The new reality requires mental flexibility: how to deal with fear of the future

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We live in a unique time. If you turn the flywheel of time into the past, you will be surprised to find that we are the first generation that is living the experience of total freedom of expression and the complete absence of any confidence in the future. This is neither good nor bad. It's just that each generation has its own tasks, which it copes with or not. The psyche is arranged in such a way that a person feels confident only where he has some experience. With psychologist Nadiya Yefremova, we understand how to work with a feeling of uncertainty about tomorrow and fear of the future.

How was it before?

Remember your feelings when you appeared for the first time in a new place. It's usually more like a state of insecurity. But, if you come to the same place for the second or third time, then you already feel confident and relaxed. The problem is that neither we nor our parents have the experience of living in today's world. We could not have been prepared for such a rapidly changing reality. Because the generation of our parents had no idea that this would happen. Their source code was completely different. The main references on which they grew up were: do not stand up and endure; talk less; do your best not to be noticed; be like everyone else; listen to the opinion of others and try to correspond to this opinion. Their growing up has been stitched with a constant consideration of what others will say and the understanding that if you stay inside the system and keep quiet, it will be clear, safe and predictable.

What are we up against?

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With an ever-changing reality. According to statistics, the generation of our parents received a profession once and did not change it during their lifetime. Today's generation of 30-40-year-olds changes profession three times. What does it say? About the fact that the passage of time has accelerated. History is written with the help of transmission speed. The speed of today's transmission is colossal. Could our parents boast of this? No. They have fresh memories of how they copied a scarce book by hand into a notebook. Now it is enough for us to publish a post on a social network, and it can be seen by hundreds or thousands of eyes.

New reality

The new reality requires a new speed of response and flexibility of the psyche, which will give the opportunity to adapt and adapt to the new world. Most people do not understand how to live at such speeds and feel constant stress: the feeling that you are behind everyone and will not catch up, that you will not have time to do something, there is a constant devaluation of your successes against the background of a beautiful picture of others on social networks. We digest a huge amount of informational noise. Our thinking has turned into clip art. This means that we have learned to collect a lot of superficial information. If it is necessary to delve more seriously into the context, then it seems incredibly labor-intensive to us.

A person is always looking for something that he can rely on. For many, the support is what lies in the plane of the external world (family, career, car, apartment, friends, money, etc.). But the speed with which various events are happening in the world shows us that all this does not belong to us. And yes, it can be a support, but for some not very long term. In order not to be afraid of the future, it is very important to build your inner stable pillars. Namely:

• Hear yourself and your desires
• Trust your intuition
• Be able to build healthy communication with your family and the outside world
• Not to fall into destructive feelings, such as: guilt, shame, resentment
• Be able to protect yourself and your boundaries
• Be able to declare yourself to the world and offer something to it
• These are all things that we have only just begun to learn to develop in ourselves. Many have not yet understood that these are one of the most important skills in the modern world and, out of old habit, look for someone to lean on in the outside world.

It's normal to feel insecure about your future. The problem begins when fear becomes the dominant emotion over all others. To understand how fear begins to control us, I suggest using a simple example to consider how our internal attention works. We always try to highlight in ourselves what we focus on, that is, to designate something important for ourselves. It is important for us to choose the main one in the group, we try to choose the central object in the picture, our attention in the room is always focused on some accent. It is easier for us to perceive the world and the brain does not have to process tons of information. What we focus our inner attention on is a figure for us. The rest is background. At the same time, we can easily click switches within ourselves and make the background what used to be a figure. And this control panel is always in our hands. For example: you are sitting in a cafe with a very interesting person. And you are so fascinated by his persona and the conversation that is happening between you that you do not pay attention to the interior of the cafe, what the waiters are wearing, what color the menu is and what color the salt shaker is on the table. All your attention is focused on the person. And he is now for you a figure on whom all attention is directed, and the cafe is just a background, with which you have no business. Now imagine the opposite situation: you are sitting in the same cafe, but the person across from you is not interesting at all. And you even take a quick look at the clock to understand after what time it will be decent to get down to business and finish this meeting. And while you were creating the effect of presence in this conversation, you had time to think about what an interesting surface at the dinner table, what good clothes the waiters have, what you will feed your family tonight, what interesting plates you were served salad on. Feel the difference? The cafe is the same and the object, on the contrary, is the same. But in this situation, the cafe will be the figure on which all your attention is directed, and the person will be the background.

When we talk about the fear of the future, we do the same. We can turn a blind eye to the frightening unknown and fail to see all the possibilities that life throws up in the here and now. And when we do that, we voluntarily paralyze our lives. Isn't the price too high for horror stories that have nothing to do with reality? And do you really want to pay that price? Agree, it is much more interesting to ride a wave and enjoy the fact that you can ride it!