The concept of “spontaneity” is used in the modern world in a negative way and is personified with unpredictability, lack of control, and impetuosity. But quite recently it meant harmless suddenness and unexpectedness of actions. A spontaneous person arouses suspicion, distrust and a condescending attitude among others, caused by the fear that at any moment he might do something out of the ordinary. According to the unanimous opinion of society, it is impossible to rely on such a person due to his reckless unpredictability. Is spontaneity so dangerous, and how to identify this “dangerous” quality in yourself?
Is spontaneity good or bad?
In psychology, spontaneity has historically been explained in different ways. In some sources, a spontaneous person is a person who finds the strength and courage to act according to his inner impulses, ignoring external influences. In others, it is the inability to regulate one’s behavior, a complete lack of awareness of the actions being performed. Thus, spontaneity was first placed on a pedestal, and then rather rudely asked to vacate the wrongly occupied place. The concept of free personal expression fought against lack of control, and vice versa. Both concepts are quite interesting, because the spontaneous personality has long been a source of either admiration or contempt.
Option 3. Answer part of the question
As a rule, when people ask a difficult question, they put all their pain into it. And it rarely fits into a short “Why did this happen?” Accordingly, in one question you will hear many theses, conjectures, assumptions at once... and sometimes several questions at once.
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Choose one - the one that is easiest for you to answer. And answer it clearly and consistently. The remaining parts of the question can either be left out of brackets altogether, or short, superficial answers can be given to them.
A brief moment of triumph of spontaneity
The scales in psychology continued to tug spontaneity in one direction or the other. Some argued that a spontaneous person is a dangerous and unreliable person, because he does not know how and does not want to control himself, while others praised individualism and the ability to be oneself. The end of this protracted discussion was put by the teachings of Moreno, Jung and Fromm, who boldly declared that the phenomenon we are considering is one of the driving energies of human existence, and the ability to show spontaneity is a sign of a real personality. According to their concept, this personality quality is considered a huge force that pushes a person towards self-realization and freedom of expression.
The spontaneity in their mouths became a challenge to established foundations and stereotypical behavior. It has become fashionable to “be yourself”, “decide to take your own path” instead of the usual “everyone does this, so I should too”, “be like the rest”. Spontaneity was finally established on the pedestal and was proclaimed “the road to self-development.”
Option 2: Cite the source
Very often, officials are stumped when asked about their salaries. Firstly, they don’t really want to name the amounts: whatever you name, there will definitely be a person in the hall to whom it will seem gigantic, and a person who will find it funny. And the official himself, for some, will become a “snickering rich man,” and for others, a “sold-out simpleton.”
Secondly, my experience of communicating with officials shows that many of them really do not know what amount is on their payroll. Additional allowances, bonuses, payments for overtime work are added to the base salary... And all this is extremely uncomfortable to explain to the same journalists.
So you can go the other way and say:
— You can refer to the administration website. All the income declarations of our employees, including mine, are posted there.
Our days. Being spontaneous is not in fashion?!
Years passed, the masters of psychological sciences, who managed to restore spontaneity’s good name, have sunk into oblivion. And again she fell out of favor with the people; she was assigned such negative qualities as lack of control, impulsiveness and unpredictability. In the modern world, a spontaneous person is an infantile, irresponsible and immature person, unable to keep his irrepressible self in check. To be spontaneous - alas! - only children can.
The dynamically developing world has crushed us and taught us to follow responsibilities, schedules and stereotypes. Moral duty, education, social restrictions tied our hands, but we did not resist, confident that this was the way it should be. Even spontaneous speech is not held in high esteem these days - everything must be thought out, verified from all sides and presented through a sieve of stereotypes. And only a few of us find the strength to follow our inner convictions, without hearing the indignant cries of society, to move towards the freedom of our “I”. But we still can’t decide for ourselves who they are – outcasts of society or real individuals?
Option 1a. Avoid answering the question
To leave is not to refuse to answer, but not to answer either. My mother gave me an example of such “evading an answer.” She was very pretty, bright, lively, and, of course, she always had enough fans. One of the most devoted and active was the director of the school where she worked as a teacher. He showed his mother signs of attention for a very long time. For a very long time she pretended not to notice them: she didn’t want to leave the school at all, and the director himself was a good, interesting person, so she wasn’t going to raise a scandal, and the concept of “harassment” did not yet exist in those years.
One day, at a teacher’s party, the director finally seized the moment and found himself alone with his mother. And he asked sharply, one might even say, with pressure and resentment:
- Tell! Well, tell me honestly - you had lovers, didn’t you? Were there?
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His question sounded like a statement. Mom later said: “I realized: I need to answer in such a way that he never raises this topic again, so that he ends up a loser. But at the same time, in no way should I offend him in my words.”
According to her admission, she herself did not understand how her brilliant answer came to her mind:
“If I tell you the truth, dear Pavel Yakovlevich, you still won’t believe me!”
