Sadly enough, life consists of everyday life. And for most of us, these everyday lives are associated with stress and nervousness, which reduce the overall quality of life and lead to illness. Here are 12 tips on how to live a relaxed and enjoyable life.
Get up earlier
The simplest thing you can do to switch your life from stress mode to relaxation mode is to get up an hour or two earlier. During this time, you can have time to deal with various things, whether it is washing, which has been waiting for its turn for a week, or watching a program that was missed yesterday. More time in the morning - less busy day.
Do the worst
In the morning, make a to-do list for the day. First of all, do the one that you want to do the least. Answer a boring letter, finish writing and submitting a report - deal with it and cross it off the list with peace of mind.
Take a breath of air
In the middle of the day, contrive to go outside. This is especially important if you've been sitting at your desk for 8 hours. Fresh air and bright light will invigorate and soothe even the most tired.
Give up junk food
Poor quality, heavy food requires too much energy for the body to cope with it. After such a meal, fatigue and drowsiness will certainly occur. It is your energy that goes into digesting junk food. Products healthy eating On the contrary, they will supply energy and improve well-being.
Don't Forget the 80/20 Rule
Workflow studies have shown that as little as 20% of customers and responsibilities take up to 80% of an employee's time. Therefore, firmly refuse everything that takes up your time and concentrate on fulfilling your duties and achieving work goals.
Produce Vitamin D
A lack of vitamin D leads to a breakdown and a depressed mood. At every opportunity, appear in the sun, even if it is a five-minute sitting on a bench.
Automate invoices
Get in the habit of paying your bills right away. The feeling of accumulated debts that must be dealt with sooner or later causes great stress.
Defuse social media
Go through social media feeds and unsubscribe from people who evoke negative emotions with their posts. It can be lovers of political squabbles, fans of hackneyed quotes placed on a photo with mountains, anyone. Let only useful and pleasant things remain in the tape.
Listen to the right music
Radio talk shows, podcasts and hard rock only add to the stress of everyday life. Instead, listen to relaxing music or classical music. Melodious works tune the brain to waves of calm and positive.
Turn off notifications
If you get distracted by the push notifications of every app on your phone, you won't have time to work or relax. Check social networks and mail when there is time and desire, and not when an obsessive signal orders you to do so.
clean the drawer
This may take a long time, but check your mailbox and unsubscribe from stores and organizations that litter it with spam. A clean box means a clean mind, and a clean mind is stress-free.
Choose your clothes carefully
When buying new things, be guided primarily by convenience. Even an expensive and beautiful thing will cause only bad emotions when worn if it is uncomfortable in it. You should not sacrifice your own comfort for the sake of fashion or someone else's opinion.
You are wearily wandering through a gloomy autumn park, scolding yourself for having the wrong conversation with the customer, not signing the contract and now you will not see the award. At home, the problems of family members who always need something will fall upon you. The new neighbor turned out to be a very unpleasant and conflicting type, on top of everything - problems with health, weight, sleep, etc. You look enviously at the carefree laughing couple on the bench and do not understand how to enjoy life in your situation. Trust me, it's not that bad! And the fact that you are reading this material already speaks of your readiness for change.
Optimism is a must!
The most important organ in a person is his brain. The ability to think, to give a correct assessment of events allows people to radically change their lives. Believe me, in order to catch moments of happiness more often, you don’t need special conditions and a lot of money. A billionaire on a luxury yacht may feel less satisfied than a poor shoemaker who has just seen his newborn son. Happiness and satisfaction are momentary states, but it is from such moments that our life consists. Direct your thoughts along this path. Put the negativity away. Remember Scarlett O'Hara's catchphrase: "I'll think about it tomorrow!"
Look at your situation and always tell yourself the word “but”: a gloomy cold day, but the exhausting heat is over, you can dress warmly and take a walk, breathing fresh and humid air. Family problems? But you have a family and children, and someone has been dreaming about it all their lives. Didn't work out with the contract? This is a chance to consider new strategies and perspectives. Live and enjoy this particular day, this moment, this weather and yourself! Literally since tomorrow start living as if all your dreams have already begun to come true! See what's coming soon.
You are the one and only
And this is the real truth! A bunch of complexes and a belief in their own insolvency are formed differently for everyone: someone is inspired by their parents, someone reaches out for a respected friend and blames himself for failure, someone feels like a gray mouse against the backdrop of a bright beautiful girlfriend. Why love me? If you ask yourself this question sincerely, think: who will appreciate you if you yourself do not know your own merits? And how to enjoy life without self-respect? If a person has too developed self-criticism, self-flagellation and underestimation, it is hard for him. There are no people in the world whom nature would not have awarded with something that would distinguish them from others. And do not be afraid to sometimes reward yourself, your loved one, with an unscheduled vacation or a delicious dessert. Looking in the mirror every day, smile at yourself and say: “Life is great! And this day is for me!”
