Obstacles To Happiness

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

One of the reasons for going to a psychologist is the lack of a feeling of happiness in your life. When everything seems to be there - health, work, a roof over your head, family, etc. … but there is no happiness.

As in the joke:

“A sad man walks into a store:

- Hello, do you remember me? I bought balls from you yesterday.

- I will. More balls for you?

- No. I am complaining to you - they are defective.

- What's the matter - they don't hold air?

- No, that's okay.

- And then what?

"They don't make me happy."

In connection with such a “defective” experience of your life, claims to yourself are raised inside: “What else are you missing?”, Fueled by the stories of friends about the problems of other people or envy about how wonderful your life is. But that doesn't help.

So what is happiness?

Wikipedia defines it as a human condition that corresponds to the greatest inner satisfaction with the conditions of one's existence, the fullness and meaningfulness of life, the fulfillment of one's human vocation, self-realization.

As practice shows, each person puts his own personal meaning into the understanding of happiness.

For example:

“Happiness is when you are understood, great happiness is when you are loved, real happiness is when you love” Confucius.

“The exceptional happiness of a person is to be with his constant favorite business” V. Nemirovich-Danchenko.

“The greatest happiness is not to consider yourself special, but to be like all people” M. Prishvin.

"Happiness is pleasure without repentance" L. Tolstoy.

“The only happiness in life is a constant striving forward” E. Zola.

“Happiness is only where there is naturalness” A. Maurois.

“Happiness is in change, not in finding” D. Krishnamurti.

"Happiness is the absence of unhappiness and the presence of calmness" Strugatsky brothers.

“One of the main signs of happiness and harmony is the complete absence of the need to prove something to someone” N. Mandela.

“We are happy only when we feel that we are respected” B. Pascal.

But there is something in common that can be distinguished in all statements: happiness is a process that depends on our perception of the world (how we see ourselves, the world around us, the attitude of other people towards us, etc.) and lived (and not suppressed) feelings.

On the path to happiness, you often have to face obstacles that prevent you from enjoying the wonderful moments of life. Such as:

- Shame or fear (express yourself, rejoice, have fun, etc.);

- Incomplete gestalts (relationships, actions, goals), which cling to the legs with bony paws and interfere with moving forward easily and confidently;

- Destructive attitudes, absorbed by us in childhood from parents, teachers, society, etc. Those who drew us a standard stamped script, but never taught us to listen carefully to our own needs;

- Not lived feelings (envy, guilt, grief, regret, sadness, powerlessness, resentment, rage, etc.);

- Unworked traumas that left their deep imprint on the heart and contributed to the development of certain behaviors that helped us survive in childhood, but now makes life unbearable;

- Criticism and self-loathing. A constant voice in my head that tells a story about how bad we are and compares us to others not in our favor;

- Low self-esteem, lack of self-confidence and ability to self-support, constant search for the approval of others;

- The habit of suffering, like a connection with one's family (mother suffered, grandmother suffered, and now I will also suffer);

- The expectation that something or someone will change our life (winning the lottery, a prince on a white horse, a wizard on a blue helicopter);

- Incorrect lifestyle that affects health and general well-being;

- Burnout (fatigue, exhaustion), insensitivity to the resources necessary for recovery;

- The need to totally control everything. Not the ability to agree that in reality, we have little control, and life is random and little predictable;

- Different types of painful addictions (from alcohol, work, other people, food, smoking, etc.);

- Claims and expectations from other people;

- The environment in which we are (after all, it is not we who create relationships, but relationships create us);

- The pursuit of the ideal (ideal partner, work, body, home, etc.) The ideal is never attainable, which means that a person cannot feel satisfaction from what already exists and complete the cycle of contact;

- Not the ability to feel your body, slow down and plunge into the power of such a beautiful "here and now".

In order to be happy - first of all, you need to understand and eliminate the cause of unhappiness - preferably in personal or group therapy (what we will do on my group "Granite Pebble in the Chest", which starts on February 6). After all, all these: “being yourself”, “freeing from addictions”, “letting go of the past”, “living feelings”, “living the way you want”, “loving yourself” and other necessary components of being happy are quite difficult to implement in reality (especially if we have lived a significant part of our life with some of these “program failures”).

And finally, I would like to recall the story of John Lennon:

“When I was 5 years old, my mother always told me that the most important thing in life is to be happy. When I came to school, I was asked what I want to become when I grow up. I wrote: "happy." They told me: "You did not understand the task." And I replied: "You did not understand life …"