How not to lose yourself in a company. How to find yourself and how not to lose yourself in the search

The question of how not to lose yourself comes up lately more and more often. It would seem that this question is becoming relevant only now, in modern world, but this is not entirely true. For many centuries, if not millennia, people, when they have free time from work, begin to ask this question.

After all, if a person works in physical work, trying to feed himself, his family, or somehow comfortable life, then he has no time for deep life questions, which is why previously such questions were of interest only to rich people with a lot of free time.

What does “not lose yourself” mean?

So what does a person mean when he thinks about the question of how not to lose himself? The fact is that this is a so-called decoy question; behind it there is always another question, which a person is often afraid to voice even to himself. After all, if a person accurately understands his place in the world, his mission, values, he understands what he is doing and why, he is not worried about the issue of losing himself.

But if a person lives without understanding the meaning of his life, without faith in himself, he is not sure that his actions are correct, and his life is going in the direction it needs to go - that’s when he begins to think that perhaps he is somewhere... then I lost myself.

Therefore, the question of how not to lose yourself can be given an unambiguous answer; for this you need to deeply understand yourself, your role in this world and where life is heading in general. And to make it easier, we will divide this process into three stages, which any person can do.

Stage 1. Remember ourselves.

Do we remember ourselves as children, what we wanted to achieve, what to do. What we liked or scared, what we most wanted to avoid. You can remember your life for a very long time, but how to structure your memories so that later you have the opportunity to somehow work with them. It turns out that our desires are the totality of everything that makes up life at any particular moment. Therefore, if we want to describe ourselves at some period of life, the easiest way to do this is through our desires, those that were at that moment.

In psychology, this process is called defragmentation. when we write down all our desires, dreams that we can only remember. The easiest way to do this is sequentially, either from childhood to the current age, or vice versa, it doesn’t matter. The process itself can take many hours and the list can consist of hundreds of wishes. At first, the process may be difficult; after writing 30-50 points, you may think that this is all strong desire finish, at such a moment it is best to take a break and then start again.

I would also like to note that we do not have the task of analyzing our desires and dreams, and we just need to write, even if now this desire may seem strange, unnecessary, and children’s dreams about an astronaut or singing are stupid, they still need to be written down. The process itself already gives a very strong effect, gives liberation and “cleanses” the brain. But for us this is only the first stage.

Stage 2. Determine who we want to become and what we want in life.

Once we have remembered who we were, we can begin to formulate who we want to be and what we want our life to be like in the future. In order not to lose ourselves, we need to very clearly understand who we should become. There must be a standard by comparing ourselves with which we will be able to adjust our life path. The list from the first stage will help us with this.

Cross out from it all those desires and dreams that you have already achieved or fulfilled, then cross out everything that is no longer relevant for you and is not needed, what you once wanted, but now you want something else. The rest will become the base, the foundation for creating an image of yourself in the future.

Based on your past dreams, try to describe the person you would like to become in the future. What does this person do, where does he live, what surrounds him, what has he already achieved and what does he want to achieve in the future. Look many years into the future, at least 10, but maybe 20 or 30 years.

If it’s difficult to imagine yourself, think about which person you know you want to be like and describe his life as your future. This approach is even better, because in addition to simply describing life, you can spy on the life schedule, habits, skills, values ​​and manners of your idol. This can give a strong boost to your understanding of what you need to do and study.

For convenience, it is very good to break down the vision of who you want to become into certain sectors. For example, achievements at work, family relationships, health, friends and environment, finances, spiritual development. Break it down into as many sectors of life as you want, but if there are more than 10, it’s better to combine several sectors.

Stage 3. We build a guideline to check where our life is heading.

For this point we will take as a basis the well-known technique of the Wheel of Life, but we will change it to suit our needs. Namely, as in the picture, we draw a circle and divide it into the number of sectors that you came up with at the last stage. A scale from 1 to 10 is how much we rate our life now in this sector, where 10 is what you want to achieve.

For example, in the finance sector we determined that we want to have an income of 10,000 per month, and now the income is 2 thousand, then accordingly, now we are on a scale of 2. With non-financial sectors, of course, it is more difficult, you cannot calculate so clearly, give yourself an assessment that the first one that comes to mind.

