DREAM FULFILLMENT CAN CURE CANCER

Those who have been to the Belgian capital must have seen this curious inscription. It is often hung in local cafes and bars. The inscription is indeed unusual: “The 11th commandment: live for your own pleasure!” Is it a slick sales pitch designed to get visitors to spend more money, or a really important reminder, so important that it can be compared to the ten commandments of Christ?

Before answering this question, let me tell you about one interesting scientific fact.

German psychologists working with children with the last stage of cancer (at this stage the disease is considered hopeless) decided to conduct an unusual experiment: to fulfill the child's innermost desire and see how the fulfillment of the dream will affect the well-being of little patients. The experiment involved several seriously ill children doomed to a quick death. What did the children want?

A four-year-old girl living in the country wanted to ride a tram. An eleven-year-old boy dreamed of riding a horse, and a thirteen-year-old girl dreamed of becoming a princess: that she had servants, and that her hands were kissed like a princess.

Psychologists rented a tram and drove the little girl around the city for two hours. They showed her interesting sights, gave her tea with sweets ... They found a pair of horses for the boy and his father - and the father and son galloped along the sea ... The most difficult desire was the transformation of the patient into a princess. But the doctors found a way out: they rented an old castle, rented beautiful old clothes. The doctors dressed up as courtiers, and the girl was dressed in a princess dress. The little princess walked through the halls, everyone served her and, as she dreamed, kissed her hands.

The subsequent results of the medical examination were simply amazing. In one child, the cancer completely disappeared; in others, the disease either subsided, or at least stopped!

This experiment confirmed the truth that ancient doctors knew, but for some reason modern doctors often forget: our emotions have the strongest and most direct impact on our well-being and health. Positive emotions and good thoughts can not only bring joy and a sense of happiness, but also defeat the most terrible disease. That is why the phrase "live to your heart's content" is not a joke at all, but the most important truth. The truth, which should not just be learned, but memorized as “Our Father” to everyone.

SCHOOLS AND UNIVERSITIES DO NOT GIVE WISDOM

“Caliph Abdurakhman had fourteen happy days in his life,” Leo Tolstoy lamented in his diary, “but I probably didn’t have so many. And all because I have never lived - I don’t know how to live - for myself, for the soul, but I live for show, for people. Goethe, a man who experienced many seemingly happy novels, adventures and events, also claimed that in his entire long life he was happy for only a few moments. If you study diaries or biographies famous people, you can see that even people endowed with great intelligence and talent are rarely happy. Why did it happen?

It would seem that the more educated a person is, the more sources of happiness should be open to him. An, no! Everything is just the opposite, and the proverb is right, stating that "in much wisdom there is much sorrow." How easier mechanism the more reliable it works. By the same principle, the less a person knows, the better he sleeps. And yet - more often laughs and rejoices more. Listen to some professor's reflections on life and, most likely, your optimism will decrease. And talk about the same with a simple peasant and - look, it turns out that not everything is so bad and you can live!

Apparently, Confucius was right when he said that the truly wise is not the one who knows a lot, but the one who knows the necessary. What is necessary? Knowing why to live and how. Neither schools nor universities teach this. This person learns on his own.

However, it cannot be said that the peasants are much happier than the "sad" professors. Both those and others are almost equally "what they have, they do not store, having lost, they cry."

And here's another weird thing. Soviet linguists in the 1930s discovered that in Russian the number of words with a negative connotation was three times higher than the number of positive ones. Not a single serious theory explaining this fact, except perhaps the one that the life of the Russian people has always supposedly been hard, did not sound then. And only a recent discovery made it possible to answer why happy people are so rare and why the vocabulary of abusive and other negative words in the Russian language exceeds the volume of positive ones.

What is this discovery?

WHY IN RUSSIA ARE MORE MORE THAN JOY?

It is known that the human brain consists of two hemispheres - right and left. And each of them is responsible, as it turned out, for directly opposite emotions. The left, "logical", endows a person with joy, confidence, calmness, cheerfulness, hope and optimism. The right, “emotional”, on the contrary, makes you feel more sad, worried, angry and disappointed.

In the experiment, people were seated in front of a monitor screen and shown different pictures - pleasant and disgusting. At this time, with the help of special sensors, brain signals were read. Sensors showed that scary and other unpleasant pictures aroused - in some more strongly, in others weaker - the right hemisphere, while only the left hemisphere reacted to pleasant ones.

