Herd mentality or group psychology is formed when a large number of people in a society form some collective ideas and behaviors. People who agree on and comply with the group psychology prevalent in the society can live in comfort, but those who do not experience discomfort and difficulties. The specifics of group psychology vary and change in different societies and in different times.
At present, the psychology of voyeurism and exhibitionism seems to spread and deepen in many modern societies affecting more and more people including even minors. The society seems to be polarized more and more between people who conform to the psychology of voyeurism and exhibitionism and people who do not. Voyeurism and exhibitionism usually involve sensualism and it being manifested as group psychology indicates that sensualism has also become accepted in the society as something to be shared openly and publicly.
The society is formed by members in the society forming relationships. Members who live in relationships in the society must maintain harmony and order as well as enjoy individual freedom and equality. Individual freedom and equality may be restricted to a certain degree to achieve balance with social harmony and order and not to inflict damage on other people.
There are components of human nature that must be contained exclusively within individuals' privacy. They include basic human desires such as eating, sleeping, and having sex. We all know that they are essential components of every individual's life but they are not to be publicly or casually shared with other people in maintaining social harmony and order in healthy relationships. Especially, human sexuality is a component of human nature that can have highly detrimental adverse effects on individuals' psychology and on the society when exploited carelessly.
As more and more people claim and exploit their right for publicizing private components of human nature, and the society develops the group psychology that not only accepts but also promotes such ideas and behaviors, social harmony and order are to be breached and people who think and act differently are marginalized.
As components that are supposed to remain private by human nature become publicized and such distorted ideas and behaviors spread to be formed into a type of group psychology, conventional social restrictions on the matter are challenged and people get confused between their right as individuals and responsibility as a person in relationships in the society. The development of technology such as internet and social media expedites the process of aggravating such distorted group psychology. These days, people can actually view other regular people's private lives and they can also expose their own private lives to other people easily and casually, and the media contribute to promoting such phenomena.
The reason people view and expose the private components of human nature publicly is that they find it fun and pleasurable. In a society that mistakes pleasure for happiness and accepts pleasure seeking as not only being legitimate but also desirable, human sexuality, which is supposed to belong to one's privacy and to be dealt with great care as a source of generating positive energy within human mind, becomes a mere object of pleasure for everyone to play with anytime anywhere. Indeed, we are seeing the popularization of human sexuality in the modern era and we don't realize that it is damaging and destroying individuals' psychology, human relationships, and eventually the whole society.
It is a high time that we accurately understood the operational mechanism of human mind and psychology, and tried to establish healthy and balanced group psychology. We must stop aggravating the current phenomenon of widely spread voyeurism and exhibitionism. We must also stop aggravating the general trend that equates pleasure with happiness, and justifies the pursuit of individual freedom and equality at the expense of social harmony and order.
Psychology is the manifestation of the result of the interaction between the mind and the body. Three components of psychology are perception, memory, and expression. In the process of psychological operation, facts and emotions are recognized in the conscious. Facts and emotions are recognized connected with each other in perception, memory, and expression.
Psychological operation is important since it involves emotions. The treatment of psychology attempts to normalize the recognition of emotions in perception, memory, and expression although facts always stay the same. It is important to understand where emotions come from to apply psychology treatment in an adequate way. We mistake that emotions that accompany facts in perception flow in from outside attached to the facts. However, emotions do not flow in or come in from outside. Emotions that are recognized in the conscious in the process of perception, retrieving memory, and expression are not to be directly considered as the operation of mind.
The mind consists of the unconscious and the conscious. The unconscious generates emotions and has them operate in the psychology of perception, memory, and expression. The unconscious generates emotions connected with perceived facts and combines emotions and facts, connects them in the process of storing in and retrieving from memory, and combines them for expression. Emotions are generated from within your unconscious. Emotions generated in the unconscious are combined with facts and are manifested in psychology and recognized only in your own conscious.
Suppose that someone gets angry at you. You may think that he or she made you feel bad. However, it is your unconscious that generates your negative emotions upon your perception of the counterparty's speech, actions, and facial expressions. Then, your conscious makes you recognize the combination of the fact of the counterparty getting angry and your negative emotions, which makes you feel that facts and emotions are connected from the beginning. You may generate positive emotions upon the counterparty getting angry at you when your unconscious generates positive emotions upon the perception of the external fact and connect the two elements.
The emotions that you feel is recognized only by yourself. Facts are objective but emotions attached to facts are absolutely individual and subjective. When you are convinced that facts and your emotions connected with the facts are inherently attached together, you become to have a distorted perception of facts and emotions. Then, you may apply your subjective emotions and ideas to view and judge all information that are perceived. When you perceive all the facts connecting them with negative emotions, you are considered to have developed perception disorder and you need to adjust the unconscious operation of generating emotions.
When you express your emotions in relationships with other people, your emotions are generated only within yourself. When your counterparties express their emotions, their emotions are generated only within themselves. When each party perceives the counterparty's expression, it is common that they mistake their emotions generated by perceiving the counterparty's expression for being provided by the counterparty instead of being generated from within themselves. This phenomenon is referred to as the error of psychological interaction and it explains the fact that human relationships and psychological interactions naturally lead to conflicts and misunderstanding. Thus, it is a complete misunderstanding that your counterparties' emotional state will become positive when you are nice to them and vice versa. Everyone's emotions are generated only from within themselves.
