A Healthy Emotional Diet For The Mind (Part 2)

In yesterday’s message, we saw how to avoid consuming a negative emotional diet from print, electronic, or social media. We also came up with simple steps for our emotional detoxification.

Let us now become aware of another very common and critical source of negative information. It comes from people around us – where we live, our extended family, friends, acquaintances or office colleagues. What they often talk to us is about things we can do nothing about – like problems, issues, Sanskar or behavior of other people. But we listen to this information with attention.

Listening to such information means consuming a harmful emotional diet. Whatever we listen to, becomes our perspective not only about a person we are listening to, but it also now becomes a part of our thought process.

When someone gives an opinion about a person, it is not necessarily the truth. Such people are only sharing their perspective based on their Sanskar. Don’t we see what happens in relationships or at the workplace – how someone with a Sanskar of criticism, someone with a Sanskar of jealousy, someone with a Sanskar of worry talks about other people?

The first layer of the wrong emotional diet fed to us is about the weakness of the person being talked about. The second layer is of the weakness of the person talking to us. We add the third layer of our weakness by listening to it. So, we end up consuming three layers of a fattening emotional diet. It is only a negative baggage we will carry. If we want to be light and happy, we need to protect ourselves from such diet.

(continues tomorrow...)