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

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