Why familiar pleasures no longer make us happy

Psychologists have long told us that a person lives according to the principle of pleasure. He does what is pleasant and tries to avoid what is unpleasant. Relaxing and lying in the sun is nice. Not much work. But I really want to eat, so I have to get up to get food.

Hunger has always been the main reason for human activity and the main reason for progress. By becoming more and more familiar with the world around us, man practically got rid of not only hunger, but also hard physical labor. Nowadays, our daily bread comes to us quite easily. And not just bread, but bread and butter. There is no longer any need to work up a sweat: all the hard physical work is done by machines. Now we have delicious food in the supermarket, housing with all the amenities and money to pay for it all.

And we can finally begin to enjoy life: relax and have fun, without denying ourselves anything. And let only those who cannot buy the right to rest work. Is it so? Let's figure it out with the help of system-vector psychology by Yuri Burlan.

Dance while you are young!

Indeed, we have a strong association in our heads that rest is good and work is bad. Modern youth answer the question about their dreams simply: “If we had money, we’ll buy the rest!” Question: “If you already had a million dollars, what would you do?” The most common answer: “I would like to rest!”

Here we are resting. Foam party, pajama party, wine, beer, girls, boys... Everything is basically the same, the only difference is the price of drinks and establishments. And in the morning there is a headache, emptiness and a vague feeling of dissatisfaction. Some entertainment is replaced by another, new, more sophisticated, followed by the next, even cooler. Diversity and elevation are required. Otherwise - hopeless boredom and mortal melancholy.

Why do we feel bad when everything seems to be fine?

It turns out that the pleasure principle does not work? Works. But in a different way. First, let's figure out what relaxation is and what pleasure is.

Rest is the restoration of strength after WORK. Any muscle in the human body functions according to the tension-relaxation principle. If a muscle is not strained for a long time, it will atrophy. Lying on the couch after a hard day is pleasant. But lying on the couch for days is a bad sign. Walking around the shops and window shopping is a good way to relax for many women. But wandering around stores for days on end is already a diagnosis.

The eternally resting-traveling-relaxing person becomes just as unbearably bored and insipid as the eternally living Immortal, who, in order to feel the taste of life, is ready to give up this immortality.

How to improve your mood

Acknowledge your frustration, dissatisfaction and bad mood. If you internally agree that a problem exists, it will be possible to find reserves to solve it.

• Learn to appreciate your achievements . Every day, analyze what you managed to do today, for which you can praise yourself.
• Don't demand immediate changes from yourself . It will take time to change your attitude towards yourself and life. Any attempts to push yourself only lead to stress and new disappointments.
• Don't endlessly bombard yourself with interesting events . Stop and think about what you really need. It would be better if there were fewer public appearances, but each of them would bring joy.
• Set realistic goals for yourself . If you want to learn a foreign language from scratch, you should not immediately enroll in a group where they already speak at a certain level, in the hope of catching up with your classmates and feeling the joy of your victory. Otherwise, there is a great risk of lowering your already not very high self-esteem.
• Don't neglect the help of a psychologist.

Pleasure: I always want more than I can contain

When you are thirsty, a glass of water can give you incredible pleasure. And another one? And the third? Or maybe another glass? NO, THANK YOU, I DON'T WANT ANY MORE.

When you come home hungry, it feels like you could eat an elephant! Delicious food gives great pleasure (although experience shows that after several days of hunger, any food will be tasty). You eat one piece, a second, a third... After some time, saturation occurs, the appetite disappears, and along with it the pleasure from eating. What about this beautiful piece of magical chocolate cake? NO THANK YOU, IT WILL NOT FIT ANYMORE.

When there is no great feeling of hunger, we get pleasure from food through the feeling of the variety of tastes and the beauty of the presentation of dishes. But restaurant food sooner or later becomes commonplace. The iron rule “it’s delicious when you’re hungry” applies here too.

We receive pleasure from satisfying a need only as long as the need is not satisfied. As soon as the need is satisfied, the body signals us by stopping pleasure, even to the point of disgust.

System-vector psychology of Yuri Burlan explains this by the fact that the volume of our body is limited and all pleasures aimed at consuming IN OURSELVES are always finite. Contrary to popular belief, increasing your consumption does not make you happier. Idle moneybags, satiated with their wealth, are no happier than ordinary people.

Pleasure and pain are inseparable

The material world is like a river. A river does not have a constant shape: it changes every moment. The same thing happens in the material world: the flow of life constantly brings changes. The endless cycle of birth and death, creation and destruction is manifested in everything. And this is precisely the cause of suffering: in the material world there is not a single state that could be fixed for a long time. The first brick laid in the foundation of a house already starts the process of its destruction even before the house is completed. The birth of a person already starts the process of aging and dying. Any person who has some experience of owning his own business knows that no business can exist forever, developing according to the pattern: development - peak - decline. And so it is in everything.