Tell me who is your friend
Sometimes it is happy to live now and here a person is hindered by his environment. This does not mean at all that you need to leave your family or stop helping a sick friend. The bottom line is: soberly assess yours If you spend a lot of time in the company of whiners, for whom all conversations are reduced to criticism, gossip and abuse of an imperfect world, it is unlikely that your perception will be different. Take for yourself a model of a person with whom everything is arguable, who is always cheerful and pleased with himself. Watch him, talk, find out his attitude to life, ask about the ability to overcome troubles. Moreover, the age of such a friend is completely unimportant - sometimes a wise old man becomes a measure of life values, and sometimes a very young, cheerful person.
You should always try to communicate with people who are equal to you in terms of moral values, degree of education, range of interests. Watch TV shows selectively, exclude the negative completely. The whole industry makes money on this - and you have nothing to do with it.
It is not customary for us to run for advice to a personal psychologist, like the Americans. Whether this is good or bad is a separate question, but the fact that you need to learn to feel comfortable in the world around you is a fact. Learn to be cheerful from people who call themselves happy.
Can money buy happiness?
How to enjoy life in poverty? Is happiness possible without money? Or happiness is not in money, but in their quantity? This question is discussed by everyone and everywhere. Everyone agrees in one opinion: money is an opportunity to satisfy your needs. The difference is that everyone's needs are different. Some want to be rich in order to ensure their importance, gain power, others need freedom of action and movement. This is where the answer lies: by itself, money, in any form, does not mean anything, what brings you pleasure is what you spend it on.
Envy is the enemy of happiness
To be able to enjoy one's life without comparing it with others and without envying anyone is not given to everyone. Envy kills friendship, love. This feeling destroys family ties, becomes the cause of hostility and crime. For oneself, envy is a dissatisfaction and a disease of the nerves. You can completely get rid of this nasty feeling if you learn:
a) love yourself
b) love people;
c) find a balance between their needs and capabilities.
There are people who don't like to show off their failures. For each successful career, a happy family is worth a long and painstaking work, and sometimes big losses that no one wants to wish for themselves. Realize this and try to understand what qualities helped another to achieve what you would like to achieve. Do not waste energy on envy, tell yourself: "Just live and enjoy life." And remember: at this moment, thousands of people are dreaming about what you have! For example, at least the ability to see and read on the Internet.
of people?
It means accepting them for who they are. The eternally dissatisfied and grouchy neighbor, perhaps, became so from loneliness, or maybe her childhood did not work out. Not everyone in the world is kind and fluffy. The world is generally imperfect. Loving life and not trying to educate everyone in your own way does not mean pleasing everyone. Some individuals are not subject to education in adulthood, and neither your kindness nor pity will re-educate them. Build your existence so that with those who are unpleasant to you, the paths intersect as little as possible. Live healthy! Don't waste time arguing! The best way to win a conflict is to get rid of it.
Expectations and reality
Do not expect too much from life, then there will be fewer disappointments, and each achievement will please you more. This does not mean that you do not need to plan anything and set goals. The goals just need to be realistic. Psychologists advise using this tactic. First, learn to live now in harmony with yourself and determine one stage in your development (career, relationships) that you can practically accomplish. Then raise the bar higher and higher. Never rest on your laurels and praise yourself for every success.
Magic words of gratitude
Make it a rule to mentally and aloud thank the Universe for every day of your life, for everything that you have. Thank you for nothing? Not true! You have life, a roof over your head, water, food, vision. So every day be grateful for this to God (the Universe, fate, in whom you believe). How it works? Our thought is material. That's for sure! Evil attracts evil, curses return like a boomerang, gratitude is perceived by the Universe and returns with an addition. Sincerely thank the people who helped you.
Do good
No matter how bad you feel this moment, always remember that there is someone who is even worse. Help someone else to enjoy every day. You do not need to have a lot of money for this, just a desire is enough. Sometimes a person in trouble needs a simple friendly participation. Just do not demand praise and brag about your good deeds on every occasion. Sincere goodness should be quiet, and your life without embellishment will be filled with inner light and joy.
This hateful job
What does it mean to enjoy life? Enjoy every day of your life! Wake up with the expectation of a new and fall asleep in the satisfaction of past events. And here is the hitch: when a person is engaged in a job he hates, he does not want to wake up in the morning, and restless thoughts do not let him sleep at night. Good for those who have the opportunity to earn with pleasure. And if a well-paid position leads to frenzy and neuroses? There is always a way out.
