Do you know the story when you strongly strive and crave for something, but with every effort you make it either remains in place or gets even further away, but you don’t get any better? I'm sure everyone has something similar in their pocket. What could be the matter here and is it even worth “cleaning up” the environment? And if so, how? And it also happens that it seems that you have achieved and received, but there was still no joy. Satisfaction, by the way, too. In general, we need to figure it out. I'll start from afar. We have our true desires and needs. At the heart of everything, of course, are needs. There are not very many of them and “Maslow’s pyramid” describes them well. I'm talking about the content, not about their relationship to each other. Desires are materialized needs. For example, the need for security may be expressed by the desire to earn a lot or get married. Well, you understand. Everyone has their own ideas and attitudes about the things that “should” satisfy their needs. Emotions regulate this whole thing. The desire satisfies the need - positive emotions. Does not satisfy - negative or none. Failsafe test. In general, childhood also has needs and desires. There are children's, and there are parent's. If they coincide in relation to each other, everything is great. If they disagree and parents win by suppressing children’s needs and desires, imposing their values ​​and attitudes, expect trouble and living a life that is not yours as an adult. I really liked the idea that information by a person should first be chewed, digested and only then assimilated and absorbed or accepted as part of his worldview or position. If it was swallowed in one piece without processing and digestion, then it will remain an alien element that will lie like a stone and add tension to our already interesting life. Such “stones” include parental attitudes and principles, social attitudes and principles imposed from the outside, behavioral stereotypes, the same stereotypes, but social, ethnic, gender, professional, etc. In other words, when all this befalls a child, he is not yet able to intelligently use mental tools to filter what hits him. The child's brain is not yet capable of this. The only tool that a child can use until the age of 5 is emotions. So it produces them in a wide range. Parents, as a rule, either suppress such manifestations, or suppress and impose their point of view on this issue. And sometimes they even get personal and much more. And children's needs remain “hungry” or they were fed with a surrogate. And it became a habit, for example. As adults, we can continue to feed our needs with surrogates or plastic food and wonder why our achievements do not please us, necessary acquisitions do not bring satisfaction, prestigious jobs do not make us happy and make us depressed. Also, we may be surprised that our desires meet resistance within us and we delay their implementation, procrastinate and feel anxious, thinking about what will happen if we succeed. This is only one aspect of the question identified at the beginning. There is also a part about the “chipping” of the environment and its intensity. More about this next time. Follow the news! Sincerely, Practical psychologist Dina Kotovskova.