12 important things to know about life

Motivation, comprehensive approach, regularity

December is the perfect month for a personal reboot. The festive atmosphere puts us in a different mood, when we want to believe in miracles, plan something, dream about something. Give yourself at least 21 days to prepare for a new life in the new year, because even positive changes are always a little stressful for our body.

I’ll say right away that you will have to work comprehensively, that is, influence simultaneously on several different aspects of life: physical, social, mental and emotional. In addition, regularity is very important. If you want to really reboot yourself, one day is definitely not enough. And the most important point is motivation. Decide what you need all this for, clearly formulate your request or even write it down. Specifics are important, not general phrases like “I want to live better.” Your brain simply won't understand what "better" means. But, for example, “I want to receive 100 thousand rubles a month” is another matter. The main thing is that your motivation is objective, i.e. if you now receive 25 thousand rubles, but want to earn a million, then it is clear that a miracle will not happen in three weeks. Also try to fit your motivation into 5-6 words, no need to build complex sentences. It should also be formulated in the present tense. Let’s say, “I feel confident,” and not “In the new year, I will feel confident in absolutely any company, when I speak in front of my boss, when I meet new people, etc.” The brain will not accept the second option.

Motivation is a kind of red flag that stands, relatively speaking, somewhere in the field, and no matter what happens, we clearly understand where exactly we need to go and why we should put so much effort into it.

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Become happier. How to start a new life in the New Year

PROBLEMS OF PERSONAL LIFE IN MODERN PSYCHOLOGY

The material presents in a concentrated form approaches to the study of the phenomenon “personal life”, which arose as a subject of interest for psychologists in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The author refers to the results of the study and to the results of a study of life plans and characteristics of life prospects at the beginning of adolescence.

What is “private life”? What is its essence? Do you need to develop an attitude towards your own life, or do you need to live as you live, learn to use every moment, every opportunity? In personal life there are no criteria, norms and standards that could judge and evaluate whether a person’s life has turned out well, whether it is prosperous, whether it is correct. Life achievements are assessed by social standards, but they cannot be the criteria for everyone. When you wake up, you do not complain that you are not a minister. The mother of three children does not wake up with the bitter thought that she is not a doctor of science. Everyone can easily console himself by saying that he has his own and does not need another.

In this case, is it possible to pose the problem of personal life? Is it possible to understand it by taking the path of comparing people’s destinies if these destinies are so different? Is it possible to talk about the patterns of their life path that are common to all people, if each path is individual, representing an individual “history” of the individual?

For a psychologist, “personal life” begins with asking questions: 1) does a person live in accordance with his needs, 2) does he put up with his dissatisfaction with life, 3) does he have life prospects, 4) how does he combine in his life what he wants, what he can and what he should?

The realization that life can be defined in relation to personality came at the end of the 20th - beginning of the 20th century. S. Bühler was the first to attempt to give a scientific definition of life. She drew an analogy between the process of life and the process of history and called individual or personal life in its dynamics the life path of the individual.

S. Bühler identified a number of sides, or aspects of life, in order to trace them in dynamics. She considered the first series, constituting, as it were, the objective logic of life, as a sequence of external events; the second - as a change in experiences, values, as the evolution of a person’s inner world, as the logic of his internal events; the third - as the results of his activities.

Her understanding of the path of life included the fact that the life of a particular individual is not random, but natural, it can be described not only, but also explained; the driving force of personality development is a person’s innate desire for self-realization, self-fulfillment, that is, the comprehensive realization of oneself; A person can realize himself only through creativity, creation, and self-realization is the result of life’s journey.

Almost simultaneously with S. Buhler, P. Janet sought to define the life path as the evolution of the personality itself, as a sequence of age stages of its development, stages of its biography.

Following S. Bühler, C. J1 turned to the idea of a person’s life path in Russian psychology. Rubinstein. He came to the conclusion that the path of life cannot be understood as the sum of life events, individual actions, and creative products. It must be presented as a whole.

