Reducing overthinking and anxiety || Acharya Prashant, with IIT Bombay (2020)

Acharya Prashant

‍♂️ Want to meet Acharya Prashant? Be a part of the Live Sessions: https://acharyaprashant.org/hi/enquir...   Want to read Acharya Prashant's Books? Get Free Delivery: https://acharyaprashant.org/en/books?...  ~~~~~~~~~~~~~  Video Information:  07.07.2020, IIT-Bombay, Greater Noida, U.P.  Context: ~ How should one reduce overthinking? ~ How to manage time? ~ How to spend our time? ~ How to get rid of worries? ~ Are we finding fun in worries?   Music Credits: Milind Date  ~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Transcript

00:00Next one is from Jai Krishan, IIT Bombay, Civil Engineering.

00:17How should one reduce overthinking about situations or about future?

00:28There is so much unnecessary anxiety in students.

00:36Jai Krishna work, to be anxious you need to be

00:50blessed with a lot of spare time.

00:54How do you manage the time to indulge in anxiety?

01:07I have chosen the word with care, it's an indulgence, to be anxious, to be worried.

01:16There is a subtle enjoyment in all this, right?

01:24I am worried, something great is about to happen.

01:34One is subtly sipping some juice, it's a covert kind of fun.

01:58Anxiety, worry, may I say it's related to narcissism, when you say something bad can

02:20happen to me, either right now or in the future, aren't you saying you are very important,

02:27at least to yourself?

02:32Some really big misfortune is going to fall on me.

02:42Indirectly you are asserting that you are so big that you can attract a big misfortune.

02:48Are you that big?

02:50Has anything really big ever happened to you?

02:56And how can even a big boulder fall on your head?

03:04But there is pleasure in worry, this will sound strange to many, but stay with it.

03:14There is a subtle pleasure in worrying.

03:27The opposite of this self-centered worry is immersion in action.

03:39Immerse yourself in the right action and then where is the space and the time to worry?

03:46Surely you are stealing time away from work so that you can indulge in worries and anxieties

03:54and fancies of all kinds.

03:59Young people fantasize, don't they?

04:04Some fantasize about beautiful, pretty, exciting things, others fantasize of scary demons,

04:21but fundamentally it's much the same thing, is it not?

04:27You are using your faculty of imagination to gratify yourself in some way.

04:34You have rom-coms and then you have horror flicks and one is being played on screen number

04:43three, the other one on the adjacent screen number four.

04:48The audience is much the same, is it not?

04:51In fact, some who could not manage a ticket for screen three have walked into screen four.

05:03The objective is entertainment, the objective is to move into a virtual, unreal world and

05:19titillate yourself.

05:25On one screen you have a man and a woman doing things to each other's bodies.

05:33On the other screen you have the demon doing things to somebody's body.

05:41In either case, it's a bloody bodily business.

05:49There is blood and there is body, both the screens.

05:55And in both the cases, in either of the cases, you are glued to the screen, right?

06:03So that you can forget the real thing, so that you can forget the fact of your life.

06:12That's what imagination of all kinds, whether the so-called positive imagination or negative

06:18imagination, whether it is hope or worry or despair, that's the purpose they all serve.

06:25They take you away from the fact of your life.

06:29So you are busy imagining that something very inauspicious, very scary can happen to you

06:38in the future.

06:40Indirectly what you are asserting is that presently you are all right, are you all right?

06:47When you are saying that, oh my God, what if tomorrow such a bad thing happens, aren't

06:53you claiming that right now things are almost okay for you?

07:01That's what you want to convince yourself of, that you are almost all right.

07:08Believe it or not, what demon can hold you by the neck in the future?

07:21The demon is already here right now and he doesn't need to hold your neck, he is within

07:30you and he has gripped your heart from within.

07:42But you don't want to look at that, you want to avoid that, that's why you manufacture

07:46fancies.

07:49Action, work is what we need.

07:57And you know what you need to do right now, let's assume for a while that your worries

08:03about the future are founded in facts, let's say some grand evil army is invading your

08:13little fortress and you can see them all coming with your binoculars and you are estimating

08:27that they will reach you in another four hours, correct?

08:34Those wild hordes and they are all bloodthirsty savages, they will ravage your fortress, they

08:46will put everything to fire, they will slaughter, they will loot and you are seeing that they

08:56are about to reach you in another four hours, now what do you do?

09:10You work, you work.

09:15If the future as per your imagination is really threatening to be terrible, then that's all

09:24the more incentive for you to immerse yourself in the right action right now or would you

09:34squat and brood?

09:39Four hours they are coming, you know what they will do, they will rape, they will plunder,

09:46they are coming, is that what you will do?

09:51Is that what you will do?

09:53If the threat is indeed real, then work and if the threat is not real, then slap yourself

10:02and find some work.

10:08What's the point in getting trapped in circular thought, getting it?

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