Human emotional well-being. What wealth depends on: the illusion of meaningful effort

What does human well-being mean, and how to achieve it?

Many dictionaries write that human well-being is a life filled with smooth and happy events. For a prosperous person, all things go smoothly, without any straining effort. Luck, prosperity, wealth, success, prosperity; - these are the components that shape human well-being.

Personal well-being is compared to such a big concept as happiness. A happy person has material wealth, a healthy physical body, friendly public relations and mutual love. Such an example of the sweet life. Are you like this?

Perhaps you are missing something to be completely happy?

Usually people think: “For complete happiness, I would like now...”, and here everyone has their own list. Some people lack money, some lack health, and others love relationship. At such a moment, a person feels flawed, inferior, deprived, and from here various psychological complexes grow; “What if I don’t have enough...”, “I won’t have time...”, “I’m not worthy of this...”.

Let's stop and think, what charge does our body and the surrounding space receive from such thoughts? It can hardly be called positive. And here lies the line that separates a prosperous person from one who considers himself disadvantaged.

A prosperous person initially has a psychology of well-being. This psychology allows him to see in “non-existent” circumstances a positive growth in his development. He mentally develops a plan for achieving his goal, thinking through it step by step. His actions towards implementation become motivated because he sees in this a certain life game. The internal state of a prosperous person fills invisible force which gives the determination to act. It is through action that a person achieves well-being.

Actions are divided into physical and mental (mental). Yes, thoughts influence the result no less than physical activity, scientists all over the world talk about this.

Now many countries have psychologists on sports teams and clubs for psychological training for victory. Here video training of trainers. Many training programs are offered on the Internet for the development positive thinking. And all this in order to form a fertile inner mood of the psyche, which gives rise to human well-being.

To achieve prosperity in life, it is enough to tune your thoughts to gracious thinking. You need to detect negative thoughts in time, learn to neutralize them, and replace them with good and good thoughts.

It seems that everything is simple, but in reality, to become prosperous and successful, you need to make a lot of effort. At first, everything does not work out the way you want, but later, with a certain persistence, the desired subjective well-being of a person is built! Verified.

A successful student, an excellent student, as a rule, does not cause concern either among teachers or parents. On the contrary, it seems to adults that he is quite prosperous. In fact, when earning “A” grades, a child can be guided not only by a thirst for knowledge and a desire to succeed.

For children who are not too spoiled by parental attention, who are unsure of themselves and their merits, grades can become a kind of compensation, a “payment” for the approval of parents and teachers. By bringing excellent grades, the child hopes to receive recognition of his talents in return. As adults, these people may have a hard time realizing that they can be loved and valued for more than just being great at what they do. social role, but for their personal merits and qualities.

Another problem for an excellent student can be perfectionism. The desire to do everything perfectly in all areas of your life. Such people are lost when it is necessary to set priorities and highlight the main directions and tasks in their lives. For them, “second place” means failure. But as you know, it is impossible to embrace the immensity and be the best in literally everything; in life you have to choose something that is most important and meaningful and devote maximum effort, talent and time to the chosen path. Otherwise, it’s quite easy to bring yourself to nervous and physical exhaustion, which often happens to perfectionists.

Another problem with excellent students is that they do not know how to lose. Accustomed to being first in everything, they do not know how to adequately perceive failures and learn life lessons from them. A sudden defeat against the backdrop of constant victories can be a real disaster for them. And where a less successful student will try to improve the situation, the failed excellent student will only suffer and grieve over his plight.

Excellent students may also have problems establishing friendships, the ability to work in a team and organize joint activities. It happens that the environment of a successful student has a rather consumerist attitude towards their fellow excellent student, because it is so convenient: there is someone to consult, get an explanation, and finally write off! But an excellent student may not have real friends who value not his academic success and knowledge, but his personal qualities.

Successful C students

But those guys who studied quite averagely at school, in adult life sometimes they become quite successful people. It is known that 50% of businessmen were “C” students at school. And this is the rule rather than the exception.

This happens because C students, unlike excellent and good students, are not so focused on their studies, on proving to their parents and teachers how good they are. Children simply choose what interests them. They are not afraid for their “reputation”, so they often take risky or adventurous steps. Studying for them is not a means of building a career, but a necessity, a part of life to which they learn to adapt. They are not afraid of defeats, they do not perceive failures so keenly, and the success and good grades that happen to them do not turn their heads. In addition, there is no need to look good in the eyes of parents and teachers.

