How can peer pressure be avoided?

Answer Podcast

Transcript

This is an AI-generated transcript and may contain some errors.
how can peer pressure and influences be totally avoided actually they can’t be avoided but we can place ourselves in that social circle which actually pressurizes us for doing good things we are by nature social creatures so our desires are not just linear they are triangular triangular means that it’s not just we see something and we like it sometimes it happens like a few months ago there was this video game pokemon go which became very popular now initially when that game came okay there are so many video games one more new game has come what is the big deal about it but then say somebody was thinking like this they saw somebody playing a pokemon clicking on fingers trying to catch pokemons and then what’s so great let me let me play it also I start playing it and then friends say enough no no I want to play now so what happened just seeing the game doesn’t kindle the desire but you see somebody else playing the game and then that kindles the desire so the desire is not just linear from us to the object it is triangular from us to someone else doing their activity and then we feel like doing their activity so especially in spiritual life our desires grow much more triangularly than linearly that means if we see somebody else doing a devotional activity if we see somebody doing kirtan and just absorbed in ecstasy in kirtan maybe there’s something special in this I also want to taste this you also get absorbed in it so when we say peer pressure basically means it’s like this triangular desires are going towards materialistic things we see somebody else doing somebody doing something and we feel like doing it or we feel compelled to do it so if we have spiritual association if we have devotee association or association of spiritually minded people then that will create the triangular desire for good things within us and by having that desire for good things strong within us or strengthened by the peer pressure that will bring out the best within us so we can’t avoid peer pressure but we can we can counter it by having peers who pressurize us to do good things so the word pressure sometimes has negative connotation but here it simply means that our desires are kindled in a particular way that’s why spiritual association is extremely important and when spiritual association is not possible then what we could do even in our social circle whatever we have we can find out those friends who are not too grossly materialistic there are even in materialistic circles there are some people who are just you know there are three modes of material nature goodness, passion, ignorance there are some people who are just totally irresponsible some people are just passionate about I want this I want to enjoy this I want to enjoy that some people are more thoughtful, contemplative so even within our social circle in material life we can try to bond more with people who are in the mode of goodness that way also the pressure which is there it won’t push us down to materialistic things now we need a sense of belonging a sense of acceptance and where we get that that will determine whether that will bring the best out of us or bring the worst out of us so by selecting our association we can learn to channel the power of peer pressure to bring out our best