What does it mean to develop immunity? It means to develop your strength to stand firmly and win against your opponents or someone who may harm you.
In these days of covid 19, there is stress of developing physical immunity to beat the Covid19 virus. We had started digging in the ancient traditional wisdom of Ayurveda and other oriental systems to know about immunity boosting ways. The companies have introduced immunity booster kits also in their product portfolio. Social media is abound with all kind of “health influencers” sharing their experiences and has generated large following. We all have started giving importance to our physical health.
Just as we need to take care of our physical immunity, we also need to develop our social immunity to save us from the social pressures of society. The first taste of social pressure is tasted in teens. Academic pressure, peer pressure, socio-economic pressures are different kinds of social pressures faced by young adults. This is the right time to learn to stand strongly against these pressures, many of which are rather unfounded. Create a strong ring of values and family support to ward off such pressures. It’s the duty of parents and family elders to help develop this strength in your children so that it becomes easier for them to live a life of their own choices without fears and apprehensions. This will come handy when children go out in hostel or to another city to work and live independently.
To develope emotional resilience, mental immunity is a must. Mental immunity is our mind’s ability to cope with whatever life throws at it. It’s about having the capacity to understand, observe and move through painful thoughts or events, without either being completely derailed or ignoring them altogether. Mental immunity is not about resisting or denying negative thoughts but to observe them without acting on them. Mental immunity is about conditioning the mind not to run away or ignore fearful thoughts or external challanges but rather not to get disturbed by them and tolerate them. It’s like shifting the objective from avoiding pain to accepting pain as part of the life’s journey.
When we have mental immunity, we are capable of becoming a third party observer to our thoughts and feelings. We can identify what we need, what we don’t and what really matters to us. The process of reintegration – or nonresistance become more capable of tolerating thoughts that scare us. The less reactive we are to them, the more we can learn. Frequently, there is an unhealed root association with recurring thoughts we have, or feelings that keep coming up. Being able to process these uncomfortable sensations will not only help us overcome singular issues but progress our lives forward in other ways, too.
So, we know that mental immunity is good, but when we are in the thick of our suffering, how do we begin to build it?
- Think about progress and not about perfection.
- Do not let your fears be part of your personality. Donot identify with them. Do not accept them as you.
- Do not try to eradicate fear. Interpret “weird” or upsetting thoughts as symbols, not realities.
- Imagine what you would do if there is no fear. This will help you think without constraints and you will feel freedom.Focusing too much on trying to “get over” something actually reinforces it. Learning to refocus on what matter is what actually gets us to move on.