"We must aspire to reasonable happiness," says the Spanish psychologist Enrique Rojas and gives 10 tips to achieve it

"Happiness can be named in many ways because it has to do with many things. It is a reality that is difficult to grasp, vaporous,

, with fuzzy profiles," says the Spanish psychologist and psychiatrist Enrique Rojas in his latest book.

Rojas, who is director of the Spanish Institute for Psychiatric Research in Madrid and was elected Humanist Physician of the Year in his country, is the author of

 that are divided into two aspects: clinical (dedicated to depression and anxiety, panic , personality and behavior disorders) and other more essays on happiness, will, feelings or heartbreak. 

The last one,

(Editorial Planeta), is part of that second aspect.

He will present it this afternoon at the Book Fair (at 5:30 p.m., in the Julio Cortázar room).

Everything we should know about life is divided into

in the book that cover different aspects of existence that have always interested men and women, but that are addressed by the author from current concerns.

These lessons deal with who the human being is, the exploration of feelings and their maturity, sexual education and pornography today, going through the golden rules for living as a couple, the sentimental immaturity of today's man (and fear/panic to commitment) to 

and traumas, educate the will, models of happiness and the characteristics of a leader.

One of the chapters dedicated to happiness includes a decalogue, "so that the reader can see

with which he connects or criticizes, or he himself can change and improve it."

Below are fragments of the decalogue that

accessed courtesy of Editorial Planeta.

"Happiness is suffering overcome," says Rojas.

Illustrative photo Shutterstock.

1. Happiness consists in being able to close the wounds of the past

We need

.

Overcoming traumas, negative impacts, setbacks, failures and a long etcetera in the same direction.

The catalog of bad events that can happen to us is a bottomless pit and it is important that we know how to jump over them.

There is a temporary equation of the balanced person that could be summarized in this way: having been able to close the wounds of the past with all that that means, accepting the complexity and difficulties of any existence;

living installed in the present, knowing how to make the most of it, is the famous

of the classics: he seizes the moment, lives the moment... despite its transience;

and, above all, he lives soaked in the future, which is the most promising dimension, what is yet to come, the future.

We always hope for the best, despite the regrets.

I have said it in another way: happiness consists in

.

Psychologists and psychiatrists know how important it is to help our patients to perform the cosmetic surgery of the past, closing wounds permanently and knowing how to fit them properly into the organization chart of our biography.

When this doesn't happen because that person is unable to truly let go of that collection of dire facts, they run the risk of becoming sour

, and spoiled.

In psychiatric terms, she becomes neurotic on that sliding ramp and is invaded by unresolved conflicts that, sooner or later, appear and damage her and make her toxic.

The grudge deteriorates inside.

And the one who encourages betrayals, does them.

, that clear.

There are many examples that come to my mind of characters for whom I feel great esteem: from Thomas More to Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, through Nelson Mandela or Vaclav Havel;

or lesser known cases such as Walter Ciszek or Van Thuan.

In many of them everything has happened in a terrible and brutal way.

To love is to affirm the other and to love is to forgive and fight to forget the grievances received, and that requires generosity and effort.

2. Learn to have a positive outlook on life

This must be learned, like almost everything in this life.

Of oneself and of our environment.

Optimism is a positive way of capturing reality.

And that requires an education of the look to be able, in addition to seeing the negative, to be able to

that often remains hidden or camouflaged and that it is necessary to go behind it.

It is surprising how there are people

and who grow in the face of difficulties.

And, at the same time, others are too weak and collapse in the face of relatively small setbacks from day to day or others of medium intensity and collapse.

Are you born an optimist?

Can a pessimist stop being one?

The key is in the

, a personal craft work through which we are able to discover the most positive dimension of reality, that segment that is hidden in the background of the facts and that has some positive notes that it is good to discover because they can teach us very wise lessons.

I bring here the case of Boris Cyrulnik, a French Sephardic Jew, who saw his parents and two brothers die in the gas chambers of the Auschwitz concentration camp.

He managed to escape under a fence, himself a bundle of bones, and was wandering around the outskirts of the field.

He wanted three things: to be welcomed by a family, to study Medicine and to be a psychiatrist.

.