If both hemispheres of the brain were developed equally, then there would be just the same amount per person - both joys and sorrows. However, this does not happen: one hemisphere always works more actively than the other. And this means that the character of a person depends on which hemisphere of the brain plays the “first violin” in him.

Left hemisphere people, as a rule, endure the blows of fate, right hemisphere people, on the contrary, become discouraged by the slightest trifle. And about people, and about health, and about fate, right-hemispheric people complain much more often than left-hemispheric ones. Therefore, they live a little, and get sick a lot, and achieve much more modest results in life than they could.

Knowing how a person reacts to a problem can predict his future. Moreover, this can be done even in relation to newly born babies. “In one experiment,” says Russian endocrinologist Natalya Lints, “researchers took an encephalogram from 10-month-old babies who were breastfeeding. Then the feeding was interrupted. Some shouted indignantly, others showed Olympian calm. At the same time, scientists recorded the biocurrents of the brain, built diagrams of its activity and predicted which of the children would grow up to be an optimist and which a pessimist.”

According to Natalia Lints, “people with a dominant left hemisphere are only 30 percent, that is, about two billion. The rest, alas, are more sad than happy. The residents of Russia, Belarus and Ukraine are also saddened, mainly. These are right hemispheric peoples. But the residents Western Europe and the Americas are predominantly left-brained.

“And the person that I have become sadly greets the person that I could be,” the German poet Friedrich Goebbel once admitted. All poets are, by definition, right-brained. That is why sad poems are commonplace in literature, while joyful ones are rare.

Now, reader, do you understand why there are fewer positive words in Russian than negative ones, and why there is more sadness than joy in the eyes of oncoming passers-by?

WHAT DOES ULCERS CAUSE?

"Man is born for happiness, like a bird for flight." This phrase Korolenko is known, probably, to many. These are the words of an optimist. And here is the judgment of a pessimist - the poet Georgy Ivanov, who turned the catchphrase into a drinking witticism: "A man is born for happiness, like a bird for pate." If we conditionally divide all of humanity into optimists and pessimists, then for one supporter of Korolenko there will be three like-minded Ivanovs. And this "mathematics" has a scientific explanation.

According to scientists, it is much more difficult to stimulate positive emotions than negative ones. The human brain, as it turns out, "by default", due to evolutionary features of development, is tuned to receive "external danger". And this means that we notice the bad faster than the good, and, hoping for the best, expect the worst. And in anticipation of this, we burn a lot of vital energy, spending it on useless, "irrational" fears, anxiety and excitement. And, as a result, we destroy our own health.

Here is one interesting fact. In the 60s of the last century, American doctors recommended that people suffering from peptic ulcers avoid spicy foods. Sellers of tomatoes, from which most hot sauces are prepared, who suffered losses because of this, decided to apply to the Ministry Agriculture with a request to find out whether there is in fact a link between the consumption of hot sauces and the incidence of ulcers. The ministry conducted a massive study that lasted several years and finally published a report. The essence of the conclusions of scientists was concluded in a single line that said: "Ulcers and other gastrointestinal diseases do not arise from what we eat, but from what gnaws at us."

Early old age, hypertension, ulcers, strokes, heart attacks, cancer - all this is only a small part of those "side effects" that sad, restless, cowardly and evil thoughts leave behind, which in a real, physical way poison our body every day and every hour. And vice versa, kind, joyful, optimistic thoughts can not only improve health, but also defeat any ailment.

As Emerson said, "A man is what he thinks about all day long." It is thoughts that make us healthy or sick, happy or unfortunate, winners or losers. Yuri Andreev in the book "Three Whales of Health" cites the story of the famous Soviet psychiatrist, Doctor of Medical Sciences, Professor A.I. Belkin:

“Several years ago, during our first trip to the United States, we visited one of the clinics where psychological methods are used to treat cancer patients. We frankly admitted to our colleagues that we do not believe in the effectiveness of this method, but we will change our mind if we see a change in the dynamics of cancer. And we were given this opportunity. Recently, we again visited this clinic and made sure that patients who two years ago, according to doctors, had only a few months or even weeks to live, now looked completely healthy. Analyzes showed that malignant tumors and metastases disappeared from them. But these patients have tried everything before traditional methods treatment: radiation and chemical therapy, surgical interventions, but it was not possible to stop the development of the disease. Correction of the psyche made it possible to defeat the disease.

