How to let yourself be yourself and change your life

If you type the phrase “change your life” in the search bar on the Internet, you will get thousands of different answers and tips. But why do we need to change anything at all? Why are we not satisfied with what we have? These questions, which seem simple at first glance, touch the very essence of our being and attitude.

We demand change

According to the definition of existential psychologists, we are all thrown into this world “as an opportunity for ourselves”, as a project that must be realized in the circumstances offered to us by fate.

We do not choose the circumstances in which we are born and grow up: place and time, social and historical situation, psychological situation in the family, native language and culture, but as we become, as our needs develop, our interaction with external forms of the world order becomes more more complex and selective.

Our whole life unfolds in the field of interaction between our inner world and the outer one, and the tension that arises in this case pushes us to change.

Changing shape

Many of us have fertile stages of life when we find ourselves in certain structures that promote development. For example, a good school for a child gives him the opportunity to grow up, grow wiser, get a new experience of communication.

Any ready-made form is a kind of exoskeleton that “grabs”, pulls up and strengthens our internal potencies from the outside. But over time, the exoskeleton turns out to be small, cramped, uncomfortable, some parts of our “I” do not fit into this shape, begin to deform, and then something needs to be changed outside in order for development to continue.

The child grows up and is no longer interested in school. In the same way, we grow out of the old forms of our life. Previous occupation, place of residence, relationships, social role or habitual image … If they begin to interfere, limit us, we experience growing tension, which manifests itself in anxiety, depression or somatic diseases.

At the heart of these phenomena, in the words of one of the existential psychologists Medard Boss, there may be an experience of existential guilt – suffering from the unfulfillment of individual meanings, from not living one’s life as unique.

“The more empty, simplified and limited is the world project with which our existence is connected, the sooner anxiety will arise and the more intense it will turn out,” wrote Ludwig Binswanger, one of the founders of existential analysis.

Such a subjective narrowing of the life horizon is a reason to stop, to think: where am I, what am I doing, what is happening to me? And to correlate your true needs with what life offers.

If we have the courage to recognize and live through these crises, we get the opportunity to reach a different level of our being, to expand the horizon of our world project. And then we begin to choose a new model of our life for ourselves, look at how you can live differently, choose what inspires us.

We choose our

How do I know where is mine and where is not mine? Where there is “hot”, where there is passion, excitement, interest, anxiety in connection with overcoming, there is the future, there is life. At the other pole – cold, dead, dull and dreary – you can’t stay there, there the little life has come to an end. We have to admit it in order to start trying on something new.

How to understand in which direction to move? To catch these vibes of inspiration and excitement. Try on new life circumstances and new positions in them. Allow yourself to dream and envy the good that is in the world.

Psychologists are often asked how to overcome envy. Before you “win” it, it is useful to explore it. For example, social networks demonstrate a large selection of ready-made models of success, and where someone’s success, bright manifestations cause us envy, there is the energy of our desire: someone wrote a book, and I want to! Someone is traveling and I want to! Someone in adulthood went to study? Maybe it’s not too late for me?

This is about us, about the desire that we project onto someone else’s, it can be our guideline for development. However, when choosing the vector of our development, we are tempted to seize on someone else’s example and miss our own opportunities for realization.

You can change your job, partner, country of residence – anything, and still feel dissatisfaction, disharmony, slip in something important.

You can often hear from successful people: “I have reached the heights on the career ladder, there is status, money, fame, but the feeling that I do not live.” We have many external samples, models, which we supposedly should strive for.

In themselves they are good, correct: it is better to be healthy than sick, rich than poor, handsome than ugly. But any finished model is a simplification, an emasculation of something more complex and alive.

A very important internal task is to catch the discrepancy between my essential “I” and this conditionally ideal, but proposed from the outside. The discrepancy between the true “I” and the ideal imposed on us can lead to a misunderstanding of ourselves, to a loss of identity, to energy depletion.

Expanding Identity

We often refuse to embody significant parts of our “I”. As a rule, the unlived, unmanifested sides of our “I” are those that our parents could not pick up, appreciate and help us develop. Some were “not allowed” to be weak, and some were not allowed to be strong, some were used to hiding their pragmatism, and some – their emotionality.

Absolutely every person has his own unmanifested facets of personality, which at a certain life stage could become resourceful, and in some ways simply saving. Allowing yourself to realize what was “dormant”, what frightened you with its latency, is often a powerful impetus to expand your personality and life.

Here is an example of such inner work. “I suddenly lost all my strength,” recalls Anna, 43, a social worker. “The elderly woman I was caring for got angry with me, said harshness, and it just destroyed me … It’s hard for my wards, it hurts, they sometimes break down, but I have never reacted like that before.

All my life I tried to be good, to love everyone, to save, I chose this profession. I never allowed myself to complain, to get tired, to “build a princess”. And it turned out that I am not omnipotent, I am also weak in some way, I also want to be taken care of.

At first I was ashamed to admit it to myself, but then I accepted it, and as if the knot inside was untied. And my relatives were able to accept it, took on more responsibility. I left that job until I think that I can do it.

Here is another example of freeing yourself from the imposed program of life. “I was known among professionals, I was going to write a doctoral thesis. My parents, experts in the same field, cheered me up, my friends wished me a successful defense every New Year, and I slowed everything down,” recalls 52-year-old Veniamin. — I was terribly complex and hated myself for being lazy, for not having the will to advance science. I was already chronically depressed and had constant headaches.

Once a case turned up: a friend asked me to work with his eighth-grader son, I reluctantly agreed and suddenly got carried away. What a joy to see that a guy who knew nothing suddenly begins to understand something and wants to understand more.

I took a second student, new guys came to me. It turned out that my vocation is teaching, not science. It is very important for me to communicate, to give, to be happy for others, but in science I lack real emotions. When I realized this about myself, everything fell into place.

By manifesting more freely and organically, we become happier ourselves and interact with the world more effectively. Sometimes it is not easy to recognize whether it is time for us to change external circumstances or to try to sort out the existing ones with ourselves.

The answer is always individual and unique, but it is important to remember that behind any search for external changes is the need to experience some significant facets of one’s “I”. Whether we are choosing a new life partner or a country to emigrate, whether we are changing our profession or social position, whether we are starting a renovation or a revolution – in fact, we are choosing our new identity or expanding the old one.

And only a sincere acceptance of our true feelings and needs when choosing a new format of life will help us move towards expanding our horizons and more fully embodying ourselves in the world.