Brian Johnson (Heroic +1) presents a short, motivational monologue about how negative mental states—"ghosts" such as suffering, regret, and worry—persist only because we "feed" them with attention. He cites Thich Nhat Hanh (No Mud, No Lotus) on the Buddha's teaching that states of mind need food, quotes Eckhart Tolle (The Power of Now) and David Schwartz (The Magic of Thinking Big) to reinforce the metaphor, and concludes with the practical directive: stop feeding suffering and instead deposit positive thoughts.
Chapters
Hi, this is Brian. Welcome back to another heroic plus one. In our last couple 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, approach 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 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 their memory bank. So let's starve the bad stuff and feed the good stuff today.