“Correction of the psyche” is, simply put, changing thoughts from negative to positive.

WHAT IS LAUGHTER USEFUL?

What does he say modern science about "laughter therapy"? Here is a selection of small excerpts and facts from popular science magazines on this topic. So laughter...

…REDUCES PRESSURE AND RELIEVES HEADACHES

The American magazine Newsweek published the scientific findings of American psychologists that laughter can lower blood pressure: when we laugh, blood vessels dilate, blood pressure drops by 10-20 millimeters of mercury. Laughter is also an excellent medicine for relieving headaches, preventing heart attacks and strokes. Laughter also speeds up recovery from colds and other infectious diseases.

…RELIEVES FROM THROAT SOLUTIONS AND HEAVY IN THE STOMACH

"Be cheerful if you want to get well," says Dr. Felix Braemon, a well-known French doctor, in a French medical journal. Laughter, he says, is an excellent remedy for the liver and even for gout. Laughter is especially healing in chest diseases, as it makes the air rush from the chest to the upper extremities of the bronchi and clean their mucous walls with its pressure. Felix Bramon advises to resort to reading ridiculous writings as a hygienic remedy and states that laughter is especially useful in the afternoon, promoting digestion.

…IMPROVES YOUR FIGURE AND IMPROVES WORKOUT EFFICIENCY

“According to William Fry, 27 seconds of laughter is equivalent to 3 minutes of rowing in terms of cardiovascular effects - that is, it performs the same function as cardio training. And a minute of sincere laughter brings as many health benefits as a 40-minute run!

A report by Matej Baczowski, presented at the European Congress on obesity, says that 10 minutes of genuine laughter can burn the equivalent of a medium-sized chocolate bar in calories.

“Laughter improves the effectiveness of training. As the American psychologist Henry Schwartz established, it is pointless to go in for sports in a depressed state - there will not be a big effect anyway. But if a person is in a good mood and often laughs (of course, not during training, but before it or during breaks), a similar load will noticeably improve both well-being and figure.

…HELPS YOU HAVE HEALTHIER CHILDREN

“According to the journal of the American Psychological Association Health Psychology, women who look at life with optimism give birth to healthier children, sleep better and stay slim longer. This conclusion was made on the basis of surveys conducted among women aged 20 to 46 years from various walks of life ...

Another study showed that the babies of cheerful mothers are much less likely to get SARS and flu.”

…HELPS YOU MAKE PROBLEMS EASIER AND MORE GENEROUS

“As American scientists have established, there is a relationship between the activity of the facial muscles and the blood supply to the brain. When you laugh or at least smile, blood flow to the brain increases, it receives more oxygen, which has a positive effect on emotional state. Studies have shown that a person who laughs often solves all problems easily, is distinguished by generosity and willingness to help, as well as a rare ability to love.”

…REDUCES NERVOUS EXCITABILITY AND RELIEVES FEAR

“Laughter can be considered as a special way of breathing, in which the inhalation is prolonged and becomes deeper, and the exhalation, on the contrary, is shortened, but at the same time the intensity is such that the lungs are completely freed from air. As a result of this method of breathing, in comparison with a calm state, gas exchange is accelerated by three to four times, which, in turn, improves the blood supply to organs and tissues. In a word, laughter for the body is like a walk in the forest or an oxygen cocktail.

AT ordinary life many of us breathe incorrectly: with an open mouth and without pauses. Such breathing is too shallow (as if it is scary to take a deep breath), and leads to respiratory alkalosis (an increase in the content of alkalis in the blood and tissues of the body), which causes neuromuscular hyperexcitability. According to the observations of the French physician Henry Rubinstein, this condition is typical for indecisive, timid people who are tormented by all sorts of fears and phobias. Breathing during laughter, Rubinstein believes, is good, correct, it helps to fight alkalosis, and therefore, to overcome the feeling of fear.

…PROTECTS THE HEART AND VESSELS

“Michael Miller, director of the Center for Preventive Cardiology at the University of Maryland (USA), conducted an interesting study. It involved 150 people who had a heart attack or coronary bypass surgery, and 150 healthy people. Participants took a simple test with the most ordinary questions about how they would behave if, for example: “the waiter spills coffee on you”, “they step on your foot in transport”, “the handle of the briefcase breaks”, and so on. It turned out that the "cores" mostly reacted sullenly or hostilely, and healthy ones - more often with humor.

