Currently, one of the most common problems people have is constant dissatisfaction with life. Dissatisfaction with one's own life makes a person feel unhappy. From year to year, the situation related to the well-being of people becomes more acute. People are increasingly feeling unhappy. They cannot enjoy ordinary things that previously gave them satisfaction, and in the pursuit of material values, they become their “slaves,” and because of far-fetched delusions, they exhaust themselves with moral suffering.
Reasoning on the topic that such happiness was touched upon in their works by many psychologists and philosophers, esotericists and mystics, and each has their own instructions for achieving such an extraordinary and desired state. The term happiness refers to something good, bright or living life in complete satisfaction. This simultaneously includes the experience of love and the meaning of life, pleasant everyday moments, the search for a calling, existential categories, and self-realization. The existence of a family, the absence of health problems, having your own car and a constantly growing income also have a positive effect on the level of life satisfaction. All human actions have one goal - to be happy. When a person fails to achieve a goal or fails, dissatisfaction with life arises.
Why, despite open dissatisfaction with oneself (more about this HERE), with one’s life and relationships, does a person do nothing to improve? He doesn’t take the slightest step, no attempt to get out, to reconstruct his life.
The myth of the “COMFORT ZONE”
Often the person himself gives the answer to this question - I don’t want to leave my comfort zone. And that’s it, a solution has been found, the issue can be considered closed. But let’s figure out what this “comfort zone” is. Judging by the name, it should be comfortable... And if it’s so good, then who will go looking for something better?
But the reality is that there is no comfort zone. There is a zone of habitual actions. But it causes discomfort, otherwise a person would not suffer from dissatisfaction. Judge for yourself, the very feeling of dissatisfaction (sometimes that does not leave a person throughout the entire waking period and even comes in dreams and turns into insomnia) does not allow us to consider the zone of familiar life completely comfortable.
There are risks and costs associated with a program of action, but these are far less than the long-term risks and costs that can result from convenient inaction.
J.F. Kennedy
The first thing that will help you move is the realization that you are already living in discomfort. And accordingly, you do not choose between a comfortable state of peace and an uncomfortable process of personal development. In any case, you will have discomfort, only the first one will lead you into the swamp, and the second one can develop you. You only need to choose which discomfort you prefer. And don’t sleep in the illusion that lack of movement allows you to live in comfort.
There is, of course, a difference between one discomfort and another.
“Sleep discomfort,” that is, that state when you don’t do anything special to change, decorate and improve your life, is a swamp-like nuisance. It is like stagnant water, it does not cause acute feelings, but something like a constant nagging feeling of dissatisfaction, despair, meaninglessness, hopelessness and helplessness. It's more of a depressive experience, it's depressing, but it may not be too acute. And it is insidious in that the most real experiences await you ahead, closer to the end of your life, when it becomes clear that everything is too late, that the cells of your body, designed for a certain service life, will soon dissolve into space. “Sleep discomfort” can be a dull state, it is also a signaling system, but it does not very acutely let you know that you are in danger.
“Growth discomfort,” when you do something new, unusual for you, overcome the inertia of existence, can be associated with acute anxiety. Therefore, it is avoided more often; anxiety is a more energy-intensive and stressful state for our psyche . Some people by nature cannot tolerate high levels of anxiety or can only tolerate it in homeopathic doses. Sensitivity to anxiety can also be reduced through psychotherapy, but this is work that, of course, not everyone does. Other people are quite resilient to anxiety, can handle shock well, are more capable of change, and can work in an environment of uncertainty. Most people are able to tolerate moderate stress and anxiety, which is characteristic of periods of change.
When you think it’s time to change something in life, you need to be aware of the fact that you are not leaving the warm nest of the “comfort zone” by moving into the cold and prickly world of the “discomfort zone.” This wrong vision only prevents people from moving forward. You're actually trading sleep discomfort for growing discomfort!
Main engine of change
In order for dissatisfaction with oneself to turn into changes, energy is needed. All real movements require force, energy in the form of impulse and subsequent pressure. Dissatisfaction with life in itself does not provide energy for MOVEMENT, so there can be as much dissatisfaction as you like, but the person remains inactive. Therefore, rhetorical questions are meaningless: “since everything is wrong for you, why don’t you do anything!?” This is just a common thing - there is still strength for complaints, but no change...