Emotions are categorized into positive, negative, and void ones. Void emotions refer to the emotional state where you feel comfortable and your unconscious does not produce either positive or negative emotions upon psychological interactions. The processes of perception, memory, and expression do not lead the unconscious to generate any type of emotions but just operate facts. The emotional state of voidness is considered to have the value of zero whereas positive state of pleasure and joy has plus value and negative state of anger and sorrow has minus value. No one else but yourself can sense your emotional state. We keep adjusting our emotions to perceived facts in the process of pursuing happiness. When we sense negative emotions, our unconscious attempts to generate positive or void emotions by transforming negative emotions into positive or void emotions.
When you have negative emotions and feel difficulties inside yourself, it is the problem of your emotions regardless of what happened as facts. People misunderstand that the change of facts or situations will make them feel better. You cannot change facts that have already happened, but when you change your emotions attached to facts to positive or void ones, you do not perceive the fact as a problem any more and feel as if the problem has been solved. This process is referred to as 'healing'.
Sometimes, other people help you feel better by being considerate, providing empathy and consolation, and building rapport. From the perspective of mind operation, empathy is impossible to build since emotions are sensed only by the person who generates them. Others cannot possibly recognize what you feel. With this respect, building rapport is also meaningless and impossible to help you since emotions are recognized only by yourself. When you really feel empathy for sad or happy emotions of others, it is not that you share and feel the same emotions as others but that you have generated your own sad or happy emotions based on your perception of the situation.
When you develop psychological problems, you can restore your psychology by solving the specific problem through counseling, religion, getting advice or information. All of these activities are considered as types of consolation and diversion that employ external factors in attempts to transform your emotions into positive or void ones. They are all legitimate and necessary measures that help you restore psychology in the process of pursuing happiness in human relationships.
However, there are cases where the activities for consolation and diversion do not help since you have developed some pathological psychological condition with fixated emotions regardless of external facts. Your unconscious may generate only negative emotions upon any perception, retrieval of memory, or expression. Then, consolation and diversion do not help improve the condition and actually aggravate the situation.
When you have developed a psychological disorder in which the unconscious generates emotions in distorted ways, any operation of psychology results in distorted emotions. There can be perception disorder, the disorder of memory of emotions, and expression disorder depending on the component with distorted generation of emotions. As a psychological disorder progresses further, you may develop psychological disorders in two components of psychology. The condition actually deteriorates when you attempt to treat psychological disorders with measures that are used to solve milder conditions of psychological problems.
Psychological disorders must be treated by adjusting the unconscious so that it can generate emotions in adequate ways. It must be noted that the operation of the unconscious and the generation of emotions are processed only within oneself. Therefore, it is only you yourself who can and must treat your psychological disorder. You cannot and must not have external factors at play including your most loved people and psychology experts to treat your psychological disorder. In this process, you also must suppress the operation of the conscious to activate the operation of unconscious exclusively. The conscious recognition is necessarily associated with facts and contributes to the continuous generation of distorted emotions. When you treat psychological disorders, you must repeat the therapeutic tasks without thinking consciously, and lead the unconscious to generate emotions in adequate ways.
It is ineffective and sometimes even dangerous to adopt solutions to psychological problems for treating psychological disorders. Even experts get confused between solving psychological problems and treating psychological disorders. When pathological psychological conditions continue to progress without proper treatment, you may become permanently dependent on psychiatric treatment including medication. Also, people who have psychological disorders that make them pursue only positive emotions in distorted ways destroy their life without even realizing they have serious problems.
Excessive generation of both positive and negative emotions requires psychology treatment. In both cases, you are considered to have lost the balance of emotions being unable to process the whole range of emotions in adequate ways. People who stay in negative emotions tend to look for treatment methods and make efforts to recover. People who pursue positive emotions do not consider themselves as having problems, so hardly look for treatment. They may seek treatment when they are put in the situation where they suffer from extreme negative emotions since they cannot pursue positive emotions. When they apply solutions to psychological problems such as consolation or diversion instead of adequate methods of psychology treatment, their condition gets aggravated even further, usually developing into bipolar disorder.
Any attempt or treatment method that adopts providing positive sensory stimulation for the purpose of generating positive emotions that counteract negative emotions will lead to distorted operation of the unconscious and aggravate the psychological condition. Repeatedly producing temporary positive moods through positive sensory stimulation lets the conscious recognize positive moods and cover up the distorted operation of the unconscious. Then, your underlying condition keeps deteriorating without being recognized and properly being addressed, and you may become to pursue only positive moods from sensory stimulation at all costs. In extreme cases, the psychological condition causes serious relational conflicts or even crime cases destroying your life and the life of your loved ones.
People in perception disorder and the disorder of memory of emotions suffer from negative emotions. On the other hand, people in expression disorder pursue only positive emotions and they suffer from excruciating pain and cannot stand it when they cannot achieve positive emotions. The level of positive moods they need to compensate their underlying negative emotions keeps getting higher and higher. They experience extreme stress and extreme positive moods at the same time toward the object of pleasure or addiction.
We must accurately understand the operation of emotions for proper psychology treatment. When people in depression, which is the disorder of memory of emotions, keep activating positive moods through sensory stimulation, they easily transfer to expression disorder and then, symptoms of depression disappear. This can be mistaken for depression having been treated, but it actually has aggravated the pathological condition. Now, they have both the disorder of memory of emotions and expression disorder. Thus, the unconscious generating emotions and the sensory stimulation generating moods are completely different. Psychological problems can be solved by consolation and diversion but psychological disorders must be treated by normalizing the operation of the unconscious.
Emotions are generated and sensed only by yourself. Your emotions have nothing to do with situations and other people. It is unwise and unhealthy to pursue positive moods through sensory stimulation from consolation and diversion. Also, it is not recommended that you provide empathy, advice, consolation, and rapport when you find people around you have psychological disorders. They must treat themselves on their own adopting proper psychology treatment methods. What looks good on the surface may not be necessarily good in a true sense.