The completed wheel will be the reference that will show where you are now in relation to those you want to become. And if you have any doubts about whether your life is moving in the right direction, whether you have lost yourself, it is enough for you to do the same wheel at that moment and see the changes with the basic one that you have made now.

You will not just receive a definite answer, you will see for yourself in which sectors of your life you are successful, and in which, perhaps, you are moving away from your main goals. By doing this exercise even once a year, you can clearly imagine the vector of your development, what you need to pay attention to or what needs to be changed right now. Do you think that the 10 minutes that such an exercise will take you once a year is worth being calm about the question of whether I am losing myself and whether my life is going in the right direction? I'm sure it's worth making.

These days, self-development, motivation, time management, positive thinking are words that sound everywhere. Every day on all social networks we are advised to work on ourselves and strive for a better life. There is a lot of information, and it can be so contradictory that it doesn’t take long to get confused. And when you get confused, you finally become convinced of your own imperfection and naturally get upset and give up.

On the one hand, we are strongly encouraged to be grateful for what we have. On the other hand, they are no less persistently advised to strive for more and not be satisfied with less. Every more or less successful psychology blogger considers it his duty to talk to his audience about low self-esteem and how important it is to praise yourself even for the smallest achievements.

At the same time, when you write down every pot of soup you cook on your list of achievements, over time you begin to doubt your own adequacy. And against the backdrop of all this splendor, sometimes you just want to feel sorry for yourself, sit down and cry. But you can’t: you need to be grateful, write down goals and praise yourself for success.

How to make sense of abundance useful tips and learn to live fully, while remaining yourself?

What is valuable to me personally?

The most important thing is to understand who I am and what is valuable to me personally.

Surprisingly, but true: many people come into adulthood without a clear understanding of the processes that occur in their heads. In our youth, we very often live and act by inertia, not guided by any principles or relying on the opinions and experience of our environment.

How to understand yourself and learn to listen to yourself? I offer several methods that may help you get in touch with your inner self.

How did you get to this point?

I suggest you draw scale of your life. Apply age marks on it that will correspond most important events, one way or another influenced your development.

For example:

• 6 years- starting school;
• 13 years old- first relationship;
• 18 years old- admission to college;
• 23 year- wedding;
• 28 years- birth of the first child;
• 30 years- death of grandmother;
• 32 year- dismissal, etc.

You yourself evaluate how much impact these events had on your life or way of thinking and whether they are worth adding to your scale. For example, for some, graduating from school might go unnoticed, but in childhood there was a tragedy that left a deep imprint.

Now consider each event separately. Remember that emotional state, in which you were at the specified age interval, and write next to each item your rating from –2 (for a very depressed state) up to +2 (for a positive mood). Let 0 will be the neutral point.

This way, you will see a picture of your life and understand how you ended up in the situation you are in. at the moment. Surprises may await you. Maybe you will suddenly understand why the same unpleasant event happens to you throughout your life.

Get in sync with your feelings

Very rare people know how to live consciously. That is, regularly ask yourself what the meaning of their actions is and what motives are actually behind these actions.

I suggest a little exercise.

First of all, start listen to your body. You will be surprised, but your reactions can very often provide answers to long-standing questions.

For example, you may notice that you begin to nervously grip the back of the sofa or bite your nails every time you answer a call from a certain person. Try to think about what is behind this unconscious gesture. Most likely, you will find that for some reason you are uncomfortable with the upcoming conversation.

Write down your settings

Then take a notepad and write down on a separate page the main judgments that control your behavior, and installations that influence your actions. To do this, you will need to analyze your behavioral patterns.

For example, if you constantly refuse help from loved ones, there may be a certain principle behind this: “I can do everything myself” or “I have to cope on my own”, or maybe "I don't want to be obligated". Perhaps, having written down your basic settings, you will want to change them to new ones, completely abandon them, or at least reconsider their use.

Start asking yourself questions

In order to live consciously, you must constantly ask yourself what is behind your actions. For example, if you are constantly annoyed with your child when he fails to complete homework, stop and answer yourself why this is happening. Ask yourself questions: why, what is important to you in this situation, what do you want, what hurts you.