Dissatisfaction also has its own energy, but it by itself cannot move you forward. It is rather centripetal energy; it is destructive in nature, destroying the person himself and the world around him. In dissatisfaction with himself and those around him, a person does his business poorly, takes poor care of what he has, almost does not take care of the people around him, since he is dissatisfied with everything, what is there to take care of! And as a result, he loses what he had. Your body will release a portion of energy to move forward when it sees what it wants and wants to get closer to it. Desire provides the energy with which you can move towards your goal. If there is no desire, but only dissatisfaction, then you stand still and slowly devour yourself. Sometimes you can even physically feel it; the language has a very characteristic word for this - self-criticism. Having the right desires means moving. This is precisely what numerous psychological techniques are associated with, which invite you to formulate desires in a variety of options, from lists to figurative wish cards.
Create your ideal
The difficulty, oddly enough, is to generate a desire that will trigger the flow of energy for its implementation. Not every formulated desire will necessarily generate energy. Here are the most popular mistakes in desires that not only do not lead you to movement, but on the contrary lead to apathy and disappointment. 1. What you wished belongs to other people: their behavior, thoughts, actions, relationships. You want your husband to communicate less with his mommy. This relationship is someone else’s for you; you don’t need to exhaust your strength trying to take on someone else’s. You want your wife to stop gossiping about you with her friends. This is also someone else’s, the conversations and degree of frankness of your wife do not belong to you. You, of course, can make requests to your loved ones, but you need to understand that their fulfillment is almost independent of you. Many people place the lion's share of their desires exclusively on someone else's territory; everything they want must be done by someone else's hands. Your husband should stop drinking, your child should want to study, your friends and parents should start taking better care of you. The result of such desires is usually a chronic feeling of dissatisfaction with others and a feeling of one’s own helplessness. 2. You constantly formulate what you want to get rid of. Change jobs, get rid of the habit of eating at night, break off relationships. Without a realistic model of the desired future, the psyche does not provide energy for movement. You are still focused on the problem and dissatisfaction, but there is no way out, no movement forward, because there is simply no clear vision ahead. The desire is not actually formulated in the form of an image, a model. 3. You generalize too much. All the time you wish for abstractions: harmony, prosperity, peace in the soul, wisdom, the ability to accept, good relationships and other beautiful things that do not exist at all for your psyche. To mobilize, your psyche needs a clear sign, a beacon to which you can swim. The psyche does not provide advance energy for abstraction; this, as in the previous paragraph, is too unclear; the economy of your body does not agree to such murky deals! She needs something clearer and more attractive. 4. Your desires are essentially fantasies that have nothing to do with your current opportunities or life obligations. Losing touch with reality, you bury yourself so far and unreasonably in your dreams that you experience nothing but disappointment in real life. So, for example, you dream of working in a specialty that requires at least 7 years of study. In another city. Or you dream of traveling around the world alone, with three young children in your arms. Such desires, of course, can also be engines, but if ALL your desires can come true somewhere very soon, not in this life, you will not have energy. It is necessary to formulate more accessible desires, the implementation of which is possible without resorting to miracles.
5. Well, the stupidest of all mistakes is that you expect that thanks to your correct desire, something will begin to happen by itself, at the behest of a pike, cosmic bodies will finally stand up correctly, the universe will take care of you and your desire will come true. Well, really, someone should take care of this! The main task of a desire is to launch YOUR activity; it has no other tasks and cannot have them. For some reason, many people seriously understand desire as a signal from the Universe, as if the correct formulation is then only needed to finally speak the same language with the Universe, to give it a sign that you are ready for grace and prosperity. If we speak from the mystical “connection with the Universe,” then the only language that it understands is the language of your ACTION. And until you speak this magical language, nothing will happen in your life.
Visionary
Visionaryism, that is, the ability to “see” the future, and in fact to model, invent it, is considered a necessary property of businessmen and politicians.
But this property is necessary for anyone who would like to influence the course of their own life, be an accomplice in planning life changes, and overcome the feeling of inevitability of what is happening to you. The ability to see where you would like to go ultimately gives you energy for the first and subsequent steps. How to see the target correctly and what not to pay attention to?
To be continued
Also about self-development in the articles:
Why can't you do what you want? Reason 1.
Why doesn't it work? Reason 2 - where is my “easy”?
You can find more materials about the psychology of relationships on my pages
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Are you missing something?
How many needs can a person have?
The classic of psychology Abraham Maslow once identified five groups: physiological, the need for safety, social, the need for respect and self-expression. When some are successfully completed, others make themselves known. Perhaps the mind is quite satisfied with prosperity and professional demand, but the soul asks for more spiritual communication? Or do creative abilities do not want to stand idle and require implementation? Listen more closely to your desires. You can even remember childhood fantasies. What might you be sorely missing right now from the point of view of that thoughtful girl? Maybe you desperately dreamed: “When I grow up, no one will limit me anymore - I can go to Africa to look at live wild giraffes!”, but you never realized this great idea?
