May 25 2011-QA14

I am very impulsive in nature. How to handle impulsiveness and emotional outbursts?
Sri Sri Ravi Shankar: First don’t put a label in your head that I am emotional in nature. Every person has emotions. Who is not emotional? Everybody has some emotions. But if you label yourself as emotional by nature then you are giving a license to yourself not to be intelligent or you are giving a license to yourself to be weak. You can be emotional but you can't be emotionally weak. Wake up and see you are not weak, you are strong. You have to assume you are strong. You have heard the story of Mullah Nasiruddin? Mullah Nasiruddin started thinking that he is dead. So walking here and there he kept saying I am a dead body, I am dead. If someone would ask him something he would say a dead body cannot talk, I am a dead body even though he was speaking. So his wife got very concerned, anything she would ask him he would say I am a dead body why are you asking me. So she took him to a psychologist, and the psychologist told him,' look you are not dead you are alive,' but he said,' no I am a dead body'. So the psychologist told him in a dead body there is no blood, there is water and he agreed. So the psychologist took a needle and pricked him and he started to bleed. Then the psychologist said see that means you are not a dead body, you are alive. Then Mullah says, ‘today I have found out that there is blood even in dead bodies’ So in this way whatever we believe our self to be, we become that. So we should not think ‘I am emotionally weak’. Who said you are emotionally weak? Wake up now and see that you are strong. Emotions are natural and it is very beautiful to have emotions. Otherwise you will become so dry. Even the elephant here has emotions. The birds, elephants, horses, cows and buffaloes, they all have emotions, even a dog has emotions and then how can you not have emotions. There are emotions in you as well but to think I am emotional, I am weak, this label which you have put on yourself needs to be taken off. You are fine with the emotions; there is no need to beat yourself up. You need to feel from inside that I am strong. If tears come sometime, there is nothing wrong in that. But don’t get too carried away with your emotions.