17 Dec 2025 · 3 min
Brian Johnson argues that mental ghosts like rumination and regret only survive because we feed them. Stop dwelling on negative thoughts and deposit positive ones instead, drawing on Thich Nhat Hanh, Eckhart Tolle, and David Schwartz.
Hey, hero, if you're enjoying these daily plus ones, make sure you head to heroic us to check out all of the other goodness we have to help you activate your best every day. And now, today's plus one. Hi, this is Brian. Welcome back to another heroic plus one. In our last couple plus ones, we hung out with a couple of wise Indian masters and their gurus. We talked about what to do if we're afraid of ghosts, approached them, and how to deal with the bitter process of changing our behaviors. Keep chewing. Today I want to chat about ghosts for another moment. This time we'll go a little further east and visit Vietnam, where the great Buddhist monk Thich Nhat Hanh was born and raised. When I searched my Mac for ghosts to find the Yogananda wisdom I was looking for, I saw that Thich Nhat Hanh also talked about ghosts in his great book, no Mud, no Lotus. Here's the passage he tells us, and I quote, the Buddha said that nothing can survive without food. This is true not just for the physical existence of living beings, but also for states of mind. Love needs to be nurtured and fed to survive. And our suffering also survives because we enable and feed it. We ruminate on suffering, regret and sorrow. We chew on them, swallow them, bring them back up, and eat them again and again. If we're feeding our suffering while we're walking, working, eating or talking, we. We are making ourselves victims of the ghosts of the past, of the future, or our worries in the present. We're not living our lives. So know this. Nothing, including ghosts, survives without food. So you want the ghosts to go away? Simple. Quit feeding them. Eckhart Tolle echoes this wisdom in the Power of Now. He tells us, I quote, tolle, once you realize that a certain kind of food makes you sick, would you carry on eating that food and keep asserting that it's okay to be sick? In the Magic of Thinking Big, David Schwartz uses another metaphor to bring the point home. He tells us, and I quote, schwartz, deposit only positive thoughts in your memory bank. Let's face it squarely. Everyone encounters plenty of unpleasant, embarrassing and discouraging situations. But unsuccessful and successful people deal with these situations in directly opposite ways. Unsuccessful people take them to heart, so to speak. They dwell on the unpleasant situations, thereby giving them a good start in their memory. At night, the unpleasant situation is the last thing they think about. Confident, successful people, on the other hand, don't give it another thought. Successful people specialize in putting positive thoughts into into their memory bank. So let's starve the bad stuff and feed the good stuff. Today. We hope you enjoyed today's Heroic one. For more ancient wisdom, modern science and practical tools to help you flourish in energy, work and love, head to Heroic US where you can get started on your heroic journey for free.
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