When things go bad, I start panicking || Acharya Prashant, at Mithibai College, Mumbai (2022)

Acharya Prashant

Video Information: 10.12.22, Mithibai College, Mumbai   Context: ~ How do I stop panicking? ~ How to handle myself when I panic? ~ How to deal with tension?  ~ How to not overthink or worry about things? ~ What stresses us out? ~ Why are mental health problems more prevalent in adolescents?   Music Credits: Milind Date  ~~~~~  #acharyaprashant #panic #work #tension #overthinking #stressrelief #studentslife #study #mentalhealth

Transcript

00:00Hi sir, good evening.

00:05So if things do not go my way or at the slightest inconvenience, I tend to panic.

00:11So how do I handle the situation or reduce my panic rate?

00:15See, there are 2-3 levels to this situation and the solution.

00:22First of all, irrespective of what you are doing, panicking never helps the outcome.

00:29Irrespective of whether you are doing the right thing or the wrong thing.

00:35You are doing something worthy enough, panicking will not help the outcome.

00:40You are doing something absolutely unworthy, panicking will still not help the outcome.

00:46So that's the first thing and that's a very practical consideration.

00:50Irrespective of what my desire is, good, bad, great, ugly, panicking only spoils the outcome.

01:01So if you are really serious about what you are targeting, what your desire is, you would

01:07not want to panic and when panic sets in, you will say, oh, this will spoil my chances.

01:13I don't have to panic.

01:14Panic is not my friend.

01:17Panic has entered the situation as an enemy.

01:19So I need not support the panic and believe me, panic is not something that can possess

01:26you without your permission.

01:32Any emotion, any feeling, any instinct, anything that arises from within cannot go too far

01:41within you without your permission, rather your support.

01:48An emotion arises, you support it, therefore it becomes all the more dominant.

01:55Be it anger, be it jealousy, be it fear, be it lust and the same thing applies to panic.

02:04The origin of panic might be purely biological.

02:11But the development of panic is something that you choose to happen.

02:18If you don't choose to support panic, panic will not get on top of you.

02:23And that's a practical thing.

02:25Panic is not useful, therefore I am not supporting panic.

02:30That's the response at one level.

02:33Now further, you have to see whether anything that you are doing is so damn important that

02:45it can define your existence itself.

02:53Panic is often a result of undue importance and undue seriousness that you attach to a

03:02situation.

03:03Let me ask you a few questions.

03:07Think of all the things you have been very serious about in your lives so far.

03:15You remember class 8th final exam?

03:19Remember how serious some of you were?

03:21How many of you were very serious that day or on those days?

03:27So many of you.

03:28Now the boards, class 10th, how many of you sweated and felt anxious and a lot?

03:40Now how do you feel when you look back at all that anxiety?

03:47You must be having younger brothers and sisters at home, right?

03:52And she is writing her class 8th exam and going crazy.

03:58What do you tell her today?

04:01As elder siblings, what do you tell her today?

04:05Don't you feel that very important hours and days and weeks of your life were needlessly

04:21spent in stress, tension, inner misery at that time?

04:26Don't you see that?

04:30Don't you think you could have done equally well or even better without admitting that

04:37much tension?

04:40You could have done that.

04:41Do you agree?

04:45So at the age of, let's say you are 18 or 20 or 22 today, at the age of 20, you clearly

04:52see that you were needlessly anxious when you were 12 or 15.

04:57You see that, right?

04:59And you see that in your younger siblings as well.

05:01You see that, right?

05:03And when you look at a three-year-old, you see how disconsolate he is, having lost a

05:09toy, beating his chest, wailing with his mouth towards the skies.

05:21Have you seen younger ones doing all that?

05:25Lost my entire universe.

05:31All that he has broken is a toy.

05:34That little doll or car is now broken and his universe has collapsed.

05:41Have you seen that?

05:43And we all have done that and continue to do that.

05:49Was that you realize the follies of age 3 or age 12 or age 15 at age 20?

05:57When you were 12, you did not realize the follies you are making then.

06:05Later on you realize what you did at 12 was needless.

