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Wednesday, February 23, 2011

How do we deal with being emotionally hurt?

So many times we feel hurt, slighted, neglected or ignored by friends, family members or acquaintances and carry that in our hearts and minds. It is easy to deal with hurt when strangers are involved --- we can retaliate and know we don't have to have them in our lives. But what does one do when it is someone you cannot delete from your life on a permanent basis? We have to learn how to handle these relationships by applying a multi pronged strategy as there is no single, sure short way of having a successful  interaction with people who hurt us. One obvious way is to limit our interaction to polite social chit chat and stick to neutral topics ranging from the weather to movies so that personal opinions and beliefs are avoided. Another way would be to focus on what we can learn from the other person's strong points.We don't need to gush with compliments but can use this relationship as an opportunity to observe someone who is different from us and imbibe traits which can help us. This takes your attention away from the hurt, the emotional upheavles, the negatives of the other person and makes our self improvement as the focal point. It is not supposed to land us in a competitive situation but intended to change focus to learning, growing  and maturing spiritually from every relationship. Third way would be to not shut ourself in a cocoon but seek to share our experience with people we trust. The idea is not to seek advice but a sympathetic ear and shoulder. Just as happiness doubles when shared, sorrow halves when shared. Lastly, we must do our utmost to not becoming the other person by doing the same thing as then nothing differentiates or makes us better than him or her.We urgently need to protect your core goodness  by resisting the urge to indulge in the same retaliatory behaviour. This is the spiritual test that we have been up for and have to pass . We win when we envelope ourselves in warm, positive and caring energy which attracts the same energy from other people.

Monday, February 21, 2011

Heart or the mind?

Heart is the place where all the burning motivations of our lives take birth. Capture the heart of a person and you have won him over for life. If the heart is convinced of an objective then everything just falls into place and the mind plans and strategizes to achieve the goal. The important thing to understand, is that, it is the heart which is the source of our motivations and the most basic thing that  every heart wants is peace and happiness. But most of the time we forget this and live in a virtual world of our mind which is obsessed by trying to flaunt the most attractive image of ourselves to the world. It is constantly analyzing of what the outside world thinks of us and prodding us to compete so that we emerge as the winners. This struggle between the heart and the mind is the source of all negative emotions of worries, inadequacies, anger, jealousy and unrestrained desires. So every  time we face anxiety and anger, we need to stop and ask what is it that my heart really wants and not my ego dominated mind. Follow your heart and everything will just fall into place.