We all make donations and get the benefit of donations at some time during life. We tend to relate donations with good deeds collectively but cases of donations can be analyzed differently applying the concept of psychology of donation. Some donations are made purely out of good intentions only with the purpose of helping the recipients but some are taken advantage of by people with selfish purposes.
There are two types of donations : direct donation and indirect donation. Direct donation is made by directly giving what you have to people who are in need. You may provide what is necessary for survival or what can promote self-actualization depending on the recipients' situations and needs. Indirect donation is made by entrusting the donation to organizations that are operated to support people in need for survival or self-actualization.
From the donator's point of view, both direct and indirect donation may look identical, but characteristics of indirect donation can be different among individual cases depending on different manifestations of psychology of donation. Donators must understand the mechanism of psychology of donation and choose appropriate ways to share what you have with people in need. When you make a direct donation, you must find recipients for yourself, make relationships with them, and manage the whole process of donation by yourself. You can freely decide on everything but types and magnitudes of donation are limited.
Many people choose to make donations indirectly for convenience and effectiveness. You can donate to organizations that are operated to help people in need. They have better systems of finding recipients and managing the donation process making the whole process more efficient and effective. They can help people in more diverse ways and in greater magnitudes.
All you provide for donation is received by the recipients in case of direct donation, but in case of indirect donation, some of the donated materials must be used to operate the organizations operated for donations. When donators cannot trust the organizations with what they provide, they may decide to establish an organization for donation themselves. In some cases, the donators lose their good intention and damage the noble cause of helping people in need by focusing more on the operation of the organization itself than on donation itself putting the cart before the horse.
It is important to understand the true meaning of donation. Donation means giving what you have to people in need for survival or self-actualization without any condition or your own selfish purposes. Donation is different from the concept of support, in which you provide what you have to people in need to achieve your own goals. It is only legitimate that organizations that are operated for donation must have their own goals of managing the organization. It is also crucial that organizations for donation must establish the system of transparent operation to prevent distortion and corruption.
Some organizations operated for donation become distorted and focus more and more on their own selfish purposes. As the distortion advances, the whole process of donation operated by the organization may also be distorted. It is recommended that organizations operated for donation be kept under surveillance for transparency and people involved in the work of donation learn about the psychology of donation. Some corrupt workers may develop distorted psychology and use donated materials for their own selfish purposes and act as if they themselves were the donators.
Donation is a good deed that provides people in need with opportunities to pursue happiness, so it is an important component of a healthy society. However, the distorted process of donation caused by distorted psychology of people involved leads general public to develop negative perception toward donation itself. We are not to judge the phenomena based on what is seen on the surface but understand the underlying mechanism and must raise the awareness of the adequate practice of donation.
Empty nest syndrome is defined as 'the grief that parents feel when their children move out of home'. This condition is more common in women then men. Having empty nest syndrome indicates that you have had a nest to take care of and you have taken a good care of the nest with people in family relationships. As you are left in the nest by yourself after your children grow and leave home, you may experience psychological difficulties. You may develop loneliness, depression, and anxiety.
Mothers rather than fathers usually take care of children primarily for at least more than 15 years. When children grow and become independent, they lose objects of maternal love and their major role in the family. The cannot get attention from children any more and get confused about their identity. After all they have done for the family for decades, they feel they are left with nothing. They cannot feel the sense of achievement or present happiness coming from child rearing any more.
Women who have a good relationship with their husband do not experience a severe condition of empty nest syndrome. They can still get attention from and share happiness with the husband even after children leave home. Empty nest syndrome is more prevalent in women who get themselves immersed into child rearing exclusively without having a good marriage relationship. Also, women who were not interested in child rearing much do not experience empty nest syndrome. They may have raised and supported children in all possible ways, but they got themselves immersed into some other things such as career, social life, or other activities than children. The concept of 'nest' does not apply to them since their home has not been their 'nest' in the first place. They may even like children's independence since they can fully get immersed into what they like after children leave home.
Usually, suffering from empty nest syndrome indicates that you worked hard and did your best to take care of your children. However, your relationship with your husband may have been distant or conflictual. You as a couple may not have communicated effectively, or not exchanged attention and response sufficiently. You may have lived as good parents but not as a happy couple. Also, you have not prepared yourself for the time when children will leave home. Now is the time to start building a new life of your own since you still have the whole life in front of you.
To get out of empty nest syndrome and build a new life after children leave home, you yourself must make effort to restore psychological balance. The first important point in your effort is to restore a happy marriage relationship. The couple can spend time together, pay attention to each other, and communicate each other. Then, recovering from empty nest syndrome may turn out much easier than you expect.
Secondly, you can get immersed into some activities you are interested. You may take up and concentrate on study, traveling, hobbies, sports, or career. Restoring marriage relationship must be prioritized over getting immersed into activities of interest, though. Either way, your empty nest syndrome will disappear. It is fine to get immersed into activities of interest keeping your nest as it is, but you must not build another nest claiming that you will find a new life of your own. Then, you will become to neglect your family and home and start seeking fun and pleasure of the moment. You may start generously spending your savings enjoying the sense of satisfaction by activating the psychology of compensation.
Some women develop the desire for getting attention and love as a woman. Then, they may start seeing men other than their husband. They feel they are truly treated as a woman instead of a wife and a mother and feel happy and compensated for all the years of their life they have sacrificed. This phenomenon usually occurs when women had a distant relationship with their husband. Getting attention as a woman does not necessarily involves extramarital affairs. Some women just enjoy casual social gatherings with men and women in a group to get attention as a woman.
