Last updated on 11/05/2010
Human emotions need food. Choose which emotions you’d like to feed.
When someone in your physical or emotional space is blissfully happy, the happiness wants to be fed. That’s easy, join in the happiness, and it will continue. You’ll feel it, enjoy it, spread it.
When someone in your physical or emotional space is angry, resentful, or frustrated, the anger wants to be fed. It’s easy to feed these emotions, too. They devour your reaction. Join in the rage, repeat the gossip to just one more person, respond with unkind words. The anger, resentment, or frustration will spread, but you’re not likely to enjoy the way it feels.
Consider a more comfortable, more compassionate choice. Don’t allow the anger, frustration, or resentment into your space. A non-reaction isn’t unkind, cold, or rude. It’s just non-reactive. An acknowledging smile or nod lets the other person know that you’re hearing them, but you aren’t going to react. You aren’t going to waste your energy on feeding their negative emotions.
If they want to go elsewhere to feed their pain, they’re free to do so.
Take good care,
Thanks to Shanti for the lovely photo.
Great post, so true! I’ve been testing this on myself, and it’s sooo powerful- if I keep the negative emotions “on a diet”, i.e., I purposefully don’t reflect at length on them, don’t look for further proofs “how bad it is”, how unfair it is – the negativity and the internal pain and hurt grow weaker and stop coming! Thank you for reminding!