What causes the feeling of dissatisfaction?
Dissatisfaction doesn't just happen. Be that as it may, we always try to give ourselves something, to compare ourselves with the people around us. When certain standards appear, we try to strive for them, or exceed them. And everything that does not correspond to us leads us to uncertainty and complexes.
There are also factors that influence the aggravation of our dissatisfaction with something.
- Fashion trends
. Many of us want to be at the forefront of fashion. And this is not so important whether we want to update some gadget, clothes, or general outlook on life. Each person has his own views, for example, the tendency to judge a person by his appearance or well-being. But if a person's appearance does not match the appearance of other people, that individual may become immersed in feelings of discomfort in that society. - Presence of public opinion
. It can be destructive for a person, just like going outside naked in the winter frost. Public opinion can erase a person, or put him on a pedestal. Anyone who is disliked by public opinion may face serious problems. Having long hair on a guy can turn into bullying, because such a hairstyle does not suit a guy. As a result, the person begins to feel inferior, which will lead to him shaving his head and becoming a straight dude.
Dissatisfaction is a habit of the mind
People are always dissatisfied, whether there is a reason for it or not. It has become a familiar state of mind for them. Even if they had the best home, a beautiful wife, a prosperous son, and a job they loved, they still felt dissatisfied. Whether you are poor or rich, at least something will not suit you.
The feeling of dissatisfaction becomes a habit of mind. A person’s mind begins to live with everything that does not suit him, and this feeling never leaves him. Discomfort is associated with the very nature of the human mind, for this reason there is no need to achieve something impossible from it.
When a person realizes where his discontent lies, when he realizes that it arises in his head, and not from external sources, then he will throw his mind far away.
You need to contemplate your mind, be more interested in your past: how many times have you been convinced that having something, it made you a happy person. And suddenly this thing is in your hands, but happiness never came to you. And this can happen many times, and you never manage to learn this lesson. Are you tired of stepping on the same rake yet?
Comparisons haunt you
Why, in the era of victorious socialism, did a person who rarely saw smoked sausage feel calmer than now a person who rarely sees crabs?
Well, back then there were few people to envy in this sense! Relatives and neighbors stood in approximately the same clothes and stood in the same lines. Now the division has become much deeper and more obvious. And not only directly by the number of banknotes per kilogram of live weight. Here is a former employee who founded his own production center, and his satisfied face smiles from banners advertising the lifestyle of the especially powerful and influential. The ex-boyfriend was offered some kind of lucrative contract, and he is now chilling in warm California. And a former classmate has become a star and is a member of some kind of club for the especially privileged. And there are more and more such lucky people around. Surely someone will get something nice that we are deprived of! When an individual feels “pretty good” and those around him “very good”, you inevitably underestimate the value of what you have. Even if you learned in childhood that envy is bad, and you don’t allow corresponding thoughts, all the same, when you observe someone’s successes, you feel somehow uneasy—embarrassed for your modest achievements.
No, there is no need to push the discomfort deeper
! You can “openly” think about how many accompanying difficulties (from the long working hours of a producer to the eternal publicity of an actress) this is “very good” for them. And give yourself every right to calm down and live your own way.
All misfortunes are from nerves
Dissatisfaction is a terrible thing. In healthy doses, it can certainly help achieve your goals. And in unhealthy ones, it causes all sorts of troubles.
- Family conflicts. Spouses, one of whom is dissatisfied with something in family life (not necessarily in the intimate sphere, although that too), do not always think of discussing the source of underlying discontent and deciding how to eliminate it together. More often, implicit claims result in unconstructive grinding, whims, claims and quarrels, which set the situation in motion.
- Violation of rules on the roads. Russian psychologists have found that the root of many road accidents is not technical problems or even a lack of skills, but in the “head”. It is internal dissatisfaction that gives rise to aggression, which forces drivers to act recklessly and cut off, and pedestrians to carelessly stomp across traffic and at red lights.
- Addiction. When significant needs cannot be realized, dissatisfaction takes on global proportions. And if there is something that relieves this tension (games, drugs...), there is a big risk of immediately becoming addicted. Hence the pattern that more often children from dysfunctional families fall for such destructive “consolations”.
Rubtsova Nina · 28 Sep, 2016
In a peaceful direction
Surely all sensible humanity, having read these lines, has already thought: on the other hand, if dissatisfaction exists in a person, does that mean someone needs it?