1. Change your job, profession, leave your position.
2. Analyze what is more important for you at the moment: a healthy nervous system or is it the income that gives you the opportunity to support a family? In that case, be thankful that you have such a job.
3. Try to turn into an object of income favorite hobby This has worked for many people. And there is earnings, and everyday pleasure.
Be persistent
Very often, the stereotypes imposed on us by family, society, environment penetrate our consciousness so deeply and take root there that we are afraid to be happy if for this we need to retreat from them. Which university to enter, with whom to start a family, how to communicate with friends, how to spend a day off - it's up to you. And if you like baking pies, then don't try to convince yourself that you need a career as a doctor of some kind of science there in the name of continuing. family tradition. As a result, both you and those around you will be happy, because it is a pleasure to communicate with a person who knows how to enjoy life. Don't be afraid of drastic changes. If such a thought has ripened - act.
In a healthy body healthy mind
Among the people who support healthy lifestyle life and a healthy diet, there are very few gloomy pessimists. Sports, yoga, dancing increase the level of satisfaction. In addition, group classes allow you to find friends among like-minded people. Spend more time in nature. For starters, try just walking at least part of the way home from work, preferably through a square or park. A person always finds time for what he really wants. Sometimes you just need to pick yourself up and push yourself into the light.
A person who has health problems cannot enjoy life. Constant dissatisfaction with one's place in society leads to problems with this important component. This is such a vicious circle. It can only be broken by a personal desire to be healthy and happy.
The same applies to the power system. Not a single debilitating diet brought joy to anyone. Constantly hungry eyes cannot look happy. Food brings joy when it is tasty, beautiful and healthy. In everything, individual needs and a sense of proportion are important.
Life is Beautiful! Love her, yourself and your loved ones! And be happy!
Every person wants to be happy. But at the same time, everyone has a completely different understanding of happiness, and many people cannot at all formulate what exactly this concept includes for them. Most of us live according to the principle of "Groundhog Day" and do not consider it possible (and often necessary) to somehow change ourselves or the life around us. But if this situation does not suit you, you need to learn to enjoy the current moment of life. And to do this is not so easy. Let's clarify how to live, enjoying every day?
The ability to enjoy life is a rather rare quality, which, nevertheless, is necessary for each of us. If you know how to enjoy life every day, this can be an excellent health insurance. Indeed, with such an attitude towards gray everyday life, various ailments will become attached to you much less often.
Assess your life in terms of happiness. Think about it, there will be at least a third of the time (free from a night's rest) when you feel completely satisfied and happy. If not, then it's time to change something in life.
Try to understand exactly what moments in your everyday life give you pleasure. Also think about the things that made you happy before, and try to find at least a little time for them. At the same time, do not be afraid to somehow change the list of planned cases, and do not be afraid of not being able to do something. After all, positive emotions will add you both physical and moral strength.
If you feel chronically tired and unsatisfied with life, try to loosen your control over the daily routine a little. compulsory program. Bring at least a little spontaneity into your life, allow yourself to refuse to do some very unpleasant things, and be sure to please yourself with little things.
Do not hurry! Life around you is full of small pleasures, you just need to learn to notice and collect them. Walk systematically - not on the way from one meeting to another, or from work home, but aimlessly. Hiking in the park or the streets of the city will help you find a source of inspiration, or focus on solving particularly pressing problems.
Learn to enjoy idleness. Such a pastime allows you to renew the forces spent during the working day, to enjoy the world around you and even its bustle. To avoid discomfort when idle, use books (including electronic ones) or music.
Remember that the world will definitely not collapse if you allow yourself to postpone things until tomorrow. Ordinary business matters can wait, do not spend precious minutes of a night's rest on them or deal with them instead of having a good time in good company. After all, a good sleep and quality rest is a guarantee Have a good mood and high performance.
How to enjoy life every day?
Try to make changes in how your typical day goes. Add some positivity to it.
In the morning, getting out of bed, do all the usual activities (washing, exercising, brushing your teeth, breakfast) with awareness of the benefits of such actions and with pleasure. Look at yourself in the mirror before you leave the house, smile at yourself and wish yourself a great day. Repeat this ritual for a month, and you will get used to it.
On the way to work, keep yourself busy with something interesting. Download audio lessons, audio books, or just great music that you like on your mobile phone. For such activities, time in a traffic jam or in public transport fly by unnoticed and with benefit, and the road will bring pleasure.
In order to learn how to enjoy work, think about how it benefits you. Try to convey to yourself that your even small business is a part of the Great and Especially Important. Think about it, maybe you can learn something new in your profession, or, conversely, retrain for something more enjoyable. And don't be afraid of change!
