Wednesday

17


February , 2021
In search of happiness
12:07 pm

Sister Shivani


 

...... Continued from the previous issue

Emotional health has a direct connection with our relationships. Many of us, not everybody, are still living with 20 people together. Many of us have moved towards smaller families and then we are alone in our rooms. We think we are very happy being alone with our laptops, iPads, and phones but our power of adjusting and adapting remains unused.

 

This power increases within us only when we are with people. To adjust makes us emotionally healthy. To be able to listen to a no makes us emotionally healthy. To live a life of discipline makes us emotionally healthy. But now we are living alone in a room and we are talking to people online and sometimes, we don’t even know who we are talking to, and then we don’t need to adjust as much. Building relationships is directly connected with our emotional health.

 

As a family, we can take some decisions to start taking care of everyone’s emotional health. Because if we don’t take care of our emotional health, then we may face a mental health crisis. Why is there a large number of anxiety attacks today? Don’t you think we need to do something about it together?

 

We need to protect the emotional and mental health of our children. We cannot only prioritise their intellectual health, their physical health, their social circle, and social health. What about their emotional and mental health? During the Covid pandemic, a lot of corporate houses say we want leaders who are emotionally strong. The need to adapt, the power to adjust, the power to hold everybody together, and the power to be able to motivate others is being felt strongly. It requires a lot of emotional energy.

 

Emotional health is not a priority but a necessity. We all have the power to deal with depression and mental health issues from our country as we are a country, which is rich in spiritual principles and in healing tools and techniques. We have yoga, pranayana, meditation, and spirituality.

 

Start prioritising emotional health that will benefit every family member. It does not mean everyone has to start doing it immediately. Just begin with one person. So, let’s pick up a simple lifestyle habit, which can increase your emotional health. Many are going to create new habits this new year but remember new year should not only entail a change in date but also a change in your nature.

 

Let us focus on the morning. Mornings are very important for emotional health. Actually, the early hours of the day and the last hour of the day before we go to sleep is very important for emotional health. This emotional health will help heal physical health, heal relationships, and heal nature. Since we now have technology, we are always at work. Even when we are at home, we are working, because we are connected with our phones, with our technology and with gadgets. Let’s start by giving our mind a little break. It needs some rest. If we want us or our employees to remain energised, intuitive, relaxed, recharged and emotionally healthy, then we need to give the mind some rest. It means a cut off time from work and that’s a simple thing to do.

 

Let’s say we are working from 8am to 8pm at a stretch. Then from 8pm in the evening to 8am in the morning, we don’t need to work. Even if we do this much, we are going to solve the majority of mental and emotional health issues. Every organisation needs to realise that the people they are sending back home every evening are someone’s parents. If we want to have emotionally strong children, we will have to send emotionally strong parents back to their houses every evening.

 

For us to have emotionally strong children, we have to have emotionally healthy parents. For us to have emotionally healthy parents, we have to give them a cut off time from work. But if we expect people to be at work always, even after they go home, how would it be? Work is only a part of our life but it seems that we have made work our life.

 

That’s why the lockdown has reminded us that there is more in life than only working. We suddenly started enjoying life because we had not experienced that life for quite some time. We are living with tired and fatigued minds and when the mind is tired and fatigued it just reacts in every situation and that hurts our mental health. So, let’s create a cut off time from work. If we do it as an organisation it is good but if we don’t do it as an organisation, let us do it as a team. If you don’t do it as a team, then let us do it individually.

 

The problem is we have a fear. We fear that if we disconnect from work for two hours, someone else will go ahead of us. But the truth is if you really want to go ahead in life, your mind needs to be energised. If you wake up at 5am, don’t check your texts and emails till 6am or 7am. Give your mind some time to connect to the supreme power, fill it with positivity, give some time to reflect and contemplate and meditate.

 

We do everything but we first look at our phone for 10 minutes, see our messages and emails. Then we sit to meditate and pray. That’s not the way to go about it because the mind is already in work mode. I would request not to check emails and messages before meditating. Be with yourself for at least one hour in the morning. Because the first layer of information that goes into the mind will get absorbed by the subconscious.We have just had deep sleep, subconscious which means deeper layer of the mind is active, whatever I will put the first layer in the morning, it will go deeper into my personality. The first hour of the morning should be for meditation and spiritual study, yoga, pranayama for 1 hour. An hour for self that is what going to change the quality of the remaining 23 hours. An hour for the self is what going to heal not just mind and body but your relationship, the energy of the house and energy of the planet. Emotional health depends on emotional diet, emotional diet depends on what we watch, read, and listen. What we watch, read, listen is what we become.

So now rewind, 30 years back why there was no stress. Why there was no depression, not that we knew much about it. It was not there because what we watch, read, listen was very little compare to what it is right now and quality was completely different. So what we watch, read, listen if the content I consume has got aggression, has got stress, has got worry, has got hurt and hatred, has got jealousy, comparison and competition - that’s what is there what I consume, that’s who I become.

So spirituality means I begin my morning with at least 30 minutes of a healthy, emotional diet. That is spiritual study, which means begin the day with absorbing content of spiritual nature, content from divine, content of compassion, empathy, faith, love, acceptance, unity, forgiveness, have to absorb that content. Unless I absorb that I will not be able to become that, because during the day I am absorbing a lot of opposite content. Kyam, kryodh, lobh, moho, ahankar panch bikar, last, anger, ego, greed, jealousy we are consuming of that so much content. If we absorb that, that is what we are going to become.

30 minutes in the morning should be like mandatory for everybody. It’s like diet, we are conscious about what we are eating for the body. More than that we need to take care of what we are putting in our mind. The first few thought should be gratitude. Gratitude to the supreme power, gratitude to the mind and body for being healthy, gratitude to family and people and gratitude to nature. If we create first few thoughts of gratitude, then our mind tunes into higher vibration and then there is less to complain during the day or power to accept then meditation, meditation means preparing ourselves to how to be during the day.

We all have a diary of what to do during the day we need to prepare ourselves of how we are going to be today. So Rajyog meditation means, we create a set of powerful thoughts and then we visualise them. It’s power of visualisation. We all know the about miracle created with the power of visualisation. But that is power of visualisation of what we want to achieve. Mediation means power of visualisation of what we want to achieve here, who I want to become here.

So let’s say I take a simple steps to mediate, I am a peaceful being, now I start visualising it during the day with people in situation. I release the past, I let go, and this is my preparation in the morning. I connect to the supreme power, visualise, the powers and qualities of the divine, feeling inside the soul. This is Rajyog meditation. The last hour before we go to sleep, if we want to be emotionally healthy, we need to take care of our sleep timing. Life needs to be disciplined.

We have to create a disciplined lifestyle and then manage our work around it. We win the other way round, that if I finish work, I will sleep early, if I finish my work I will eat on time, if I don’t finish my work how can I eat on time, how can I sleep on time. Everything else is secondary and work right on the top, which is okay that is a priority. If we make that choice then work will flourish which it is, mind getting affected, body getting affected, relationships getting affected. 

 

.......... To be continued. 

Add new comment

Filtered HTML

  • Web page addresses and e-mail addresses turn into links automatically.
  • Allowed HTML tags: <a> <em> <strong> <cite> <blockquote> <code> <ul> <ol> <li> <dl> <dt> <dd>
  • Lines and paragraphs break automatically.

Plain text

  • No HTML tags allowed.
  • Web page addresses and e-mail addresses turn into links automatically.
  • Lines and paragraphs break automatically.