Mental Health and Economic Uncertainty ACE acro || UBER online || Chaitanya Charan || 13.5.24

Transcript

This is an AI-generated transcript and may contain some errors.
And I’ll talk about how we can find inner strength, inner stability amid outer uncertainty, and especially the outer uncertainty that is caused by, in today’s times, the economic insecurity.
And essentially what I’ll speak, I’ll be using a blackboard here to write and draw things. So I’ll be talking about three principles, A, C, E. So, ace, how we can ace our life with these three principles. So, essentially for every one of us in life, there are things that are changing.
And changing can be positive, changing can be negative, and changing can be uncertain. So, when changes come, at that time, there is the event that has happened, and there is the experience of the event. So, if we consider this to be the event is what happens outside.
The experience is what happens inside. And we don’t have a lot of control over the way things happen outside. The events outside, we do have some control, but as our world is becoming more and more interconnected and complicated, which factor where will cause what change and how that will lead to a chain of events, all that becomes more and more unpredictable.
So, while all of you are professional experts in your fields, and you know what you can do to manage the outer events, my focus will be on how we can better process the inner events, the experience. Now, it’s important to understand this difference between experience and event. At one level, it’s straightforward.
If there’s a sports match, now, say there’s a tennis match, and the final shot is hit. And when the shot is hit, the ball hits the ground and say one player wins. At that event, the ball falls somewhere on the pitch.
But some people say the winner experiences a moment of great joy, and the loser experiences a moment of great agony. Now, among the fans, depending on who is identifying with what, which player, they either experience joy or disappointment. So, the events now in this we could say in this case situation, we could say the events, it is a clear event what exactly happened.
And some people feel joy, some people feel disappointment that’s based on the investment of emotion that they have on what they are invested in. Accordingly, they’re invested in the winning of one player, then that player wins, they feel elation, otherwise the opposite. Now, this same principle can be applied at one level through unconscious emotion.
Unconscious emotion means we just have emotions invested in something. And because of that, our reactions, our experiences go in particular ways. But there’s also the possibility to do this through conscious intention.
So, there’s an event and how we experience the event at one level that will result through unconscious emotion. Hey, this happened, that’s bad. Hey, this happened, that’s good.
So, that will be our default experience. But we have the capacity to reprocess our experiences by letting them be shaped not just by an unconscious emotion or unexamined emotion or involuntary emotion. So, it may sometimes be that we are not even aware of the emotion.
Sometimes we are aware, but it’s not in our control. It can be involuntary emotion also. But we can also reprocess or reframe our experience by using conscious intention.
So, this is what we’re going to discuss about how we can change our experience. And this is where I’m going to talk about these three principles of ACE. So, whenever something has happened, some, as I said, the changes outside can be either negative, positive or neutral or uncertain, we could say.
So, let’s assume that the change outside is negative. We hear something about the market going down. We hear about some impending recession or whatever.
So, when this happens, the first thing is look for the positive around the negative. Something negative has happened, but look for the positive around the negative. So, A is for around.
What this means is that, say, if we consider this is our consciousness, this is where we experience things. So, some event has happened out here and that event has created an impact, an impression within us. And say, if the event is negative, then there is a particular, oh, this is bad.
This is, this is worrying. This is dangerous, whatever emotion it is. So, then the nature of our consciousness is such that whatever, if nothing stays with you after this particular session, if this one sentence, whatever catches our attention, catches our emotion and catches us.
So, this is how our inner psychology progresses, that whatever catches our emotion. So, first something catches our attention. Once it catches attention, that means, okay, I got a particular news, this XYZ happened.
And then this particular event that is there, that is in our conscious experience, it starts growing. As it starts growing here, it starts becoming bigger and bigger in our consciousness. And everything else that is there, it starts becoming smaller till eventually this is the only thing that is there in our consciousness.
And we can think of nothing else. So, this happened, what if this happens? And what if that happens? And what if that happens? And what if that happens? Our mind goes on a wild dystopian fantasy, not utopian, but dystopian. This may go wrong and that may go wrong and that may go wrong and that may go wrong.
