Change Your Attitude Toward Life

By Bikash Paul

Psychological problems vary from person to person, but these problems are based on four fundamental mistakes that each of us makes. We worry because of the illusion of danger, we are disappointed because of the illusion of happiness, we suffer because of the illusion of the same name, and we conflict with other people because of the illusion of mutual understanding. These illusions are hidden in our subconscious and cost us too much. So if we really want to be happy, we need to know these "classic mistakes" and have instructions on how to deal with them. You will find both in this book.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Bikash Paul
• Release date: Oct 4, 2022
• ISBN: 9798215791974

Bikash Paul

Close the door. Write with no one looking over your shoulder. Don’t try to figure out what other people want to hear from you; figure out what you have to say. It’s the one and the only thing you have to offer. Bikash Paul from India is a content writer and digital marketer, also working with My Recharge Ayurveda for several years. I helped people solve their problems. My education qualification is MBA in marketing and an HR minor. Writing books is another profession.

Book preview

WHAT IS ILLUSION?

Everything in life tells us that a person is destined to know in earthly happiness something deceptive, an empty illusion. For this, riddles lie deep in the essence of things.

Arthur Schopenhauer

Illusion is the key concept of this book. Therefore, before we begin to discuss specific illusions that turn our lives into constant torment, we must understand what illusions are in principle. In this book, a special understanding of the word illusion is psychotherapeutic.

Psychology, for example, defines illusions as deceptive perceptions. Look at the glass of water with the spoon dangling in it. At the air-water interface, a normal spoon appears to be broken. This is a perceptual error, or, in other words, an illusion. If we pick up two balls of the same mass but different sizes, then the larger one will seem heavier to us - this is also an illusion from a psychological point of view. There is also an understanding of illusion in psychiatry. For example, if a person begins to feel that he is being persecuted, when in fact no one cares about him, then this, explains psychiatry, is a painful, pathological illusion.

For a psychotherapist, an illusion is something quite different. When he talks about illusion, he talks about the mistakes that our consciousness makes, he means mistakes in relationships, in feelings. Sometimes we perceive wishful thinking, and this, as you know, is fraught with a number of undesirable consequences. Sometimes our eyes enlarge with fear, and therefore, in essence, innocent events are perceived by us as a real catastrophe. Sometimes it begins to seem to us that we have reached absolute understanding with someone, and then, looking, he did not understand us, did not support us, let him down or even betrayed us.

Well, there are mistakes made by us, or, psychotherapeutically speaking, illusions. One can, of course, in such circumstances complain about the vile human nature, the hardness of life, one's past experience. But the problem is something else, the problem is that we misunderstood reality, and therefore sat down in a galosh. We proceeded from erroneous judgments, and therefore our actions were erroneous. And reality just put everything in its place.

Sketch from psychotherapeutic practice: Mom, be quiet!

I have had a chance to travel a little: I have seen mortals far inferior to us, I have seen those who are many superior to us, but I have never seen those whose desires would be limited by true needs, and needs by the possibility of satisfying them.

Voltaire

Children, unfortunately, often repeat the life of their parents, and not the best part of it. Why? Thanks to my parents... Anya's mother, for some reason unknown to me, was unable to improve her personal life. With their first husband, Anya's father, they lived less than a year, he left the house on all four sides with one suitcase. The second marriage of Anya's mother followed five years later, but the new husband, Anya's stepfather, turned out to be a drunkard, and therefore this time the family happiness was short-lived. Anya's mother broke up with her second husband after four years, which, due to the saturation of family scandals, could pull for all forty. The last, third husband of Anya's mother was expelled from the apartment in the second year of marriage after he was suspected of treason.

Thus, when Anya turned fourteen, when her girlish body and consciousness began to turn into the body and consciousness of a woman, she already had a rich experience of family happiness. Her mother became embittered and told her daughter that men only need one thing, that you can’t rely on them, and even if they don’t walk, they will drink everything in the world. Agree, the instruction received by Anya on the subject of building family happiness was exhaustive!

It is no coincidence that the mother, addressing her daughter with such sentiments, invariably added: I really want you to be happy, daughter!

