Do not let the world occupy your mind || Acharya Prashant, with youth (2015)

Question: Sir, how can we control the internalization of thoughts which we get from society and other people?

Speaker: When you get them, are they external? Or are they already internalized?

Listener: Most of them are external only.

Speaker: A thing is external or internal depending on whether it is external to you or internal to you, right? Do you have thoughts floating about in the thin air? Or is the thought already in the mind? When you say, there is a thought, where is the thought?

Listener: In the mind.

Speaker: So, has it not already been internalized? The moment somebody is able to provoke you into thinking, he has already taken a slice of you. He has already occupied a part of you. Your well-wishers will not provoke you into thinking. They will bring you to peace. So, if you are thinking hard, and thinking hard is confusion and disturbance and frustration; if you are thinking hard and you come across a well-wisher, his presence will be able to calm you down. Your thoughts will subside.