Personality: The yearning for a new beginning
Everything that is good or even good in our lives, everything that makes us up, friendships, our relationships, children maybe, the job, the apartment, our hobbies - everything has its origins in the fact that we once, a long time ago, have ventured something new. Do we want to have a coffee afterwards? I know the application deadline was yesterday, but I'll let you have my records. And am I right with "Italian for beginners"? These were all beginnings. And probably the best moments of our lives.
"True life moves forward into unknown areas," is how psychoanalyst Wilhelm Reich puts it. In research, our longing for new beginnings is called the "call of life". Because our small and big new beginnings are nothing less than life itself: the adventure of which we are heroines and heroes, demons we fight against, new lands that we discover, and our new selves that we must liberate as if it were a princess who is trapped in a haunted castle.
But first we sit here with some friends, and the winter evening is so dark and long that at some point the gossip and the little topics are exhausted, and then finally the truth comes to the funky light of the burning candles. The job is annoying. The city is the wrong one. Love is so worn out. Our lives have become too tight for us, we are stuck, and everything is running on a big "Actually, I would much rather ...", a single common "One should actually ....". And then the demons come out of the dark forest of the borderland between the old and the new: for already in the conversation a thousand reasons come to us why it is not possible. Now quit and start your own business? Way too risky. Start a couple therapy so that we can talk to each other again someday? Do not bring anything. Buy a piano at mid-thirties and take lessons? I do not have the time. And we go home, go to bed and suffer a bit from ourselves, from our dissatisfaction and cowardice, until we fall asleep, because tomorrow we have to get out early in another new day that feels old and used before dawn ,
The fear of admitting failure is greater than yearning
There are some interesting theories as to why we remain in our dissatisfaction rather than moving. After the so-called "prospect theory", it's like stocks falling and keeping them because we hope they eventually return to the value we bought them for: if I started something new now, then I have I had all the frustration for nothing, I have to get back to zero first, otherwise I'll make a loss. Or the phenomenon of "cognitive dissonance" - I remain in my loveless relationship because it would mean separating me and admitting to myself and others: that was all nothing. If I go now, I would have had to leave much earlier, so I failed, and then I prefer to stay. It describes more positively the "Candy Shop Syndrome": Like a child who does not know what to buy in the sweet shop from his Euro, we are paralyzed by the variety of our possibilities. When I choose licorice snails, I decide against everything else. What I have will always be less than what I do not have. So we do not do anything. And complain again and again that our lives are unfilled.
We like to talk about how terrible everything is, rather than goals and solutions. We indulge in negative emotions, define ourselves as victims of circumstances and always say to ourselves in this way: I am innocent of having my problem and can not solve it. "I will not solve a problem as long as the advantages of this problem outweigh for me," says psychologist ChroniquesDuVasteMonde Roser: "It's comfortable, it's familiar, it's learned, and we'd better settle for a known misfortune, as exposing us to the threat of an unknown luck. " There is a fascinating model that describes this state: instead of changing something, we remain in our so-called comfort zone. This is the area where everything is so familiar that even the problems have a home in them. Marie and her men, for example. For years, Marie has been tangled up in an endless loop: one man at a time, who does her no good. Interesting but unreliable types who live on their money, are never there, do not stand by her. Everyone looks good, that's right. And Marie herself knows that her booty scheme "dark-haired, mysterious silence that's hard to get" does not bring her luck.But getting involved with another type of man would mean questioning all their relationships, their claims, their own ability to bind. That would be very threatening. And exhausting. Because she would have to leave the comfort zone of her known misfortune.
It's like learning. Suppose someone persuades me to attend a tango course. In my comfort zone I have never thought about tango and about the fact that I can not dance tango, that is: I was in the blissful state of so-called "unconscious incompetence". Now I leave my comfort zone, find myself in a draughty factory floor again, and very quickly I realize: I can not! So I move from "unconscious incompetence" to the threatening state of "conscious incompetence". Now it is time to practice, to practice, to practice, I can see it before me, the Wednesday evenings of my best years in that very factory floor, until one day I realize: Damn, it works! With this I have reached the state of "conscious competence". Now I'm always dancing until I can tango without thinking about it. This is called "unconscious competence".