To be happy, Anya decided to gain complete independence from men, and this, in her opinion, could only be provided by education and a good job. Anya received a legal education, which by the beginning of the nineties was a great gift. Having changed several jobs, Anya decided to do her own business and did it. By the mid-nineties, she was already in charge of one of the most successful notary offices in St. Petersburg. The default of 1998 slightly unsettled her, but she pulled herself together and her career took off again. Only now, Anya's state of mind safely rolled downhill.

Why didn't I say anything about how Anina's personal life developed? The answer is simple: she did not have this life. Suspecting every man as a subject who cannot be relied upon, because he is either on his own mind, or womanizer, or alcoholic (and in our time also a drug addict without fail), this sweet and successful woman turned into a real investigator. Anya examined all the men who showed signs of attention to her in terms of whether they had the appropriate qualities. Oddly enough, everyone passed the exam successfully. If the potential applicant was not a drunken alcoholic, then he turned out to be on his own mind, and if he was not a womanizer, then, of course, he was a drug addict. Nothing can be hidden from a lawyer!

When she appeared at my reception, complaining of a low mood and a desperate unwillingness to live, I asked myself this question. If a person neurotically expects a catch, how likely is it that he will notice this catch, even if there is none? Practice shows that a sophisticated mind will find a sufficient number of arguments in favor of any of its hypotheses. And the hypothesis formed by Anya's mother was reinforced concrete: men cannot be trusted under any circumstances. On the other hand, if a person is endlessly examined, then he, of course, becomes very angry. If I am not trusted in my best feelings, then it is hardly justified to count on my best feelings. Finally, isn't a successful woman a problem for a man? Certainly a problem. If you are connected with her on business, then this is a double problem. But the circle of Anya's acquaintances was limited to this business ...

In short, Anya did everything possible and impossible so that her personal life turned out to be what it turned out to be. Are men to blame? I am not ready to say unequivocally, although it is quite obvious that the way of interaction with the male sex, which Anya's mother chose, really spoiled the furrow here. Children, of course, are not responsible for their parents, but they pay for their mistakes - that's for sure. It is possible that Anya's mother really had no luck with men, but it may well turn out that the position of this woman herself was not constructive.

Pregnancy is not an easy task, one might say, a hormonal disaster, but still we can only guess what a woman should do so that a man who loves her is forced to leave her with a barely born, desired child ... The fact that he has no forgiveness and it can’t be, this is also understandable, and therefore the next husband of Anya’s mother received, as it should be in such cases, a grenade - for himself and for that guy. Drinking out of grief is also an option for solving family problems, although fraught with complications, but, whatever one may say, an option. Here is the second and drank. In general, everything happened in the best traditions. The subsequent betrayal of the third husband only added to the overall range and, perhaps, was also provoked. But let's leave it.

Something else is important here, the important thing is that Anya, who forgot about the presumption of innocence, which she should have known about at least as a professional lawyer, suspected every man who was not indifferent to her of all serious things. And these suspicions themselves played a bad joke on her. Undoubtedly capable in legal matters, Anya overlooked her most important error, her most serious illusion, which cost her so dearly. She mistakenly believed that her life was her mother's life. She was deluded when she told herself that no man could be relied upon, as this was a clear exaggeration. Finally, she was completely unaware of the fact that the relationship between two people - between a man and a woman - is a mutual relationship. And so the behavior of one most directly affects the behavior of the other.

As a result of these delusions of hers, she behaved in such a way that she really could not count on the reliability of men. Not everyone can withstand endless suspicions and gender discrimination, not everyone is so knowledgeable in human psychology to see such a deeply hidden mental problem behind the scandals that arise out of the blue. And Anya herself could not calmly endure the loneliness to which she was doomed by her illusion. And depression was the logical conclusion of this madness.

After we discovered this illusion of Anya in the process of psychotherapy, a lot has changed, but this was only the beginning of the matter. Next, we had to get rid of fears and prejudices, learn to react differently to men and form a readiness for stable, long-term relationships. By the way, I also had to advise that young man who had been trying to achieve Anya's favor for more than a year, but, for reasons known to you and me, was not successful in this. Fortunately, he did not have time to become embittered by this time and showed a fair understanding of the state of his beloved. In addition, in the process of our joint work, he understood a very important thing for himself: being reliable is a calling.

