A Vaccine from misfortunes

In order to remain healthy while chasing luck, one should cultivate a truly optimistic approach and tune his/her life for success.

A member of Moscow's Society of Family Guidance, psychologist Maria Vladimirovna Stishova comments on the issue. 

-Is Pessimism an inborn quality or does one acquire it with age?

-Pessimism is most likely an acquired characteristic. Pessimism is a sort of a dead-end, which mostly affects person's emotional state. A woman can easily reach that dead-end if all her successes are not properly evaluated.

I had a woman come to me once. She said: “I have everything, but I am disgusted with life.” Such things happen when a person is unaware of how to praise him/herself. She has probably never been complimented by anyone throughout her entire life, not even by her mother. It is as though she chases the horizon. As a result, she lives her life without establishing proper contacts with her own feelings.

-How can a person escape this dead-end?

-It is of utmost importance to stop and turn around. You have to decide what exactly you personally wish for. Stop living somebody else's screenplay.

Most often, the screenplay of our lives is being designed by our parents. This happens especially in those families where a child faces some sort of a task from the moment he is born. Parents often want their children to continue family business, become famous and talented. Parents produce such baby in order to fulfill parental purpose. So the baby is already predestined to achieve something in life. Such newborn already has a sense of duty. And the longer a woman possesses such feeling, the faster she exhausts her emotional and physical resources. She then begins to experience lack of energy followed by depression.

Sometimes, this happens when a mother raises her daughter alone and only for her own pleasure. Her daughter in turn chooses her mother's life path or that life path is later being introduced to her by her husband. The sooner she realizes it, the faster she will step onto another level of her existence. This realization in turn will be the best cure.

-It is easy to say. What should we DO?

-In the beginning, remember your personal success when you really achieved something. You should not use any photographs. Try to envision yourself exactly as you were then. Remember clothes you were wearing, surrounding smells, sounds, people. Feel the environment, experience emotional high and I guarantee you will want to experience the same feeling once again.

For those women who fulfill their daily occupations as housewives, I would suggest going out to the movies with their girl friends more often. You will see that it is a wonderful experience and nothing bad is going to happen to your family. By doing so, you will break finally break free from the program you have been following for so many years.

You will have to come up with a new screenplay for yourself with you as a leading actress. Imagine that you live in your dream house and have a dream job. Your happiness will be restored and doubled!               
Even though the road from Pessimism to Optimism is quite long, it is still worth trying. Make yourself remarkably happy. 

 Olga Smirnova
Source: “Women's health”