06:12If at 20 you can see what you did at 12 was needless, don't you see that when you would

06:17be 30, you would be laughing at all the anxiety, stress, tension, panic, that you today give

06:25your consent to, won't it happen?

06:30Today, as of today, how many of you are worried about something or the other?

06:36Raise your hands please.

06:39How many of you are absolutely free of worry about anything?

06:44Come on, there would be at least a few.

06:47I will talk to you separately.

06:52Need some life lessons.

06:58So we are worried.

07:01And the same kind of worry can snowball into panic when the moment comes, right?

07:11These same worries, how would you look at them 5 years from today?

07:17Yes, you would be laughing at them, right?

07:21Just as today you laugh at that 12 year old.

07:25Today you laugh at that 12 year old, tomorrow you will be laughing at this 20 year old.

07:31Am I right?

07:36Have you attained enlightenment at 20?

07:39Absolute perfection?

07:40No, you are not perfect.

07:41Nobody is, at least I am not.

07:44So when you would be 30, you would be saying, how stupid I was to worry about needless things

07:48at age 20.

07:49Won't you say that?

07:52But even if you realize that when you are 30, your 20th year that you have lost won't

08:00return to your life, or would it?

08:02Will you be able to set the clock, rather the calendar back?

08:08Would you be able to do that?

08:10So the 20th year is gone, then the 21st year is gone, and then the 30th year is gone repenting

08:16that you wasted the 20th year.

08:21Look at old people.

08:24The frustration of a life lost is writ large in their face on their wrinkles.

08:31Seen their wrinkles?

08:35All those are words actually, that's a script that we can't read, but they can.

08:44And what's written there in that script?

08:48A life just lost, an opportunity just squandered.

08:56Doing what?

08:59Doing not much, but worrying a lot.

09:04Doing not much, but worrying a lot.

09:10We are worried mostly about inconsequential stuff, but sir, what happens when you choose

09:25something consequential and really important to do?

09:30Would you not be doubly worried then?

09:33No.

09:35On the contrary, when you choose something really important to do, you do not have time

09:40to worry.

09:43If you have time and space to worry, that only tells that you have chosen something

09:48worthless.

09:49The real target, the real job, the real action will absorb you so much that you will be left

09:58with no space to worry.

10:02A western thinker said action is the antidote to despair.

10:11And the topmost Indian philosophy from the Bhagavad Gita says that the Yukta person,

10:19the undivided person is the one for whom future has ended.

10:25In what sense has the future ended?

10:26The fellow is so immersed in what he is doing that he has stopped caring for the results

10:32in future.

10:35What I am doing, what's at my hand is so beautiful and so important, so lovable that I have no

10:45time to bother about the results.

10:48And think of it.

10:49It's a question you have to answer.

10:52Can you be stressed out or panicky if you are not thinking about the results?

11:00What stresses you out?

11:01The action or the concern for the result?

11:03Think of it.

11:06Again think of it and repeat to yourself.

11:09It is not the action that is troublesome.

11:12It is the concern for the result that troubles you.

11:17And you will not be concerned about the result if you have taken up something very beautiful

11:22and meaningful.

11:23That's counterintuitive.

11:26Usually we think that if we are doing something very important, we will be even more bothered

11:31about the results.

11:32Right?

11:33No, that's not what the knowers have told us.

11:37They have told us something very different.

11:38They have said, if you really love doing something, you will be so absorbed in it that the result

11:46will become inconsequential.

11:51Love and let your action be in love and then you will give two hoots to what happens next.

12:01Now where is the space to panic?

12:04Where is the space to panic?

12:07Panic itself is an indicator that you are bothered about tomorrow.

12:13Let tomorrow die.

12:18Let tomorrow be finished for you.

12:20All I know of is this moment and the beauty it has.

12:26Learn to live.

12:28Learn to love beauty.

12:34Otherwise there is only despair.

12:39And mental issues have somehow become epidemic in this generation.

12:51It's a new thing.

12:52It has never happened before in history.

12:57You people are especially blessed in many ways.

13:01You are recipients of the thousands of years of progress of human technology, knowledge,

13:10economy.