Ask the same question until an answer comes to mind that seems closest to the truth. For example, if you get angry when your other half goes out with friends, start internal dialogue from a question "Why?".

“Why don’t I like it?” Most likely, the first answer will be the very formal explanation that you give to others and to yourself. For example: “Because instead I could have babysat or cleaned up”.

However, if you try to clarify with yourself whether this two-hour meeting really influenced the affairs of the household, it may turn out that not everything is so simple. An unpleasant answer may come unexpectedly. For example: "Because I'm jealous".

Continue the internal dialogue. Ask yourself why you are jealous. For example, your answer might be: "Because I don't trust him/her".

Ask the question “why?” again: “Why don’t I trust?” Keep moving forward until you gain a deep understanding of the true reasons.

It may well turn out that the problem is not at all that the children were left “unwalked”, but that you doubt yourself. And in this case, you will have to deal not with the duty schedule in the kitchen, but with your own self-esteem.

Johari window

This technique, developed by psychotherapists Joseph Luft And Harry Ingham in 1950, will help you discover sides of your personality that are invisible to us, but obvious to others.

Take a piece of paper and write it down all your character traits that come to mind. Then reach out to a few of your friends or acquaintances and ask them to do the same. Let them tell you what they value most about you, what they consider to be your strengths, and what they think your weaknesses are.

Then divide the piece of paper in half vertically and horizontally. You will get four windows:

• Top left- this is the “open self”, the zone into which you can rewrite the qualities that are on both lists.
• Bottom left- this is the “closed self”, a zone where only words from one’s own list will go.
• Top right- This is a “blind” list. Here you can write down what others think about you, but what is missing from your own list.
• Bottom right- this is the “unknown self”. This information is not yet available to you or those around you. However, when you find yourself in an unknown situation, you can learn a lot about yourself.

Define your values

I would like to stop at this point and consider it in more detail. This is my favorite technique because I deeply believe that our values ​​represent the base of the pyramid, the foundation on which we can build our goals and separate them from the goals imposed by other people.

It is the understanding of our values ​​that can help us make a choice in an ambiguous situation or assess whether we are following our own path or have already lost our way.

Values ​​can change throughout life. But they definitely influence us and our actions, no matter what we do.

For example, for a man who grew up in orphanage, family will most likely not be one of the basic values. But freedom and independence will probably be on their list. If he meets a girl who is looking for a serious relationship, this man may fall in love, but it is unlikely that such a relationship will become successful.

At the same time, growing up, developing, studying oneself and the world around us, a man can realize and accept family as a value. And then he will build any relationship according to a different scenario.

How to determine what is truly valuable to you?

Look carefully at all these words and cross out those that do not evoke any positive feelings in you. After this the list should reduced to 20 points.

Now is the time to think seriously. Read each word on your list carefully and think about what it really means to you. Select 10 core values.

This is not bad, but the most significant values ​​are usually no more than five. So we take our list again and look at it carefully and in detail. We reflect on our own lives, analyze when and how we acted, focusing on any of the values.

As a result, we get three, five or seven points.

You can refer to this list every time you doubt your actions or wonder if you are moving in the right direction. Look into it before setting a goal or in moments of doubt.

Working on each technique on this list can take a lot of time. These solutions seem simple at first glance, but in reality they will require deep study and active analysis. But believe me: learning more about yourself can be a turning point for you.

Spend at least 10 minutes a day on these exercises, and very soon you will find out what is truly dear to you, and maybe even discover your true purpose.

Know and love yourself and be happy!

From the editor

Psychological trainings, seminars, lectures on self-development - all this is beneficial only if you are ready for change and understand how to get the maximum benefit for yourself. A practicing psychologist explains how to do this Olga Yurkovskaya: .

There is an expression: “The farther, the closer.” We often use it in the context of describing our relationships with others. Although we pronounce it with irony, there is a grain of truth in this expression. Moving away from people, we miss them, we lack communication. And the constant flashing before your eyes does not make your partner closer and dearer.

Being with each other 24 hours a day has nothing to do with true Intimacy.

Proximity and boundaries

True Intimacy occurs when we find balance in establishing our personal boundaries, the boundaries of the other person, and the shared space between us. This is the territory where the meeting of two people takes place, each of whom has a real understanding of their personal boundaries. This is that set of internal beliefs, thoughts, values ​​and feelings that we are not ready to exchange and the integrity of which we are ready to defend even at the cost of losing intimacy with another.

