How Unfinished Actions Affect Us

2024 Author: Harry Day | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 15:43

One of my favorite stories in the field of psychology. And whoever reads to the end will understand how connected with each of us.

Once the psychologist B. V. Zeigarnik and her teacher went into a crowded cafe. Her attention was attracted by the fact that the waiter, having accepted the order, did not write down anything, although the list of ordered dishes was extensive, and brought everything to the table without forgetting anything. At the remark about his amazing memory, he shrugged his shoulders, saying that he never writes down and never forgets. Then the psychologists asked him to say that they chose from the menu the visitors whom he served before them and who had just left the cafe. The waiter was confused and admitted that he could not remember their order in any way. Soon, an idea arose to test experimentally how the completeness or incompleteness of an action affects memorization.

She asked the subjects to solve intellectual problems in a limited time. The time for the solution was determined by her arbitrarily, so that she could allow the subject to find a solution or at any moment declare that the time had expired and the problem had not been solved.

After several days, the subjects were asked to recall the conditions of the problems that were offered to them for solving.

It turned out that in the event that the solution to a problem is interrupted, it is remembered better than problems that were successfully solved. The number of interrupted tasks remembered is approximately double the number of completed tasks remembered. This pattern is called the Zeigarnik effect. It can be assumed that a certain level of emotional stress, which did not receive discharge in the conditions of an unfinished action, contributes to its preservation in memory.

In our memory, there is always something that we have not finished. And even if it seems to us that this is in the past and it is not worth stirring it up, or “I’ll think about it tomorrow,” and this tomorrow does not come for years, emotional stress builds up. Accumulated by various situations, circumstances, reasons. As any vessel has its own capacity, so our body is also not bottomless. Sooner or later, everything that does not fit comes out through nervous breakdowns, apathy, despondency, depression, illness.

It so happens that over the course of many years of our lives we carry with us a lot of unfinished business (with a periodic splash out). We spend our internal energy on them. And the most dangerous thing in this is that we don't even notice where our forces go, why the space inside is overflowing.

Especially it concerns:

• unfinished dialogues;
• conversations in which misunderstandings remain;
• emotions that have not received a discharge;
• suppressed feelings;
• situations that we want to forget;
• desires that did not dare to fulfill;
• situations that you cannot forgive yourself and others;
• people whom we deliberately want to erase from life.

Found something familiar from the list?

It seems to us that all this does not affect us. And in the end it is in our backpack among the rest of the burden of life. Therefore, it is very important to find ways to complete the case. You can do it yourself, or you can pair it with a psychologist.