Now, there is a time to evaluate future threats and prepare for them. But when it is happening at the level of involuntary emotion, that is the time when it is not to be done. Because that is the time when we are swept away as if by a storm.
So, here, look for the good around the bad means that when a particular negative experience has been there for us, because of something negative that has happened, is there in our consciousness, but we try to look for what are the good things around it. So, okay, this particular project, which we have launched, it has not done very well. Okay, that is, it is not doing well, the market is not good, the customers are not responding positively, the reviews are not great.
Okay, that may be an event. Now, when this is happening, we can consciously shift our attention to what are the positives within us, look for the good around the bad. In general, many times we try to, in the name of being optimistic, in the name of being positive, try to suppress or downplay or deny the negative.
That generally doesn’t work. Because if we decide I won’t think about something, that very thought is actually going to give energy to that, that particular experience, that particular emotion, that particular stimulus. And it’s like if you tell someone, don’t think of a pink monkey, they’ll start thinking of a pink monkey.
So, instead, look for the good around the bad. So, okay, you may say, okay, this particular project has not worked. But you know, I have a good track record.
My previous assignments have worked well. I have good qualifications. I have expertise in my field.
I have a sharp mind, I can learn things. I have good health. Now, whatever it is, I have some level of financial security, I’ve got good friend circle, I’ve got this.
Whatever it is that we have, if we make a list of this, then we will have something to look at, which is around the bad. And this is where we’ll restate and refine a common saying. It’s often said count your blessings.
And the act of counting is more of list, make a conscious list and not just list. It’s also list and elaborate. Why? Because we want our emotions to be triggered.
And knowing okay, I have this, this, this, right, that’s not enough, count your blessings. And then make your blessings count. Make your blessings count means it is this time when the negative has come in our life.
And that is creating some negative emotion, creating some negative experience within us. We don’t deny or downplay that. But we redirect and refocus our attention on what is it that we have right in our life.
So this often is something which we need to prepare in advance. So prepare in advance and revisit regularly. Then if we’re doing these things, then we will be able to visit during distress, during disappointment.
That’s when we can make our blessings count. If somebody is a soldier in the army, and they are in the war zone, and they see opposing troops coming charging towards them, they say, wait a minute, I’ve not brought my gun. Let me just go back to my tent.
If we get my gun, then we’ll fight. Now that enemy is not going to wait. In fact, the enemy is going to come at a time when the soldier is likely to be unarmed.
If they can detect that, that’s the time they’re likely to attack the most. So the defensing soldiers need to be armed. And in one sense, these are our arms.
We are all vulnerable to emotional attacks that may be triggered by events in the outer world. And the way we arm ourselves is by keeping in our awareness an elaborated list. Why elaborated? Because it’s not just a mechanical list that is enough.
Okay, why is this important for me? Why is this good? How is this a blessing in my life? To the extent, we have maybe written something down, maybe we have some images, some drawings, some text, something which will trigger emotion within us. That is how if we have a list like this say we have 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7. Now we have some list like that. Then when this negativity starts enveloping us at that time, we will be able to find at least one of these.
This particular negative experience is there. But among the many negatives, one of them can grow in our mind. Instead of the other negative, all the positives, you may not be able to trigger at that time.
But instead of the negative taking over our mind, we can have the positive. So basically, the result of this will be fear, anxiety, uncertainty, tensions. These are all unavoidable in life.
But there’s a difference between living with fear versus living in fear. So with fear, it is manageable. Yeah, there is this one thing that has happened.
It is concerning. But there are many other things that are right. Living in fear, it becomes overwhelming.
It becomes crushing. This is where you may go down towards panic, which can become a panic attack. It can become depression.
It can become a serious mental health challenge thereafter. So look for the good around the bad. And to look for the good around the bad, it’s important that we start by having a list of the good with us.
So that is the first point. Now, when we are dealing with the situation, at this particular point, we come to the second part of it. The acronym is ACE.