This is only ours, what we are ready to speak about publicly and what we are ready to defend. This is an internal constitution, a set of rules that we proclaim to the world around us so that others know what we are ready to put up with and what we are not. Clear personal boundaries are not about selfishness and high self-esteem. Here we are talking about self-respect, which is a strong support for respecting the feelings and opinions of others.

On the contrary, more often blurred personal boundaries or their absence leads to problems in relationships. Inability to say “no” to others, desire to please and devaluation own feelings makes us a hostage to others and leads to neurotic relationships.

A good example

One day a close friend came to visit you. You were so welcoming that he decided to spend the night with you, and his presence was not burdensome for you either. He didn't leave the next morning, and he didn't leave in the months that followed. Your home has become his home. You enjoyed your friend's company and enjoyed his presence in your life.

Soon your friend began inviting his friends to your house. “It’s okay, living together is more fun,” you might think. Soon you will notice that you will not have enough space in your own home. Happy holidays and noisy companies will become commonplace in your home, although you personally prefer quiet evenings. You will rationalize what is happening and convince yourself that this is normal, because it could be worse.

Unnoticed, in your own home, guests will give you a guest room, and maybe even offer you to go visit relatives, to unwind, so to speak. You have ceased to be the mistress and decide who and when to let into your territory. And now you have only two options: either silently endure what is happening, or declare your rights and put uninvited guests out the door, once and for all indicating who is boss in the house.

In the first case, you will step on your own throat, just not to contradict others and save good relationship. But these are all illusions: relationships are good when you and those around you feel good in them, when there is mutual respect. If there is a herd of people walking around in your house with dirty shoes, then there is nothing left to save for a long time.

In the second case, you will declare your feelings and risk being misunderstood. At best, they will twist their finger at your temple and go away, accusing you of inadequacy. At worst, they will ignore your unauthorized protest and will never pay attention to your feelings again. Both the first and second options will not return the former warm feelings and relationships.

It is difficult for others to understand you, since you yourself vaguely understand your desires and the limits of what is permitted in relation to you. You find it difficult to be natural and boldly state your boundaries due to fear of rejection. The need for the company of others, for acceptance, is read in your every action. You are infected with the belief of your own inferiority and are dependent on the opinions of others.

We are driven by two main fears: the fear of death and the fear of losing love. All other types of fear are derivatives of these two. The possibility of being rejected makes us forget about our own desires in favor of others. Constant violation of personal boundaries makes you suffer, but giving up this suffering is even worse.

Refusal to suffer instills fear of rejection inside. It is better for us to maintain the illusion of the presence of others in our lives than to remain in the emptiness in which we are afraid to live. We are not ready to face our loneliness. We think that loneliness is the absence of people around us, but in reality this is not the case. Loneliness is the inability to feel your own self-sufficiency.

To be self-sufficient is to experience happiness from being with yourself. This is a state where being alone makes us feel less lonely than when we are in the presence of people. Without this strong foundation, it is impossible to achieve true intimacy with another person. It is important to love yourself unconditionally. At least for reasons of psychological health: it is inconvenient to live life with an unloved person. Every relationship will repeat the scenario in which the partner is perceived as a straw for a drowning man.

How not to lose yourself in a relationship, remain free as a couple, and not make constant compromises with yourself?

Responsibility

We look at the Other with hope, and in the eyes we read in large letters: “Save me from myself. Let this relationship be serious." Only it is not the other person who gives seriousness to the relationship, but ourselves. We seek seriousness from another, while we ourselves defend ourselves with the phrases: “If it’s destined, then what’s mine will not leave me.” In fact, such an approach is, to say the least, frivolous and irresponsible. This is a way to protect your reluctance to invest in a relationship. We are looking for love, firmly believing that we will find it where another loves us.

It’s often like this: we are ready to show our feelings only when we have guarantees that we will be reciprocated. Otherwise, why would I open my soul? Now, if he….then I…. Bargaining. There is no love here.

