In order to live to the fullest, we need to free ourselves from negative thoughts, hear and realize our real dreams, and, most importantly, understand that we ourselves are responsible for our own destiny.
“For sixty years, I tried to prepare myself to live a real life,” writes existential psychotherapist James Bugenthal in The Science of Being Alive. “For sixty years I have been preparing for a life that will begin as soon as I figure out how to live… as soon as I earn enough money… as soon as I have more time… as soon as I become more like a person who can be trusted… Lately time I feel like I know a little more about how to live, how to be a friend, how to be sincere with people, how to face the truth. Recently, I have become more confident in myself … Am I too late?
We are driven by the running time. When we realize that soon, it may be too late to carry out our intentions, we begin to act, overcoming uncertainty, anxiety and guilt. If we lived forever, we would probably endlessly put off this decisive moment until later. However, the desire to finally heal in full force is not always enough to take the first step.
“We live in images of ourselves, and they are distorted and reduced,” Bugental continues. Many of us are used to living the “right” way, used to suppressing our desires, and feeling an urgent need to be ourselves, simply do not know where to start.
Only those who are ready to accept the challenge of death decide to start living the way they consider right for themselves.
“It will take work on yourself,” says psychotherapist Irvin Yalom. “We have to stop being led by negative thoughts (“I’m good for nothing”) and sort out our fears that lead to unwillingness to do something, to change.”
Perfectionists, on the other hand, who believe that they have no right to make mistakes, and in order to live a real life, it is necessary to be ideal, will have to accept that such an uncompromising attitude actually hides the experience of their own inferiority.
Another challenge along the way is to “regain our innate inner voice that has been partly or completely suppressed,” writes James Bugenthal. Irvin Yalom adds: “And realize and feel that we are completely responsible for our lives.”
It is also important to think over and, possibly, reconsider your attitude towards those patterns of behavior that are imposed by social stereotypes and parents (“Start a family”, “Get a prestigious job”). How do they suit us personally? After all, sometimes it is they who push us to abandon our own ideals.
Manage your life
How to give up passivity and internal prohibitions and start living, acting in accordance with your nature? Can each of us reconnect with our deepest desires and redraw our life path?
Martin Heidegger, the creator of the philosophy of existentialism, wrote in Being and Time that a person is determined by other people and external circumstances, “he is abandoned in them and does not have the ability to change everything and everything at will.”
Many people remain in the conformist mode of “indecisive existence”, that is, they never think about who builds their destiny, why they came to this world, they do not seek to change anything, even when they don’t like their life at all. They live handing over the reins to the outside world, until one day they are faced with a terrible (this is Heidegger’s term) experience of their insignificance and finitude: “a handful of worms at the end of their own life” and eternal Nothing.
To take care of one’s own world means to realize one’s possibilities. Even if they do not depend on us in everything
And only those who are ready to accept the challenge of death decide to start living the way they consider right for themselves. And stop depending and complaining. At the same time, outwardly, their life may not change, Heidegger clarifies, but internally huge changes are taking place, a person now lives “in the mode of his own life.”
“It is important to pay attention to the fact that a person does not necessarily have to change everything outwardly, quit, start from scratch, break off relationships,” notes existential psychotherapist Svetlana Krivtsova. – As far as I know from practice, people between 35 and 40 years old go through all these stages inside themselves, outwardly continuing to live their usual lives. And they stay with their family, in their profession — but by their own choice, having done a lot of spiritual work to answer the question: “Am I living my life? Why did I come into this world?” This period is familiar to many as a mid-life crisis.
The founder of existentialism called responsibility in the face of the finiteness of life care. Taking care of your own world also means realizing your potential. Even if these opportunities do not entirely depend on us.