So E is look for the good to counter, look for the positive that can help us counter the negative. Let me say, as I said earlier, that we don’t want to deny the negative. We don’t want to imagine that okay, nothing negative has happened.
When positive thinking, it is optimism is always good. But optimism, if it is based on denial of the negative, that no longer remains optimism, that becomes stupidism. The negative is real.
Many of us may have heard this example, look for a glass. Is it half empty or half full? Well, this is a metal glass, you can’t see either way whether it’s half empty or half full. But we’ve all heard this so many times.
Look, the glass is half full, not half empty. It becomes such a cliche that if I hear it, the first thought that comes in my mind is quite often, is there enough water in the glass to throw in your face? Isn’t there something new that you can speak? So here we are not talking about this redirection of vision at the expense of the denial of the negative. Sometimes the glass is empty.
That particular glass is empty, but that may not be the only glass in our life. There are other glasses. So what we are seeing is first look at what is positive in our life.
And that gives us a foundational sense of positivity, a foundational sense of security. It is that when we start feeling as if the whole world is falling apart, everything that we have worked for is crashing. That’s when our emotions start working against us and then they start sabotaging our efforts from within.
So what we’re saying is first have positive, have a source of positivity ready for ourselves. And then once we have that, then we want to revisit the negative. But we are not focussing on the negative.
We are focussing on the resources that we have for dealing with the negative. So if in the blessings we counted, say, there are maybe six, seven blessings we have, which are major. Now out of these, maybe two of these are what we can specifically leverage for dealing with the particular situation that we have.
So maybe we have experience, we have expertise. So these are tangible things which are of value for dealing with our particular situation. This is where we go a little deeper that when we look for specific resources to deal with what is happening in our life, then we are able to see that, okay, this is the earlier the war metaphor.
There is an army that is attacking me. But this is where I, this is what I can do to face this. This is what I can do to counter the situation.
And once we have those resources, it is at that particular point that we don’t, we don’t, we want positive emotion. So positive emotion is generated by looking around the negative. But then we also want not just emotion, but we also want a positive energy.
Emotion is more concrete, sorry, it’s more abstract. Emotions are felt very strongly, but emotions for them to be effectively to be translated to energy. And this is where we, when we zero in on the things that are specifically available for us to counter the negative, that is when we generate positive energy.
So from positive emotion in general, okay, there are a lot of things going right in my life, but these are the things which can help me to face the negative. That’s the positive energy that comes up. So it is, this is a short seminar, but I would request you after the seminar, whenever you get time to make a list and whatever is a challenge that you are facing, try to see what are the resources that you have for dealing with them.
Generally, as I said, the way we interpret, there is the event and there is the experience of the event. So life’s events can make our power less. Power less means maybe our particular plan didn’t work out.
Maybe our project is not doing as well as we thought. Whatever, whatever changes happen, the event can be that our power may become less, but the experience that comes up is we start feeling powerless. And this is an extremely unhealthy experience.
With animals, when they feel as if they’re, they’re completely hemmed in there, they just have no chance of doing anything. That’s when they can become vicious. Even a small animal, like a cat, if it feels cornered, it can attack viciously.
So like that, when our emotions, at the level of our emotions, we start feeling we are powerless. That’s when we can become thoughtless. We can become destructive.
We become self-destructive more often than destructive either way. So we don’t want, we want to break this particular link. This link, we want to break it.
Yeah, the power has become less, but that does not mean that we are powerless. We still have power. And what does this having power mean? It means that we see what resources do I have right now? What can I do about this right now? So if we consider, going back to earlier example, a tennis match.
Now in a tennis match, sometimes the opposing player is an ace machine. The player who is returning can do very little except somehow try to get the bat onto the racket, onto the ball and try to get the ball back into play. And sometimes they just can’t even do that.
What do they do at that time? Well, wait. The resource that is available for them at that point is okay. Not every serve is going to be an ace.
And even if every serve is going to be an ace, which is unlikely, still it’s not that the whole game is the other person serving. They’re going to get their chance to serve. So once we move forward to avoid this feeling of powerlessness, this is where I’ll go a little deeper into the yoga model of the self, where I talk about the difference between experience and event.
