Freeing up our heart space

I heard this terminology from a talk quite a while ago. I didn’t really get what it mean until recently.
To give some background about the speaker, he’s a monk and sometimes he has to give counseling to his people. People who has session with him, will throw all their concerns to him. But does he overwhelmed with their stories? He said, he didn’t. The simile that he used is to become rubbish bin without bottom.
Sometimes we experienced it too isn’t it? People around us are throwing things to us and not all of them are pleasant. Easily our mood is influenced by it. Right?
(Or at least that’s what happened to me) :p
It doesn’t mean that we don’t have empathy about them. We give them our time with all we got when we listen to their stories. However, do we let the story stay?
Well, I’m in IT line, so I’ll use terms from a world I’m very familiar with and come with my version.
Our computer needs maintenance from time to time too. We need to remove unnecessary things to keep some space so the operating system can perform well.
If our heart is like computer hard drive, we can’t keep piling things up or keep storing things. (Well we can expand the space by adding external hard drive though, can we?)
Be a RAM or computer memory. We use it well when it’s necessary at that point of time, after that, we let it go.
There is a restart option, when things get so too much and we can’t work efficiently, let’s restart ourselves.
Lastly, don’t forget to “shut down” and “charge” our battery by resting when it’s time to rest.
When we regain our energy, we will work much much better.
So what’s your hack to yourself when people are throwing things on you?