As a result, C students turn out to be better adapted to life in society, more flexible and free than successful students. During their time at school, they manage to acquire qualities that allow them to do successful career, and sometimes they can figure out what they really want in life faster and better.

Of course, it cannot be said that any excellent student will grow up to be an insecure perfectionist with an inferiority complex, and any C student will someday become a recognized genius. Success in life depends on many factors, but it is also incorrect to say that the level of further well-being in life directly depends on academic success.

Well-being is considered to be a calm and happy state of a person. Indeed, we call people happy if they are satisfied with themselves and the world that surrounds them. The most difficult question is how to achieve such a state, and scientists and philosophers have been arguing over it from ancient times to this day.

Many people believe that the path to well-being is a large number of money in your wallet. Often people with limited means believe that wealth will open the door to happy life. However, this is not always the case, and money can only make a person happier for a while. According to numerous studies by scientists, there is no direct correlation between wealth and well-being, and often residents of poor countries such as Cuba or India feel happier than much wealthier citizens of Japan or Norway.

Many people believe that the main component of well-being is health. But this issue also remains controversial. Indeed, there are a lot of absolutely healthy people who cannot self-realize, find themselves and feel their life is meaningless. At the same time, there are many examples where disabled people live life to the fullest, are engaged in creativity, raise children and rejoice in their fate.

American psychologists have summarized existing knowledge about the factors of human well-being. They presented them in the form of a pie, each piece of which is a certain group of factors. So, the first piece is external. This is the state where a person lives, his social environment And natural conditions, the degree of financial well-being of the individual. The second piece is the psychological traits of the individual, such as temperament, character, heredity. The third piece is the results of a person’s choice: the goals he sets for himself, his occupation and lifestyle. The first group of factors has lightest weight as a result - only 10%, while the second and third are very significant (50 and 40%, respectively).

Thus, our happiness is at least half dependent on ourselves. Of course, it is difficult to change what is set by genetics, but everyone can change jobs, take up their hobbies, or move to another city. But even such significant steps are not always required. Sometimes it is enough to look at your life from a different angle. For example, if you broke up with your loved one, this means that you will soon meet someone with whom you will have a good relationship. happy relationship. At the most important moment, the computer freezes - which means you need to rest, take a short walk. At work they didn’t give you a vacation - that means it’s not time, and your best vacation ahead.

Different people look at the same life situations differently. There is no stability in the country, there is no professional and material growth at work, and no one gets married? You can be sad and cry over this, or you can try to change something: your job, your country of residence, the way you behave as men, etc. After all, our well-being is, first of all, in our hands.

Overcome alienation and feel unity with the world around you, on the one hand, and awareness of your own separate and indivisible “I”, on the other. This well-being implies the full birth of a person, the realization of the potential inherent in him, that is, his awakening, getting rid of averageness, gaining the ability to experience the full range of feelings - from stormy joy to deep sadness. At the same time, a person must be able to create, respond to the world, be responsible both to himself and to everything that surrounds him; to appear as an integral personality, truly existing in the world of animate and inanimate objects.

Giving a true answer to the world, the human creator is at the same time capable of really perceiving this world. In a creative attitude towards the world, a person must consider it as a product of his own perception. As a result, this world ceases to be something alien and distant for him and becomes his own. In the end, well-being consists of pacifying your ego and revising your life priorities. A person must renounce acquisitiveness, the desire for personal integrity and aggrandizement. The meaning of life should not be the eternal thirst for possession, accumulation, profit and consumption, but the joy of being itself, the awareness of one’s own uniqueness in this world.

Having said this, I have made an attempt to correlate the development of human individuality with the history of religion. Due to the fact that this article is devoted to a comparison of psychoanalysis and Zen Buddhism, it seems necessary to me to consider the evolution of religion at least in some psychological aspects.

As I have already noted, existence itself poses a question to man. This question is generated by the contradiction inherent in man: belonging to nature, on the one hand, and being outside of it, conditioned by the awareness of one’s own existence, on the other. A person is “religious” if he approaches this fundamental question not formally, but strives to answer it with his whole life.