Love exists where there is naturalness and joy. When the questions don’t arise: “Does he need to write an SMS first? What will he think? What if he doesn’t answer? We need to light the fire of love on our own, otherwise we risk living our entire lives in the cold and in relationships without intimacy.

Responsibility in a relationship is the willingness to work hard at it. If you don't work on your relationships, you'll soon have to play with them. It’s a paradox, but playing is more energetically expensive than working.

Giving up control

Demanding absolute sincerity from a partner is depriving him of his own territory. The desire to control is an invasion of someone else's personal boundaries. Where there is insufficient understanding of one's own internal boundaries, there will often be a desire to violate others. There is no clear understanding of “I am not I.”

Our capacity for intimacy is directly related to trust, acceptance of ourselves and others. Controlling people struggle with the flow of life, cannot trust other people, and have difficulty with emotional and physical intimacy.

Readiness to meet others

The union of a man and a woman exposes children's matrices and complexes. When romantic love retreats, we meet the Other for real. We begin to notice shortcomings, feel deceived and blame the person for becoming what he always was. To accept the shortcomings of another, we first need to accept ourselves with all the shadow sides of our soul. Fighting your own Shadow is suppressing your negative trait and disgust for those who also possess it.

The inability to experience one's feelings in the presence of Another destroys Intimacy. Allowing the Other to be different means giving up the intention to redo, correct or change something in him. In a mature relationship there is Self and Other. Mutual differences are valuable. There is an opportunity to be yourself in a relationship, to be different, and also to accept this right for the Other. Do not be horrified by mutual differences, but treat them with curiosity, as a new experience.

In such a union, I recognize the Other’s right to be different, as well as my right to be myself. This means the ability to accept the differences of the Other, as well as see in them opportunities for rapprochement. This is the rejection of projections and illusions. Another is not a set of functions that satisfy your needs, but an individual person, with values, views and beliefs inherent only to him.

Naturalness

While allowing another to remain who they have always been, it is important to remain yourself. Not to seem, but to be. Our self-esteem is the internalized opinion of others about us. These are other people's thoughts and assessments with which we were infected in deep childhood. little child has no self-esteem, he does not know whether he is good or bad. For the first time he gets to know himself through his close circle. And precisely at the border of the first contacts with environment the first social feelings appear: shame, guilt, fear.

The situation gets worse when they begin to compare us with others. It is then that we receive a powerful message: being yourself is bad. But if you pretend a little or try to meet other people's expectations, then the likelihood of being rejected will be less.

Child-parent relationships are built on the strict subordination of the younger ones to the older ones. If in childhood they were not interested in our opinion, did not ask what we like and what we don’t, then most likely, as adults we will also not understand ourselves and our feelings. Frequent changes of desires, life goals, endless search for ourselves are a manifestation of the fact that we have not yet met ourselves and have not recognized our natural selves. And it is unlikely that anyone will be able to guess our desires if we ourselves are not fully aware of them.

To be natural is to be able to feel your desires and follow them. To be natural is to make a decision based on the criteria of “I want it or I don’t want it.” Compromises with yourself hidden feelings and unexpressed emotions will sooner or later cause difficulties in relationships. Allowing ourselves to live next to the Other, revealing our hidden feelings, the willingness to bare our soul and show our vulnerability, to be natural allows us to become closer to each other. Being in harmony with ourselves, we create harmony around us.

The ability to be alone

If the Center of Love is within ourselves, we no longer need crutches in the form of dependent relationships. We no longer need to be saved, because alone with ourselves we gain strength and merge with the source of love.

I once thought for a long time about the topic of loneliness and after repeating this word many times, I replaced its amazing semantics. Oneness - One Father. Being alone is not being isolated and not feeling abandoned. To be alone means to be alone with the Creator, with a powerful source of energy, and the ability to contemplate your inner world. This is an opportunity to get to know yourself as a whole, to hear your feelings, to enter into dialogue with those parts of the Self that were once repressed from our lives. Self-love in solitude is an indicator of the ability to love others.

The farther, the closer

We are not talking about a specific distance between us, expressed in kilometers. Intimacy is not a state, but a process of conscious life creation.

To be close and at the same time free in a relationship means not to dissolve in the relationship, thereby losing your own taste. Do not try to merge and turn into one, depriving yourself and others of personal space.