So I did a broad differentiation between the external and internal. Now I would like to do a slightly greater difference between the external and the internal. In the internal level, we have our mind.
And beyond that is our spiritual essence. So both of these exist internally. And when the events come over here, they impinge on our mind.
So we could put it this way that the mind is something like a screen inside us. It’s an inner screen. But there is a part of us which is like the inner seer.
And it is for us that we have the capacity to observe what comes on the inner screen. Many stimuli may come in. If you consider this to be like our phone screen, all these are notifications that are coming on the inner screen.
Now sometimes based on our past settings, some notifications might just come up noiselessly. Some notifications come with a beep. Some notifications not only come with a beep, they come a beep plus a pop-up.
Some notifications, they come not just a beep and a pop-up, but there is a beep plus a full screen. And sometimes some notifications may be like an incessant ring plus full screen. So similarly for us, from the outer world, when things happen, the event happens, our mind is like that screen which we are observing.
And on that different events, they trigger different kinds of notifications. And sometimes, say, if we want to, we are taking a rest at night and we have an urgent flight to catch in the morning. So then we may have put out, we may set a very loud alarm clock, which cannot be very easily turned off.
Because that’s what we want. We want to wake up so that we don’t miss the flight. That’s healthy, that’s positive.
But if that same level of alarm clock or that same level of notification starts coming up when we are in an important meeting and we are reading something on our phone, we don’t want that at that time. So basically, there are certain notifications that are going to come up inside us. But how much those notifications get our notice, that is up to us.
So when dealing with notifications, there are two distinct things. There are the settings, which are more or less preset. And there are actions that are done in the moment.
So sometimes we may decide, okay, this app, I don’t want any notifications from it at all. We have to go in the settings and change it. But, okay, the settings are in a particular way, right now, I can change the actions.
So for us, we are right now talking at the level of actions. Then in the last part, we will go toward the settings also. So it is still in our hands or rather in our control that when a particular notification comes up, when something pops up, at that time, how much attention do I need to give this? That is something which is for us to do.
So when we look for the good, that can help us to counter the bad. The bad is a notification that is like ringing loudly. But okay, I am different from this.
Although this seems to have taken over my mind, but this doesn’t have to take over my mind. I have the autonomy. And this, there are situations where we are almost fused with our screen.
And the more we are fused, the more we become confused. But we have the capacity, this inner screen is there, the screen is like our mind, we can come to a, we can be at a distance from it. The more there is distance, the more there is perspective.
So activities like meditation, activities like introspection, activities like journaling, activities like mantra chanting, these are all inner work that can help us create a distance from our mind. And then okay, this thing has gone wrong. But there are these things which are there I can do to deal with this.
So look for the good that enables us to counter the bad. Look for the positive. These are the positive resources that I have.
So although my power has become less, I am not powerless. And yes, some things may not be in our control. But that doesn’t mean nothing is in our control.
That is the mistake in the processing that the mind will do. Oh, this has gone wrong. And our mind may go into full alarm mode.
Okay, this is concerning. But there is no need for a full breakdown. Let me distance myself from this.
Let me turn off this particular notification. And that brings me to the last part in the acronym A.C.E. E. E is Emerge. So Emerge means look for the positive that will emerge from the negative.
In our lives, sometimes we may find it okay, this particular issue I have, and I have these resources to deal with this issue. But even with the resources, I’m not being able to make any dent at all. The problem is still there.
What am I going to do about this? I studied my engineering about 27-28 years ago. And then that is the time I was introduced to spirituality. And when I was introduced to spirituality, I found it so empowering internally, that I felt that I could contribute to society much more by sharing spirituality.
That’s what I have been doing. And over the last few years, I have reconnected with many of my co-students who are now leaders in companies in various places in Silicon Valley in America, in Singapore, in London, other places. So it’s very interesting that when I look at their trajectories, there were some students who were brilliant.
They were always the top in their classes. I happen to also be on one of those. But there are students who had great talents.