Empty nest syndrome may be accompanied by a distorted idea that their life has been sacrificed for family life when they actually had a happy life rearing children as a mother, and that they need some forms of compensation now. When they are carried away by this distorted idea, they may overly get immersed into activities of interest or demand compensation from children psychologically or financially putting the cart before the horse.
You need to accurately understand the root cause of empty nest syndrome and realize that your family life has been a meaningful and righteous one and you did a good job. You may have had conflicts with you husband but built happiness together for all those years. You still have the nest intact and just need to take care of the nest in a new way. It is strongly recommended that you restore a healthy and intimate relationship with your husband. Then, you will realize how great a nest you have been building and supporting. Even if you cannot work out the relationship with your husband, you need to get immersed into activities of interest in the right way so that it promotes the restoration of healthy psychology.
When you accommodate the concept of sacrifice and compensation for your past life, your past life is perceived as a wrong one. When you become dependent on other people or objects of interest instead of finding the right way to build your life in a healthy way, you will enter the vicious cycle of feeling down and seeking attention and compensation. Empty nest syndrome is different from depression. Depression results from accumulated psychological wounds, but empty nest syndrome results from distorted ideas. It is sufficient to have the accurate understanding of the mechanism of the condition in order to overcome empty nest syndrome.
Personality is strictly personal qualities of a person and character is personal qualities that are manifested in relationships with other people. The concept of personality applies in the situation when you exist all by yourself, and the concept of character applies in the situation when you interact with people in relationships. Human beings exist both as an individual and a person in relationships. Personality and character are clearly displayed when problems and conflicts occur and we try to solve problems and resolve conflicts. Personality is displayed when you address your own problems by yourself and character is displayed when you address problems in relationships with other people.
When you exist only as an individual without being connected with other people, you can pursue only your own happiness. You have only the right and not the responsibility since you do not interact psychologically with other people. You can operate only the mind of an individual for freedom and equality. Since you exist all by yourself, you do not give or take anything to or from other people. You may get immersed into positive moods to generate passion and positive feelings to generate love all by yourself. You can apply your personality when problems occur in the process of generating passion and love as an individual.
On the other hand, we also exist as a person in relationships and interact psychologically with other people. Your happiness and others' happiness need to coexist in this case. We need to operate the mind of a person in relationships instead of the mind of an individual. People help each other and give and take things to be happy together maintaining harmony and order.
When problems occur in human relationships, we need to solve problems and resolve conflicts together. We also pursue happiness of being together generating passion and love as a person in relationships. We have the right to claim for freedom and equality, but we also must take responsibilities for harmony and order. Instead of applying personality, we need to apply character to solve problems including the concepts of concession, cooperation, consideration, devotion, and sacrifice.
We exist as an individual before we exist as a person in relationships, and we naturally form personality before we form character. The formation of character must be based on the formation of personality and happiness in relationships must be based on the happiness of an individual. Since personality is applied only for an individual, it is not to be judged to be right or wrong. It just needs to suit individual needs since it does not affect other people in any way. Also, personality should not be applied to solve problems and conflicts in relationships since it is likely to damage harmony and order.
Personality naturally develops as you accumulate unique experiences in life. No two people on the earth share the identical personality. We also naturally form character based on personality as we accumulate experiences in relationships. If you are forced to form personality and character by external intervention such education or training, stress and wounds are generated since they do not accord with your own standards and you may develop psychological problems. Both personality and character should be formed naturally through unique and diverse experiences and trial and error of your own making.
Focusing only on character as a person in relationships disregarding personality as an individual cannot lead you to happiness in a true sense. It is the same as forcing yourself to accord with others' standards disregarding your own standards. On the contrary, focusing only on personality as an individual disregarding character as a person in relationships will lead to never ending conflicts in relationships and unhappiness of yours and others. It is important to maintain balance between applying personality and character depending on circumstances.
We continue to learn things from childhood through old age. We learn things to become successful and happy. When you achieve financial affluence, career goals, or social status, you are considered to be successful. When you achieve stability and happiness in mind, you are considered to be happy. We must think about what and how to learn things to be truly successful and happy.
You need to accumulate knowledge and skills to become successful with financial, social, and relational values of life. When you try to obtain knowledge and skills, you must store information in memory and internalize it to turn it into your ability. As you accumulate more knowledge, skills, and experiences, you have a better chance to become successful.
When you accumulate knowledge and skills to obtain abilities, you learn things from other people who already have knowledge and skills. Knowledge and skills can be transferred from the one who has them to the one who does not have them yet. Then, the learners must internalize what they have learned into their abilities by studying further or accumulating experiences.
Problems may occur when you learn undesirable or distorted things in the process since you will have undesirable or distorted knowledge, skills, and abilities. Then, you will pursue success and values of life in undesirable and distorted ways. For example, if you learn and study knowledge and skills on committing crimes, you will build abilities for committing crimes and pursue success and values of life through committing crimes. Or you may learn and employ knowledge and skills to damage other people destroying harmony and order in the society. Thus, what and how you learn and study knowledge and skills is important to become truly successful.
If you are in a position to teach or guide other people to develop abilities for success, you must consider carefully and make sure that your teaching leads people to pursue success in the righteous and desirable way. When learners accumulate distorted knowledge and skills, it is very hard for them to adopt righteous and desirable knowledge and skills. Learning of any type takes continuous thinking, recognizing, and experiencing and no one can readily realize that what they have thought and recognized is wrong. Unlearning and correcting what has already been learned is much more difficult than learning new things without any basis.
