2024 Author: Harry Day | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 15:43
Jorge Bucay is an Argentine psychotherapist and writer. He devoted more than 30 years to psychotherapy, after which he switched to writing books. "I try to put into each sentence only thoughts, the benefits of which I was convinced of from my own experience." Here are 20 simple and not so easy steps to help you get closer to yourself and answer the most important questions that life puts before us
Step 1. Know yourself
Remove the veils from yourself that prevent you from seeing who you really are. Accept the knowledge of who you really are. Take off all the "masks" that you wear for others. Take full responsibility for your life, including everything you say and do.
Step 2. Become free
Do not conquer, but give yourself freedom, inner independence. Freedom is the art of choosing within the limits of the possible, not permissiveness. Declaring yourself free means taking a step towards your independence. Understand that from now on, only you are responsible for all the decisions you make.
Step 3. Open up to love
Love that needs to open your heart is an everyday, real and simple feeling. This is a genuine concern for the welfare of others. Awaken a genuine interest in the lives of others, be it your child, your mother, spouse, partner, neighbor, or even a stranger.
Step 4. Laugh heartily
Learn to wake up happily every morning, in spite of television and other negative information. Linger in front of the mirror for at least a minute every day and smile at yourself. Smile until you infect everyone around you with your mood. Laughter and irony are necessary for a person so that he can act more rationally, without denying existing problems and without running away from them.
Step 5. Learn to listen to others
Well-known wisdom says: we have two ears and only one mouth. This is a reminder that we must listen twice as much as we speak. Practice active and engaged listening when you analyze, agree, or deny the other person's opinion. Another person can help you better understand yourself, see the facets of your personality that are not available to you.
Step 6. Learn to learn without pride
Life is the constant acquisition of new knowledge necessary for self-improvement. There is no worse punishment than the inability to go beyond the boundaries of already acquired knowledge. A person who is not ready to descend from the pedestal of omniscience cannot learn anything from others, because he despises others in advance, assuming that no one can tell him anything new.
Step 7. Be always friendly
It's easy to be nice to someone who treats you with warmth and respect. But it is not so easy to follow the rules of courtesy when you are not answered in kind. However, I am convinced that everyone should deliberately refrain from the ill-treatment to which we subject each other on a daily basis. It is difficult to go through self-improvement all alone, without fellow travelers, and it is impossible to succeed if you are not loved.
Step 8. Tidy up the outside and inside
Learn to reach your goal without losing your way. To do this, you need to prioritize, separate the main from the secondary. Remember two important points: 1) no order can be considered final and immutable, 2) your own order should not at all coincide with the order of another person.
Step 9. Become a good salesperson
The ninth step on the difficult path of self-development, undoubtedly, few people do openly - the ability to correctly present oneself. Selling in this case does not mean “selling out”, it is just the ability to convey information about yourself and what good you can do to others.
Step 10. Choose a good company for yourself
You need to choose people not with your mind, but with your heart. It may seem naive, but not so long ago, overcoming difficulties, I realized how important it is to have people who love you and beloved by you: friends, relatives, readers, neighbors, colleagues, teachers … I call them life companions. Not having such people or forgetting about them, you will not achieve anything in life.
Step 11. Don't be afraid to overestimate your knowledge
Often, in the pursuit of new knowledge, you may forget that all the information you already have must be constantly maintained. Revise your knowledge, give up something, discover something new, replenish and improve what you have always considered reliable. Personally, I am in a conscious and constant search for new solutions to old problems, new answers to old questions.
Step 12. Be creative
There are two ways of knowing: one is based on the experience and knowledge of an adult, the second - on the discoveries and experiences of a child who is in each of us. It is the second method that allows you to bring out the creative force, to discover that in any situation there is some kind of new, unknown facet. Try to build your life path in the following sequence: emotion, researcher's curiosity, creative behavior, creative mistakes, cognition, joy, growth.
Step 13. Use every second
The present is the only possible moment for an active life. Neither the past nor the future should distract you from being here and now. The present is always open to change, unpredictable and can present any surprise - this is its main advantage. Make the most of it.
Step 14. Avoid addictions and attachments
This step involves getting rid of all kinds of dependencies: things, people, actions, positions, ideologies. It is about getting rid of everything that one way or another is not originally yours. And to start this list of "unnecessary things" should be with our vain and narcissistic "I".
Step 15. Don't risk it lightly
One old poem says that every thing, thought, opinion, deed carries a share of risk. It is dangerous to laugh, cry, do something new, love, meet people, fly an airplane … But this same poem teaches us one more thing: the greatest danger is the desire to live our whole life without exposing ourselves to any dangers. I suggest that you take risks in your life, but take risks wisely.
Step 16. Only haggle in the most extreme cases
Learn to bargain only in the field of commercial or legal relations, in litigation, war, conflict situations. For other cases (and especially for love!) It is better to use the word "consent". In friendship, family and love relationships, I like the phrase "voluntary refusal" rather than "sacrifice".
Step 17. Improve without competition
From my own experience, I've learned that there is no “healthy” competition. Of course, in every person there is a desire to compare himself with others, but only in sports does such rivalry turn into a game. Therefore, sport allows you to sublimate this fatal desire to surpass others, and then return to everyday life. Only competition at the level of competence and skill can be considered healthy.
Step 18: don't be afraid to fail
Our fear of failure is usually the result of our childhood upbringing. Every person is afraid of failure, and we all forget: any failure of plans is an impetus for self-improvement. Spiritual growth is only possible through the daily experience of trial and error. If you succeed the first time, this may amuse your vanity, but it will not teach you anything. You can only learn from mistakes and comprehension of the past.
Step 19. Start all over again
On the path of life, you have repeatedly come to a dead end, fell into a hopeless situation, where you were led by serious, sometimes irreparable mistakes. At such times, it is worth remembering this step. And make a decision to start all over again. The point of this step is to go back to the place where you lost your way or where the road ended. And when you return, you will understand - now everything will be different: the situation itself, and the place in which it happened, and you yourself. Remember, there is always the opportunity to start over.
Step 20. Do not doubt the final result
I believe that anyone can achieve everything they dream about if they take their time and be persistent in achieving what they want. The main thing is that it was really his own desire, and not the needs of other people, which sprouted in his heart. It is said that we face failure because of our impatience, not a lack of real opportunity. Probably the way it is.
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