She smiled and left to join her cheering colleagues. The director really never allowed himself anything extra. She outplayed him and he admitted defeat.
As you understand, such a phrase can suggest either a complete absence of lovers or an incredible number of them.
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Mom gave an answer, but did not answer! And this phrase is almost universal. It can be used, albeit not in all, but in many situations.
One day, my government students gave me the idea of compiling a list of such phrases. I repeat: they are not suitable for all possible situations, but they certainly cannot be called disposable.
- You have known me for 10 years from real cases. I can only say one thing: I will not let you down.
- It’s unlikely that you will like the answer to this question, so let’s go with the next one.
“The people chose me, and I will answer to them.”
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- Thanks for the info. I won’t comment because there is nothing to comment on here.
“I can only answer this question with your help: you clearly know the situation better than me.”
- You say that you need to do it faster, but we both know: it won’t work out quickly and well.
- Pass by us and forgive us our happiness! (By the way, this is a quote from Dostoevsky’s novel “The Idiot”: the phrase was uttered by Prince Myshkin in an argument with Ippolit, who was sick with consumption.)
How to use your brain 100%: tips from Nike, General Electric and Virgin Group mentor Jim Kwik
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Make way for spontaneity!
Constantly living in a world of standards is hard and sad. Every person has the right for a brief moment to fall back into childhood and feel free, let off steam and return to normal life again. For spontaneity, like all good things, must have a time and a place. How to achieve such a state?
- Turn off your phone for a day.
- Order dishes in a cafe that you have never tried.
- Walk around your neighborhood aimlessly.
- Go visit friends you haven't met for a long time.
- Get on the bus and drive around the streets.
- Wear something you've never worn before.
- Go to the cinema to watch any movie.
Such actions will give you a charge of positive emotions and energy. You will be able to feel like a free, spontaneous person.
No matter how much this topic develops, each person has the right to answer the questions about whether a spontaneous person is good or bad, whether spontaneity is a danger to society or a form of self-expression, based on their own vision of this concept. However, you should not cut off your oxygen if spontaneity is a source of joy, movement and life for you.
SURPRISE YOURSELF
Now there are several areas of psychological and near-psychological practice that directly work with spontaneity. And at the same time, regaining the ability to act spontaneously is a by-product of any psychotherapy.
Playback theater
In the previous issue of the magazine, we talked in detail about this new direction of art, which appeared at the intersection of theater and psychodrama. Let us remember that here the actors are acting out on stage a story that the audience has just told them. Any participant in the playback theater “transfers the rights” to his spontaneity to the actors, who reveal the story to him from different sides and show it from a new angle. The ending is unknown and unpredictable. There are no rehearsals or readings of plays, there is no director. Each improvisation is performed only once in the presence of the author-storyteller. The theater has its own ritual. First, the author sits on a chair and tells his story, then actors are selected from the group, together with the presenter and musicians they tell the author’s story. Then the author shares his impressions and discoveries from what he saw, and the actors play the ending. During one playback theater performance, several audience stories can be played. Well, actors are ordinary people (without special education or experience) who united in a permanent group under the leadership of a presenter and “played” before starting to work with the audience.
Contact improvisation
This is a search for your bodily spontaneity and liveliness, a dance in which every movement is born within and reflects content, not form. The dancers seem to “flow” from one movement to another, roll over each other, fly, slide, push and pull. This is an improvisational dance, at every current moment the dancer listens to his body and the body of his partner and moves in accordance with himself, with gravity, inertia, with the logic of his own and others’ actions. Performed solo or in a duet.
Dance relieves tension, allows you to discover and change your bodily patterns (habitual ways of responding to touch, for example), helps you realize your own motor needs, and provides space for self-expression. Surprisingly, much can be accomplished through the body even with a skeptical, fearful, or resistant mind. And one of the results of practicing contact improvisation is freedom from constantly looking at “what people will think.”
Intuitive drawing
Here you draw, leaving behind all fear and unnecessary doubts about your own artistic competence. You pour out your feelings on paper and express yourself. This is a way of understanding oneself and the world around us, immersing ourselves in the depths of one’s own unconscious, which speaks to us in vague images. The main criterion that everything is going right is the pleasure that the painter experiences from the process. There is no task here to draw something beautiful; no techniques or techniques are used. Often, a drawing is created without brushes or pencils, simply with fingers immersed in liquid paint. Intuitive drawing allows you to go beyond the boundaries - at least beyond the boundaries of the sheet (by sweepingly covering both the sheet and the substrate with paint), and realize all their conventionality. It is unlikely that his goal is to teach technique, composition and color combinations. The emphasis is on self-expression, spontaneity, naturalness, and attention to needs.