First of all, to this man himself. After all, if it were completely cloudless for us everywhere, we would not see progress - neither personal nor social! So we would sit in the dugouts, happy with everything: it doesn’t drip - it’s already comfortable. After all, why drive out the feeling of dissatisfaction completely and irrevocably? You can, after all, by curbing this feeling, not kill it completely and irrevocably, but simply direct it to your benefit. How can you imagine a creature who never doubts anything, is happy with everything and is always in a good-natured mood... and even somehow becomes a little disgusted. After all, that same awl in that very place is a useful tool when it makes you become better and make the world around you better!
So, we take our own vague dissatisfaction, our own inner aggressiveness - and use it in a specific case of downtime and slippage as an incentive! Yeah, we got there, tore off the ribbon... And now we urgently throw the incentive we just used away! Otherwise, he may again drive there - who knows where, in search of that - who knows what... But according to our plan, we have rest, breathe deeply and enjoy ordinary life!
You are 'responsible for everyone'
This “syndrome” haunts teachers and sometimes politicians more often than others.
And in general, representatives of professions associated with responsibility for other people. From time to time it begins to seem that you are thereby entrusted with almost a huge responsibility for the happiness and well-being of all mankind. Everything is fine with you, you were able to sort out your problems, but... How can you allow yourself to be happy when someone else is dissatisfied and unsettled? “Nothing will work out there without me!” With this approach, even if you do everything in your power, there will still definitely be a reason for despondency. After all, someone will certainly remain unhappy. Unhappy. Despite any help. However, this also happens for those whose activities are not related to social work. When the elongated, sad faces of those deprived by fate slowly gather around a successful person. Or it just seems that way to the person. And reflection begins: “I feel good, but my sister is depressed!”, “How can I be happy when my aunt is constantly sick?”
And so - you can do everything! Did you console your sister, did you run to the pharmacy for your aunt? Then it’s a matter of their desire and attitude. Firstly, you are not a wizard, and secondly, even wizards in fairy tales could not make everyone automatically happy - there were always some restrictions. As for professional responsibility for careless students or stubborn patients, it is useful to often remember the wise formula with them: “Do what you must - and come what may.”
When the trees were big
Sometimes a person enters adulthood unprepared. Helplessly looking around and not knowing how to live this incomprehensible adult life? They didn't teach me. And the years go by.
“I’m 35,” writes a young woman, “and I don’t know my desires, I just want to die from hopelessness.”
Where do they learn to be an adult? Of course, life itself teaches, by and large, but basic skills are still laid in childhood.
In childhood, a child depends on his parents; they satisfy all his needs. It happens that they get so carried away by overprotection that they literally do not allow the child to take a step on his own. Children's ineptitude and inexperience cannot compete with parental experience, which is often confirmed by statements like:
- don’t interfere, you’ll only ruin everything;
- Then it’s up to you to redo it, it’s better to do it myself;
- Do you have crooked hands?
Appealing to their experience, they decide what the child should eat, drink, wear, who to be friends with, etc., because they sincerely believe that they know better. Or they argue that life is a hard thing, and there will still be time to get in trouble. In the meantime, let him stay small. Remember how in the cartoon about Vovka in the Far Far Away Kingdom? Two from the casket are like an allegory of such parents.
─ Are you going to eat for me?
─ Aha!
Ready to help when needed, they do the wrong thing...
Are the parents, who were also thrown into adulthood at one time, to blame? They have filled their teeth, gained their experience, which, to put it mildly, is not always good, and pass it on with the best intentions.
And so it turns out - the child has grown in body, but not very mentally and does not know what he wants from life. I went to study where my parents advised or where society directed me with its fashion trends. And everything else, too, I don’t understand how life turned out.
You 'need it most'
Your requirements for yourself and for life are significantly inflated, and with the implementation of each point they are inflated higher and higher.
You, like that famous cartoon character, will always and in any conditions “not be enough!” Any imperfection sincerely upsets you, and again and again you strive to storm the peaks - and try to drag your neighbors along with you. Psychologists call this phenomenon the beautiful word “perfectionism” and unanimously warn that it can ruin life thoroughly if it is not tamed. After all, perfection is truly not observed in nature. And if you sacrifice all human joys and weaknesses to this mythical deity, then you will not achieve your goal (after all, it will forever remain somewhere at the zenith), and you will forget how to enjoy life. Well, you also torment your neighbors with eternal nagging. Until this happens, it is necessary to instill a realistic approach, forgive the tautology, to reality!