Well, now their marriage is already three years old, they have learned to understand and support each other, which made this relationship truly reliable. And recently they had a daughter, and I think that Anya, wishing her daughter happiness, will not cultivate illusions in her that can make this wish unattainable.

Don't be afraid of perfection. you him. not reach. Moreover, there is nothing good in perfection.

Salvador Dali

Two brains in one

Everyone knows that the human brain consists of two hemispheres. In fact, the human brain is arranged, to put it mildly, somewhat more complicated - there are basal ganglia, and the cerebellum, and the bridge, and the reticular formation, and much more. But it is these hemispheres that are important to us, because it is here that our consciousness lodges with you. So, these hemispheres of the brain, outwardly similar to each other, like twins, perform different functions, and therefore we have not one, but two consciousnesses.

Our first consciousness uses images and is called figurative, and the second uses words and is called verbal. We, on the one hand, can think in pictures, and on the other hand, think in words. Of course, in reality, both processes go on simultaneously: we both see internal images and make various verbal inferences about this. That is, these two consciousnesses - figurative and verbal - complement each other, but still they are different.

Scientists have studied the differences between the right and left hemispheres of the human brain using special psychological methods. The subjects here were not ordinary people, but patients who experienced either electroshock therapy, which turned off one of the hemispheres of the brain, or surgery, which consisted in crossing the nerve pathways connecting the hemispheres of the brain with each other (Of course, we are not talking about doctors -sadists who did their dirty work in concentration camps.We are talking about psychological tests that were performed by people who underwent brain surgery for medical reasons.For example, electroshock of one of the hemispheres is sometimes necessary to treat severe depression, which does not obey drugs, and operations on the brain to cut the nerve connections between the hemispheres were previously done in cases of severe epilepsy). This made it possible to find out exactly how our hemispheres work separately.

In the process of these studies, it turned out that the right hemisphere of the human brain is responsible for the perception of information and its emotional coloring, and the left hemisphere is responsible for logical analysis and decision making. Simply put, the right hemisphere perceives and experiences, while the left hemisphere thinks and acts. This, of course, has a deep biological meaning, which can be expressed in the famous formula: divide and rule. However, this is where serious problems arise.

It's like we have two people. One (the right hemisphere of the brain) is impressionable, emotional, but completely reckless, I would even say stupid. The second (left hemisphere), on the contrary, is a real logician, a formalist and, without exaggeration, a desperate bore, and therefore a dumbass. And these two acrobat brothers speak different languages. Formally, they have the same language, and the right and left hemispheres of the brain understand words, human speech. But if the left hemisphere uses only words in its practice, then the right one thinks with feelings, words act here as provocateurs of feelings, but nothing more. So it turns out that they seem to understand each other, but genuine unanimity between them cannot be found in the daytime with fire! Everything looks as if a crazy mathematician (the left hemisphere of the brain) on the one hand, and an exalted artist (the right hemisphere of the brain) took up the discussion of the same issue. At the same time, the artist, since he is responsible for perception and, accordingly, receives information first, sets the tone for the entire discussion. While our mathematician joins the discussion second, and therefore he can no longer change the nature of the discussion, he only adds fuel to the fire: they said to press - presses, they said to sing - sings.

True knowledge does not consist in familiarity with facts - this only creates a pedant, but in the ability to use facts - this creates a philosopher.

Henry Thomas Buckle

If the artist assessed what he perceived positively, then the mathematician will not dispute this assessment, but will only strengthen the positive. If the artist assessed what he perceived negatively, then the mathematician will strengthen the negative. That is, the left hemisphere, although it is responsible for our intelligence, is actually forced to follow the direction that is laid by the senses. But let's think: how correct will our perception of this or that event be if it is based not on the analysis of the fact, but on first impressions? It is hardly necessary to rely on sanity here!

On the other hand, an event, initially perceived by us (our right hemisphere) erroneously, is subsequently analyzed by our left hemisphere not on the subject of whether this first impression is right or wrong, but on the subject of why it is right. In other words, our left hemisphere, having joined the discussion on some issue second, does not question the reliability of the primary assessment (given to the event by the right hemisphere), but only affirms, with the help of logical arguments, that this assessment, whatever it is neither was actually true.

