Poison can’t affect you if you don’t ingest it.
Please discuss. How does this play out in life?
I’ll start us out. It seems like there are a plethora of hazardous and hateful things going on around us. The epidemic, politics, discrimination, and the degradation of social discourse all feel like they’ve tainted out lives. We react by generating negative emotions within ourselves and may feel we just can’t let these toxic topics drop.
We alone decide how we consciously react to stimuli in life. We can choose to engage—or not—in inflammatory situations. How much time and attention we devote to disturbing interactions is our to determine.
If we strongly feel a situation isn’t right and we’re sure of our facts, we certainly should speak out and take any peaceful and productive action we feel is appropriate. But we don’t need to obsess. Being fixated on the issue, once we’ve taken action, only hurts us and doesn’t improve anything.
Today’s message counsels me not to dwell on the negative, not to allow perturbation longer-term houseroom within me. I can choose how I allot my time and energy, and don’t want to poison myself by focusing on the ugly in fruitless ways. When I deal with the difficult as effectively as I can and move on, I hold space for things that make me happy.
How about you? What poison might you cease feeding yourself?