Words of others

I have been reflecting on things other people say to us and how much time and energy sometimes we end up spending on them. In a recent podcast, Andy Puddicombe addressed the same topic as follows:
“Awareness allows us to distinguish that which is helpful and that which is not, and set the latter free. So as we train the mind, we start to get a better sense of which thoughts are helpful, which ones to engage with and which thoughts are unhelpful, which thoughts to let go of. But we are not always so good at doing this with the words, the thoughts of others”.

In my own experience we tend to take people’s comments very personally and if they said something good, we tend to like them more and hold on to the words and if they said something not so pleasant, we might start to dislike them and, again, we struggle to let go of those words.

“Words are just that. In the same way as thoughts appear in the mind, they come and go, so words come and go. It’s hard to believe that we can simply hear them and if they are not helpful, let them go, but with practice, over time, we can get to a point where we are no longer taking those words – the thoughts of others – so personally and we are able to let them go”.

I hope you’ll find this helpful – it definitely helped me to see things from a different perspective.