The Dream Must Have Its Own - Self-development

We live in an era of success. The most popular people today are motivational speakers who set us up to achieve the most desirable things in life. How to change to get things done? What are the steps to take? But the question is: are they preparing you for your dream, will all these prescribed metamorphoses lead to your ideal?

Numerous business trainings and personal growth trainings, to which people come to "make their dreams come true," in themselves may not be bad. After all, there is nothing wrong with daydreaming and anticipation. The problem is that most of our dreams are invented, learned. That is, in fact, the dream turns out to be not what the person himself wants, but what he is "infected". This is literally a virus that he picked up while in society. And as a result, a person spends time on the implementation of some concepts that he grabbed from others (or that inspired him by the "coach"). Which he either spied on or created for himself, but exactly as a compilation from dozens of sources, and not an individual dream.

And what happens then? Here you have an imposed dream: I want a million, a house by the sea, a beautiful wife, etc. All your life you go to her, overcoming obstacles and everything that is customary to fiercely overcome on the way to the cherished goal. And then at 45 (and sometimes at 60) they look back and realize that they didn't want a million at all, a house on the sea and a beautiful wife. But the worst thing is that not only did they go in the wrong direction, but also in the process of achieving someone else's dream, because of all the overcomes, they did not live a full life. And then a terrible crisis begins. Life-threatening in the truest sense of the word.

There are untalented dreamers, and then they are really dangerous people

Georg Christoph Aichtenberg

At one time, I worked quite closely with patients with suicidal behavior. And I found that among people who, looking back at their lives, understand that they did not live, successful and unsuccessful outcomes of therapy are distributed approximately 1 to 1.

In this context, I would like, firstly, to encourage everyone and everyone to strive for their dream, and not someone else's. Alas, in an era of success, everyone wants to be abstractly “successful”, someone “worthy”, someone else, and not themselves. Although in my understanding it is much more important. And second, to seriously think about what kind of transformation and adaptation should be, leading to the achievement of goals.

After all, what is usually taught in the already mentioned courses of success? The most popular auto-training model is dream visualization. If you properly imagine your goal, if you strain with all your strength, then it is highly likely to come true (even the special term "law of attraction" is usually mentioned here).

Meanwhile, it is not at all necessary that self-realization and harmony in life require colossal expenditures of energy on the way to a dream. Perhaps you should use not your energy and not your resources, but the energy of life itself? Not trying to control your own existence yourself, but letting him control a person?

In my book Guided Miracle I give a simple analogy. Imagine that you are driving some incredibly powerful sports car. You have chosen the direction, and now you are trying to push this sports car along the necessary road yourself (even with the active help of passers-by). Yes, yes, this is nonsense instead of starting the car and using those colossal resources that it has under the hood.

What is this resource in my analogy? This is life itself. We are used to thinking that we are in control of our lives (and in many ways this is not bad, since it forms a generation of responsible people). But if we imagine that everything is the other way around and our life controls us (as an independent substance, as a process that goes on independently of us - and to which we can only surrender, adapt), we get a tenfold effect. This applies to happiness, dreams, and satisfying relationships with other people. The only trouble is that this is the most difficult thing in psychotherapy.

Impossible is impossible

“The dreamer often defines the future correctly, but he does not want to wait for it. He wants to bring it closer by his efforts. What nature needs thousands of years for, he wants to see perfect during his life."

Gothold Ephraim Lessing

I recall a situation when I was 12 years old and my grandmother gave me a camera. How happy I was! I thought that this is what makes me the happiest child in the world. I walked around, took pictures, closed in the bathroom every Sunday (enlarger, developer, fixer …). It was so interesting to me! But one thing darkened my life. I doubted: what if five years pass and I no longer want to take pictures? The thought was very frightening. And of course, five years have passed and I no longer wanted to photograph. But this transition, this admission to yourself that you do not want what it is customary to want, or you can change and stop wanting what you originally wanted (a million, a house on the sea, a wife), is the most difficult. And the whole question is whether a person will have enough courage to give up what he thought (or still thinks by inertia) is the meaning of his life.

The risk is very high here. As I said before, this recognition or awareness leads to severe crises, as a result of which it may become vital to rebuild oneself. In essence, it is the fear of losing yourself. And this, I would say, is a guaranteed risk. Indeed: most likely, if you become more sensitive to all manifestations of life, if you find your dream, and not someone else's, then you will die the same.

But there is good news too. By making a choice in favor of your real self, you embark on the path of daily happy finding your own balance and your own life in its entirety. The movement towards a foreign, imposed, introduced "viral" dream or goal is most often extremely simple, understandable, linear and banal. This is a repeatable process every day.

In the same model of adaptation to life that I want to describe (when you let life control you), the movement towards the goal is not linear. From now on, I don't know my goal in 10 years. I can draw a picture, and tomorrow it may change. But when immersed in life, it is no longer so scary. I am ready to face the fact that tomorrow my dream will be different. And it is this aspect - the ability to revise goals and dreams every day, the ability to daily confirm your choice - and makes a person alive.

EXPERT OPINION

Dreamers of life

The main problem of people is not at all in the "lack of connection with their lives." People in the overwhelming majority are insanely illiterate with regard to even elementary knowledge about the nature and existence of man. And life is a rather complex and laborious profession, which presupposes a voluminous set of competencies acquired through serious education and training based on rigorous scientific knowledge. The most important and the very first thing that is worth understanding: we all have at least a few dozen of the most serious cognitive gaps in the perception of reality, we are all fantastically prone to self-deception and extremely susceptible to the most primitive suggestion. We must already begin to know ourselves, to master critical thinking, otherwise we will flush ourselves into the toilet. Alas, while money is more important than knowledge and skills to solve urgent problems, the movement towards the abyss will only accelerate …

Evgeny VOLKOV,

expert, consultant and researcher in critical thinking, social impact and social engineering