And now if you consider these students were talents, now if I look at who has been how successful, how many have had achievements, it’s actually a relatively small portion. Not everyone who has talents has made great achievements. And now, of course, everybody has their own challenges which they have gone through in their lives.
And the point here is not to judge or demean anyone. The point is that the present and the future, they’re not exactly linearly connected. So there was one student who was not that good in engineering, a good friend of mine.
And our project guide gave him an assignment. The final project assignment was that he was to work with two other students, two other kids who were brilliant in their studies. And he said that these were superstars in our, not just in our class, but in our university.
He said, I’m nowhere in their league. I can’t work with them. And he said, Yeah, I know that they are better than you in engineering.
But project guide said said that these two people, because they are so good in their engineering, they both have a big ego. They just can’t work together. So you need to focus on getting them to work together.
Getting them to work together. So which was a very striking thought for me. Okay, let me try that out.
And he focused on that. And he actually got both of them to work together. And they did a very good project eventually, something which either of them could not have done.
And in that process, throughout the four years that he had been studying engineering, he always felt that maybe I’ve come at the wrong place. Maybe I should not be studying engineering. This is some way in which our mind often, by second guessing us, it undermines us, it undercuts our energy.
So that’s the time I realised that my strength is in team building, is in relationships. And the technical skills that he had, they were good, not great, but good. So then he went into management.
He did an MBA from prominent university. Then he was recruited in the managerial position. Now, he’s the CEO of the company.
And coincidentally, or whatever you want to say that both of those students who were the top in the university, both of them are working for him in his company. He’s not a person who lorded over them. But things change.
So at that time for him, he was feeling I’m a misfit in the company. I’m a misfit in engineering. I’m definitely a misfit among these two luminaries in this particular project.
But look for the positive that can emerge from the negative. So, as I mentioned, I have been a spiritual teacher at a bond for about 25 years now. Yesterday was Mother’s Day.
So when I was one, I got polio. And since then, I have never been able to walk without support. I need crutches for walking.
And when I travel across the world and give talks, I speak about spirituality, about motivation, about inner growth. Sometimes I’m invited to give talks to people with special needs also. And at that time, one of the things that strikes me is how many people are fighting battles that are lost long ago.
It’s all distressing. Somebody in accident lost a limb, somebody lost an eye, and somebody has some various kinds of issues. So it’s terrible, but it’s happened.
It’s happened six months ago. It’s happened six years ago. But they’re mentally still replaying it again and again and again.
Now, when I look back at my life, I don’t remember being very resentful about my difficulty in mobility. And to a large extent, the credit for this goes to my mother. I remember when I was about two or three, some neighbours or relatives came to our home.
That part of the memory is vague. They tried to console my mother saying that, oh, it’s so sad that your son got polio. And my mother, I remember her speaking in a very clear, confident voice.
Whatever he lacks physically, God will provide him intellectually. I don’t know what I had done at that time to make my mind, mother think that I had some intellectual abilities. And the God part, I didn’t focus on that, but I focused on the intellectual part.
I like to read, I like to study, I had been gifted with a decent memory. And I did well in studies. So, oh, and in fact, in many ways, my lack of ease in physical mobility helped me to channel my energies towards intellectual growth.
And I started reading in my school also, I became a speaker, I used to write articles, essays. And there’s something good that emerged that a particular capacity to focus in a particular way because of a particular inadequacy. So, I’m not here minimising or trivialising the negatives that happen in our life.
But we are all survivors. And we’re not just survivors, we can be much more than survivors. Whatever it is that seems to be overwhelming us right now, or threatening to overwhelm us, we have probably survived something similar or worse in the past.
And we will survive this also. So, look for the positive that may emerge from the negative. Even if you feel like, okay, I have these good things in my life and these good things I can use to fight with this, but still there’s no impact on it.
Well, okay, there may be no impact right now. But this is where time, it requires, we need patience. I’ll conclude with one metaphor is that, suppose there is a shell.
And there is a tiny bird, a baby bird inside the shell. I was in Florida about a month ago. One of my friends has a farm.
