Psycle

The title of my post could be perceived as some random pop psychology quote, but let me explain, I do not mean it that way at all. Or I don't know, maybe I mean it that way, you decide!

First of all it would be fantastic if we could define failure. What failure means for me might not be the case for you. And it could come in a lot of ways. I could fail as a parent, I could fail at my job, I could fail to please my parents' expectations, I could fail to pass a test or get into what university I would like. Failure comes in a lot of ways, pretty different for each and every one of us. But it's there and it's something most of us don't seem to handle easily.

I have not ever taken failure easy, not as a kid, not as a grownup. What is it in failure that makes us so upset? I mean ok, if you try things you may as well fail now and then.

My dear Woody Allen says

If you don't fail now and again, it's a sign you're playing it safe.

It is true, isn't it? Ok sometimes, it may be your fault that you failed. You may not have studied hard enough for example. Again, it's ok. I don't say you shouldn't try or something, in fact I'm saying the exact opposite. Try once more. Yes, not succeeding sucks but not succeeding isn't always the same as failing. And even if you are indeed failing, what's the big deal? Who says we should always be ultra successful at everything we do?

I actually think life is full of hardness and possible failures (ok, some sweetness too) but we're not exactly prepared for that. Maybe it's our parents' fault (way to go personal responsibility, hehe) for not training us well enough to accept that it's all right if we fail. It's possible. The world won't come to an end and in the very case that a failure is an end to something then it could as well be a new beginning for something else. Let me go back to parenting a little bit.

It is hard for parents to see their children struggle and strive. We (and I say we even though I don't have a kid, but I'm sure it would be difficult to just let her/him be when the road is tough) don't want them to suffer, and sometimes we even fight their battles for them. Well, I can't think of a worst way to teach your kid about self-esteem and confidence. If we're constantly fighting for them how will they ever get up and fight for their own? It's not only that we don't teach them how, but it's also that we make them believe they're not capable of doing it on their own.

I read an article the other day (The gift of failure) and I definitely agree with what the writer says:

By protecting our children, we do them a double disservice. First, we insulate them from experiences that can facilitate growth and resilience. Second, by actively protecting them, we send them the message that they are not capable of coping on their own.

I'm not saying let them be and don't worry about them, I'm just proposing teach them how to fight! And teach them to accept failure by accepting it yourself, by making it a deal but not a hell of a deal.

Failure could be a way to do something differently, to be creative, or even to damp something forever. Whatever it brings I'd like to be open about it. Now that I'm saying all these "teach yourself to blah blah" I come to wonder who taught us being ok with failure? What if nobody ever taught you that? Well, maybe it's high time we learned that by ourselves. Sometimes I'm so afraid I'm gonna fail I don't even try. How many opportunities have I missed really? So... I guess what I'm saying is... I failed because of my fear of failure? Yes. I guess pretty much that's it.

image by CassieStarFox

I have been studying Socrates some time now and his views on life and death. Socrates used to say

The unexamined life is not worth living.

He was all about examining his as well as other people's lives. I guess I agree, that's why I give all my money to therapy :p No, really, I do believe it's more than just useful to reflect on our own feelings, to actually get to know ourselves, to listen to what we truly say / feel and therapy seems to be the perfect way to do all these things. I'm a therapist, what would I say?! :-)

Of course, it's not the only way to examine one's life but it's one of the most common ones. Other ways might be keeping a journal, creating, thinking about your life and how you live, meditating (I'm not really sure about this one), talking with a good friend. To live a full life, a satisfying one you have to take a close look at yourself. What are your true values? What are your beliefs? Do you live according to your emotions and beliefs or by what the society / your mother / your friends think you should do? Do you give time to yourself or are you always running to get a hold of every little thing when you don't have the slightest idea who you really are?

James Bugental once wrote:

When we busy ourselves with work, with social media, and with continual activity to avoid confronting who and what we are, there is a strong likelihood that we will be living a dissatisfied existence.

Do you take time to get you know yourself? Do you examine your life and how you live it?

Of course, there's always the other side which we should not forget, we need to live a life to have something to examine. What I mean is that sometimes for example I go to such great lengths of thinking, examining, reflecting, that I forget to actually live, to act on all these thoughts. Yes,

the unexamined life is not worth living but nor is the unlived life worth examining

as is mentioned in this article http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/happiness-in-world/201011/the-unlived-life I came across the other day. I really like this quote! Reminds me to get out there and stop writing!

Oh well, it's raining. Perfect weather for some introspection, isn't it?!

image by Phillymar

Last night I watched a youtube video that Alain de Botton made some years ago, about Epicurus and his view on happiness.

In this video, he mentions that Epicurus believed that we could all find a way to be happy. The problem was, simply, that we were looking at the wrong place. Epicurus said

What we want is not always what we need.