S. JT. Rubinstein proposed the concept of life relationships of the individual as units of analysis of the life path, naming three: the relationship to the objective world, to other people, to oneself. If events are divided into external and internal, then relationships are always an internal relationship to the external, to oneself, in which the external and internal are inextricably linked.

The most interesting thought is C.J1. Rubinstein about turning points in a person’s life. In the course of an individual’s history, there are events—key moments, turning points, “fateful moments” of an individual’s life path, when the adoption of one or another decision for a more or less long period determines the person’s life path. HER. Sapogova, discussing the ideas of the relationship between life and fate, the problem of responsibility for a person’s fate, pointed out that if fate is considered by a person as an internal factor, then he “owns” fate. If a person treats fate as an external factor (“fate is given from above”), then if he is dissatisfied with the quality of life, he creates an individual mythology, and external properties are attributed to fate.

And yet a person himself determines the direction of his life. Through the concept of personality as a subject of life C.J1. Rubinstein defines the path of life - not only as a person’s movement forward, but also as a movement upward, to higher, more perfect forms, to the best manifestations of human essence, as an upward movement, to human - ethical, social, psychological - perfection.

In the 70s XX century a scientific approach to the study of personality is being formed, emphasizing the uniqueness of each person’s life path, as well as the need to supplement the psychology of personality development with the study of the psychology of life path. The theoretical background of this approach is highlighted in the works of K.A. Abulkhanova-Slavskaya, C.J1. Rubinshteina, B.G. Ananyeva, N.A. Loginova, L.I. Antsyferova, T.B. Kartseva and others. Currently, the study of life path problems continues, as evidenced by the results of studies by such psychologists as V.I. Kovalev, A.A. Kronik, RA. Akhmerov, K.V. Karpinsky, V.M. Slutsky, S.S. Goncharova, M.I. Yakovchuk et al.

The path of life is a very multifaceted problem. According to L.I. Antsyferova, the uniqueness of human existence lies in the fact that a person does not just live, carried away by the forces contained within him, and makes efforts to build his life. He is capable of taking an evaluative position towards life in general and his own in particular. He is able to dispose of it and even - which is impossible in the rest of nature - to die of his own free will. Thus, L.I. Antsyferova views human life as a system of elections unfolded over time. This system is based on a basal choice - between life and death. Every person throughout his life has to make many existential choices, that is, those concerning the very essence of his existence. A person’s entire life is a chain of transitions from one life world to another. He finds himself in new systems of socio-psychological connections, in unusual circumstances, from the material of which he must create his own new unique life world and master new ways of living.

On the other hand, the question is often not so radical, and death is not considered as an underlying alternative in life.

K.A. Abulkhanova-Slavskaya pointed out that the greatest difficulty in posing the problem of personal life is precisely to recognize it as a problem, to imagine it not as it spontaneously develops, but as it could be with a reasonable attitude to life and effort.

Considering a person’s life path as his ability to organize his destiny according to his own plans, she identifies types of life strategies on two grounds: initiative and responsibility. And the most important “reinforcement” of the meaning of life is a person’s feeling of satisfaction with how he builds his life. Satisfaction associated with responsibility for one's life and duty to oneself.

The idea of unused, missed opportunities in life, of unrealized human abilities is fundamental for a psychologist. It directs attention to how a person can build a life in order to more fully realize his abilities in real life conditions. This problem directly leads to the problem of building a life strategy. The task of realizing human potential is especially acute in connection with the irreversibility of life.

The life path is not a fixed position once and for all, but a certain life line, i.e. implementation of one’s position over time, its gradual deployment, expansion, strengthening.