The scientist concluded that anger, stress cause a violation of the endothelium - the protective inner lining of blood vessels. This leads to the accumulation of cholesterol on the walls of the coronary arteries and leads to infarction and ischemia.

Experts from the same university found that laughter has a very beneficial effect on blood vessels: in volunteers who watched a “serious” film, blood flow was inhibited by 35%, and when watching a comedy, on the contrary, blood was accelerated by 22%.

According to Michael Miller, laughter can be safely added to the list of factors contributing to the preservation of a healthy heart: "The recommendations of doctors should sound like this: exercise, low-fat foods and laughter several times a day."

…RELIEVES STRESS

“At the University of California Medical Center, subjects were subjected to forced hilarity caused by comedy broadcasts. While the first group was laughing, the second (control group) sat quietly, not hearing the laughter of their comrades. The doctors determined (from blood samples taken before, after, and during the study) that the reaction to humor triggered physiological processes similar to those that occur in athletes. In the laughter group, there was a decrease in the levels of stress hormones - cortisol and adrenaline, which allows the body's immune systems to work more efficiently. So, in the study, an increase in the number of T-lymphocytes fighting viruses was found. In other words, the immune system's response to laughter is just the opposite of the response to stress."

… STIMULATES THE IMMUNE SYSTEM

“Interesting data was obtained by Margaret Stuber from the University of Los Angeles. A group of children were asked to keep their hands in cold water (about 10°C) for as long as they could. Under normal conditions, they withstood 87 seconds at the most, and when watching a comedy - 125. Interestingly, in laughing children, the pulse, blood pressure and respiratory rate practically did not change. All this led to the conclusion: laughter has a stimulating effect on the immune system and protects the child's body from stress ... "

…ACTS LIKE A SUPPLEMENTARY DOSE OF VITAMIN C AND DESTROY PRECANCER CELLS

According to the Heidelberg Society for Biological Cancer Defense, laughter stimulates digestion and sleep, reduces or completely eliminates back pain, alleviates asthma attacks, and even restores potency. One minute of laughter replaces 45 minutes of relaxation training and acts as an additional dose of vitamin C. Laughter therapy can also be successfully used to prevent cancer - as a result of intensive laughter therapy, the immune system begins to actively destroy precancerous cells.

Alexander Kazakevich. Chapter from the book “Inspirational book. How to live"

11TH COMMANDMENT: LIVE YOUR PLEASURE!

"Do not hurry. Don't worry. You have visited this world for a brief moment, so stop often to breathe in the scent of roses.

Walter Hagen, American psychologist

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Everything in front of us and behind us are small things compared to what is inside us.
Ralph Emerson, American philosopher

There are many wise books in the world in which smart people talk about how to become happy, successful and rich. They explain in detail, reasoned and convincingly what and how to do in order to achieve what you want. And everything would be great, if not for one minus. The problem is that these books, as they say, do not work.
You can read a hundred or a thousand of these books and learn by heart all the laws of success and happiness, but knowing is not the same as being able to. Knowing doesn't mean doing. Because the most important thing cannot be taught. This can only be learned. Knowledge is not received - it is taken. And for a person to take them, he must be interested. No wonder they said in the old days: “A mediocre teacher tells, a good one explains, an excellent one shows, and a great one inspires.” You can say and explain anything, but if it does not touch the heart, then everything loses its meaning.
Anatole France once said: “In each of us, the artist sleeps, who wakes up from the words spoken at the right time.” When I decided to write this book, I made a promise to myself: not to write another textbook for success, but to write a book that will inspire. "All genres are good except boring."
Therefore, let my book not prove anything to anyone, explain or recommend anything. This has already been done before me by others. Let it awaken not thoughts, but feelings. My task is to arouse interest in the reader, and the goal is to ignite, inspire and inspire his heart. After all, a person, as La Fontaine noted, "is arranged in such a way that when something kindles his soul, everything becomes possible." Everything begins with a desire, and all our desires are born not in the head, but in the heart. Let the sleeping one wake up, the saddened one be consoled, the discouraged one rise up, and the timid and doubtful one be filled with enthusiasm and faith.
I have tried to collect in this book only the most Interesting Facts, the most exciting stories, the most beautiful parables and the most inspiring aphorisms. And now, having written this book, I remember the words of the Indian philosopher Hazrat Inayat Khan: “Words that illuminate the soul are more precious than precious stones.” It really is. And I want to believe, my dear reader, that this book will make your life even a little brighter. That is why it was written.
Alexander Kazakevich
Minsk, April 14, 2009

We all dream of some kind of magical rose garden that lies beyond the horizon, instead of enjoying the roses that bloom right outside our window.
Dale Carnegie, American writer

In the middle of the last century, Canadian scientist James Olds conducted a curious experiment.