Then the usual day is approaching lunch. Do not even think about wasting time before or directly during it surfing the Internet and watching the news. Such activities will definitely not bring pleasure. It's better to go for a short walk, just walk around, look at the world around you and don't forget to have a proper snack.
After a long and hard day at work, most people only dream about how to get home and collapse on the couch. But if you want to feel the pleasure of life, smile, meet friends or your loved one. Also great option for evening classes will be reading, walking, hobbies. Force yourself to break away from the TV, computer and sofa. At first it will not be easy, but over time you will get great pleasure from active and diverse evenings.
And do not stay too long, remember that the key to a good mood, as we have already found out, is a good night's rest.
How to change to enjoy ordinary life every day?
If you want to learn how to enjoy life, do not try to change your everyday life in one moment. After all, all those habits that you have have been developing for more than one year, and changing them to others will not be easy. But do not give up on the ideas and changes that have arisen, gradually, step by step and day by day, you will be able to bring them to life.
Instruction
Few people appreciate what they have. For some reason, it is generally believed that only those who have reached the heights of success can be happy. If you don't have the latest iPhone or don't wear clothes famous brands you are a loser and will never be able to enjoy life. But the whole secret is that all those who have a huge fortune depend on how much of their products the common man buys. And for this, they impose with the help of the media that one can be happy only by possessing all these things. Therefore, you should not perceive that the possession of material goods can help you learn to enjoy life. It's not like that at all.
A person can only be happy when he is satisfied with his life. He rejoices at what he has, thanks for what he was able to acquire, appreciates friends and relatives. In any situation, he is able to see the positive aspects, but this does not mean at all that a happy person does not know how to properly respond to what is happening. Quite the contrary, when it hurts, he is unhappy, but when everything is good in his life, he does not grumble and does not think that he will be able to enjoy life only in the future, but notices the good that is today.
No need to expect from others that they will become better, friendlier and kinder. Change yourself and others will follow your example. in order to change the world, change your attitude towards him and yourself. Do not rush to assess what is happening, get used to analyzing any situation from all sides. Then you will react in a completely different way, even to the most difficult problems in your life.
Appreciating that is very easy when faced with adversity. Start helping those in need, and you will immediately understand what you can thank life for. Health, peace of mind, kindness, caring, great willpower, good manners, the ability to take responsibility, a loved one, good friends and a job that allows you to fulfill yourself, the availability of housing and a good income - all this is worthy to enjoy your own life.
Never refuse to orphans, lonely pensioners, people with disabilities, children who are sick. Your help will be most welcome, by the way in shelters for homeless animals, and by taking an unfortunate creature from the street that is innocent of anything, you will make this world much better and kinder. The love and devotion that it will give you cannot be compared with anything. So no one can love you. Animals do not see your shortcomings, do not reproach or humiliate, they believe in you and know that you are the kindest and best on earth. Therefore, it remains only to correspond to this faith in yourself.
Scientists have come to the unequivocal conclusion that a person is happier not when he earns more and more, but when he gives to others. Think about how you can help right now. Maybe it's time to say "thank you" to your parents for what they have done for you, help friends solve difficult problems, or make a small financial contribution to an orphanage and animal shelter created in your city.
Start fulfilling your own long-forgotten dreams. Do not deny yourself to take a step forward and feel like a strong person, able to achieve everything that he wants. The memory of the desires that appeared in childhood or adolescence, at the same time give the opportunity to once again feel that faith and hope that the best lies ahead. Don't pass up the opportunity to celebrate what you've accomplished over the years.
Current page: 1 (total book has 25 pages) [accessible reading excerpt: 17 pages]
Alexander Kazakevich
Simple Truths, or How to Live for Your Pleasure
Everything in front of us and behind us are small things compared to what is inside us.
Ralph Emerson, American philosopher
From the author
There are many wise books in the world in which smart people talk about how to become happy, successful and rich. They explain in detail, reasoned and convincingly what and how to do in order to achieve what you want. And everything would be great, if not for one minus. The problem is that these books, as they say, do not work.
You can read a hundred or a thousand of these books and learn by heart all the laws of success and happiness, but knowing is not the same as being able to. Knowing doesn't mean doing. Because the most important thing cannot be taught. This can only be learned. Knowledge is not received - it is taken. And for a person to take them, he must be interested. No wonder they said in the old days: “A mediocre teacher tells, a good one explains, an excellent one shows, and a great one inspires.” You can say and explain anything, but if it does not touch the heart, then everything loses its meaning.
Anatole France once said: “In each of us, the artist sleeps, who wakes up from the words spoken at the right time.” When I decided to write this book, I made a promise to myself: not to write another textbook for success, but to write a book that will inspire. "All genres are good except boring."