E.P. Varlamov and S.Yu. Stepanov distinguishes types of life strategies according to the relationship between individual originality and creative activity of a person in the events of his life:

- creative uniqueness - reflects a person’s creative attitude towards his own life, when his transformative initiative leads to high uniqueness and extraordinaryness of the events of his life;

- passive individuality - represents the spontaneous, random nature of a person’s formation, when his individual identity mainly depends not on his efforts, but is determined by external circumstances;

- active typicality - reflects a person’s desire to “be like everyone else” when his efforts are aimed at achieving generally accepted goals and values;

- passive typicality - characterizes a person’s spontaneous adherence to social stereotypes, his blind submission to social norms.

T.N. Berezina cites such parameters of life strategies identified by different authors as the scale of planning, its duration, strategicity, predictability, as well as two methods of time planning: optimal (for subjects with long-term regulation) and non-optimal. Two “temporary styles” are also described: prolonged and situational. However, already in the concept of “life strategies”, explicitly or implicitly, lies the central problem of human existence - the meaning of life and, although this is not exactly the same thing, the choice of life goals.

The life strategy of different people is that one manages to immediately determine his main life line, his professional perspective; another may initially see several prospects and directions for self-realization and wants to first try himself in different areas and then choose the main direction. One believes that it is necessary to start a family as early as possible, providing for one’s “rear”; the other, on the contrary, while maintaining personal freedom, first establish oneself, see the world, etc.

Already in the life plans of adolescents, such differences are clearly revealed: some see their future in the field of social achievements (titles, positions, careers), others - in a personal way of self-expression (friendship, interesting communication, family), others - in creativity (dreams of becoming a writer, artist, composer).

Interesting research by E.I. Golovakhs of professional self-determination and reflection of their life perspective by high school students. Most high school students expect to realize their aspirations in professional and other areas by the age of 35. The origins of the midlife crisis of E.I. Golovakha sees the limited life prospects when young men and women, intending to live on average up to 70 years, set the limit of self-realization at the turn of 30 - 40 years. A number of authors also associate the crisis of the fourth decade with a feeling of limited life prospects, an orientation not towards finding new ways of self-realization, but only towards copying the path taken by representatives of previous generations, and in behavioral terms - an attitude towards existing age-role expectations.

Anticipation of the future is essential in the regulation of human behavior. However, the bulk of research into life plans and life prospects is concentrated around a rather narrow topic and is devoted to the study of young people’s choice of profession. As a result, life planning in other areas and at other stages of the life path turns out to be little studied (limited subject of research). Little attention is paid to the theoretical and methodological analysis of life plans as an essential aspect of a person’s life throughout his entire life path. In our opinion, one of the promising ways is to conceptualize life plans as a socio-psychological concept in the broader methodological context of the concept of lifestyle as an integral part of the subjective picture of an individual’s life path.

The study of the genesis of life plans and features of life prospects at the beginning of adolescence, carried out by us using the “Situational Causemetry” technique by A.A. Kronika showed that not all young men’s need to turn to the future, to go beyond the limits of today’s situation into the future life reaches a high level of development. Many, under various pretexts, move away from specific characteristics of their own future and do not have a meaningful model of it. The future appears as a set of some formally objective moments, weakly substantiated by the past, present, and one’s own activity. The program of action to achieve what you want is little realistic or completely absent; the future seems to be an almost literal continuation of the present. The phenomenon of “unrealistic optimism” is often observed, which manifests itself in a tendency to give higher assessments of one’s personal capabilities (compared to assessments of the future prospects of peers) regarding positive future life events and significantly lower assessments of negative events. Many people have difficulty combining near and long-term perspectives.

All this points to the need to carry out preventive, correctional and developmental activities with young men in order to develop their skills of adequate planning and reduce the degree to which they experience the future as a problem. This process is impossible without special guidance in the development of young men’s ability to reflect on life, without a constant desire to evoke in them the need to look at human life from the standpoint of its value and meaning. In the words of V. Frankl, “the sooner a person asks the question about the meaning of life, the sooner he will begin to live like a human being, since the search for meaning is the main force of life.”

