“You need to get married before 30”, “you need to have an expensive car”, “you need to give birth to two children” – often the settings in our head do not belong to us at all. Without noticing this, we implement other people’s scenarios of happiness – parental or imposed by society. How can you hear the voice of your own dreams?
Have you ever made a list of your XNUMX wishes? If not, try it right now. This exercise helps you understand if you allow yourself to want and desire.
Then analyze your feelings. What did you experience while making the list? Did you feel embarrassed? Or thoughts: “You still need to enter the desires and dreams of children, loved ones, parents …” Didn’t you feel guilty if you didn’t write down their dreams and desires in your “hundred”?
Most will answer “yes, it was.” And such a reaction may indicate that we are controlled by attitudes formed by other people.
For example, as children, we could walk past a window in a children’s store and our parents would say, “Don’t even dream about it.” Thus arose and formed a ban on desire, “desire”. Behind this “don’t even dream” was “I can’t buy you this at the moment.”
But the words of the parents are often recorded as if on a tape in the child’s head, and then played back in the adult state. And it turns out that an adult does not allow himself to dream, wish, want. What does this lead to? To the absence of their own big goals, because they crystallize precisely from dreams.
Dreams and goals
What is the difference between a goal and a dream? A goal has a time period, a specific date, or a completion period. To achieve the goal, certain resources are needed: financial, economic, human.
If we know everything about the stages of building a house, we understand what financial resources are needed, we have the opportunities for implementation, then this is the goal. For example, if we saw a beautiful house in a magazine and thought that we would like one, then this is a dream.
So, some attitudes from the past prevent us from dreaming and translating dreams into goals. But there is another situation when, as a result of fixing attitudes, we still achieve goals – but not our own. Whose are they really?
In the era of social media, we are also influenced by bloggers.
The experience gained in childhood shapes the scenarios of our behavior. “My mother got married after university and had two children. And it’s time for me – it’s been 5 years since I defended my diploma, but who needs me with excess weight? As soon as I tried to lose weight, nothing helps, ”says the client at the session.
And in the course of psychotherapy, it is revealed that “to get married and have children” was the goal of her mother. And the girl herself wants to develop her own business and believes that she is not yet ready to combine motherhood and business development. And in this case, being overweight gives her an excuse for why she didn’t follow her mother’s script.
Another setting that parents often broadcast in childhood is “don’t be yourself.” It is reflected in phrases like: “Here, our neighbor’s son went to study as an engineer, and you are doing nonsense with me”, “Your aunt worked all her life at the plant for eight hours in the steel shop, this is work, but what do you for work?”, “When I was your age, I wanted to become a policeman, but you want to be a blogger, ugh.”
Children really want their parents to accept and love them. They try to prove that they are worthy of love, and this happens unconsciously. And therefore, the installation “do not be yourself” leads to the realization of other people’s desires and goals. That is, inspired by parents and society.
foreign influence
Previously, we were influenced by significant adults involved in our upbringing, peers, friends. In the era of social media, we are also influenced by the bloggers we follow. We often perceive the success they broadcast as true and want to repeat it.
In the format of native advertising, we are given the appropriate instructions to buy marathons, webinars, products – we unconsciously believe that it is by purchasing the services, products of successful people that we ourselves will become successful. But what we forget is that behind the veneer of ideality on social media is a simple desire to generate income, and not an altruistic desire to make the world a better place.
Not getting the desired result, many begin to experience anxiety, disappointment, and this can even lead to depressive disorders.
Rewrite Beliefs
Dissatisfaction with our lives pushes us to think about what leads to failure. If you are unhappy with what is happening to you, or what you have today, try the following method for identifying core beliefs:
- Sit comfortably and relax. Think back to the good times in your life.
- Now remember the current situation that worries you. Use all your senses (visual, auditory, olfactory, tactile, gustatory, kinesthetic) to visualize it as vividly as possible.
- Shift your focus to your emotions. How do you feel when you think about this situation? No need to invent – try to feel.
- Focus on your thoughts. Ask yourself what you are saying to yourself right now about this disturbing situation, what exactly is causing these emotions. Let these be the first thoughts that come into your mind. If necessary, take a short break and write them down (these are your beliefs), then return to mental concentration.
- Keep these beliefs in mind and ask a question like: “And what follows from this?…” or “Why is this important?…” Keep asking the same question until you find the key answer. And maybe even remember who and when told you why it should be important.
Next, you need to “rewrite” these beliefs, replacing each negative belief with a positive one. It must be formulated in the present tense, without the particle “not”, short and clear. And if you want to change these settings yourself, without the help of a specialist, then you can use the affirmation method: repeat a new positive setting every day in the morning in front of a mirror.
Ask yourself the question: “Will I be happy if I achieve my goal?”
For example, in your Belief Identification, you found that the desire to have a higher income is often limited by the belief “we didn’t live rich, there’s nothing to start.” It can be replaced with “money enters my life easily.” The main thing is that you internally like the new belief, that you accept it. Naturally, this alone will not make you a wealthy person, but by changing your limiting attitudes to positive ones and allowing yourself to want more, you can see new options for increasing income.
In order not to be dependent on other people’s opinions and not to implement other people’s scenarios, it is important to work out (and preferably with a specialist) many important issues: self-acceptance, self-confidence, the problem of self-esteem. But there is also an express method that helps you get out of the influence of the information suggested to you:
- Change the position of the body in space, position yourself comfortably, comfortably.
- Install right now on your smartphone a screensaver that reminds you of a moment in your life when you were happy, when you felt good and comfortable, you were safe.
- When you need to calm down and make an informed decision, sit comfortably and look at your phone screensaver. Shift your focus from the outside world to the inside. Remember how good and comfortable you were, how happy you were at that pleasant moment of your life. Relive those feelings.
- And then ask yourself the question: “Will I be happy if I achieve my goal?”
Still, the main task of a person is to be happy, no matter what goals he realizes.
About expert
Ekaterina Yakovleva – psychologist, hypnologist, nutritionist, adviser to the chairman of the public association of nutritionists of Russia. Her .