Therefore, let my book not prove anything to anyone, explain or recommend anything. This has already been done before me by others. Let it awaken not thoughts, but feelings. My task is to arouse interest in the reader, and the goal is to ignite, inspire and inspire his heart. After all, a person, as La Fontaine noted, "is arranged in such a way that when something kindles his soul, everything becomes possible." Everything begins with a desire, and all our desires are born not in the head, but in the heart. Let the sleeping one wake up, the saddened one be consoled, the discouraged one rise up, and the timid and doubtful one be filled with enthusiasm and faith.
I have tried to collect in this book only the most Interesting Facts, the most exciting stories, the most beautiful parables and the most inspiring aphorisms. And now, having written this book, I remember the words of the Indian philosopher Hazrat Inayat Khan: “Words that illuminate the soul are more precious than precious stones.” It really is. And I want to believe, my dear reader, that this book will make your life even a little brighter. That is why it was written.
Alexander Kazakevich
What does a person need to be happy?
We all dream of some magical garden roses that are beyond the horizon, instead of enjoying the roses that bloom right outside our window.
Dale Carnegie, American writer
It is impossible to say “stop” to happiness ...
In the middle of the last century, Canadian scientist James Olds conducted a curious experiment. Microscopic electrodes were implanted into the area of the brain responsible for wakefulness in laboratory rats. The scientist was trying to find out if the rats would avoid the place where they were exposed to the current. As expected, the experimental animals very quickly stopped wanting to go into the corner of the cage, where an unpleasant “surprise” awaited them every time. And only one rat for some reason stubbornly returned to this "cursed" place, again and again receiving a current discharge.
Perhaps James Olds first thought that there were masochists among rats. However, a subsequent autopsy of the brain of this animal showed that the electrode was implanted with some deviation and thus irritated another zone - the so-called "pleasure center". So, if you influence this area of the brain, then you can make a rat do anything?
Further experience confirmed the assumption of the scientist. An electrode implanted in this part of the brain doomed the rat to a “pleasant” death. Having gained uncontrolled access to the conductive lever, the rat pressed it like crazy - up to 1,000 times per hour (almost every 3.5 seconds!), forgetting about food and sleep, not paying attention to either cubs or sexual partners. After several days of uninterrupted high, the rat died of exhaustion.
The question arises: is there such a “happiness button” in the human brain, by pressing which you can make any pessimist or unfortunate person a happy person? It turns out there is. It is located in the corpus callosum, where the "bridge" between the two hemispheres lies. And with electrical stimulation of this area, a person has a feeling of unearthly bliss ...
It would seem that at last there is a real opportunity to make all of humanity happy. But let's think: what if a person, like a rat, does not have the strength to stop in time and not drown in an uninterrupted stream of pleasure?
In the course of studying the human “pleasure center”, new interesting data were obtained. It turned out, for example, that this part of the brain is overflowing with dopamine, a hormone that gives a person a feeling of euphoria and happiness. Along with other hormones responsible for mood (oxytocin, tyrosine, norepinephrine, melatonin, and others), the amount of dopamine in the “pleasure center” determines how happy we feel. And if it is not enough, a person seeks to increase it by any means.
There are many ways. Power (career); glory; Love; erotica; sex; tasty food; someone's attention recognition (approval) of our merits, talents or behavior; prayer; winning a game, competition or lottery; sport; creation; leisure or travel; favorite hobby; laughter; dancing; singing; money; property; alcohol; drugs; Skydiving; fast driving ... In a word, any thought, any event or behavior that causes a hormonal surge. And everyone chooses his own way of getting the portion of dopamine he lacks.
It turns out that a person does not need to drill a hole in the skull and implant a chip in the brain in order to feel happy? Indeed, there are much safer and time-tested options for achieving happiness. However, how reliable are they?
Money is the sixteenth thing ...
One of the most common myths is that you need money to be happy. Or, as the French millionaire Paul Getty once joked, “happiness is not in money, but in their quantity.” In fact, not everything is so simple.
Studies in the West have shown that psychiatric hospitals Europe and America are filled mostly with wealthy people. Fashion, movie and music stars do not get out of depression by regularly using strong antidepressants, alcohol or drugs. Hugely wealthy businessmen die prematurely from cancer and other diseases caused by excess stress and fear. (After all, business is a kind of war, in which there is always a risk of losing not only money, but also other values: a good name, freedom, and even life. It is no coincidence that suicide and contract killing are commonplace in commercial circles.)
However, wealth not only drives people crazy, but also drives them into depression, pushes them to commit suicide. There are a great many examples of this. The famous writer Jack London struggled to become rich. When his dream came true, he bitterly admitted that he was happy only when he lived in poverty.