When you achieve success with distorted knowledge and skills, many people will want to learn your knowledge and skills. Then, you can easily disseminate distorted knowledge and skills to many people accelerating the collapse of individuals and the society. Moreover, people with distorted knowledge and skills hardly realize or admit that their knowledge and skills are wrong since they are their abilities and values of life. It takes a much shorter time to accumulate and transfer distorted knowledge and skills to the next generation than to unlearn and correct them. We all know that learning is important in pursuing success, but it is less known that what and how to learn for future success is crucial.
Another component of learning in life is learning to become happy. Differently from learning to become successful in life, learning to become happy requires only unique personal experiences of emotions, and you cannot learn to become happy at all through accumulating knowledge and skills other people transfer to you. Emotions can be formed and sensed only by yourself and learning all the knowledge and skills known to humanity on human emotions cannot form or generate your emotions.
We learn about our emotions only through experiencing psychological interactions with other people in relationships. What you think and feel in psychological interactions is stored in your memory and with it, you gradually form your own unique standards of positive or negative emotions and standards of happiness. Emotions, differently from knowledge and skills for success, cannot be taught or transferred by other people who already have them. It is only you yourself who can teach yourself on what and how to feel through psychological interactions in relationships.
When you learn about emotions and happiness in mind in the same way you learn knowledge and skills for success, your emotions necessarily become distorted since they are not what you actually feel. Distorted emotions are the main cause of destroying human relationships. When you learn how to promote positive emotions, how to become happy in relationships, and so on as knowledge and skills rather than through first-hand experiences, they are stored as factual information rather than as emotions in your memory. You may develop self-conviction that your knowledge about emotions is your emotions, and reinforce the distorted emotional condition being confused about what happiness is. You may even attempt to teach what happiness is as if you would transfer knowledge and skills to other people and promote distorted emotions here and there.
When you learn about emotions as a type of knowledge education, you may experience the discrepancy between what you think and what you feel and develop psychological problems. When you learn about knowledge and skills for success, what and how to learn is important, but when you learn about emotions for happiness in mind, you don't have 'what' and 'how' of learning to start with. Emotions are supposed to be operated and recognized only within yourself, and they are not something to be taught or transferred from outside.
One thing to be noted in developing your emotions for happiness in mind is that you need to at least understand how human mind and psychology operate. You need to know how to restore healthy psychology when you have stress and wounds in mind, which is inevitable in anyone's life. Also, you need to apply the operational mechanism of human mind and psychology in your daily life.
With respect to learning to be happy, you should learn through experiencing and feeling based on accurate knowledge on the operation mechanism of mind and psychology. It is to avoid developing distorted self-conviction and being carried away by emotions out of ignorance.
In the saying 'Failure is the stepping stone to success', success means 'achieving the goal' and failure means 'giving up the goal'. It must be noted that failure is not 'not achieving the goal' but 'giving up the goal when you have not achieved the goal'. 'The stepping stone' can be interpreted as two interchangeable concepts. One is building success based on failure and the other is not giving up in the process of building success. The core concept is 'not giving up' in both interpretations.
Then, how would the saying 'Failure is the stepping stone to success' be applied in real life situations? First of all, it is meaningless to advise people who have already given up making efforts by saying, 'Failure is the stepping stone to success.' They would not accept the advice or show any interest. The saying can only be applied to people who have failed to achieve their goal but have not given up yet and are still making efforts.
Your life cannot be judged for success or failure at some point in the middle of life since life covers the whole period from birth till death, and you may experience both success and failure repeatedly in the course of your life. Whether your life is success or failure can be determined only at the very last moment of your life. For most people, they are still in the process of pursuing success experiencing both successful and unsuccessful moments. If you have lived making efforts to achieve goals and have not given up, you are considered to have lived a successful life so far.
You may set many goals as you proceed in life. Each goal can be achieved or failed. Failure in one goal in life does not mean that your whole life is failure. You can always try again or set another goal and make efforts. The same logic applies to success. Achieving one goal in life does not mean that your whole life is success. You must come up with another goal as soon as you achieve one goal. A case of success and a case of failure must be treated identically and cannot be taken as the indicator for success or failure of your whole life since you still have many years left to be lived. When you conclude that your life is failure only referring to one case of failure, you may give up and cannot take advantage of the experience of failure to achieve the next goal.
The saying, 'failure is the stepping stone to success' means we can learn through failure. It is also similar to the concept of trial and error. Trial and error is the concept that includes the whole process of making efforts, experiencing failure, and achieving the goal. In this sense, failure is part of success. We learn how to overcome difficulties and not make the same mistakes again through trial and error.
Since learning is made only through direct experiences, it builds unique strategies and methods that belong only to you. If you have not achieved your goal, it indicates that you have not fully developed strategies and metnods for success and it does not mean that you have failed in life. All throughout the lifetime, we are supposed to make efforts for another goal when we have failed in one goal.
Failure is a driving force for success for people who make efforts for success. However, if you keep failing no matter how hard you try, you can check for the following mistakes.
- You have only very short term goals, which are right in front of you.
- You try to avoid disappointment by not admitting your failure.
- You blame other people or the environment for your failure
- You try to take advantage of other people to achieve your goal.
- You are dependent on other people.
The process of self-checking is also a part of trial and error. You will repeat only failure if you try to take only success without analyzing failure. You must never give up and always reflect upon your past ideas and actions. Also, you cannot achieve success in a true sense when you blame, depend upon, or take advantage of others. Success employing such distorted methods will have destructive influence on yourself, other people, and the society.