Microscopic electrodes were implanted into the area of ​​the brain responsible for wakefulness in laboratory rats. The scientist was trying to find out if the rats would avoid the place where they were exposed to the current. As expected, the experimental animals very quickly stopped wanting to go into the corner of the cage, where an unpleasant “surprise” awaited them every time. And only one rat for some reason stubbornly returned to this "cursed" place, again and again receiving a current discharge.
Perhaps James Olds first thought that there were masochists among rats. However, a subsequent autopsy of the brain of this animal showed that the electrode was implanted with some deviation and thus irritated another zone - the so-called "pleasure center". So, if you influence this area of ​​the brain, then you can make a rat do anything?
Further experience confirmed the assumption of the scientist. An electrode implanted in this part of the brain doomed the rat to a “pleasant” death. Having gained uncontrolled access to the conductive lever, the rat pressed it like crazy - up to 1,000 times per hour (almost every 3.5 seconds!), forgetting about food and sleep, not paying attention to either cubs or sexual partners. After several days of uninterrupted high, the rat died of exhaustion.
The question arises: is there such a “happiness button” in the human brain, by pressing which you can make any pessimist or unfortunate person a happy person? It turns out there is. It is located in the corpus callosum, where the "bridge" between the two hemispheres lies. And with electrical stimulation of this area, a person has a feeling of unearthly bliss ...
It would seem that at last there is a real opportunity to make all of humanity happy. But let's think: what if a person, like a rat, does not have the strength to stop in time and not drown in an uninterrupted stream of pleasure?
In the course of studying the human “pleasure center”, new interesting data were obtained. It turned out, for example, that this part of the brain is overflowing with dopamine, a hormone that gives a person a feeling of euphoria and happiness. Along with other hormones responsible for mood (oxytocin, tyrosine, norepinephrine, melatonin, and others), the amount of dopamine in the “pleasure center” determines how happy we feel. And if it is not enough, a person seeks to increase it by any means.
There are many ways. Power (career); glory; love; erotica; sex; tasty food; someone's attention recognition (approval) of our merits, talents or behavior; prayer; winning a game, competition or lottery; sport; creation; active recreation or travel; favorite hobby; laugh; dancing; singing; money; property; alcohol; drugs; Skydiving; fast driving ... In a word, any thought, any event or behavior that causes a hormonal surge. And everyone chooses his own way of getting the portion of dopamine he lacks.
It turns out that a person does not need to drill a hole in the skull and implant a chip in the brain in order to feel happy? Indeed, there are much safer and time-tested options for achieving happiness. However, how reliable are they?