>> Source:
JI.M.
Dauksha. PSYCHOLOGICAL AND PEDAGOGICAL PROBLEMS OF PROFESSIONAL ACTIVITY AND COMMUNICATION. 2009 January 24, 2020 Educational psychology

Bodily level

It doesn’t matter what kind of motivation you choose: financial well-being, career growth or ideal family relationships. Your task is to feel it through your body, that is, to give it the pleasure that you love. Sports, massage, if you want, sex, sauna, aromatherapy, delicious food, etc. Find what exactly brings you positive emotions and pamper yourself. We all want to live better, and for this we need to consolidate the experience of pleasant experiences in our psyche and enter a state of energy resource. The easiest way to do this is through the body, so give yourself a real spa.

Thinking level

Here it is important to track the appearance of “enemy thoughts” in your head, which simply do not allow you to breathe freely, let alone live in a new way, or dream about something. How to detect such destructive elements? Ask yourself: “What is stopping me from living the way I want? What is stopping me from making the changes I want?” The main thing is to answer these questions honestly. For example, you are afraid of failure. Then the next step is to figure out whether your fear has any basis.

Remember the expression “fear has big eyes”? It illustrates very well the tendency of people to be much more afraid than a particular situation requires. For example, a person is haunted by the thought that if he allows himself to look for his dream job (which he really likes), he may not have enough money to pay the mortgage. If he tries to prove to himself that such a scenario can happen, it often turns out that what he is so afraid of is actually not related to reality. However, if the fear or anxiety is justified, you need to prescribe an algorithm of actions to get out of a difficult situation. And believe me, your brain is capable of this too!

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Psychology of life - a road without signs?

Where can we find a foothold if everything flows and changes endlessly? How to live? Where to look for the answer to this question: in the sacred scriptures, philosophical treatises, works of art, codes of laws?

Or should you listen to the life advice of wise people? But you can’t put someone else’s life on yourself. No matter how correct she may be, she is still alien. There is another option - to not give a damn about all social norms and live by the law of the jungle: whoever is stronger is right. But such a coordinate system disgusts with its inhumanity.

Or maybe create your own set of rules? This idea seems the most correct, if not for one thing. A personal moral code will most likely be built on the most important and shamelessly primitive desire - pleasure. Is it possible to subordinate the entire psychology of life to him alone? Then we will be controlled by only two impulses: fear of pain and thirst for high. Our entire existence will be reduced to a journey from point “Minus” to point “Plus”, from suffering to happiness or, at worst, to peace.

So, all your life you can not stick your nose out of a quiet viscous swamp or howl with the wolves, joining a pack of predators. The psychology of the comfort zone has nothing to do with the feeling of real life - bright, daring, active, full of hope, love, creative achievements.

And then: if we take pleasure as the highest good, then why is it that hard work makes us stronger and happier? Why is it harmful to eat everything tasty, but drugs that give you a high kill? Why does sybaritic pastime corrupt, the desire for simple entertainment leads to degradation, and uncontrollable philandering ultimately deprives one of strength?

Emotional level

Anger and resentment - each of us can experience these feelings. But some people manage to live with such baggage for many years, for example, being offended by parents, former or current partners, depriving themselves of a very large amount of energy, not allowing them to move forward. There is only one way out: accept the situation and let go. I understand that it is often extremely difficult for us to complete this task, so some work with a psychologist, others read specialized literature.

I can say that if you are aware of how negative emotions drag you down and prevent you from developing, that is already half the battle. And then special practices will help. If you can't get over your ex, try following this plan for two weeks: Set an alarm for every two hours from the moment you wake up until you go to bed. As soon as it rings, allow yourself to cry, worry, suffer for your partner, i.e. express the emotions that the loss of this person causes you. Also, during this period, every day before going to bed, write a letter to your ex-lover: whatever comes to mind. There is no need to send it, nor do you need to re-read it. 14 days of such work will help you sort out your feelings and understand that if a person stops loving you, there is no point in clinging to this relationship.

As for parents, for some (not everyone!) the idea that mom and dad are getting old and need more and more support helps them let go of resentment towards them.

