How many phone calls, emails, or texts have you gotten from someone or some organization trying to sell you something? These telemarketers will keep communicating even after you’ve said you don’t want what they’re selling. I’ve had similar experiences at outdoor markets. Vendors will call out to you, even put their product right in your face. They want to catch your focus and entice you to buy what they are selling.
I have found the key to not buying something I don’t want is to simply not get drawn into the conversation. To turn my attention to what is providing a message of value to me. In Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, the guidebook that helps us dig deeper into the Bible to learn how to overcome challenges, author Mary Baker Eddy refers to Jesus: “The ‘man of sorrows’ best understood the nothingness of material life and intelligence and the mighty actuality of all-inclusive God, good. These were the two cardinal points of Mind-healing, or Christian Science, which armed him with Love” (p. 52).
Knowing how to deal with an aggressive vendor is a useful insight in learning how to deal with the daily suggestions we get for things we don’t want to “buy”—temptations to do something we know is wrong; to accept the onslaught of an acute or chronic disease; to dwell on hurtful memories, or act on the impulse to treat others in a way we wouldn’t want someone to treat us.