One of the most common myths is that you need money to be happy. Or, as the French millionaire Paul Getty once joked, “happiness is not in money, but in their quantity.” In fact, not everything is so simple.
Studies conducted in the West have shown that psychiatric hospitals in Europe and America are filled mainly by wealthy people. Fashion, movie and music stars do not get out of depression by regularly using strong antidepressants, alcohol or drugs. Hugely wealthy businessmen die prematurely from cancer and other diseases caused by excess stress and fear. (After all, business is a kind of war, in which there is always a risk of losing not only money, but also other values: a good name, freedom, and even life. It is no coincidence that suicide and contract killing are commonplace in commercial circles.)
However, wealth not only drives people crazy, but also drives them into depression, pushes them to commit suicide. There are a great many examples of this. The famous writer Jack London struggled to become rich. When his dream came true, he bitterly admitted that he was happy only when he lived in poverty.
The famous Kodak and Savva Morozov committed suicide. The oil tycoon Rockefeller was dying in a terrible depression. Multimillionaire Howard Hughes, having lost his mind, lay naked in a closed room for days on end, believing that clothes are a "nest of bacillus carriers." All these tragedies cannot be overshadowed by private jets, villas, or money.
A few years ago, the German Society for Rational Psychology conducted a survey of about 3,000 Germans under the age of 65 to find out what makes them happy. It turned out that the most important sources of happiness for them are: a loving, gentle partner; happy family; healthy, happy children; success at work; completed work; health; favorite hobbies. Money in this list took only 16th place.
A larger study conducted by American scientists confirmed the results of German colleagues: wealth is not a fundamental condition for happiness. And even the answers of the 100 richest people in America almost matched the happiness characteristics of average Americans.
English psychologist Daniel Gilbert of Harvard University writes in his book Stumbling on Happiness: “Psychologists have been studying the relationship between wealth and happiness for decades. And they came to the conclusion that money can make people happier if we are talking about the transition from extreme poverty to the middle class, but they do not have a tangible impact in the future.”
When asked why money does not give happiness, Gilbert answers: the more opportunities a person has for choice (and money just creates and multiply these opportunities), the less happy he feels. That is why Goethe's statement is true: "Order is more important than freedom."
Freedom is responsibility, and the more freedom, the greater the burden of responsibility. And not everyone can bear such a heavy burden.

So, if not money, then what brings happiness? Maybe we should rush in pursuit not for a long ruble, but for something more important and significant? For example, behind some beautiful dream or ideal? Alas, these "firebirds" are unreliable creatures: you can spend your whole life, but never achieve what you want. Or, conversely, achieve, but not get satisfaction from this.
One parable tells how a certain man decided to marry an ideal woman and, in order to find her, went to wander the world. Forty years later he returned home, alone, without his wife. And someone asked him: “Well, have you met the perfect woman?” - “Yes,” the man sighed, “I met her ...” - “So why did you return alone, and not with her?” "Because she was looking for perfect man…»
Maybe we should be simpler and use the "improvised" means of happiness, those that psychologists recommend: communication with friends, children, nature and animals, singing, dancing, massage, sex, laughter, exercise, hobbies, travel ... Probably, they are very good means of making our lives, if not happy, at least tolerable. And much better sources of dopamine than its fleeting and extremely dangerous surrogates, such as tobacco, alcohol, drugs, medications, thrill seeking and other extreme sports ...
However, there is no strength here either. No matter how much you communicate with friends, they will not always be with us. No matter how much you travel, you can’t run away from yourself (as the American philosopher Ralph Emerson rightly noted, “travel is a fool’s paradise”). No matter how much you eat the most delicious dishes, no matter how much you laugh, or have sex - all these are temporary and equally unreliable moments of joy. After all, you can’t just do this all day and all your life.
And these sources are not inside us, but outside, which means that our happiness will always depend on external circumstances. “He is unhappy,” Schopenhauer argued, “who seeks adventure, but does not see happiness at home, whose center of gravity lies in others, and not in himself.”
A Georgian proverb teaches: “Do you want to be happy one day? Don't go to work. Do you want to be happy for three days? Get a mistress. Do you want to be happy for ten years? Get married. Do you want to be happy all your life? Be healthy!" Maybe happiness brings health? Health is of course important. But just as you will not be satisfied with water alone, you will not be happy with health alone. Health is like air: when it is there, you do not notice it and therefore do not appreciate it.
So what is happiness?