We always pursue success and experience failure within human relationships. You may feel difficulties when you recognize that you are falling behind compared with other people and you have not achieved as much as other people. It is crucial to set a clear goal of your own making, and make sure what role you want to serve in the society to maintain healthy psychology in the process of pursuing success.
When you accurately understand the concept of 'Failure is the stepping stone to success', you can not only reflect upon yourself but also inform other people of the concept. Directly helping other people when they repeat failure can cause them to stay in failure by developing dependency. You can simply let them know about the concept of trial and error and the possibility of success, and encourage them to have faith and hope in themselves.
When you succeed from only one try or experience only success in a row, you may not learn how to overcome difficulties and maneuver your life through wind and waves. True happiness can be achieved when you experience success after failure in the process of trial and error. Many people are looking for only success and do not want to experience failure, but success can be achieved only with involving failure and only by your own will power and effort.
Some people say that you are as unhappy as you have. It can be interpreted that you should not have too much in order to be happy. To accurately understand the relationship between 'having' and 'being happy', we must first understand what it means to 'have'. You can 'have' either materials or knowledge and experiences. Materials can be possessed by you and then transferred to other people, but knowledge and experiences uniquely belong to you and cannot be transferred to others.
Firstly, if you become unhappy as you have more materials, it is because you become nervous and anxious for keeping what you already have or grow excessive desire to have even more, which may lead you to become unhappy. You may also feel unhappy when you see people who have more than you. When you have all the above conditions, you are considered to be enslaved by materials. Of course, people who do not have much can become enslaved by materials when they become nervous and anxious about having more and keeping what they already have.
Having or not having materials does not determine happiness or unhappiness. It is rather your ideas and attitudes about 'having' that determines happiness or unhappiness. People who have a lot can be happy when they are not obsessed or enslaved by materials. They will make good use of what they have for themselves and other people promoting happiness everywhere. Materials cannot be judged as negative or positive in and of themselves, but it is people's mind set and behaviors that make materials look positive or negative. We all must reflect on how to make use of what we have to become happy in a true sense. Without accurately understanding what you can do with what you have in a negative of positive way, you will become unhappy no matter how much materials you have.
Secondly, you can have knowledge and experiences with which you can be happy or unhappy. Your knowledge and experiences are uniquely yours and cannot be transferred to other people as materials can. Your knowledge and experiences can be connected with negative or positive emotions inside you. When they are connected with negative emotions such as stress and wounds causing psychological suffering at present, you will become as unhappy as you have. However, you can change your emotions to positive ones and you can become happy with the identical knowledge and emotions. Then, you will actually become as happy as you have.
With respect to materials, you can become as happy as you have by establishing right ideas and attitudes toward keeping and making use of materials. With respect to knowledge and experiences, you can become as happy as you have by changing negative emotions connected with them into positive ones. For materials, you may gain some and lose some in the course of life, but you can still be happy with the right ideas and attitudes regardless of how much you have. For knowledge and experiences, the more stress and wounds you have, the more happiness you can achieve by changing all the stress and wounds into positive emotions. You are the only person who can decide what emotions you want to connect with them. For both materials and knowledge and experiences, you yourself can and must decide whether to make use of what you have for happiness or unhappiness. You can be as unhappy as you have or as happy as you have depending on your ideas, attitudes, and emotions.
We try to find ways to make our loved ones happy. Our own happiness is important but we also hope for happiness of our spouse, parents, children, and friends. To achieve happiness of ours and our loved ones, we must first accurately understand the concept of happiness. Although happiness is a subjective emotional experience, we need to understand about the standard of happiness in order to prevent problems and achieve happiness in a true sense.
Most people live together with other people in human relationships, so the standard of happiness must accord with the happiness in human relationships. When you live only as an individual without any human relationship, you can be happy with your own comfort and pleasure regardless of other people. However, humans are designed to pursue happiness in relationships once they have stability and composure as an individual. That is why you are naturally inclined to help strangers in need. Thus, the basis of happiness in relationships is stability and composure as an individual.
When you interact with people psychologically in relationships, you cannot but generate stress and psychological wounds. When problems that caused stress and wounds are solved and your psychological balance is restored, you may feel moved and touched. The greater stress and wounds, the more you feel moved and touched when the issue is resolved. You feel happy for restoring stability and composure after solving the problem. This feeling of happiness is quite complex and much more than the simple combination of a wide range of emotions such as joy, pleasure, sorrow, and anger. After feeling moved, you may come back to the state of stability and composure. Happiness is the whole process of being stable, experiencing difficulties, solving problems, feelings moved, and being stable again. You can help your loved ones become happy by letting them experience the whole process.
Specifically, there are two ways to make efforts to make your counterparty happy. One is to completely comply with the counterparty's standard of happiness. You may provide everything so that the counterparty can get out of difficulties and achieve stability and composure. Since everyone has different standards for happiness, you may need to adopt different strategies for everyone you are trying to help. The other way is for you to become a happy person. When you have happiness ability by taking care of your stress and wounds, feeling moved and touched, and restoring stability and composure on your own regardless of interactions with other people, people around you will naturally feel happy just to be with you. These are the only two ways to help other people become happy.
When you adopt the first strategy and try to comply with the counterparty' standard of happiness, you must make efforts to sacrifice yourself. On the other hand, when you have happiness ability, people around you will automatically feel happy without any effort on your part. In the latter case, your own happiness affects people around you in a positive way to make them feel happy.