The famous Kodak and Savva Morozov committed suicide. The oil tycoon Rockefeller was dying in a terrible depression. Multimillionaire Howard Hughes, having lost his mind, lay naked in a closed room for days on end, believing that clothes are a "nest of bacillus carriers." All these tragedies cannot be overshadowed by private jets, villas, or money.
A few years ago, the German Society for Rational Psychology conducted a survey of about 3,000 Germans under the age of 65 to find out what makes them happy. It turned out that the most important sources of happiness for them are: a loving, gentle partner; a happy family; healthy, happy children; success at work; completed work; health; favorite hobbies. Money in this list took only 16th place.
A larger study conducted by American scientists confirmed the results of German colleagues: wealth is not a fundamental condition for happiness. And even the answers of the 100 richest people in America almost matched the happiness characteristics of average Americans.
English psychologist Daniel Gilbert of Harvard University writes in his book Stumbling on Happiness: “Psychologists have been studying the relationship between wealth and happiness for decades. And they came to the conclusion that money can make people happier if we are talking about the transition from extreme poverty to the middle class, but they do not have a tangible impact in the future.”
When asked why money does not give happiness, Gilbert answers: the more opportunities a person has for choice (and money just creates and multiply these opportunities), the less happy he feels. That is why Goethe's statement is true: "Order is more important than freedom."
Freedom is responsibility, and the more freedom, the greater the burden of responsibility. And not everyone can bear such a heavy burden.
“Do you want to be happy one day? Don't go to work"
So, if not money, then what brings happiness? Maybe we should rush in pursuit not for a long ruble, but for something more important and significant? For example, behind some beautiful dream or ideal? Alas, these "firebirds" are unreliable creatures: you can spend your whole life, but never achieve what you want. Or, conversely, achieve, but not get satisfaction from this.
One parable tells how a certain man decided to marry an ideal woman and, in order to find her, went to wander the world. Forty years later, he returned home - alone, without a wife. And someone asked him: “Well, have you met the perfect woman?” - “Yes,” the man sighed, “I met her ...” - “So why did you return alone, and not with her?” “Because she was looking for the perfect man…”
Maybe we should be simpler and use the "improvised" means of happiness, those that psychologists recommend: communication with friends, children, nature and animals, singing, dancing, massage, sex, laughter, exercise, hobbies, travel ... Probably, this is very good means make our life, if not happy, then quite tolerable. And much better sources of dopamine than its fleeting and extremely dangerous surrogates, such as tobacco, alcohol, drugs, medications, thrill seeking and other extreme sports ...
However, there is no strength here either. No matter how much you communicate with friends, they will not always be with us. No matter how much you travel, you can’t run away from yourself (as the American philosopher Ralph Emerson rightly noted, “travel is a fool’s paradise”). No matter how much you eat the most delicious dishes, no matter how much you laugh, or have sex - all these are temporary and equally unreliable moments of joy. After all, you can’t just do this all day and all your life.
And these sources are not inside us, but outside, which means that our happiness will always depend on external circumstances. “He is unhappy,” Schopenhauer argued, “who seeks adventure, but does not see happiness at home, whose center of gravity lies in others, and not in himself.”
A Georgian proverb teaches: “Do you want to be happy one day? Don't go to work. Do you want to be happy for three days? Get a mistress. Do you want to be happy for ten years? Get married. Do you want to be happy all your life? Be healthy!" Maybe happiness brings health? Health is of course important. But just as you will not be satisfied with water alone, you will not be happy with health alone. Health is like air: when it is there, you do not notice it and therefore do not appreciate it.
So what is happiness?
"You need a big heart and you don't need a big room"
If you carefully dig through the literature on the subject of happiness, you can find three really solid conditions for happiness. The first of these is work, purposeful, creative or simply favorite work.
“When I rest, I get dumber,” said Benjamin Franklin. “The secret of our misfortunes is,” Bernard Shaw wrote, “that we have too much leisure to think about whether we are happy or not.” “Find something to your liking,” Maxim Gorky advised, “and there will be one less unfortunate on earth.” When Winston Churchill, who worked 18-hour days in the midst of the war, was asked if he was worried about the huge responsibility placed on him, he replied: "I was too busy to have time to worry."
Academician of the Russian Academy of Medical Sciences Boris Petrovsky in an interview told about a meeting with an unusual person: “Once I was in Baku, and Professor Akhundov invited me to visit. In addition to me, a 140-year-old man was invited. We sat, ate, drank a little. And the owner asks the old man: “Tell me, dear, why do you live so long?” And the mountaineer said: “I sleep very well. Under the sky. I don't have a boss. I myself am the head of the herd of my sheep. There is always a woman with me. I never envied anyone. And in general I am a happy person ... "
As you can see, happiness is completely undemanding. You can work all your life as a simple shepherd and at the same time be a great sage who is always happy. Happy because every day is busy with what he loves.