Why are pleasures the same as suffering?

All for the same reason: the fickleness of the world. Any desire for pleasure will end in one of two ways: either the destruction/disappearance of the object of pleasure, or satiety/loss of interest in the object of pleasure.

You can give an example that will be understandable to many. Cake is a harmful but delicious food that we eat solely for pleasure. Spoon, second, third. And then one of two things happens: either the cake runs out, or the appetite runs out. Moreover, in the second case, this appetite most often ends in overeating. In both cases we get suffering. Thus, any pleasure is already the beginning of suffering.

.

Another interesting example: heat and cold. Severe frost can cause suffering. When winter ends, we experience a kind of pleasure when we warm up. But the paradox is that warmth is also suffering. And only because at the moment the suffering from cold is higher than the suffering from heat, we experience some kind of temporary pleasure. But as soon as suffering from heat and suffering from cold become equal, and then spring is replaced by hot summer, we will already experience suffering from heat. Thus, only this short moment, when two oppositely directed sufferings balance each other, can be called short-term illusory happiness. But it is important to understand: if we depend on external conditions, then our happiness is as fragile as bubbles on the water.

Does work love fools?

On the other hand, we meet people who work day and night and truly enjoy their work. A surgeon who spends most of his life in a hospital, saving people and performing complex operations, nevertheless feels needed and happy. A programmer who cannot leave the computer until he comes up with the very necessary code is completely absorbed in his new idea and does not want to hear about rest. A car enthusiast, he spends all his evenings and vacations in his garage, as he assembles one, but fundamentally new one, from two old cars.

And there are many, many other people who are so passionate about their work that they are ready to devote all their time to it, forgetting not only about entertainment, but also about rest. Why is this happening?

How to find joy in everyday things again

Diversify life

Get positive emotions from different areas of life, look for new sources of pleasure and supplement old ones. Add caramel syrup to your favorite coffee, which has become your morning routine, find new interesting tasks at work, try a new sex position. Do everything so that the pleasures are not monotonous.

Appreciate what you have

People are constantly looking for happiness, but for some reason they don’t think that they may already have it. You need to be grateful for what you have, be able to enjoy a delicious dinner, think not only about how to earn more money, but also plan what nice things you can spend your existing savings on. You can spend your whole life chasing something more without ever feeling that you were ever happy. Think about what makes you happy here and now, and stop.

Try writing down a few things you are grateful for each day. You will see that there are many more pleasant moments in life than it seems. You're just used to a lot of things.

Monitor your happiness level

Try to become aware of hedonic adaptation. At what moments in your life were you filled with joy and what did you enjoy? Compare with the present: what do you think will make you happy and why are you sure that without it you cannot be happy now? How long will the euphoria actually last?

Surely you will find things in everyday life that once seemed so necessary to you for happiness. Now you have them, so why did you stop enjoying them?

Hedonic adaptation is part of our lives. But if you understand how this mechanism works, you can take control of your own happiness and learn to enjoy even ordinary things.

We are not stokers, we are not carpenters, or Happiness is in work!

The explanation is given by the system-vector psychology of Yuri Burlan. She argues that humanity is a species, and each person is a representative of the species, having his own species role. His natural task is not to obtain pleasure exclusively for himself, but to fulfill his individual task in the general cause of the development of humanity.

System-vector psychology of Yuri Burlan says that every person is born with certain sets of mental properties given by nature - vectors, of which there are eight in total. One person can combine several vectors that not only determine his desires to fulfill a specific role, but also provide the opportunity to fulfill them.

If a person does what nature intended him to do, then the biochemistry of his brain is aligned, he receives a “reward” in the form of pleasure and a feeling of happiness. If not, then he does not feel satisfaction from life, from his work and suffers.

Recreation and entertainment fundamentally cannot provide a feeling of happiness for a person, since they are aimed at obtaining individual satisfaction “inside”. Whereas work for the good of society, that is, “outside,” in accordance with its purpose, naturally fills a person with joy.

Internal consumption is limited, return is endless!

When a person fulfills his program, realizes himself in society, lives “to give back,” he does not get tired, but, on the contrary, a new, additional source of energy seems to open up in him. He manages to do much more, he is not tormented by illnesses and misfortunes and, most importantly, he feels happy. Such people live long and remain active until old age.

When a person does not feel in demand, cannot realize himself, or find something he likes, then the feeling of joy in life gradually disappears, fatigue from life accumulates, and neither rest nor entertainment helps. And the person gradually, through illness, passes away from life. We see this in the example of pensioners. Retired, it seems, rest, relax, enjoy life. But no, a person without work begins to get bored, suffer and get sick.