“Do I like living?”: 10 quotes from a lecture by psychologist Alfried Lenglet

In 2017, Alfried Lenglet gave a lecture in Moscow “What makes our life valuable? The importance of values, feelings and relationships in order to nurture the love of life.” Here are some of the most interesting extracts from it.

1. We shape our lives

This task is before each of us. We are entrusted with life, we are responsible for it. We constantly ask ourselves the question: what will I do with my life? Will I go to a lecture, will I spend the evening in front of the TV, will I meet my friends?

To a large extent, it depends on us whether our life will be good or not. Life succeeds only if we love it. We need a positive relationship with life or we will lose it.

2. What would a million change?

The life we ​​live will never be perfect. We will always imagine something better. But will it really get better if we have a million dollars? We may think so.

But what would it change? Yes, I could travel more, but inside nothing would change. I could buy nicer clothes for myself, but would my relationship with my parents improve? And we need these relationships, they shape us, influence us.

We can buy a bed, but not sleep. We can buy sex, but not love. And everything that is really important in life cannot be bought.

3. How to feel the value of everyday

Can life be good on the most ordinary day? It’s a matter of sensitivity, mindfulness.

I took a warm shower this morning. Isn’t it wonderful to be able to take a shower, to feel the stream of warm water? I drank coffee for breakfast. During the whole day I did not have to suffer from hunger. I walk, I breathe, I am healthy.

Many elements give my life value. But, as a rule, we realize this only after losing them. My friend has been living in Kenya for six months. He says that it was there that he learned the value of a warm shower.

But it is in our power to pay attention to everything valuable that makes our life better, to handle it more carefully. Stop and say to yourself: now I’m going to take a shower. And while taking a shower, pay attention to your feelings.

4. When it’s easier for me to say “yes” to life

Values ​​are what reinforce my fundamental relationship with life, contribute to it. If I experience something as a value, it is easier for me to say “yes” to life.

Values ​​can be both small things and something grandiose. For believers, the greatest value is God.

Values ​​strengthen us. Therefore, we must look for value in everything we do and everything around us. What is it about this that nourishes our lives?

5. By sacrificing, we break the symmetry

Many people do something for the sake of others, refuse something, sacrifice themselves: for children, a friend, parents, partner.

But it’s not worth it just for the sake of a partner to cook food, have sex — it should give pleasure and benefit you too, otherwise there is a loss of value. This is not selfishness, but the symmetry of values.

Parents sacrifice their lives for their children: they give up their holidays to build a house so that their children can travel. But later they will reproach the children: “We have done everything for you, and you are so ungrateful.” In fact, they say: “Pay the bill. Be grateful and do something for me.»

Feeling the joy that we can give up something for the sake of children, we experience the value of our own action. But if there is no such feeling, we feel empty, and then there is a need for gratitude.

6. Valuable is like a magnet

Values ​​attract, beckon us. I want to go there, I want to read this book, I want to eat this cake, I want to see my friends.

Ask yourself the question: what attracts me at the moment? Where is it taking me now? Where is this magnetic force taking me? If I have been separated from something or someone for a long time, longing arises, I begin to want repetition.

If this is a value for us, we willingly go to a fitness club again and again, meet a friend, stay in a relationship. If a relationship with someone is valuable, we want a continuation, a future, a perspective.

7. Feelings are the most important thing

When I have feelings, it means that I am touched by something, my life force, thanks to someone or something, has come into motion.

I am touched by the music of Tchaikovsky or Mozart, the face of my child, his eyes. Something is happening between us.

What would my life be like if none of this existed? Poor, cold, businesslike.

That is why, if we are in love, we feel alive. Life boils, boils in us.

8. Life happens in relationships, otherwise it doesn’t exist.

To establish a relationship, you need to want intimacy, to be ready to feel the other, to be touched by him.

Entering into a relationship, I make myself available to another, throwing a bridge to him. On this bridge we go to each other. When I establish a relationship, I already have an assumption about the value that you represent.

If I am inattentive to others, I may lose the fundamental value of my relationship with them.

9. I can become a stranger to myself

It is important to feel yourself throughout the day, to ask yourself the question again and again: how do I feel now? How do I feel? What feelings arise when I am with others?

Relations with others can only be good if everything is in order in the relationship with oneself.

10. Do I like living?

I live, which means I grow, I mature, I experience some experience. I have feelings: beautiful, painful. I have thoughts, I am busy with something during the day, I have a need to provide for my life.

I lived for a number of years. Do I like living? Is there something good in my life? Or maybe it is heavy, full of torment? Most likely, at least from time to time it is. But in general, I personally am glad that I live. I feel that life is touching me, there is some kind of resonance, movement, I am glad about this.

My life is not perfect, but still good. The coffee is delicious, the shower is pleasant, and there are people around whom I love and who love me.