In general, each of us chooses the algorithm of action that can ultimately free him from grievances and unnecessary people in life.

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We'll wait until Monday. How to spend your weekend to stay energetic

Psychology of life: meeting with conscience

Sooner or later, having hit enough bumps on the sharp corners of existence, we begin to see the light. And then the understanding comes: life itself is a wise teacher. After all, at every step she poked us, like blind kittens, into our mistakes and demonstrated her unwritten rules.

She repeatedly proved to us that true benefits have nothing in common with illusory ones. At the same time, she left us the right to choose. She didn’t pull anyone’s ears away from refined joys, piquant delights, screen leapfrogs, and glamorous advertising pictures. She did not force anyone to be contemplative and thoughtful, to clear their consciousness, clouded by stereotypes, prejudices, and superstitions.

But she prepared for each of us an unforgettable meeting with our conscience. And this main “creditor” in the psychology of life knows how to get his due to the fullest. He will certainly present charges for naivety, immaturity, self-deception, and violence against himself. He will convince you that breaking the rules of life - buying into superficial pleasures and diving headlong into a pool of lies - is more expensive for yourself. This is the path to coarsening, imbalance, degradation.

Social level

Conduct an analysis: what kind of people do you surround yourself with, with whom do you communicate, do they bring you positive emotions or do they just drain your energy? It is useful to periodically review your environment. And not only real, but also virtual, because for many people their morning begins with viewing their Instagram feed. Think about what your brain sees at this moment, what information it absorbs. Even if these are beautiful pictures, but they cause negativity, envy, anger, you need to limit such content.

Also, perhaps there are people in your circle whose lives you admire and you yourself would like to achieve the same results. If there are such role models, ask them how they got to where they are and do the same.

Also, get into the habit of thanking those who bring you positive emotions, support, inspire and motivate you. This helps a lot to switch to a positive wave.

If you put things in order on these four levels and take small steps towards a better version of yourself for at least three weeks, starting that very new life in the New Year will be much easier.

7 more tips on how to change your outlook on life

Ditch the “victim t-shirt.”
People who have a positive attitude towards life and get out of difficult situations more easily know for sure that they are in control of all their actions. They see themselves as active participants rather than victims of circumstances. Therefore, there is no point in demonstrating helplessness; they get rid of the “victim T-shirt” in time.
Set ambitious goals.
Thanks to a moderate level of stress, it is possible to rewire the brain and protect against more serious further experiences. Therefore, try to choose goals for yourself that require additional effort, this will make it easier for you to change your outlook on life.
See change as a chance for a better life.
Now for you, any changes, even for the worse (although they may only seem so) are not a crisis situation, but a chance to change for the better.
Don't forget about social medicine.
It's about the support of friends and family, and believe me, it is much more valuable than it might seem at first glance. People with a high level of stress tolerance mitigate the consequences of stress for themselves precisely through social support. But you don’t need to make a person feel sorry for yourself, you need care and encouragement.
Do what you like.
Scientists have found that stress-resistant people draw strength, energy and time for their work from a sincere interest in it.
Don't let yourself get bored.
A moderate level of stress allows you to avoid getting bored with your daily routine. University of Chicago psychology professor Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi described how you can avoid anxiety caused by overstimulation without getting bored. When a person finds a balance between these two states, he finds himself in the so-called “flow” and enjoys it.
Be curious.
Curiosity triggers active brain activity. Having developed this quality in yourself, you will turn any new environment into a source of impressions and knowledge. Due to an emotionally and intellectually rich environment, it is possible to positively change the neuroplasticity of the brain, and otherwise provoke its degradation.

History knows of people who started a new life after serious injuries - they were able to do this thanks to resilience. They remember very well what they went through, but do not give up and do not get bored in anticipation of something good. They work hard, including on themselves. If you have a series of failures, remember such people, they will help you change your outlook on life. After all, an important step on the path to rewiring the brain is to independently create a positive attitude. How to start valuing yourself: