Ashok Gupta says rumination about global suffering fuels anxiety and depression. He recommends concrete personal actions like lifestyle changes or activism, patience with outcomes, and prioritizing your own healing so you can actually help others.
When we hear about these things, if we are prone to worry and we're allowing our mind to default to worry, we start thinking about it repetitively. And one of the things that causes anxiety and depression is rumination, ruminating on our negative thoughts. And first of all, it's connected to what I talked about before. Attachment to results, attachment to outcomes, human destruction of the world. This has been happening for many, many decades. This isn't something that's going to change overnight, although we would love for it to change overnight. And therefore there has to be a certain amount of patience at the same time. You want to make a difference, you want to help the planet. And as you said, getting anxious or depressed helps nobody. So how do we shift the attitude? We shift the attitude or what helps me personally is recognizing this idea of everything happens for a reason. And that reason is in every challenge that humanity has faced, hopefully something good comes out of it, which is humanity is facing this big challenge and it should bring forth the opportunity for the world to work together better to put aside selfish needs and actually learn and grow together. So this is part of the evolution of civilization. And if it wasn't for these challenges, wouldn't each country just go off and do its selfish thing and not want to work together? But this is about, as I keep saying this, it is allowing the planet to evolve to its next level of awareness. And therefore, that's what helps me, is recognizing this is good for something. There is a silver lining here. And we will work together, we will work through this. We will find a solution. Humanity has always been, has made lots of mistakes, but also has been great in challenging times to come together and try and work through things and not going to be perfect. But there is a way through. And now is the time for us to campaign for that, to get involved in that in whatever way we can. And so sometimes when we make that little shift and change, whether it's making a personal change in our own lifestyle or signing a petition or going on a march or supporting these things in whatever little way we can that makes us feel like we are responding and making difference and then reduces that sense of helplessness, of this is going on and I can't do anything about it. It empowers us. So what one thing is there that you could do to support the situation that you're concerned about. But as you said yourself, it doesn't help the world and doesn't help me if I'm worrying about it. And I'm becoming more anxious and depressed when we're anxious and depressed. That doesn't really make us change agents for trying to focus on this and someone else is sharing. I deal with these by recognizing that right now I need to focus on myself. And so when we're going through the Gupta program, we focus on energizing ourselves, like plugging our phone into the socket. Let me energize myself first, and then this phone becomes useful to other people, and then I can see how I can make a difference. So let me heal and strengthen myself, and then I'll be there for other people around me and the planet.
