Suppose you receive a beautiful message early in the morning.
That we shouldn't hold onto anger about anyone.
Because holding onto anger makes us sad. Therefore, forgive.
Finding it to be such a beautiful message, we forward it to everyone.
But when we come in to practical situations throughout the day
We say - How can I forgive? It was such a huge mistake.
The message we had read was different. And it felt good when reading it.
But when we came into action, we did not implement that goodness.
Which means we have a lot of wisdom but we are not using them consistently.
So I think the only need today is forest take one more pledge -
That everything we know, we will start implementing it.
Implementation is important.
Close your eyes for 30 seconds.
And on a grade of 1 to 10
10 is for perfect emotional health and 1 is for least emotional health.
Please grade yourself from 1 to 10.
What ranking do you stand yourself by?
Whether it is a perfect 10, whether it is average, or below average.
Look at yourself, being a detached observer.
It's very easy to rate other people.
You can rate other people within a moment, if you are asked to do it right now.
She is on 8, she is on 5, she is on 4 ... It takes no time.
Now we need to grade ourselves.
When we check our physical health it is very easy to see.
Am I strong? Are there any aches and pains?
Is my immunity system good? How is my stamina?
Do I start gasping for breath when I climb 3 floors of stairs?
We are able to check our physical fitness.
Now let's check emotional fitness.
We keep facing situations. People behave differently.
Do we fall emotionally ill in those moments?
When someone is worried or angry, do we catch their emotional infection?
How strong is our emotional immunity system?
Do problems seem very big to me? Or do I find them simple and cross them easily?
What is my response internally?
In my thoughts and feelings? And then in my words and behaviour?
To every situation of life? In every scene ... Scene after scene
If someone doesn't speak to me properly, how do I feel?
If someone doesn't like my post on Facebook, how do I feel?
If someone tells me I am too fat, how do I feel?
If someone stopped speaking to me, but spoke to the other person, how do I feel?
On a scale of 1 to 10, where do I stand?
Do I feel emotionally tired by evening?
Even if someone enquires about our wellbeing, do we say life is just going on?
Okay, please raise your hands.
(count 10, 9, 8 ... 3, 2, 1)
If my emotional health is not at 10
If it is 7, 6 or 5
Life is going fine, there is no problem.
Sometimes we get angry, sometimes we cry, and sometimes we feel bad.
What is wrong in that? It is normal.
Which means I can live my life with average health.
But while having an average health, if suddenly there comes a big challenging situation
Then my average health will not be in a position to face that situation.
For example if there is pain in my leg, I can still walk.
It is so easy that
I have accepted that pain in my foot to be a normal part of my life.
And if I say - It is okay. What difference will it make? Anyway it is not healing. Let me keep walking.
But some day if I need to run, I will not be able to do it.
And that day I will fall.
But that day when I fall
I will say that I need someone to help me stand.
But when I was walking in pain, if I had helped myself to heal my foot
Probably I would never fall.
Similarly there are few emotional pains internally. But we have accepted then and are living with them.
Because we have believed anger is normal, tension is normal, sadness is normal ...
If someone speaks rudely, we think feeling bad is normal.
Actually all of them are emotional illnesses.
They are not mental health issues but are emotional health issues.
But because we labelled them as normal
We didn't find the need to do anything about it.
Not just us, but the whole world called these emotions as normal.
Holding onto unpleasant past,
Saying - I can never forget this. It was a huge thing.
As we kept holding onto the past here, our inner power kept reducing.
They started becoming emotional burdens
Even then we said it is not a big deal. It is normal.
As a society we collectively labelled several emotional illnesses as normal.
Always being happy, always being peaceful
Always been stable and powerful, regardless of the situation
Today we say it is abnormal and impossible.
Which means we said health is abnormal and illness is normal.
When we were at school, which means I am talking of 25 years ago
There was no word called Stress as an emotion.
Stress was a word only in Physics.
We never walked around saying I am stressed. It was not a word in our vocabulary.
We only knew Stress in science defined as Pressure / Resilience.
Very rarely we would say - I feel tensed.
That was only one day before exams and one day before results. Finished.
Otherwise the word Tension did not exist in line at all.
And tension was just that slight discomfort, one day before exam and one day before results. That was it.
But because we did not take care of it at that level
What happened in the past 20 years?
Please locate this equation: Stress is equal to Pressure divided by Resilience.
Numerator is Pressure, which means challenges.
How many of you feel the numerator which means the Pressure has increased in the last 20 years?
Denominator is Resilience which means inner power.
Resilience or Inner power means the power to face situations in life.
Which means power to adjust, power to tolerate, power to let go, power to forgive ... These are our inner powers.
Do you feel this resilience or inner power has decreased over the past 20 years? Yes.
If you look at the equation, numerator has increased. Denominator has decreased.
This has happened really fast.
If this had happened slowly, we would have adapted ourselves.
But it happened really fast.
Numerator increased quickly. Denominator reduced quickly.
So the result of that equation did not even remain at Stress.
It escalated into another word Depression.
Depression doesn't just remain an illness. A lot of people use this word to describe their mood.
People say - I am feeling so depressed today.
They even open the window in the morning and say - The weather is so depressing today.
We need to be careful when using these words.
If we repeatedly say - I am feeling very depressed
We might have to meet the doctor one day.
We have to be very careful with our vocabulary.
We keep repeating that I am stressed. The other person says - I am more stressed than you.
And we actually started competing with each other to see who is more stressed.