He is one of the fathers of the psychological movement called

, defined as a psychological current that teaches to endure adverse situations so that that person bends like metal but without breaking.

Thus one becomes solid, resistant, strong, tenacious, robust, powerful, almost invincible.

Resilience speaks of the ability to draw strength from a traumatic experience and

and thus be able to be impregnable, stony, unalterable, armored, with the vigor of a superior person.

Resilience is all art and means acquiring

to achieve improvement.

Happiness implies having "good health and a bad memory," says Rojas.

Illustrative photo Shutterstock.

3. Have an iron will

Strong, compact, strong, robust, resistant to discouragement, like the roots of a centuries-old olive tree.

And this needs to be educated from the first years of life.

It is a key piece in psychology that, if it is solid, ensures that our objectives and goals come to fruition.

All education begins and ends by the will.

It serves nothing more and nothing less than to achieve the proper development of the personal project.

Having a strong will is one of the clearest indicators of personality maturity.

.

With her we are dwarfs on the shoulders of giants.

4. Have a good balance between heart and head

The two great components of our psychology are the world of affectivity and that of intelligence.

I'm not saying that the other tools within them are less important;

what I mean is that these two decide the behavior.

Not be too sensitive, bordering on susceptibility, nor too cold and rational.

The key is to find a

between them.

Pascal said: "The heart has reasons that reason does not know."

Let's not lose sight of the fact that our first contact with reality is emotional: I liked that person, I like him, I liked those people a lot.

well-armed block.

Having a healthy affectivity means moving the strings of relationships with others well, charging them with true, authentic feelings, without duplicity, discovering that

.

And at the same time knowing how to use the instruments of reason well: logic, analysis, synthesis, discernment.

Being able to

at the same time.

Parents and educators have a central role here.

Cover of the last book by Enrique Rojas.

5. To be happy it is necessary to have a coherent and realistic life project

And this must house within it four great arguments:

.

There are two notes that sneak into its ins and outs: it must be

, which means having within it as few contradictions as possible.

Good relationship between theory and practice, consistent between its parts, congruent.

The other note is that it must be

: have your feet on the ground, adjust to the facts of personal life and the environment, although with hope.

Each of them opens, fanning out.

.

This must be one of the main arguments.

But not only that, but it must be worked with care, with dedication.

There are many forms of love and we must know them.

Also to be happy it is essential

and that brings out the best in oneself.

Love and work are two key hinges of reasonable happiness.

One and the other feed on each other.

Culture is freedom: it gives you wings, fullness, abundance of knowledge.

A paid path that leads to happiness.

, knows what to expect, has answers to the great questions of existence and that is why it is difficult to manipulate.

Culture is one of the gateways to the castle of happiness.

And, finally, friendship: affinity, donation and confidence;

we need it as part of life itself,

in the various circumstances of life.

6. Put the right means to make other people happy

When one is trying to do this, he forgets himself,

, and this leads him to change the direction of his actions.

Frequently asking yourself: "What can I do to give a few drops of happiness to those around me?"

And this rests on a principle that is included in many authors who have worked on this subject: there is

.

Psychologists and psychiatrists know this well.

and turning to others trying to give them joy is highly effective.

An American psychologist has been one of the fathers of this thought, the so-called Positive Psychology, Martin Seligman, who has developed a wide field of work focused on this, which leads to a way of learning that requires a certain mastery in order not to get stuck. in negativity.

I have the experience of many patients to whom our team recommended

and that changed them.

It is sometimes difficult for them to follow this indication, from the outset, but, if we succeed, the effectiveness is usually very positive.

7. Ability to appreciate the little joys and pleasures of ordinary life

These things often go unnoticed.

It is about knowing how to stop the clock and stop the time that runs fleetingly and capture it to, in those moments,

, simple, but very positive.

There is a

, which refers to the exploration of how our life is going as a whole and another

, which aspires only to know how to enjoy the small things, the everyday, which goes from a beautiful landscape to a mountain excursion , to reading a book that has us absorbed, going through a pleasant lunch or dinner, or a long-awaited music concert, or a conversation about a topical issue.

That knowing how to be opens a window of fresh air for small happiness.

"Small happiness" are moments.

Illustrative photo Shutterstock.