He had gone for a walk on the farm and we actually saw this happening also that if there’s a shell, the bird is there and the bird is trying to break out of the shell. So, when the bird is trying to break out of the shell, the shell is hard and thick. Initially, that shell is very comfortable.
Even if the shell is not thick, the shell protects, it’s comfortable. But as the bird grows, the same shell that is initially comforting, protecting, it becomes stifling, it becomes confining. And the bird tries to break that shell.
And maybe a leg comes out of a crack in the shell and the shell snaps back. You can see the bird wincing at that time. And again, the bird pushes and maybe some wings come out.
And again, the shell snaps back. It’s actually very distressing to see the bird struggling and the shell’s edges are often sharp and the bird starts bleeding. However, through this process, what is happening is, there is the bird’s purpose.
The bird’s purpose is just come out of the shell. And from that perspective, if the shell were thin and fragile, the bird could break out of it and come out very easily. But nature is far wiser than the bird.
And whatever is the organising principle beyond nature, the divine, whatever name we may refer to it, it is to make the bird strong enough to fly. So in the struggle that the bird is going through, in breaking the shell, actually the bird is becoming stronger and stronger. And by that strength, when finally the bird succeeds in breaking the shell and coming out, it will not only get freedom from the shell, it will also be ready to fly.
So similarly, for all of us, we may be facing a particular negativity right now, we may be trying to deal with that negativity. And we may feel like that bird inside the shell, trying to break it. And nothing is happening over there at that time.
However, our purpose may not be the only purpose that is being served through that situation. Who knows during this process, apparently futile of trying to leverage our resources to deal with a particular situation and not having any results. But during that process, we may be developing certain capacity, certain resources, certain level of grit, certain level of resilience.
And that could stand us in far greater stride. So even when nothing seems to be happening externally, in terms of the shell is not breaking, something is happening internally, the bird’s muscles are growing. So our efforts, sometimes they may not seem to give external results.
Sometimes we may be working in a team, but our efforts are not recognised. But if we are working, if we are contributing, we are learning, then we are growing. The particular skills that we have learned, the particular discipline that we have learned.
So external results, they may or may not be happening. But the internal results in terms of our growth, they are going to be there for us. And eventually the shell will break.
Eventually, whatever problem we are facing, we will be able to deal with it. But through dealing with that problem, we will have emerged stronger, wiser, better. And that’s why having patience.
Okay. Let’s wait for the positive that can emerge from the negative. That is extremely empowering.
So I’ll summarise what I discussed today. How to preserve our mental health amid uncertainty. That is our topic today.
And I talked about it broadly, three broad points that look for, we’ll use the A’s acronym. I started with A is look for the positive around the negative. So this is where we discussed how events may not be in our control, but experiences are.
And we can choose how we experience the events. And that’s why what we do is we count our blessings. We have a list of the things that are right.
And then after that, we make our blessings count. And that sense, we ensure that even if there’s something negative going on in our life, that negative doesn’t dominate our consciousness, but rather we are able to focus on something positive. We may have to live with fear, but we don’t have to live in fear.
Now, this is not denying that the problem is negative is there. Among the positive that look for the good around the bad, can look for the good to counter the bad, look for the positive to counter the negative. So once we have some tangible resources, okay, these are the things that I can do something about.
And what happens is at the level of the event, our power may be less. But at the level of experience, we can remember that we are never powerless. This link that is happening, we want to break this link.
And the way we break this link is by asserting our internal autonomy. Internal autonomy means that we understand that it’s like my mind is like my phone screen is like an inner screen. And on that many notifications will come up.
But I am the inner seer, I’m the observer of that screen. And on this when notifications come up, it is for me to decide which notifications deserve to be noticed. So we consciously focus on what can help us deal with the problems.
And sometimes even if we decide, I am doing this to deal with the problems, but nothing is happening and look for the positive that can emerge from the negative. This means that we understand that when we are going through life, that from the present to the future, the path is not necessarily linear or predictable. So at the present, the problem is one thing and the solution of the problem is break the shell for the baby bird.