Best example? Shopping, Alain de Botton says. We keep buying things we think that'll make us happy, and they do, for some minutes (or even hours if you're lucky) but then that feeling wears off. We don't care that we got this super-wow dress, or watch, or, or. It's another thing to actually need a pair of shoes and another to own some 30 pairs.

Well, a lot of times I hear people complaining they don't know what they want. Then again I hear others saying they are happy, but just for a little while. It doesn't last. Most happy people I know - and now that I come to think of it I don't know that many - seem to have a deeper system of values, in which they rely and live by at their everyday living. Something like a deeper sense of their lives. Like changing clothes day after day but keeping the same body underneath. Ok, not the best metaphor but you get it.

I think happiness isn't something we can feel all the time. It's an instant feeling. But then again, I believe there's a deeper sense of happiness, maybe called something else, I don't know, that lies beneath what happens to our everyday living. It's like deep down you're a happy person, or you're not. These later years I come to find I'm a much happier person than I was six years ago. It took an evaluation of what I consider important in my life and some frequent reminders, to have that state of mind. I'm not always happy, sometimes I become way too miserable or even furious but I think after all, I'm happy. With my choices, with my relationships, with my work, with my life.

Do you think we ought to be happy? I mean we all try too hard, but is it really as important as advertisers make us think? And how really can one give a definition of happiness? I think that general happiness, for me, has something to do with inner peace. I don't know, I'm actually trying to figure that out. What about you? What do you mean by happiness? How do you define it? And would you happen to know any happy people? Are you one of them?

Oh yeah, the video Epicurus On Happiness

I want to share with you an article I read the other day What Work Is Really For. With such a high rate of unemployment in Greece (and everywhere else too) we seem to be deeply anxious when we can't find a job and then again deeply anxious when we work (am I going to get fired? or I'm not paid enough etc). We don't have a lot of time to think if work is good or bad, we just want a job. To pay for the essentials, to provide -ourselves or our family-, to live. To have a job used to be everybody's right, now it's become some people's privilege. It's a hard situation we're going through, that's not new. I like what Gary Gutting says in this article:

...in our economic system, most of us inevitably see our work as a means to something else: it makes a living, but it doesn’t make a life.

It's true, isn't it? Do we even live a life of quality anymore? I don't know. Sometimes I think I live as I want, some others all I feel is anxiety, to do all these things I have to / want to. And those times seem to be too many, but then I try to remind myself what's essential to me, to live a "good life" -apart from food, that is.

Socrates believed that the pursuit of material wealth was not the point of living, he always talked about how important virtue was. What do we consider important nowadays? Except money and success, I mean. What are the important qualities a person ought to have? I guess it's personal, but we have to admit, we live in a world totally pointed at material wealth and fake needs. We give a large amount of money to have the new i phone, but we don't have money to buy a book, or go for therapy. Now, I'm just only imposing my own criteria for what one should do, aren't I?

Anyway, I wonder, what do you think is an important quality for a therapist to have? What really makes a good therapist? Do we prepare ourselves as we should or are we in such a rush to earn a living that we skip some steps on the way? And something more. How do you spend your free time? Do you have any?

image by micromeg

If someone says "I have a body", he can be asked "Who is speaking here with this mouth?"
Wittgenstein, On Certainty, §244

So, do I have a body or am I a body? Gabriel Marcel makes a distinction between being and having which applies as well to my bodily existence. I can say that I have a body and look at it in a disassociated manner or I can say I am a body, because, well, my body and me are a whole, I couldn't exist without a body - not in this world anyway. As Paul Smith-Pickard once beautifully said: "you never see minds walking down the street".

The Cartesian split of mind from body is really out of date, but then again I rarely come across people that "are a body", or at peace with their body and its possibilities. It's a tricky thing because on one hand you can't control all your biological processes, so you have a body, on the other hand you live with all those processes, so you are a body.

Sometimes I get completely pissed off that my body acts on its own ways, some others I think it's practically in harmony with what I'm experiencing at the moment. For example, there are times that I have a headache and I catch myself thinking "damn you stupid head" and there are times that I'm so tensed that getting a headache seems the normal way to be. I mean how can I feel awful and never getting a body sign? I think the only way is if you're completely detached -either from your feelings or from your body.

I have quite a responsive body, I mean I always have a sign (maybe a stomachache, or a headache or something) when something bothers me. I usually don't like it but my therapist used to say "your body is wise, trust your body".

What about our clients? Do they trust their body signs? Do they listen to what their bodies are trying to tell them? And if we are our bodies, don't we already know what's going on? Do we need a body signal? Or are the signs just in accordance with what we're experiencing at the time? And what should we tell to a client whose body suffers and so is she/he?

image by http://nile-can-too.deviantart.com/