13:11All the progress that mankind has made over its history has come to you.

13:16You have inherited that.

13:18So you are blessed.

13:20Equally you are very unfortunate.

13:23The kind of mental pressure you chaps are facing is unprecedented.

13:31The anxiety levels in youngsters are just too scary.

13:37I am not talking of impressions.

13:38I am talking of statistics.

13:46The only way out is love.

13:48Love not of the man-woman kind.

13:51Obviously we are not talking of that.

13:55Love of the day-to-day kind, moment-to-moment and breath-to-breath kind.

14:03Why must you choose to do something that's not worthy enough?

14:07Love for worthiness.

14:14Attend to what is important and give yourself completely to it.

14:19Learn to surrender.

14:23Have the guts to be immersed.

14:27Don't save yourself for tomorrow.

14:31Dissolve in this moment today.

14:36Don't do something just because it will fetch you good results and dividends.

14:40Do something just because it is great doing it.

14:45I don't care for what it gives me.

14:48I just love for what it is.

14:54Will you be the same kind of profit-seeking, benefit-mongering youngster that historically

15:05Homo sapiens have been?

15:07You want to continue that Sikh tradition?

15:10The same Sikh tradition that has brought the entire humanity along with the whole planet

15:15today to the brink of devastation?

15:18You want to be the same individual that we all historically have been?

15:23Do you want to emulate the follies of yesterday?

15:26Do you want to or do you want to break away and break free?

15:31Remember, we do not have too many great examples to follow.

15:38You have been handed over a planet that's already 1.5 degrees centigrade warmer than

15:45the normal and the summers this time, not too far away, just a few months, 3-4 months

15:53you will see, will be unbearable.

15:59The moderating effect of the Lal Nina is no more there.

16:05We'll have stuff in Delhi, Mumbai, all over India that is beyond survivability.

16:17It will become difficult to even walk on roads.

16:20That's the kind of planet you have been given.

16:24So surely our predecessors have not given us too many glorious examples to follow, which

16:34means you have to write a new story, a new script.

16:38Are you getting it?

16:40They have told you that you should work only for profit.

16:47The moment you say you're doing something, they'll ask, isme se mil kya raha hai?

16:53What do you get out of it?

16:56That's been the flow of history.

16:58Now is the time to say, I don't care for what I get out of it.

17:04I care for what?

17:06What?

17:07It.

17:08What?

17:09It.

17:10Come on, please.

17:11I care for what?

17:12It is.

17:15And the best thing I can get out of it is absorption, immersion, dissolution.

17:22I want to be so totally in it that the mind comes to a standstill.

17:28Thought stops, worries stop, the clock stops.

17:34I just want to stand dissolved.

17:38Only that can take care of mental troubles.

17:44That's the healing that the mind is desperately seeking.

17:51Are we together or am I just too fast or too distant?

17:57Are we together?

17:59Is it getting heavy, dull, boring?

18:03We need to crack some jokes?

18:08This was the first one, by the way.

18:18What was the question?

18:21Whose was the question?

18:22Pen.

18:23Right.

18:24See, that's what.

18:31I stop keeping time when I speak.

18:35I just stop keeping time.

18:37Is that an answer?

18:38Do you see the answer hidden in this?

18:41That's the way to not to worry, not to panic, not to care, to keep all concerns aside.

18:48Life will eat you up if you give it too much seriousness.

18:54Do what is right and forget everything else, just forget.

19:04Having a memory that does not remember is a blessing.

19:11Having a mind that does not project the future too much, that too is a blessing.

19:18The memory should not stick too much to the past and the mind should not project too much

19:29of the future.

19:34If we are talking right now, we are just talking.

19:37Who knows what would happen at 6 pm or 5 pm?

19:41We'll see.

19:42We are brave people, we are capable people.

19:48Let tomorrow decide for itself and the past, it has already taken care of itself.

19:58The only place where action is possible is right now.

20:03So let's act and let's act in love.

20:05Let's act in honesty, not in helplessness, not in inner deception, self-deception, courageously.

20:21Next one please.

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