20 minutes of Healthy Emotional diet can help deal with Stress better, suggests BK Shivani at ASSOCHAM’s ‘Illness to Wellness’ series

New Delhi: The Associated Chambers of Commerce and Industry of India (ASSOCHAM), one of the apex trade associations of India concluded the seventh edition of the ‘Illness to Wellness’ series themed ‘Work Life Balance and Stress Management’. The event saw Brahma Kumari (BK) Sister Shivani, one of the leaders of the Brahma Kumaris spiritual movement, hold an active dialogue on inculcating emotional wellness to strike a balance between life and work during a pandemic.

Supported by the hygiene brand SAVLON, the programme, an innovative and comprehensive approach to cascade awareness through wellness campaigns to address preventive healthcare management and to promote health, hygiene, and well-being of people, saw Sister Shivani speak at length about the importance of understanding emotional illness and how setting up a healthy emotional diet can positively help our lives and the people around us.

Elaborating on the definition of emotional fitness, Brahma Kumari (BK) Sister Shivani said, “To be emotionally fit, one needs to be emotionally independent. This means, if there is a crisis outside, can you be calm inside. Somebody can be rude or angry to you, be shouting at you, can you still be stable and respond with dignity. This is called emotional fitness, where you are not affected by the energy of the situations and people and have the strength to choose your response.”

She further explained how emotional fitness can be effectively practiced in our day to day lives by making a few conscious decisions focusing on filtration of content being consumed, designing a healthy emotional diet and practicing lifestyle discipline.

“For establishing emotional health, we need to look at emotional diet. Emotional diet consists of what you watch, what you listen and what you read. This makes up our emotional health. Our thoughts are created based on information. First step to take care of your mind is lifestyle discipline. Take a lot of care of the content you consume. Calibrate how much, how long and the quality of the content you want to consume from social media, digital platforms, television, movies, serials and songs. If the content has too much of stress, violence, anger, criticism, ridicule and others, then that is what you will slowly become.”

She then went on to highlight the importance of practicing daily positive mental affirmations to help us get through a time of uncertainty. “We have created low vibration thoughts for our jobs and business and that has started manifesting. We can change that by choosing high vibration thoughts through affirmations like ‘I am a powerful being, I am a peaceful being, I am a fearless being, My body is perfect and healthy and will always be, I am protected by divine energy circle and so is my family, same circle exists for my workplace, success is certain for me, abundance is my reality, 2020 is a year of miracle for my organization and a circle of protection for the planet’. Create affirmations of what you want to see and make it a reality. Practicing just 20 minutes of healthy emotional diet can do wonders.”

BK Sister Shivani also shared a few tips on practicing healthy emotional lifestyle like disconnecting from work related activities 2 hours before bed, signing out of social media platforms 1 hour before bed, denoting 10 minutes to journaling before bed so as not take negative thoughts and grudges to sleep and practicing affirmations right before sleep so that the positive high thought vibrations are carried through the sleep time.

Putting forth his thoughts on how work life balance has taken centre stage during the pandemic, Mr Anil Rajput, Chairperson, ASSOCHAM CSR Council said, “This pandemic has brought the whole topic of work life balance and stress management to the centre stage. During the pandemic, the world is resetting time, it is making people rediscover themselves, realign their priorities and relook at everything in life. In the past few months, many sectors and industries have opted for work from home. This newly embraced culture is giving rise to challenges like distractions at work, lack of motivation, technological glitches and unsteady work life balance. To overcome these, as Sister Shivani shared, we need to focus on solutions like being positive to reduce stress and creating emotional independence going forward.”

Mr. Vineet Agarwal, Sr. Vice President, ASSOCHAM, highlighting the importance of work life balance said, “Work life balance and stress management is a multi-generational issue that has been expanded and had deeper impact in the past 40 years across generations. The need for balance in critical to everyone’s life, be it mental, physical or spiritual. Striking a balance has thus come in focus over the past few years.”