Favorite business ceases to be labor and becomes creativity and even the meaning of life. During World War II, the Austrian psychiatrist Viktor Frankl ended up in a concentration camp (Auschwitz). At this point, his manuscript, dedicated to the search for the meaning of life, was not yet finished. Only a passionate desire to complete the book gave him the strength to endure the horrors of camp life. Even when he fell ill with typhus, only the need to constantly write down his notes on the sheets helped him overcome this disease. He would later say of this time: "I saw the meaning of my life in helping others find meaning in their lives."
Modern psychologists have come to the conclusion that we are most happy when we are striving for a goal. It is the state of striving, or, more simply, everyday work that brings us closer to the intended goal - and not at all the successful completion of the work begun! – give us the greatest joy of psychological reward. Well, the main factor preventing happiness, scientists call idleness. At the same time, as it turned out, it doesn’t matter at all what caused it - laziness, illness, poverty, or, on the contrary, financial well-being.
English professor Mansel Aylward believes that "depression of lack of work" is much more dangerous than possible fatigue from overwork. According to statistics, young unemployed men are 40 times more likely to commit suicide than their employed peers. Some experts compare the harm of being out of work for six months with the damage that would be caused to a person by smoking 400 cigarettes a day. “In addition,” adds Aylward, “the risk of cardiovascular disease, diabetes and cancer is many times higher for the unemployed.”
So, the first step to happiness is a favorite job that has a meaningful goal. Or, to put it another way, a meaningful goal that gives meaning to life and is achieved through the work you love. Well, what is the second condition of happiness?
There is a Chinese expression: "You need a big heart and don't need a big room." It is not the environment, not the things and not the people around that make us happy, but our attitude towards them. Dale Carnegie put it this way: “We are not happy or unhappy because of what we have, or because of who we are, where we are, or what we do. Our state is determined by what we think about all this. Almost all philosophers of the world repeat about this: “Our life is what our thoughts are”!
Maxwell Moltz in the book "I am Me, or How to Be Happy" talks about Dr. John Schindler, who became famous thanks to his unusual method of treating people suffering from neuroses. The essence of this method is the conscious control of thinking. “The underlying emotional problems of every patient have the same common denominator,” writes Schindler. “The problem is that the patient has forgotten how, and most likely never knew how, to control his current thinking in such a way that it gives him pleasure.” And here is Schindler’s definition of happiness: “Happiness is a mood in which we are occupied by pleasant thoughts most of the time.”
One of America's most respected psychologists, William James, gives this advice to anyone who considers himself unhappy: “Much of what we call unhappiness is only a reflection of the subjective perception of a person. How often misfortune can be turned into an invigorating, tonic blessing, by changing only the inner attitude of a person, displacing fear and aiming it at struggle. How often the pain subsides and is replaced by joy, when, after fruitless attempts to get away from suffering, we finally decide to drastically change our position and endure this pain with cheerfulness and optimism! And then these phenomena and events, physically continuing to exist, already lose their fatal character for us. Since you make them good or bad in your own thoughts, your main concern should be the direction of your thinking.
Conclusion: Our happiness depends on our thoughts. And the more often we force ourselves to concentrate on the positive and positive that is in our life, the happier it is.
What are the "dead men at five minutes to five" talking about?
And finally, the most important and most enduring secret of happiness. It can be formulated in different words, but I personally like two of all: love and gratitude. Love is the art of observing the sedate and powerful course of life with unchanging interest and surprise, it is a gift or the ability to notice every beautiful drop, every bright ray in this endless stream and rejoice in it. It's probably insanely difficult. But at the same time, it is extremely important.
Mikhail Prishvin has a short sketch called "Joy". It seems to me that it is not so much about joy, but about love, which fills our soul with happiness and joy.
“This morning is sunny and dewy, like an undiscovered earth, like an unknown layer of heaven, such a unique morning, no one has risen yet, no one has seen anything, and you yourself see for the first time.
Nightingales sing their spring songs, dandelions are still preserved in quiet places, and, perhaps, somewhere in the dampness of a black shadow, a lily of the valley turns white. The nightingales were helped by brisk summer wrens, and the oriole's flute is especially good. Everywhere the restless chirping of thrushes, and the woodpecker was very tired of looking for live food for his little ones, sat down far from them on a bough just to rest.
