Sri Gurudev:<\/strong> How can you trick your baby so you can take away something that would hurt it? Suppose the baby is playing with something sharp. What kind of trick would you use? You would give her something nice to distract her.<\/p>\nIn the same way, find some nice, positive habits. Present them to the mind. Admire them. “Oh, look how terrific this habit is. So useful. Something to be proud of.” Certainly your little baby mind will jump to grab it. As soon as it jumps for the good habit, take away the bad one.<\/p>\n
If you want to be rid of bad company, what should you do? Just get into good company; the bad company will automatically stay away. It’s simple. You won’t be available to the bad people because you will always be mingling with good people. That’s a very good beginning toward a very high goal. Sri Patanjali calls it pratipaksha bhavanam – substituting positive thoughts for negative ones. Think of the opposite, develop the opposite. If you have hatred, develop love. That is the trick. You cannot simply beat a bad habit to get rid of it. That’s like being in a dark room and beating the darkness, telling it to get out. Instead, just bring in a candle. Without even saying goodbye, the darkness will run away.<\/p>\n
Om Shanthi, Shanthi, Shanthi<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
I LOVED this and wanted to share it! Something I’ve been incorporating into my life the past few weeks with great results.
\nThese last two months during the times I’ve most engaged my mind\/body\/or spirit and avoided confinement-related boredom I’ve noticed that bad habits just stop doing it for me. Most of them dont even cross my mind and the times they do the idea of going back to them bores me. I’ve noticed the times I’ve been most bored or confined I start to think up a storm and get back into old bad routines, almost like I’m looking for trouble. I stop going outside and just sit in front of the computer too much. I avoid company and phonecalls. I bite my nails. I facebook stalk (yeah yeah, we’ve all done it). I get angry about what I find or old things that upset me in the past come back fresh and I get angry all over again. When I’m bored I also habitually overthink things that would have been nothing to me if I was just busy, giving those thoughts way more importance than they would otherwise occur to me… and then before I know it this sadness creeps back in, and so does a type of stress that I haven’t yet been able to name. My mind is a mess, productive manifesting stops, bad things I habitually obsess over start happening, my body isnt being looked after and my nails are bitten to the quick. I turn into a shell of myself.<\/p>\n
Now that I’ve figured it out, this year is going to be very productive and so much fun! There is nothing tying me down right now, I have no obligations to anyone, nobody to check with before I make any decisions. This is a rare opportunity for most people that wont go wasted. I also noticed yesterday that I’m bored in Pittsburgh. Compared to how I felt in Portland — and every time I’m out there — the difference is extreme. I think I’m ready to move on from Pittsburgh now. After the trip to South Africa its time to create a healthy daily life. I’m curious to see if Mamma Afrika has any hold on me. I’ll be there in two weeks!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Question: How can you trick your mind into getting rid of a bad habit? Sri Gurudev: How can you trick your baby so you can take away something that would hurt it? Suppose the baby is playing with something sharp. What kind of trick would you use? You would give her something nice to distract […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[213,214],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-13226","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-food-for-thought","category-wildishheart"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/yummy-wakame.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13226","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/yummy-wakame.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/yummy-wakame.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/yummy-wakame.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/yummy-wakame.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13226"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/yummy-wakame.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13226\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/yummy-wakame.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13226"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/yummy-wakame.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13226"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/yummy-wakame.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13226"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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