If you carefully dig through the literature on the subject of happiness, you can find three really solid conditions for happiness. The first of these is work, purposeful, creative or simply favorite work.
“When I rest, I get dumber,” said Benjamin Franklin. “The secret of our misfortunes is,” Bernard Shaw wrote, “that we have too much leisure to think about whether we are happy or not.” “Find something to your liking,” Maxim Gorky advised, “and there will be one less unfortunate on earth.” When Winston Churchill, who worked 18-hour days in the midst of the war, was asked if he was worried about the huge responsibility placed on him, he replied: "I was too busy to have time to worry."
Academician of the Russian Academy of Medical Sciences Boris Petrovsky in an interview told about a meeting with an unusual person: “Once I was in Baku, and Professor Akhundov invited me to visit. In addition to me, a 140-year-old man was invited. We sat, ate, drank a little. And the owner asks the old man: “Tell me, dear, why do you live so long?” And the mountaineer said: “I sleep very well. Under the sky. I don't have a boss. I myself am the head of my flock of sheep. There is always a woman with me. I never envied anyone. And in general I am a happy person ... "
As you can see, happiness is completely undemanding. You can work all your life as a simple shepherd and at the same time be a great sage who is always happy. Happy because every day is busy with what he loves.
Favorite business ceases to be labor and becomes creativity and even the meaning of life. During World War II, the Austrian psychiatrist Viktor Frankl ended up in a concentration camp (Auschwitz). At this point, his manuscript, dedicated to the search for the meaning of life, was not yet finished. Only a passionate desire to complete the book gave him the strength to endure the horrors of camp life. Even when he fell ill with typhus, only the need to constantly write down his notes on the sheets helped him overcome this disease. He would later say of this time: "I saw the meaning of my life in helping others find meaning in their lives."
Modern psychologists came to the conclusion that we are most happy when we strive for a goal. It is the state of striving, or, more simply, everyday work that brings us closer to the intended goal, and not at all successful completion started work! – give us the greatest joy of psychological reward. Well, the main factor preventing happiness, scientists call idleness. At the same time, as it turned out, it doesn’t matter at all what caused it - laziness, illness, poverty, or, on the contrary, financial well-being.
English professor Mansel Aylward believes that "depression of lack of work" is much more dangerous than possible fatigue from overwork. According to statistics, young unemployed men are 40 times more likely to commit suicide than their employed peers. Some experts compare the harm of being out of work for six months with the damage that would be caused to a person by smoking 400 cigarettes a day. “In addition,” adds Aylward, “the risk of cardiovascular disease, diabetes and cancer is many times higher for the unemployed.”
So, the first step to happiness is a favorite job that has a meaningful goal. Or, to put it another way, a meaningful goal that gives meaning to life and is achieved through the work you love. Well, what is the second condition of happiness?
There is a Chinese expression: "You need a big heart and don't need a big room." It is not the environment, not the things and not the people around that make us happy, but our attitude towards them. Dale Carnegie put it this way: “We are not happy or unhappy because of what we have, or because of who we are, where we are, or what we do. Our state is determined by what we think about all this. Almost all philosophers of the world repeat about this: “Our life is what our thoughts are”!
Maxwell Moltz in the book "I am Me, or How to Be Happy" talks about Dr. John Schindler, who became famous thanks to his unusual method of treating people suffering from neuroses. The essence of this method is the conscious control of thinking. “The underlying emotional problems of every patient have the same common denominator,” writes Schindler. “The problem is that the patient has forgotten how, and most likely never knew how, to control his current thinking in such a way that it gives him pleasure.” And here is Schindler’s definition of happiness: “Happiness is a mood in which we are occupied by pleasant thoughts most of the time.”
One of America's most respected psychologists, William James, gives this advice to anyone who considers himself unhappy: “Much of what we call unhappiness is only a reflection of the subjective perception of a person. How often misfortune can be turned into an invigorating, tonic blessing, by changing only the inner attitude of a person, displacing fear and aiming it at struggle. How often the pain subsides and is replaced by joy, when, after fruitless attempts to get away from suffering, we finally decide to drastically change our position and endure this pain with cheerfulness and optimism! And then these phenomena and events, physically continuing to exist, already lose their fatal character for us. Because you make them good or bad in your own thoughts then your main concern should be the direction of your thinking.
Conclusion: Our happiness depends on our thoughts. And the more often we force ourselves to concentrate on the positive and positive that is in our life, the happier it is.

