The Search For Well-being Through 3 Basic Principles
From the very beginning of his consciousness, human beings have been asking themselves questions that deal with the same topics. It is understood that the continuity of these questions throughout history is due to the failure to find a completely satisfactory answer.
Among the questions with a capital letter that we have asked ourselves throughout history, it is in place of honor the question of achieving well-being. For this reason, ideas and principles from which we can begin to feel good have been known for a long time.
Today we know in much more detail new aspects of our anatomy, our behavior, our way of life, our environment, etc. Even with all this knowledge, We do not cease in the search for this state that in its ideal promises us a complete experience and satisfactory of our life course. Perhaps this happens because the existence of many today is not being complete.
There have been many who have asked questions and there have been many who have provided answers. Answers that for various reasons seem not to have been heard or that if they were, were lost along the path of planning, the achievement of objectives and the immediacy that the industrial stage of our recent era left us as a legacy.
There are three aspects that have appeared frequently throughout history and that as a species we have sensed that “something” has to do with what we call “being well.”
1. Company and affection
I would start by highlighting the tremendous importance it has in our beginnings as human beings. the ability to be accompanied even before birth by similar others that with sincere love they give us first social relationships in which we can plant the seeds of security, trust and kindness that are only achieved through recognition in the eyes and face of the other person.
Feeling supported by another who stabilizes and regulates us in this new world that we are beginning to know is essential. From there is where we begin to recognize ourselves as beings that will be discovered differentiated later.
It is in those caresses, in those looks where the first traces of our vision of the world begin where we begin to configure in our internal world who we are and the place we come from.
If this care does not occur or is negligent, our nervous system will begin its journey in this life with pressing alarm signals that will indicate that the environment is dangerous and people are untrustworthy. The sooner this catastrophe occurs, the deeper and more lasting will be the effects of insecurity and mistrust that will be installed in the first sketch of the Self that that baby will be.
On the contrary, if at that beginning we are accompanied with love, looks and caresses, and if our needs are sufficiently covered, the world that we will begin to discover will be an environment that we will perceive as safe to explore, and it will be presented to us in an encouraging and stimulating.
2. Don’t always be under a bombardment of information
On the other hand, and continuing with these keys to well-being so deeply rooted in our history, it is important to refer to the vital relationship between the mind and the body and mention the famous phrase that captures this reality very well: “mens sana in corpore sana”.
We live in a fast-paced and noisy time that bombards our minds with countless and diverse stimuli that mean that we are constantly in processes of perception and assimilation of content.
Coupled with this, life experiences happen so quickly and we want them to be so numerous that we spend most of our time immersed in pure mental activity. This causes our body to become disconnected from ourselves and the experience and life learning that always leave their mark on it, remain inaccessible and blocked.
The bodily signals that have always been a guide and compass for the growth and development of people are silenced by an inexhaustible succession of thoughts that keep us in a state of disconnection and almost permanent tension.
3. Live in the present moment
The content of these thoughts leads me to mention the third of these qualities that seem linked to our well-being. For several thousand years, human beings have known the importance of knowing how to quiet the mind, to separate yourself from thoughts and their content to be able to return to the present moment from which planning and memories take us away.
It is in the “now” where we find ourselves and where we live, and it is in the “here” where our body is, perceiving everything that happens in the environment and learning from it.
To the extent that we manage to be present in space and time, changes begin to emerge: the mind is freed and the body breathes, the muscles relax and the rhythm of our heart slows down, preparing the whole body-mind for an experience. More complete. The bodily connection and the experience of the present moment is a couple that is difficult to separate, one and the other appear and disappear together.
All of us who work at the Vitaliza Psychology Center share this approach that helps us integrate our way of visualizing and approaching well-being with our daily work in therapeutic processes.
Highlighting these three characteristics is not intended to be a wonderful recipe for all ills, nor a cure for all diseases. It only seeks to be a reminder that long before us, there were already contributions to some of the questions of our time.
At Vitaliza we believe in the value of looking back and exploring the reflections and findings of those who preceded us, as an exercise that opens our eyes to what is in front of us and allows us to see it in a different way. It even allows us to discover that what is shown, sometimes as a new light, is still the classic dressed as modern, that which in our haste and plans we have forgotten that we already knew.
Finally, I would like to point out that nothing mentioned in this article, which is Vitaliza’s culture and the belief of those of us who work here, is new. Nothing described is a revealing finding, there is nothing that we did not already know. As those who have a long history in some discipline and experience behind them say, nothing new happens under the Sun. Perhaps the only thing we have to do is stop and look at how the objects that shine under the sun shine. This is what we try when from our center we touch souls by accompanying people.