Children react with anxiety
This is how every new beginning works, which succeeds. It's easy to write that down, but what's interesting is how difficult and exhausting it is, how much strength and courage it takes. Because in the state of conscious incompetence, we develop strong defensive strategies to keep ourselves from the new, explained ChroniquesDuVasteMonde Roser. First of all, we say, the topic is stupid, so: Tango is basically totally naughty, what I really want here. If that's not enough for us to stop, we'll evaluate the one who wants to bring us the new: the teacher is definitely incompetent. And if that has not worked yet, comes the strongest defense strategy - we evaluate ourselves: What the hell, I just have no sense of rhythm.
Children have no comfort zone, otherwise they would never walk or learn to speak. Children react with new appetites, a feeling we all know. But during our life, the proportions shift: The older and more experienced we become, the more fear prevails. Children who learn to walk get up again and again, with them the desire to rediscover is infinitely greater than the fear of hurting themselves or making a fool of themselves. Why do not we just stay in our comfort zone, leave everything as it is, somehow numb us and wait, what happens? Maybe it will eventually come to a big disaster, but what the hell, maybe we need the. Is it not proven that in crises that come in from the outside, we use our resources better than if we change something ourselves? Or we sense that our partner will leave us sometime if we go on as before, and then we feel a dark, impotent hope: Come, disaster, and give me the strength to finally change something. Like the rabbit who stares at the snake and says: "Run away now, no, I'm not that, just wait, who says that there are not any interesting prospects in the digestive tract of a big reptile?
By making ourselves comfortable in our comfort zone, we give away the opportunity to evolve. No matter in which direction, no matter what the outcome: A new beginning always develops a very special power, says the psychologist and life coach Tom Diesbrock. A new beginning makes us more alert and flexible, the dangerous way into unknown territory makes us live more consciously, we learn to better assess opportunities and risks. We learn, as psychology says, more "self-reality": I determine what my reality is, not the circumstances, not the others. And: We are much more susceptible to happiness during phases of change than in times of stagnation. A new beginning makes you smarter, happier and prolongs the subjective lifetime considerably. The fact that time seems to go by faster and faster, the older we get, is due to a lack of new beginnings: the more routine, the fewer new impulses and ideas, the faster our brain will run the clock. Not to mention that if the new beginning succeeds, we'll have a better job, more understanding of our partner, a new love or a tiny, insanely expensive studio in New York. In addition, new beginnings are healthy. The "unlived life", that is the avoided new beginning, makes you sick, writes the sociologist Annelie Keil: Psychosomatic illnesses, "the strikes of body and soul", we should understand as "calls to life". How great our yearning for new beginnings is is shown by an example: the cultural history of humanity.
In all films, it is always about departure
The great myths of all civilizations, our legends and fairy tales, the classics of world literature - almost all tell of new beginnings. Cinderella is unhappy with her job as a pea grader and is fighting the evil stepmother to improve her situation. Don Quixote leaves an uneventful existence as an impoverished land adversary behind him to face as a knight of all kinds of enemies."Easy Rider", "Thelma and Louise", "Shall We Dance?" - Whenever we take something out of the cinema, the movie was about a departure. It seems that humans tell us the story of the new beginning for millennia over and over again to give us courage.