Intimacy is not when we suffocate, squeezing each other in the deadly embrace of love addiction. We come close to each other, then we move away. We move away because we feel that we might suffocate and there is a need to breathe a breath of freedom and feel self-sufficient without being tied to anyone. We get closer because we strive to exchange energies, but in such a way as not to lose ourselves, without forgetting about everything, with the opportunity to always return to ourselves.

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When we start a new relationship, the emotions can be so strong that it seems like we have never experienced anything like this and have finally found our soulmate.

We enter into relationships as independent individuals. However, this relationship and our partner can take such an important place in our lives that the relationship begins to define our personality. Unfortunately, some people want to please their partner so much that they forget about themselves. We all have an inner need to do something nice for those we love and give what they need, but we also need to remember our needs.

It is important that both partners have a self-image of “themselves in the relationship” and a self-image independent of the relationship

The desire to become the perfect complement to our partner is understandable, as long as our individuality is not sacrificed. It is not always easy to find and maintain a healthy balance in a relationship, but it is still very important in order not to forget about your personality and your interests. For a relationship to grow and develop, it is important that both partners have a sense of “themselves in the relationship” and a sense of self independent of the relationship. Some tips to maintain your individuality in a relationship.

What to do:

1. Do not give up hobbies and things that interest you, even if your partner does not share these interests. Often people abandon their hobbies that their partner does not share. However healthy relationships are built on both similarities and differences, which allows partners to have common interests while maintaining their individual hobbies.

2. Meet with friends and family - with or without a partner. It's always good if your friends and family like your partner, but you should sometimes communicate with them without him. They will often behave differently when your partner is around you. For example, your best friend, who is usually so cheerful and “crazy,” may watch his every word in the presence of your partner, trying to be as “politically correct” as possible.

3. Support your partner's long-standing hobbies and interests. It is important not only not to give up your hobbies and interests, but also to encourage your partner not to give up his own. When both partners have their own individual needs, they have a healthy desire to add something to the relationship, and not just take from it what they are missing.

It’s normal to want to share your partner’s interests, but you also need to have your own hobbies

4. Express needs and desires that your partner does not share. It is important that both partners have own needs and realized them, so they will put something of their own into the relationship. Many people believe that relationships require compromise - suppression own desires and needs, but this is not so. Most of us mistakenly believe that completely or partially giving up our wants and needs will help save the relationship, but their very fear of losing their partner shows that there are some obvious problems in their relationship.

5. Don't let relationships define your self-image. It is important not to allow a situation where you cannot imagine yourself outside of your relationship with your partner.

6. Don't be afraid to do personal things without your partner. You don't have to tell your partner what you're doing every minute. And when you spend time separately from each other, you shouldn’t constantly call each other and text each other.

7. Try something new that interests you, even if your partner doesn't share that interest. Try to be open to new things. To maintain a healthy sense of self, it's important to make sure you can try new things without sacrificing your core values, interests, and tastes. It's completely normal to want to share your partner's interests and hobbies, but for your personal growth, you need to have your own hobbies. Of course, it’s worth at least trying what he or she likes, but if it turns out that it’s “not your thing,” you can always return to the hobby.

What not to do:

1. Allow relationships to change your perception of yourself and your own achievements. Our personality is determined by our strengths and achievements - in studies, in work, in spiritual growth, and these achievements are only yours.

2. Becoming too dependent on the relationship or partner. Being in a relationship does not relieve you of responsibility for taking care of yourself and your feelings. By overcoming difficulties on your own, you develop strength and resilience.

All types of relationships are important for growth and development: family, social and love

4. Ignore relationships with other people. All types of relationships are important for our growth and development - family, social and love. Healthy love relationships always allow partners to devote time, attention and care not only to each other, but also to friends and loved ones.

5. Move quickly from one relationship to another. You should not immediately look for a new partner after breaking up. It is important to first experience the grief of parting, sort out your feelings and decide who we are in ourselves, apart from the relationship. You should not use relationships as an excuse not to take care of yourself, your shortcomings and your personal growth.

About the expert

Tarra Bates-Dufort is an American psychologist and psychotherapist with 15 years of experience, a specialist in family problems and work with psychological trauma.