact of listening to people who talk to us about things we can do nothing about and decided that we stop listening to them. To do this, most of us tend to tell the other person – Let us not waste our time. Actually we must say – Let us conserve our energy. We may all have time on our side but we are already weak emotionally. Indulging in waste conversations depletes us further.

Below options help us to stay away from a negative emotional diet. Using any of them will be beneficial to us, to the person talking to us, and to the one being talked about –

Option 1: Have the power and ability to decline politely but assertively that we do not want to listen about anyone else’s issues, sanskars or behavior. We need to handle the situation exactly the way we consciously watch our physical diet – we refuse to eat certain negative things, regardless of how tempting they are, or how lovingly they are offered. Let us extend this discipline here by plainly refusing poor emotional diet.

Option 2: Progress the conversation from being problem-oriented to solution-oriented. Shift the focus on how the person talking to us should handle the situation, so that issues he or she has with the other person are resolved. We are then discussing about the sanskar of the person talking to us and not about the sanskar of the person who is not present.

Option 3: Shift perspective of the person talking to us. We can help them look at all the positives in the person they are talking about. When complaining about someone, people fail to acknowledge the good qualities of the person they complain about.

Option 4: Let us not be passive listeners, quietly nodding at everything being said. It gives rise to our approval of the views. Too often, we hear out someone in the name of courtesy, obligation, or fear that our refusal to listen will hurt our relationship. Just as we do not feel bad when refusing to eat anything unhealthy for the body, we should refuse anything unhealthy for our mind. It’s good for us and them.

                                                                              (To be continued tomorrow …)