But the future, the opportunity that is going to come is the bird does not know fly in the sky. So I give the examples of my physical ability, becoming the impetus for me to focus on my physical inability, becoming the focus for an impetus for me to focus my intellectual ability, my friend’s relative lack of technical expertise, getting him to focus on his relational expertise, and that enabling him to succeed professionally. So if we can just be patient, that even if my efforts are not my efforts, they are not having results externally, but still the internal results can always be happening.
And if these internal results are happening, we are growing by that. And because we will be growing, eventually we will find that we will come to a better place. So when we are facing difficulties, we all need to make plans to deal with the situations.
But rather than getting too consumed by the plans alone, I did this, I did that, we see bigger that, hold our plans. Plans means with this resource, I am going to face this problem. We have our plans, but hold our plans lightly, hold our purpose tightly.
Our purpose needs to be bigger than our plans. Our purpose needs to be greater than just our financial security. Our purpose is doing justice to the various gifts that we have been given, the various opportunities that we have, and to make a positive difference.
And when we have that bigger purpose, we will always find some way ahead to move even through the toughest situations. Thank you very much. Thank you so much for a wonderful session.
Anybody has any questions they would like to ask? Hi, my name is Alana. I work in trust and safety. Thank you so much for this.
It was definitely needed for myself. I did write down one question in my notes. When you were talking about when you said that whatever catches our attention catches our emotions and catches us, I was wondering of some things that I may have in my tool belt per se.
How do we stop the attention to things that will catch our emotions? What are some key things that we can do in the moment to stop that from happening? Thank you. That’s an important question. Thank you, Alana.
So basically, the emotions, the attention, I gave to some extent an example for this earlier, that when I said that it’s like a notification that is going to come. The notification coming is that thing catching our attention. Okay, this is here.
But we paid some attention, but the more attention we pay to it, then the bigger and bigger it seems to be. And then our emotion gets triggered. And when the emotion gets triggered, we get pulled into it completely.
So what do we do to prevent this? Broadly speaking, there is a difference. The difference between what there are things that glitter and there are things that matter. Now glitter could be in a positive sense, they look very alluring, but glitter could also be in a negative sense.
Sometimes something something looks like a fire, this fire will burn, but it’s dying anyway. So we need to before we face the day to day challenges of life, generally in the heat of the moment, it is not very easy to do deep thinking. And not being able to do something like that should not be something which we feel bad about or guilty about.
Yes, when we are in a fast paced environment, that’s the time for fast action. But if we take some time apart out for ourselves some me time date with ourselves to really understand to articulate the difference between the things that glitter and the things that matter for us, then we will have at least some resource for us to fall back on to where do I focus my attention on. That means that, okay, this particular news came from here.
Nowadays, there’s so much political polarisation in the world and then there’s a military wars are happening. So some news might distress us. Okay, that’s a concerning thing.
But is that really the most important thing for me right now? So what is things that matter for you? So if we have that list for that, so when I talked about count our blessings, that is more in terms of the things that are right and they are available for us, they are good for us. But here I’m talking about slightly different things that matter, what is really important for me? When we have that list, okay, this particular thing has come up, it is concerning, but it’s not the most important thing for me right now. So once we have this difference available, I have to fall back on.
Then the second stage is distance. Distance means sometimes even at an emotional level or at an intellectual level or at a physical level, we create a distance. So for example, during our workday, we decide that after every maybe one hour, two hours, three hours, I’ll take a few deep breaths, maybe look at some affirmations, just give myself some time to pause.
Then what happens by that is even if we are getting caught in a spiral of emotions, that downward spiral, because we have withdrawn our attention from it, it won’t grow that much. And then if we have created a habit of creating some distance like this, build a habit like that, then we can fall back on that habit. Okay, I talked about some deep breathing could be done, some affirmations, some maybe some just body relaxation, some chanting of some mantras, whatever helps us to create a distance.
And then the third step is diligence. Diligence means that, okay, now I decided this is this is, this is important, but it’s not all that important for me. This is not the most important thing for me.