Many people mistake stability, composure, and comfort for happiness. These are the conditions with the absence of stress and wounds rather than happiness. Also, when you have to constantly stay in the state of stress and wounds without overcoming them, you cannot restore stability and composure. When you cannot experience feeling moved in the process of solving the problem, you may stay in stress and wounds and then in stability and composure, which does not count as happiness in a true sense, either.
There are three types of people who live in unhappiness. The first type is people who blame themselves, the second people who blame other people, and the third people who are dependent on people who alleviate stress and wounds for them. In the first case, only they themselves suffer from psychological difficulties. Other people usually do not recognize their difficulties. Secondly, people who blame others make other people unhappy by negatively affecting them. When the second type of people develop severe condition, they may feel comfort and pleasure by blaming and damaging other people. The third type of people depend on other people to solve their own problems. It cannot work and only causes psychological difficulties on both parties since your psychological problems cannot be solved by other people. No one can become happy by blaming self or others or by depending on others for their psychological problems. To become happy in relationships, you must make efforts for your own happiness and build the ability to overcome stress and wounds, feel moved and touched, and restore stability and composure.
People want to make other people happy in relationships since they themselves feel happy when they are with happy people. However, it is only yourself who can make you happy and this mechanism applies to everyone. You can build your own happiness ability and wait for your loved ones to build their happiness ability. Your loved ones may see you become a happy person and choose to become happy people themselves.
When you have happiness ability and live happily, you do not consciously recognize that you are happy. Since you are mostly in the state of stability and composure, you do not express your being happy outwardly. On the contrary, people who consciously feel and express their being happy are considered to be having fun and pleasure instead of having stability and composure. These days, fun and pleasure appear to be mistaken for happiness by many people.
When you have happiness ability, you can easily address stress and wounds and maintain stability and composure on your own. On the other hand, when you have great stress and wounds but cannot adequately address them inside you, you may constantly seek positive moods from positive sensory stimulation to compensate for the negative moods. The more fun and pleasure you pursue and consciously recognize, the more stress and wounds you are considered to have. These people may think that happiness comes with excitement and consider people who have happiness ability as boring people. They may be having fun as individuals but people around them are likely to suffer from damage inflicted by these selfish pleasure seekers.
First, you must accurately understand the concept of work life to be able to know how to be happy and successful in work life. Without accurate understanding, you may not be able to address the root cause of problems and may continue to have problems or even aggravate the situation.
There can be two essential components to consider for work life. One is the financial component and the other is the component of the pursuit of values. Most of us work to earn a living and to pursue values of life. If you think that you are happy and successful in work life, it means that you are paid enough or you are pursuing certain values or both.
Some people focus more on financial component and others more on the component of the pursuit of values. Of course, you may change your focus as you progress at work. Whichever your focus is, you need to build experience and knowledge to achieve more at work in your future. Experience and knowledge may vary depending on what you and your employer pursue at work.
As you build and accumulate new knowledge and experience at work, you necessarily experience stress. When you have a clear goal regarding either of the two components, you can easily heal stress each time it occurs. When you do not, your stress may continue and be accumulated. You may feel that you have problems of relationships, work environment, or work itself, but the root cause is the psychological condition in which you cannot heal stress generated from work.
One important aspect of your perception of problems at work is relationships at the work place. People you meet at work pursue their own goals of financial achievement or pursuit of life values. It must be clearly understood that you do not interact with them to share emotions or personal happiness. You are interacting with people at work for practical purposes, which may vary for every individual. You should not get your emotions involved in relationships at work, be it positive or negative. You may lose your goals at work and develop psychological problems when you are confused between work relationships and personal relationships.
When you aim for financial achievement at work but feel that you are seriously underpaid for your work, you necessarily develop problems since your major goal for working cannot be achieved. In such cases, you must find some ways to raise your pay such as negotiating for a raise or persuading the employer regarding the value of your work. Some people may decide to keep the job thinking that the pay supports and promotes happiness of family and this idea may provide the basis for healing.
When you feel that you are treated unfairly at work and decide to make efforts to change the situation, you are considered to be pursuing the value of equality at the work place instead of financial achievement. People may think that you are not fit to stay at the work place since you do not like the current situation, but you are actually pursuing your value at work, which is to change the work environment. However, problems may occur when your pursuit of value contradicts the pursuit of value of other people at your work place.
Some people work for both the financial achievement and the pursuit of values of life simultaneously. Then, it is more likely to cause problems since meeting both goals is less feasible, and then, more stress may be generated. On the other hand, when you work for only one component of the two, you are likely to get less stress and the other is likely to follow as you progress. Therefore, it is recommended that you aim for achievement in only one component.
Above all, perceiving human relationships at work as relationships for practical purposes is the most important aspect from the perspective of psychology. This perception will let you focus on achieving your goal at work without accumulating stress and protect you from unnecessary conflicts and difficulties.
There are two contradictory sayings : 'knowledge is power' and 'ignorance is bliss'. Both knowledge and ignorance can be beneficial or detrimental depending on circumstances. Knowledge is obtained by accumulating and internalizing information and experiences. When you have accumulated and internalized knowledge inside you, whether your knowledge is an accurate one or a distorted one is crucial. Having accurate knowledge contributes to promoting happiness in life for yourself and for people around you. On the other hand, having distorted knowledge negatively affects not only your life but also lives of people around you.
The above argument also applies to understanding the operational mechanism of human mind and psychology. Understanding in distorted ways how emotions work in yourself and other people negatively affects your life as much as distorted knowledge about other matters does. When you accurately understand how your mind operates and how stress and psychological wounds develop, you can prevent and solve problems related with not only your own psychology but also human relationships. Distorted knowledge on mind and psychology may aggravate your psychological conditions and relationships with people as time passes or as you take wrong measures. Accurate knowledge on mind and psychology can be power, with which you can build happiness in life.