Spontaneity is about childhood, about freedom from other people's judgment and expressing yourself in all available ways. If your inner child is locked in a cage of “impossible”, “indecent”, “shameful”, “scary”, your life is certainly under your strict control. But it is insipid and immobilized, because it is the inner child that is the source of joy, strength, and movement. This is our battery, an energy charge. Cutting off your oxygen with your own hands? No, excuse me.
Healthy?
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How and why spontaneity is suppressed
At a very young age, our parents and kindergarten teachers teach us what is good and what is bad. We are forbidden to be late, not eat enough porridge, forced to make our beds and wear specific things that we most often do not like. At the same time, the slightest disobedience on the part of the child is punished in every possible way, and this, in turn, leads to the development of fear. It is this fear that stops the development of that very true personality in us, due to the fact that it blocks spontaneity. Doctors learned not too long ago that this is bad and that children cannot be raised this way. However, there are many nuances in this issue, since each of us is part of a society where there are rules and principles, and if everyone fulfills their momentary whims, the world will go crazy. However, this is already philosophical reasoning, and now we will try to become a little freer ourselves, based on what we have.
General formulation of this definition
Spontaneous behavior means that a person does only what he wants at a particular moment in time, and nothing more. This is characteristic of animals and children, which is why we all admire both. With age, such “sharpness” and immediacy in behavior disappears, and it is replaced by advance planning, subordination to a schedule (one’s own or someone else’s), and this, as psychologists say, destroys us as individuals. They compare the extinction of spontaneity with the psychopathology of everyday life, and this term is used here not in a medical sense, but more in a social one. That is why it is important in your adult years to “remember” how good it was for you in childhood, when your feelings and actions were guided by spontaneity. That it was the most accurate and true reflection of yourself and your inner world, untainted by social principles.
The birth of a child is a test of spontaneity
You can talk a lot about spontaneity, but still not really understand for yourself - so what is its importance? Why is it a necessary condition for survival? And why is spontaneity finally more important than intelligence and memory?
The end to doubts is put by turning to the first minutes, days, months of the child’s life.
Newborns of some animals are born ready to take care of themselves. For some it takes several weeks. Man is a completely different creature...
He enters a complex and dangerous world long before his body is ready to face emergency situations.
Let's see how a child enters this life.
- his brain centers are not developed,
- his cerebral circulation is not fully established,
- the capillary system as a whole is undeveloped,
- speech centers are not developed,
- lack of muscle coordination for walking,
- sucking, swallowing, breathing and excretion immediately after birth are not yet sufficiently established.
When a child is born, he abruptly changes one world to another.
- it changes the state of constant sleep to a state of awakening and awareness of the world around,
- it changes its parasitic existence in the maternal placenta to an existence where its own activity is required in taking food and excreting,
- he moves from darkness, warmth and peace into a world of sharp sounds and blinding light,
- he trades security and balance for a world that must be conquered in order to survive,
At the same time, the child moves from one world to another with such rapid speed that the successful adaptation of thousands and millions of people is still a scientific mystery...
According to experts, the birth of a child alive and further survival in such a situation is almost tantamount to a miracle.
Option 6. Answer sincerely
Let me make a reservation right away: in the previous answers, I do not encourage you to deceive. But the “sincerity” option assumes that you demonstrate not only knowledge, but also feelings. First of all, feelings. And, of course, it’s better not to play with sincerity!
One day, employees of a small organization complained to their manager about low salaries.
“Friends, it really hurts me,” their boss replied. — We all know what the average salary is in our market segment now. You know and I know that your salary is twice as high as the market average. Both you and I know: over the past three years, I have tried three times at the head office to increase your salary, the last time just a couple of months ago. I will not go. I’m just not going to go ask you for more money now. Not because I don’t appreciate you! I appreciate! But it physically hurts me because instead of “thank you,” I receive indignation: “Why do we rarely get salary increases?”
Not a single person objected to his boss. Everyone understood: they had gone too far and he was right. People felt guilty and grateful. All other harsh questions disappeared by themselves.
Women's spontaneity in relationships
It will be even easier for a woman who knows her man well than for a man. It’s worth renewing long-forgotten caresses; a candlelight dinner wouldn’t hurt. An extra smile and an affectionate gesture, no matter how naive it may look, will show a man that a woman is again ready to take care of him with love, and as a man, she needs him not only out of habit.
To take your relationship to a new format, you can arrange unexpected picnics for your husband in the forest or on the beach in the summer. A great solution would be to go to a football match. Even if a woman hates football, she should buy two tickets and go to the stadium with him. In return, she will receive the man’s gratitude and a sea of positive emotions addressed to her.
It doesn’t matter whether it is a well-thought-out and pre-planned surprise, or whether it is the embodiment of a momentary desire, the spontaneity of the act will not lose its value for the partner. A well-trodden road with a tired, well-trodden rut can very soon again become a comfortable and pleasant road of happiness, as it was at the beginning of the journey.