I do not understand you!

Consider the work of our hemispheres on a specific example, so it will be clearer. We tell our friend about how badly some person has treated us (i.e., we tell him our subjective opinion on this matter). And our friend, in response, declares that he thinks differently, that, they say, it was we who acted badly, but, on the contrary, they treated us very humanely (this is his subjective opinion, to which, of course, he has the right). This message of his, which contradicts ours, enters our right hemisphere, which is dominated by images and feelings of resentment, irritation, etc. Of course, we perceive the position of our interlocutor with hostility. We counted on support, understanding and approval, and here on you, they began to stroke us against the grain! A friend has taken enemy positions!

Instead of understanding why our friend thinks this way and not otherwise, we immediately begin to get annoyed. And just at this moment, our left, logical hemisphere is activated. What will it talk about? Will he engage in an impartial clarification of the position of our friend, who treacherously went over to the enemy side? Will try to analyze his arguments? Interested in why he thinks otherwise? Nothing happened! It, directed by our right hemisphere in the direction of an irreconcilable struggle, will begin to think about what a scoundrel and vile defector this friend of ours is. On the one hand, it will look for new evidence in favor of our rightness, on the other hand, arguments in favor of the erroneous position of these two - the one who, in our opinion, did us wrong, and the one who a moment ago was our friend. , and now become a real enemy!

If we could first analyze the current situation, and then make a decision on how to respond to it, then, surely, this conversation would have gone differently. We would be surprised at the statement of a friend who supported not us, but our enemy. We would think that a friend is for that and a friend that wishes us well. Based on this, we would immediately decide to listen to his opinion (you never know, we didn’t notice something, but he will tell us - it’s more visible from the outside). In other words, in this case we would doubt our own rightness and would be able to objectively (with the help of our friend and our own vision of the situation) understand the essence of the matter. It is quite possible that in the situation under discussion we were wrong. If so, then we should draw conclusions from this in order to avoid such mistakes in the future. But...

This is an unfortunate but! It was not the left but the right hemisphere that got involved first! We were in irritated feelings, we longed for support, approval, consolation, and therefore turned to our friend. But our expectations were not destined to be justified, they suffered a real fiasco. This is why our right hemisphere was immediately irritated or even indignant, which set the tone for the entire subsequent conversation. Turning on second, our left hemisphere quickly found arguments in favor of our exceptional rightness and the equally exceptional meanness of the entire outside world, including offenders and imaginary friends. So, instead of a friendly conversation, we got into a quarrel and an open confrontation.

A friend in this fuse was rated by us as a traitor, and therefore a further conversation with him could hardly have been productive.

A person possesses the ability to think only to a small extent, and even the most spiritual and most educated person sees the world and himself always through the glasses of very naive, simplifying, deceitful formulas - and especially himself!

Hermann Hesse

The danger of love and the love of danger

Imagine now that these two hemispheres of ours are discussing such a complex phenomenon as love. An exalted artist (right hemisphere of the brain) draws heavenly places for us, and a crazy mathematician (left hemisphere of the brain), oriented artist as it should, tries to create a formula of love. Well, we have a real brigade in a row here! It's worth seeing! Let's go!

However, let's not rush to conclusions. Let's ask ourselves a question, did my right hemisphere correctly assess the situation that arose in this case? You can fall in love at first sight, but is it possible to recognize a person at one glance? Hardly. But what then is my feeling, if not a banal sexual desire excited by a suitable stimulus? Once upon a time, at the time of the formation of my sexuality, a similar cut of eyes, hair color, body smell or demeanor belonged to a person with whom the relationship gave me the highest pleasure. A banal conditioned reflex arose, like that of IP Pavlov's dog! I began to automatically respond to these stimuli in the appropriate way: joy, sexual arousal, admiration. Now it is worth this cut of the eyes, hair color, body odor or demeanor to appear in my field of vision, and everything is ready, I'm in love! More precisely, the right hemisphere gave me the appropriate direction, orientation - march to love.

Undoubtedly, it is bad to be