When we believe and implement the saying, 'knowledge is power', it is essential to build accurate knowledge instead of distorted knowledge. Distorted knowledge will lead you to a distorted life and 'ignorance may actually be bliss' if your knowledge is a distorted one. It is better not to know at all than having distorted knowledge. Not having either accurate or distorted knowledge may neither promote nor destroy happiness in life of yours and other people's. People who have distorted knowledge may destroy not only their life but also lives of many innocent and ignorant people. They may even denounce people who have accurate knowledge being falsely convinced that only their knowledge is an accurate one. When you yourself have accurate knowledge, you will not be affected by people who disseminate distorted knowledge and will build happiness in life on your own.
When you do not experience stress and psychological wounds, it may be a case of the saying, 'ignorance is bliss'. Then, you have neither knowledge nor power, and you have neither happiness nor unhappiness. Such a psychological condition is almost impossible in most people who live in human relationships, but it may be possible when you live all by yourself in a deep forest. You don't have to think, feel, or suffer, and have no ability to prevent or solve diverse problems in life.
When humans experience difficulties in life, they develop the desire for understanding and overcoming difficulties and make efforts to have knowledge and correct the situation. You may have thought that 'ignorance is bliss' so far, but once you experience difficulties, you may change to think that 'knowledge is power'. When you build accurate knowledge and make efforts to correct the situation and build happiness, you can contribute to happiness of yours and other people's.
On the other hand, when you decide to live without difficulties including stress and psychological wounds, you may think that 'ignorance is bliss'. The only way to achieve such a life style is to live all by yourself without forming any human relationship. You don't have to know anything about human mind and psychology, since all you need is survival as a biological human being. If you decide to go to a desert island and live all by yourself, you must erase all you memories about past human relationships since your knowledge and experiences that were accumulated and internalized based on human relationships makes it impossible for you to live as a person without any human relationship.
When you believe that 'ignorance is bliss' and act accordingly still living in human relationships, it is highly likely that you will be taken advantage of by other people without even realizing it and live an unhappy life. The saying, 'knowledge is power' is more appropriate and valuable than the saying, 'ignorance is bliss' in order to build happiness in life, but we must always be vigilant on whether our knowledge is an accurate one or a distorted one.
Many people worry about their future without taking care of the present psychological conditions. When you have an unstable and unbalanced psychological condition at present, it is unlikely that you will become happy in the future. You need to stabilize your present psychology in order to have a positive perspective on the future and do the right things to achieve future happiness. Unhealthy psychology at present necessarily affects you future negatively.
First, you must diagnose for your psychological condition to decide whether you have healthy psychology or not. If you have healthy psychology, you can just proceed with making efforts for your future happiness maintaining good relationships with people around you. If it is judged that your psychology is not healthy enough at present, you must first stabilize your psychology before you can pursue future happiness.
Here, addressing psychological problems and psychological disorders must be approached differently. When you have psychological problems, you yourself can adopt different activities for healing and diversion and recover on your own. When you have psychological disorders, you need professional help to adjust psychology by activating the operation of the unconscious. When you proceed without knowing that you have psychological problems or simply ignore them, they get aggravated as time passes and develop into psychological disorders. Psychological disorders cause your relationships to be destroyed and your effort for future happiness to fail.
When you have psychological problems, you must build the healing system to restore and maintain healthy psychology, and when you have psychological disorders, you must treat psychological disorders first and then build the healing system. When you treat psychological disorders and internalize the healing system, you can overcome any predicament you may encounter in the future and achieve happiness in life.
We all live as a person in relationships with other people rather than as an absolute individual all by ourselves. Maintaining good relationships with other people is directly connected with your happiness in life. When you do not treat psychological disorders and do not have the healing system of psychology, not only yourself but also people around you must live in unhappiness. Likewise, when people around you have psychological problems or psychological disorders, both you and the people around you necessarily become unhappy. The first step is to treat your psychological disorders and build the healing system inside you. Then, you may have positive influences on others, and may not be negatively affected by people with psychological problems and disorders.
Happiness in life consists of two components. One is happiness achieved in human relationships that gives meanings to your life, and the other is happiness achieved through achievements that gives values to your life. Once you build healthy psychology, you may decide on your current relationships. You may want to continue or sever the relationship, or even wait for your counterparties to treat and heal their psychology. In any case, your future happiness will not be affected by people around you since you already have happiness ability established inside you.
Achievements can be pursued by setting goals and making efforts with the will power. Making efforts does not guarantee success, but when you have the healing system of psychology inside yourself, you will not despair or give up, but gather up the will power and continue with your efforts raising the probability for success in a great deal.
Some people may be lucky enough to achieve worldly success without the healing system of psychology. However, those people are highly likely to collapse at a certain point in the near future. Future happiness is determined by the present psychological condition and by whether you have the healing system of psychology or not. Making efforts for happiness with meanings and values without the healing system of psychology can be compared to building a house of cards.
We must always prepare for the future since the future will become the present in some time. You must treat your psychological disorders and build the healing system of psychology to become happy in the future with meanings and values of life. Many people mistake their psychological problems for problems of relationships and social achievements. The truth is that relational problems and problems in your career are only the results of your psychological problems. Addressing the root cause of problems by stabilizing your psychology will guarantee your future happiness no matter what happens in the course, and even failure will not be able to stop you from pursing future happiness with healthy psychology.