We need love and suffering for a new beginning
Two impulses need a new beginning: love and sorrow. The love of a goal, that is: a deep desire, a dream. And suffering from the situation as it is. These two impulses must become very strong in order to overcome the fears that prevent us from leaving. Solveig is in her late twenties, she has worked her way up in business consulting, but since her schooldays she has dreamed of becoming a cartoonist. She would like to take half a year off, travel, do sketches. First, the demon reason: If I get off now, I can then back up again. Then come the self-doubt: Can I do that? The guilt feelings: I let my colleagues down. The fear of violating conventions: what do the others think if the business administrator suddenly wants to paint picture stories? Then the dark twins, fear of success and fear of failure: What if I do not get anything done in half a year? Then I have the certainty that my dream was a mistake, and everything is as it always is, just without a dream. And what if I have a contract for a comic strip in the end? Then I have to quit and establish myself in a new world. , , Will I still be loved by those who know Solveig, the business administrator? And, a breathtaking thought that Solveig can barely think of: If everything goes well, if my dream comes true - did I deserve to be so well?
There are a few strategies to get through a fresh start better. For example, it helps to know that every new beginning, according to an anthropological pattern, runs in three phases. Namely: 1. symbolic death, 2. chaos, 3. rebirth. In the beginning, a real farewell must be: Maybe not necessarily of our old life, because it may be that much is worth it; but at least of a self-image that prevents us from leaving.
There is a very simple model of our psyche that goes something like this: For critical situations, we respond with the strategy that we, as children, have received from our parents. Solveig has always felt so lovingly treated by her parents, she tells us today, when she was successful. This is her so-called self-concept: I have to succeed so I'm fine. The business model "cartoonist" does not fit this self-concept; which does not mean that Solveig has to give up her dream. The psychotherapist Rosmarie Welter-Enderlin explains this self-concept by "the orders of our parents": You have to be nice, you have to be strong, you have to be good. "And if I realize that my life is under this motto, I can try to free myself from it." I have to be successful? Are you kidding me? Are you serious when you say that. I have to draw comics. Or at least find out if I can do that. "I have to be successful" - write it on a piece of paper and burn it, says Rosemary Welter-Enderlin.
To allow fear of failure
This "symbolic death" is followed by chaos. Even the most carefully planned change of direction leads through a period of disorientation, an interim period in which we feel helpless and insecure and perhaps full of remorse. It helps to know that anyone who starts something new will, as psychologists say, experience "darkest hour" during this phase, an absolute low point full of fundamental doubts. In the course of this "darkest hour," we'll have to lose some illusions and give up self-delusion: Maybe I'm not an ingenious cartoonist, but a good illustrator. Perhaps the person I believed to love was never more than a compromise, not to be alone?
But how do we encounter the greatest fear of all, the fear of failure? "Failure is the great modern taboo," writes the sociologist Richard Sennett: There is no culture of failure, everyone has only one attempt and should in case of failure without much fuss again come to reason and submit to the circumstances. Because the serenity of Samuel Beckett's maxim is completely foreign to us: "Try again, fail again, fail better." Try again, fail again, fail better. This means that even if I do my best, I can not determine the result alone. If I fail, it has nothing to do with me. Any failure is after a short time a good anecdote or a rousing chapter from our life novel.
make compromises
Any successful new beginning is a compromise, they say, and not a radical, merciless stroke of genius. Every therapist, every coach will tell you: we have to find a compromise between our urge for departure and our fear of something new. The dream of the six-month sabbatical may then become unpaid leave for two months.What strongly contradicts our ideal: We just want to free ourselves from a life of compromise, we want the boss to denounce the termination, leaving the partner who cheats on the spot.
Instead: small steps. So that we can revise and secure ourselves. So we often have opportunity to praise and reward ourselves. That sounds so nice and cozy, comforting, but also a bit boring: a new beginning as a quiet afternoon in the petting zoo of our soul. Is this what remains of the great "basic principle of life", of the existential adventure, of our struggle with the demons: small steps, big compromises? That sounds feasible, manageable and therefore quite good. But not very good. More exciting than the feasible is the impossible. The unmanageable, which is a huge step. But maybe we have to learn the great adventure again. Maybe we have to accept that the first step is tiny. Do we want to have a coffee afterwards? And maybe what comes next is bigger than anything we've ever experienced. There is only one way to find that out. Here is the comfort zone. There is the door.