Get up, my friend! Collect the rays of your happiness in a bundle, be brave, start the fight, help the sun! Listen, and the cuckoo has come to help you. Look, the harrier swims over the water: this is not an ordinary harrier, this morning it is the first and only one, and now the magpies, sparkling with dew, came out onto the path - tomorrow they won’t sparkle so exactly, and the day will not be the same, and those magpies will come out somewhere else. This morning is the only one, not a single person has ever seen it on the entire globe: only you and your unknown friend see it. And for tens of thousands of years people have lived on earth, saving up, passing each other joy, so that you come, pick it up, gather its arrows into bundles and rejoice. Be bold, dare!
My enemy! You do not know at all, and if you find out, you will never understand what I have woven joy to people from. But if you do not understand my best, then why do you brag about my mistakes and on the basis of what petty trifles raise your accusation against me? Pass by and let us rejoice.
And again the soul will expand: firs, birches - I can’t tear my eyes away from the green candles on the pines and from the young red cones on the firs. Fir-trees, birches, how good!”
To be grateful means to allow the love that fills our heart to flow freely and widely. And if not for the whole world and all of humanity, then for a start, at least for those whom we really love and cherish.
This amazing fact discovered and made public by an American journalist who had studied the life of American prisons for a long time. It turns out that very often criminals sentenced to capital punishment behave in a rather strange way in the last few hours (or days) before execution. As if having experienced an epiphany, "at five minutes to the dead" suddenly begin to talk ... about love. With tears of tenderness (not fear!) in their eyes, they confess their love for everything and everyone. And to those who became their victims, and to those who sentenced them to death. And even to those who stick a syringe with poison into their veins or pass a deadly electric shock through their body. And in the last seconds of their lives, they try to say “thank you” to everyone who, on duty, was forced to become their executioner or witness to their execution.
Imagine for a moment that in a year, or a month, or a few days you will be gone (for example, doctors will give you a fatal diagnosis). Will you continue to live the way you are now? Will your values, your attitude towards loved ones, friends, enemies and the world in general change? Fortunately, most of us do not know the date of our departure, everyone expects that this “of course, will happen someday, but not tomorrow!”. What if tomorrow? And if you know this for sure, then you are unlikely to waste the remaining time on chatter and empty entertainment, on strife and criticism.
Alexander Solzhenitsyn in an interview said that, in his opinion, gives life meaning and makes it happy. “The most important thing in life, all its mysteries - do you want me to pour it out for you now? Do not chase after the ghostly - after property, after titles: this is gained by the nerves of decades, and is confiscated in one night. Live with even superiority over life - do not be afraid of trouble and do not yearn for happiness. All the same, after all, the bitter is not up to the age and the sweet is not complete. It is enough for you if you do not freeze and if thirst and hunger do not tear your insides with their claws. If your spine is not broken, both legs walk, both arms bend, both eyes see and both ears hear - who else do you envy? For what? Envy of others eats us the most. Wipe your eyes, wash your heart and appreciate those who love you and who are disposed towards you above all. Do not offend them, do not scold. Do not part with any of them in a quarrel. After all, you don’t know, maybe this is your last act, and that’s how you will remain in their memory.
An American proverb says: “In a year, no one will remember what kind of jeans you wore, but everyone will remember what kind of person you were.” "Memento mori" - "Remember death!" - the ancient sages call us. Looking down at us with their blackened eye sockets of marble sculptures, they seem to whisper to us: “Cagre diem!.. Carpe diem!.. Carpe diem!..” – “Break the day!” That is, seize the moment, hurry to live, and not exist: dare, create, love, laugh and cry, lose and win! And not tomorrow, but today! Now! This minute!
In the book "The Universal Laws of Life" by the American philosopher and preacher John Templeton, one can find such a story. “One rainy afternoon, a kind old gentleman noticed a boy, a newspaper seller, huddled in the doorway, trying to protect his goods from dampness. Buying a newspaper from the boy, the gentleman said: "My boy, it seems very cold for you to stand here." The boy raised his head and replied with a smile: “It was cold, sir, until you came over” ... "
“By sharing ourselves, our time and strength,” Templeton notes, “we very often give others the most important and beautiful thing we have. Whenever you are given the opportunity to give something to others, embrace the opportunity with open arms! Maybe this heaven is calling you to fulfill your highest destiny. And the attitude of the giver may be more important than the gift itself. It is not for nothing that they say: “Your gift is not dear to me, your love is dear.”
Someday you will leave your loved ones and all that you love - work and home, children and grandchildren, wife or husband, friends and faithful dog, a grouchy boss and a kind old neighbor who lives opposite ... All of them are part of our life. And if we thank God for our life, then it means that we should be grateful for everything that he sends us: pain, joy, good luck, and defeat. This is what real life is about. As Ivo Andric said, “what does not hurt is not life, what does not pass is not happiness.”
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