When personal life interferes with professional life

The following is an excerpt from a samvaad (dialogue) session with Acharya Prashant.

Question: Sir, what should be done when our personal life interferes with our educational life?

Acharya Prashant (AP): These are no different lives. Life is one. There is nothing called an educational life. All life is one. You do not become a different human being when you step out of the campus. The distinction that you are talking of is largely mind-made, artificial. There is just one life.

If you can be distracted outside the campus, chances are you can be distracted even within the campus, because it is the same mind. So, do not say that your personal life is disturbed, hence, your academic life is being disturbed.

A mind that is prone to being disturbed will get disturbed anywhere; and the mind which is centered, still and calm, will not get easily disturbed anywhere.

Are you getting it?

We too easily attribute things that are basically internal, to external sources. The external is fundamentally nothing. The external can at best be a stimulus that provokes something which is already present in your mind. Neither is fear external nor is greed external. Nothing is external. So, do not say that the external has disturbed you.