And finally, the most important and most enduring secret of happiness. It can be formulated different words, but personally I like two of all: love and gratitude. Love is the art of observing the sedate and powerful course of life with unchanging interest and surprise, it is a gift or the ability to notice every beautiful drop, every bright ray in this endless stream and rejoice in it. It's probably insanely difficult. But at the same time, it is extremely important.
Mikhail Prishvin has a short sketch called "Joy". It seems to me that it is not so much about joy, but about love, which fills our soul with happiness and joy.
“This morning is sunny and dewy, like an undiscovered earth, like an unknown layer of heaven, such a unique morning, no one has risen yet, no one has seen anything, and you yourself see for the first time.
Nightingales sing their spring songs, dandelions are still preserved in quiet places, and, perhaps, somewhere in the dampness of a black shadow, a lily of the valley turns white. The nightingales were helped by lively summer wrens, and the oriole's flute is especially good. Everywhere the restless chirping of thrushes, and the woodpecker was very tired of looking for live food for his little ones, sat down far from them on a bough just to rest.
Get up, my friend! Collect the rays of your happiness in a bundle, be bold, start the fight, help the sun! Listen, and the cuckoo has come to help you. Look, the harrier swims over the water: this is not an ordinary harrier, this morning it is the first and only one, and now the magpies, sparkling with dew, came out onto the path - tomorrow they won’t sparkle so exactly, and the day will not be the same, and those magpies will come out somewhere else. This morning is the only one, not a single person has ever seen it on the entire globe: only you and your unknown friend see it. And for tens of thousands of years people have lived on earth, saving up, passing each other joy, so that you come, pick it up, gather its arrows into bundles and rejoice. Be bold, dare!
My enemy! You do not know at all, and if you find out, you will never understand what I have woven joy to people from. But if you do not understand my best, then why do you brag about my mistakes and on the basis of what petty trifles raise your accusation against me? Pass by and let us rejoice.
And again the soul will expand: firs, birches - I can’t tear my eyes away from the green candles on the pines and from the young red cones on the firs. Fir-trees, birches, how good!”
To be grateful means to allow the love that fills our heart to flow freely and widely. And if not for the whole world and all of humanity, then for a start, at least for those whom we really love and cherish.
This amazing fact was discovered and made public by an American journalist who studied the life of American prisons for a long time. It turns out that very often criminals sentenced to capital punishment behave in a rather strange way in the last few hours (or days) before execution. As if having experienced an epiphany, "at five minutes to the dead" suddenly begin to talk ... about love. With tears of tenderness (not fear!) in their eyes, they confess their love for everything and everyone. And to those who became their victims, and to those who sentenced them to death. And even to those who stick a syringe with poison into their veins or pass a deadly electric shock through their body. And in the last seconds of their lives, they try to say “thank you” to everyone who, on duty, was forced to become their executioner or witness to their execution.
Imagine for a moment that in a year, or a month, or a few days you will be gone (for example, doctors will give you a fatal diagnosis). Will you continue to live the way you are now? Will your values, your attitude towards loved ones, friends, enemies and the world in general change? Fortunately, most of us do not know the date of our departure, everyone expects that “of course, it will happen someday, but not tomorrow!”. What if tomorrow? And if you know this for sure, then you are unlikely to waste the remaining time on chatter and empty entertainment, on strife and criticism.
Alexander Solzhenitsyn in an interview said that, in his opinion, gives life meaning and makes it happy. “The most important thing in life, all its mysteries - do you want me to pour it out for you now? Do not chase after the ghostly - after property, after titles: this is gained by the nerves of decades, and is confiscated in one night. Live with even superiority over life - do not be afraid of trouble and do not yearn for happiness. All the same, after all, the bitter is not up to the age and the sweet is not complete. It is enough for you if you do not freeze and if thirst and hunger do not tear your insides with their claws. If your spine is not broken, both legs walk, both arms bend, both eyes see and both ears hear - who else do you envy? What for? Envy of others eats us the most. Wipe your eyes, wash your heart and appreciate those who love you and who are disposed towards you above all. Do not offend them, do not scold. Do not part with any of them in a quarrel. After all, you don’t know, maybe this is your last act, and that’s how you will remain in their memory.
An American proverb says: “In a year, no one will remember what kind of jeans you wore, but everyone will remember what kind of person you were.” "Memento mori" - "Remember death!" - the ancient sages call us. Looking down at us with their blackened eye sockets of marble sculptures, they seem to whisper to us: “Cagre diem!.. Carpe diem!.. Carpe diem!..” – “Break the day!” That is, seize the moment, hurry to live, and not exist: dare, create, love, laugh and cry, lose and win! And not tomorrow, but today! Now! This minute!
In the book " World Laws life" of the American philosopher and preacher John Templeton, you can find such a story. “One rainy afternoon, a kind old gentleman noticed a boy, a newspaper seller, huddled in the doorway, trying to protect his goods from dampness. Buying a newspaper from the boy, the gentleman said: "My boy, it seems very cold for you to stand here." The boy raised his head and replied with a smile: “It was cold, sir, until you came over” ... "

Simple Truths, or How to Live for Your Pleasure Kazakevich Alexander Vladimirovich

Alexander Kazakevich Simple Truths, or How to Live for Your Pleasure