Which beginning prevails in you? The desire to go to the goal without sorting out the obstacles, or the willingness to accept what life offers? He who prefers one and ignores the other not only denies himself integrity, he deprives himself of many advantages. How to notice and take into account both strategies?
Imagine that you live in a spacious studio, where, in principle, there is everything you need. It takes quite some time until you suddenly notice a locked door in the corner of the studio. You open the lock and find behind this door … several more large, beautifully furnished rooms. And only now do you understand that all this time you have lived … in the kitchen.
Such a curious example is given by the psychologist Tatyana Muzhitskaya in the book “Affair with Yourself”.
In a sense, this locked apartment is ourselves. “What we consider ourselves, with which we very often identify ourselves and say“ This is me! ”, in fact, may turn out to be only a small part of who we are,” explains Tatyana Muzhitskaya. “It may turn out that we live in the kitchen, and there are some other amazing rooms. Some find it difficult to identify with their body. Others – with their past. And especially often we do not consider various shadow manifestations as “our own”. But it is still us. And our task is to take responsibility for exploring and finding ourselves as much as possible.
How to see yourself in bulk? And not only to see, but also to accept in all this integrity? The psychologist talks about the importance of two strategies – Yin and Yang, about the art of combining and combining them.
Harmony of male and female
Yin and Yang are the unity of opposites. The harmony of light and dark, hard and soft, light and shadow, day and night, sun and moon, sky and earth, heat and cold, and so on. They are different, and yet they are together. Because there is no day without night, just like there is no shadow without light. There is always a line where one goes into the other.
“If we are talking about everyday life, then yin is a breath, a desire to absorb the whole world into oneself and merge with it,” writes Tatyana Muzhitskaya, “This is relaxation and inaction. It is to go with the flow, not to interfere in events and to give oneself to the will of circumstances. Yang is breath! The desire to transform the world, fill it with oneself, actively live and act outside. This is an energetic beginning, determination, responsibility for events, control. And you can not say that one world is better than another. They are just different. From which of the principles dominates in us at one time or another, it depends on how we relate to life, make decisions and go to the goal.
So, the essence of yang strategies is to achieve the goal, designate and protect one’s territory, realize ambitions, one’s place in the hierarchy, a high level of claims, joy and creativity. yang is creativity, fire, tension.
And the yin path is about strategies for acceptance, trust, gaining energy, gentleness, relaxation and merging.
“Many people in our country do not accept and do not like yin strategies, they consider them a sign of weakness and run away from any attempt to stop and listen to themselves, to contemplate,” notes Tatyana Muzhitskaya. “And mostly stick to yang strategies. This causes burnout. Because art is in the ability to combine and combine them. You can strain with all your might, concentrate on one goal, but remember the important thing. To achieve maximum strength, you need to be able to relax. And vice versa: if you want to relax, you first need to throw out the strength!”
Choose what is comfortable for you now. There are a huge number of options! You are free to be what you want. And the world becomes hard or soft as you wish. The more diverse qualities we appropriate for ourselves, including the power of aggression, which is not very approved in society, the more we can manage in our lives.
About the benefits of savings
Yin is rest, accumulation of energy. “We have this logic: a person should get sick as it should, and only after that, when he energetically went into a minus, you can go on vacation or rest and raise yourself a little to the state of zero,” writes Tatyana Muzhitskaya. “This is bad practice. The same goes for youwalking day. I like the logic of the English calendar much more, where the week starts on Sunday and ends on Saturday. There is vhone day per work week. It’s more logical: before work, fill up the gas tank, charge your battery. Before you break into the project, you must first nourish yourself in order to enter with a positive balance. This is Yin logic. After all, the main idea is exactly to monitor the balance and fill up on time. Therefore, I propose to start the week in your head from Sunday, when your goal first becomes filling, and already work and activity are built on this resource.
About the benefits of promotion
Yang always wants something. He thinks in goals. When he has a goal, he feels it, it is there, outside. His task is to achieve the desired as efficiently as possible, spending a minimum of effort. If a person needs it, he goes. “So it is with desires,” writes the psychologist. “I don’t even want to, but I have to!” You go and that’s it! It is not necessary for another, but for you and very much! You have probably noticed this effect – when you are in the subway or in the crowd and you really need to pass, people make way. And you yourself retreat if you notice that a person is walking and does not see you. Nobody wants to get hit by a train. If a car is coming at you, it can be as wrong as you like, but you will bounce, right?
If you listen to the stories of those who have achieved a lot, you can understand: they knew exactly what they wanted. When a person understands this, he begins to look into the eyes of his goal and go towards it. And the obstacle goes away on its own, realizing that it is the third superfluous and there is no place for it here. “Exhale at the target. It’s like lighting it up, watering it like a plant, like laying a railway to it, building a tunnel between yourself and the target.”
But then, after exhaling, you need to inhale. After all, we cannot only inhale or only exhale. So thank the energy of action in you, and then thank the energy of acceptance.
Breathe in and breathe out!
Tatiana Muzhitskaya
psychologist, international certified NLP trainer, business trainer, TV presenter, author of several books