Our society overestimates productivity, and many people live unhappy by the demand to have to be productive, the consequence of this system is people who get carried away to the extreme of work and stress. Although occupational therapy has its benefits, if we thoroughly analyze the purpose of it, it is to distract the mind with activities and entertainments. On the one hand fulfills its function of removing painful stimuli and focus attention on another activity, but on the other hand it does not allow us to observe the mind and discover its potential to heal, balance and find a happiness that is not based on external stimuli.
Everything in our society is oriented to distract us and entertain us, television, the internet, social gatherings, etc. The consequence of this is that when the human being is alone and without activity that distracts him he begins to become aware of the anxiety, fear, loneliness, depression and other emotions that have been outside the threshold of consciousness while he was distracted. Many can not stand it and run for activities, people and anything that entertains them and distracts them from their great fear: being with themselves, without a stimulus. We have become addicted to activity and this has mental and physical consequences.
As Blaise Pascal (1623-1662) put it: "When I have sometimes set myself to consider the different agitations of men, and the perils and the pains to which they expose themselves in the court, in war, whence arise so many complaints, passions, rash and often wicked enterprises, I have often said that all the misery of man arises from one source, which is, that he cannot remain at rest in a room."
I invite you to learn to be in control of your thoughts and emotions regardless of the circumstance you are in, to train your mind so that you can find peace of mind both in solitude and in company, to become independent. For this I suggest exercises based on mental training and the cultivation of emotional balance. It is to help you direct your attention in a voluntary and sustained way, to teach you to differentiate between reality and the ideas you project about yourself, others and situations, as well as to train your mind to be aware when a destructive emotion begins to emerge, and to be able to release it before entering into the refractory period and have an impulse reaction like that of hurting yourself or others, to help you to cultivate motivations and intentions that guide your life in a constructive direction, as well as the cultivation of empathy for the suffering of others and cultivate equanimity when difficult situations arise in your life, and finally to help you discover that in solitude you can also find peace of mind, clarity and happiness if you learn to observe the flow of thoughts, emotions and mental events that arise, dwell and fade, without clinging to, or identifying with them. Cognitive fusion is the root of the problem and one can be free of it, if one learns to distance oneself from destructive thoughts and emotions.