Because we believed that the one who is more stressed is more successful.
And that is where we collectively brought society to.
Let's just change the word and start saying - I am happy.
Even if we are not happy, let's start saying it.
When you keep repeating the high vibration word, it's like a Mantra.
It is like continuously chanting a Mantra.
Today we have started stating low energy words like a Mantra - I am very stressed ... I am very depressed ...
They are very irritating ... I am very busy ...
Every word is low energy.
If our words and vibrations become low repeatedly
If we keep thinking the same way
When that happens most of the times and not just sometimes
Then our emotional health keeps going down.
And then we will not even realise when we going to depression. These figures are rising because we don't even realise.
Why don't we realise? Symptoms are so clear.
The mind is not happy, we don't feel like eating anything
We can't sleep at night, we don't feel like going out
I don't feel like speaking to anyone ...
Even after seeing all these symptoms, why don't we or our family recognise that we have depression?
It happens because, we are mostly living with that mood.
If someone is always cheerful
And then it's someone notices that he is sad
At least contrast in mood is visible in that person.
But if generally we are in a low mood. And slightly more sad over a period of few days?
When I meet people
And I can see it that they probably need to meet a doctor
If I tell that person, they are not in a frame of mind to accept.
But I have seen that even when you tell their family
The person needs to meet the doctor
That person's family says - Nothing is wrong. His mood is slightly off. And this keeps happening.
It is only because of this reason that we are not recognising it.
Because that mood of depression has become somewhere very similar to our normal moods.
So we cannot even see a difference, that there is a change in mood.
If the face normally looks stressed, and now it looks 10% more stressed, then what difference will it make?
And which means we may not be in depression.
But we are definitely not a healthy and happy society.
Otherwise depression in someone stands out starkingly.
But today we don't recognise depression in ourselves or in our family.
Colleague with whom we work throughout the day has depression, but we don't recognise it.
Why are we not able to identify?
Because there is not much difference between his mood earlier and his mood today.
Also there is not much difference between his mood and the mood of the society today.
We say - What is the big deal in being sad? Many people at sad today.
We are not able to find out. We are not able to see even if it is depression.
Which means many of us experience symptoms similar to that of depression
Even though we are not clinically depressed.
If we keep experiencing those moods on and off
Then our chances of actually contacting it will increase.
Today we are talking about mental health. We are talking about helping those who have issues.
Along with that we also need to talk about
People who don't have any mental health issues should take care of themselves, so that they never encounter it.
Today we are taking care after the issue is created.
But if we take care prior to it, then no one will have a mental health issue.
In the last few months I have just been traveling a lot of outside the country.
I can see a huge difference outside.
The people in other countries mostly live alone.
So many roads are also empty, and suddenly you see one person there.
People are living alone. Even lights go off after 6 p.m. in the evening.
Loneliness is becoming one of the reasons there, for depression and anxiety.
But what is the reason here? Here we don't get to spend 15 minutes alone.
We don't have space to live alone.
People don't have space to be alone for 5 minutes.
Which is such a fortune actually
That we are not alone. There always energies, there are always people around us.
In such a culture when we always have people around us
Why are we having to say that you are not alone?
What does it mean?
It means despite being with everyone, we sometimes are lonely.
Today let's take a pledge for ourselves.
Are we ready to bring our emotional health to 10?
Last year WHO said 1 in 4 people has depression.
WHO also said that by 2020, depression will become the second leading cause for death.
But today if we take a decision
That we will bring our emotional health to 10.
And bring emotional health of people around as also to 10
By 2020 we can remove depression from India. That is certain.
This needs to become our responsibility.
As a country we worked hard to eradicate polio.
Now as a country we need to take care and eradicate depression.
The goal should not be to take care of people who are depressed. It should be to finish depression.
That is what needs to be our responsibility.
That neither I should have it nor should someone else.
Understandable that if someone gets depressed, we will take care.
But why take care only after it happens?
Let's take care of each other before something happens.
And most importantly let's take care of ourselves first.
How many of you give yourself 30 minutes to take care of your mind on a daily basis?
To take care of the mind and not the body?
So it doesn't include exercise and walk. They mean taking care of the body.
Taking care of the mind.
Today if we tell someone to take out a little time and meditate every morning
There is one low vibration word ready in people's vocabulary. What is that word?
I am very busy and I don't have time.
This is a huge reason for a lot of pain.
We keep saying repeatedly - I don't have time.
I don't have time for myself. I don't have time for my family.
I don't have time to do what I like to do.
We repeatedly tell ourselves - I don't have time.
Let's change one thought today. Are you ready?
Let's sacrifice or give up the word Busy today. It depletes our emotional health rapidly.
All of us have the same amount of time.
But our attitude towards time will differ from person to person.
Some people work for 18 hours a day and still remain light.
Some people don't do anything and yet say - I have no time.
So it is an attitude. It is not about the number of hours at all it.
Someone can be retired. But it feels like no one is busier than them.
Because it's here. It's not outside.
It's an attitude which I create by repeatedly saying it to myself.
Let's start using a high energy word.
I am easy and I have a lot of time.
Say it with more conviction.
I am easy. I have lot of time.
Repeat this line at least once after every hour.
Because every time you create a high energy thought and a high energy word
You are energising yourself.
Every time you create a low energy thought and low energy word, you are depleting yourself.
It has nothing to do with work and nothing to do with time. It's all to do with here.
I am easy and I have a lot of time.
And so I promise 30 minutes for taking care of myself.
