On Saturday I turned 43 years old, and I caught myself analyzing my condition, but never summing it up. After all, successful indicators do not equal “happiness”, so my reference point is on the state. Realized aspirations I am a person of actions, goals and achievements, but the result is always a feeling, a state as a complex of feelings. So that it doesn’t turn out that I went on vacation, and besides the very fact “I was at sea”, there was nothing left. Weller recently read in “Energy Evolutionism” about the human desire for happiness - people have the same “sets”, but one owner “ cars-apartments-dachas” is happy, while the other is absolutely not. Why? Different values, different stages of personality development. And a person does not always strive for what he really needs (yes, these ideas about “other people’s” dreams did not appear yesterday on the pages of psychologists’ books). By the way, about happiness. It's hard to explain this word in words, right? But many people give the answer to this question “positive” or “negative”. I always answer positively, even in difficult periods. The feeling can be anything (angry, afraid, disappointed), but the state of happiness does not depend on it. I seem to be able to see the whole picture of life and over the years I understand that everything really passes. And to say that I am unhappy is, because of the current acute experience, to cross out what is stable, good and useful for me. But, whatever one may say, I can always have a tasty meal, at least. And my sleep passes serenely (yes, sleep, like the state of happiness, is never affected by adversity). I experience negative emotions, the tilt will inevitably be in that direction for some time, this is normal to live through. But unhappiness is some kind of total dissatisfaction or unwillingness to create satisfaction (exceptions are mental illness). That's why I keep track of my conditions on my birthday. After all, you can satisfy all the desires made in the past by blowing out the candles, but still feel emptiness and disappointment, sadness and apathy, anger and envy. What is the result? As a result, I noted a state of satisfaction in general with life and with myself. Although the past year was “devastating”, and if you really strain yourself and remember my forty-second anniversary, then, for example, I didn’t even think about divorce. There was tension, an understanding that something was clearly going wrong (and probably for a long time), but I didn’t have plans to throw off the shackles of marriage on a conscious level. How to understand yourself? How to understand your states and feelings? It’s trivial, but you need to watch yourself, study the meanings of words, because it’s likely that you have grown up, but your vocabulary of feelings has not grown :) Open the feelings/emotions table in any search engine and first just study the words using a dictionary. You notice what is inherent to you and what is unfamiliar or alien. Then you introduce the habit of observing what is inside. At first it will be artificial, but then it will become part of life, and the range of feelings may expand. At the same time, you will note what sensations (reactions of the physical body) are associated with emotions. My state of satisfaction consists of physical relaxation, quiet joy and leisurely pace. I'm happy with everything at the moment. And this is not always a period of achievements, some beyond emotions, on the contrary, I can get out of the race of life, slow down a little. This photo reflects my state: a play of light, a pause in life outside the city, a child, a weekend, me with Linde’s book...