Likewise, any system is a “religion” if it tries to give its answer to this question and forces people to do so. Accordingly, every culture and every person who does not seek an answer to an existential question is non-religious in its essence - the best example of which is the man of the 20th century. Preoccupied with thoughts about material wealth, prestige, power, career, modern man tries to avoid answering this question, trying to forget about the very fact of his existence, and therefore the fact of the existence of his “I”. A person who does not have his own answer is not capable of development, in his life and death becoming like one of the millions of things he has produced. It does not matter how deep his religious beliefs are, how often he thinks about God or attends church. Such a person, instead of believing in God, only thinks about him. However, religions can differ fundamentally from each other in their answers to the existential question, and it would be misleading to generalize them in this aspect. Existing religions in all their diversity give two fundamentally opposite answers to this fundamental question.

The first answer is to restore unity with nature through likening to animals, abandoning reason, returning to a primitive way of life devoid of consciousness. Such an idea can take on very different incarnations. As one of the extremes, we can cite the example of the German underground “bear shirt” societies. A recruit initiated into this organization must become like a bear and “change his human appearance in a fit of aggression and unbridled rage, becoming like a raging beast.”

The desire for primitive unity with nature can take on many other, not so archaic, religious incarnations. This idea can be traced in tribal religions, where there is identification with a totem animal, where there is a cult of a tree, lake, cave, etc. This also manifests itself in orgiastic cults that seek to suppress reason and moral principles in a person. Everything that brings a person closer to primitive intimacy with nature is sacred for such religions. The one who stands closest to the goal, such as a shaman, will be the “saint.”

The opposite camp includes all religions, where the answer to the existential question is the idea of ​​​​the evolution of the human mind, cultivating in a person the ability to love, and as a result - finding harmony with nature and other individuals. And although in some relatively primitive societies such ideas were only partially traceable, there is no doubt that the period from about 2000 BC was a kind of Rubicon of humanity. e. and until the Nativity of Christ. This time period was marked by global changes in man, expressed in the emergence of such religions as Taoism and Buddhism in Far East, religious revolutions of Akhenaten in Egypt, the emergence of the Zoroastrian religion in Persia, the religion of Moses in Palestine, Quetzalcoatl in Mexico.

These religions are brought together by the idea of ​​unity - no longer in a regressive sense, achieved by erasing individuality and returning to a heavenly harmony devoid of consciousness. Unity is now viewed on a new plane; a person can come to it only by overcoming alienation, isolation of himself from the world around him and thereby achieving true birth. The human mind must reach full development, after which the individual will have access to active, intuitive penetration into the real world, which is an indispensable condition for achieving such unity. The aspiration of these religions is directed not to the past, but to the future, and their goal is determined by the concepts of “Tao”, “nirvana”, “enlightenment”, “good”, God.

Sociocultural differences between the countries of origin of these religions determined the choice of one symbol or another. The domineering image of a majestic monarch or tribal chief was a characteristic symbol for Western society. However, already in the Old Testament era, this image begins to undergo changes. The almighty arbiter of destinies is now bound with his subjects by agreements containing certain promises. For example, man's achievement of harmony with nature at the time determined by the messiah is the goal of prophecy; Christianity is characterized by the presentation of God in human form. In widespread Western religions, the anthropomorphic authoritarian components undergo virtually no changes. An example of their almost complete absence is the philosophy of Maimonides, or mysticism.

Judeo-Christian and Zen Buddhist thinking are brought together by the idea of ​​the individual’s refusal of the egoistic desire for coercion, command and suppression of internal and outside world. Instead, a person must become open, receptive, awakened, able to respond to the challenges of the outside world.

Zen calls this state “being empty,” and this term does not have a negative connotation, but, on the contrary, characterizes an individual who is open to the perception of the outside world.

In the Christian religion, the same idea is expressed in the concepts of self-denial and submission to the will of divine providence. At first glance, the differences in Christian and Buddhist postulates are not so significant and the difference exists only at the level of formulation. In fact, Christian ideas, as a rule, are interpreted in such a way that a person completely entrusts his destiny to the great and omnipotent Father, who protects and cares for him, while all independence is lost. Naturally, in this case the person becomes meek and humble, but in no way open and able to react. Genuine renunciation of selfish aspirations as following the will of the Lord takes on real meaning if the concept of God is absent as such. Only by forgetting about God does a person, paradoxically, sincerely follow his will. To be “empty” in the terminology of Zen Buddhism does mean the pacification of one’s will, but at the same time it excludes the possibility of returning to a slavish reliance on the support of the Father.