Let’s see how this works out. I don’t have to pay my attention to this right now. So something has come within our attention.
A notification has come right now, but that doesn’t need my full attention. So what we do is we take a step back and consciously refocus. So the mind or you can say our attention, it can stray away, but we don’t have to let it stay away.
So stray away may be inevitable, because that’s just the way our mind is, but you don’t have to let it stay away. So we can find out what helps us to refocus. So difference in terms of beforehand, knowing what really matters for us.
Distance means intermittently having some exercises by which we can create a distance, come away from being consumed by whatever is happening. And then finally, diligence means refocusing. Even if our mind goes off in a particular direction, bring it back.
So stray away, but don’t let it stay away. Does that help? Yes, thank you so much. I think we’re almost at time.
But if you have one more minute, there’s one more question around what are some practical steps you suggest to reset, renew or determine or find our purpose? If it’s journaling, for instance, what prompt questions do you suggest? Okay, thank you. So journaling can be done in various ways. I already mentioned some prompts, but journaling is very good.
See, one thing is key thing, when we want to our attention is going in a particular direction, say it is propelled by emotions. So changing our emotions is very difficult. Say if you’re feeling anxiety, you’re feeling worry, don’t worry.
Saying like that, change, that is actually difficult. But what we can change is our questions. What do you mean by questions? Questions have a capacity to to stop the flow of our attention in a particular direction and the generation of emotion.
I’m feeling worried. Don’t worry. We might have that in the dialogue, but that doesn’t tell you what exactly is causing my worry.
Once you start asking, oh, okay, that’s interesting. I had to think about it. And as soon as I start thinking, our rational parts are getting activated.
And then there’s a dialogue. So there are various sets of questions, which I use. One is aim.
This is more for self-awareness. So A is action. What exactly am I doing? Just after a few hours, we could just, okay, what am I doing right now? Okay.
I’m attending this talk and I’m trying to learn something valuable for my mental health. Okay. What is my intention in doing this? It may be, you know, I’m going through some issues and I’m looking for some resources.
And M is what is my mood? So action, intention, mood. Okay. How am I feeling right now? Okay.
I’m feeling a little impatient when it’s going to talk, going to get over. I’m feeling a little empowered. Maybe there’s a resource I could use.
So these are questions for self-awareness. Now, for positivity, I use another acronym called God. That is, first is gratitude.
Okay. What am I grateful for right now? Then O is opportunity. So whenever some negativity is coming up, okay, what do I feel grateful for? Okay.
In this situation, what opportunity is there for me? Or even on a day-to-day basis, in a few hours. Okay. What happened in the last couple of hours? What am I grateful for? Oh, you know, okay, that particular project is going on in the next few hours.
What is the opportunity I have? We could see, okay, you know, I got to this work and that work. Yeah, but you know, that particular meeting, I look forward to it. I like hanging out with that person.
I like learning about that field. So try to find some opportunity. And then discipline.
Is there some way in which I can discipline myself more, not for the full time, but maybe for the next couple of hours? Okay, maybe, you know, I’ll not look at my social media for the next couple of hours. We will not do this. So basically, this is a way we can have a positive purpose for ourselves.
So there are these two tools which I broadly use. But journaling is a whole different subject. I also have a six session course on journaling, how to use it for self-development.
But these aim and God, these two are quick set of questions, which can help us in redirecting our attention. So, but the principle is asking questions instead of telling our emotions to stop, ask questions. So the key I would say for formulating these questions is try to visualise that yourself as two parts.
The self, there is a parent you, and there is a child you. So if a child is anxious, we don’t say calm down, that’s one thing. But how would we actually go about calming down the child? So like that, try to see what questions what kind of discussion you can have between the two of you in this way, might find that the questions that will work for you will emerge.
So thank you very much for this. These thoughtful questions and for the opportunity to be here with all of you. All the very best.
Thank you so much, Chetan Chalaji and thank you everyone for joining. It was a great session. Thank you for being here.
Bye-bye. Thank you so much. Thank you.