8. Know how to value the things that one has and those that one has achieved

We spend our lives thinking about tomorrow, imbued with the future, without realizing that it is good from time to time to value what one is and possesses and the objectives that have been achieved.

Because the important thing is not to have achieved certain goals (which it is), but

, recognize that behind it there has been a struggle, personal effort, starting over.

In my work as a psychiatrist I often go on excursions with my patients to their past life and take a walk with them and show them the wisdom of following that path and the strength of overcoming that obstacle

that other setback.

The case of the Mexican fisherman who was lost in the Pacific for 488 days in a small boat where everything happened to him comes to mind and thanks to his tenacity he did not lose hope of being saved.

In a word, to see one's life in perspective, longitudinally, as a biographical panorama where the main milestones of one's life and its vicissitudes are drawn, and the thousand and one adventures that have been happening in the landscape of personal history. .

Being able to see in perspective, key to happiness.

Illustrative photo Shutterstock.

9. Know how to give the things that happen to us the importance they really have

Life has

.

We must have responses and actions prepared to get ahead in all kinds of emergencies.

But the catalog of difficulties is a bottomless pit.

I will analyze this advice in three sections:

a) Being able to have a kind of fairness of judgment.

 Value the things that happen to us in a certain fair measure.

And this is art and craft, five-star knowledge and requires an outstanding personal balance.

There is pure reason, which sticks to the data of reality, without more.

And also the emotional reason, which helps to capture what happens to one by adding other components that are not observed at first and that come hand in hand with feelings.

b) Learn to minimize the importance of many things

that happen to us, avoiding falling into sadness, worry, frustration and a cascade of negative thoughts that lead us to the field of melancholy.

It complements the previous one, but it has some unique notes.

c) Have a good perspective of personal life

.

Ortega y Gasset spoke of perspectivism, which means the ability to analyze the facts, leaving the immediate for the immediate, the near for the distant.

Those who live next to Niagara Falls do not perceive its roar, it is necessary to distance yourself from that noise to better capture it.

The key is knowing how to distance yourself.

The Egyptians believed that the Nile Valley was the entire world.

Go from the parts to the whole.

In a word, if two men look at the same landscape at the same time, they do not see the same thing.

There is a first term that is immediate and that offers all its details with meticulousness and if we observe them we realize their nuances.

Then there is a second plane that is more blurred, where what is perceived is blurred.

And then we find a third landscape.

"Perspective is one of the components of reality, it is its organization, because all knowledge is from a certain point of view. There is no absolute point of view. Each life is a point of view on the universe."

It is the doctrine of point of view.

Our vision of personal events and the environment is always broad, complex, full of crossroads and semi-hidden areas.

It is decisive to seek the meaning of what surrounds us and where we are going.

Practicing this in personal life has enormous intellectual importance, since we will relativize many incidents.

Ortega says it in an emblematic sentence:

.

We went from the provincial spirit (of believing that our town or our city is the entire world, that everything is there) to the far-reaching spirit (which goes beyond what is seen and is capable of distancing itself from the facts and taking other conclusions that are hidden, submerged, that must be discovered because they are blurred).

But we must know that failure is necessary for the development and maturation of the personality.

It has an important role that reflects that all things in life always present pitfalls, difficulties, unexpected challenges to overcome and that we have to be prepared not to collapse, but to grow in the face of adversity.

There are many people who have a

, which means that they remain in the negative anecdote of a fact and do not have the ability to look up and scan the horizon.

It is essential to have a long vision of life that leads us to

, knowing that knowledge of reality can never be absolute, since this consists of the relationship with the phenomena that move around it.

Knowing how to look up and see in the distance, see the personal facts in their entirety.

10. Don't get your expectations wrong

Or in other words: knowing how to curb excessive ambitions.

Not asking life too much, knowing that human existence always has limitations, obstacles, barriers, restrictions, borders.

The best of lives, the one that we can study in detail, will never lack in it things or aspects that have not turned out well or that have been abandoned or that were frustrated and accepting that means maturity.

There is a very Spanish expression that goes like this: "don't ask the elm for pears".

Absolute happiness does not exist, it is a utopia.

The happiness to which we should aspire is reasonable happiness, which I would summarize in this equation:

.

The numerator is the income statement;

The denominator is moderation, not expecting too much from the big themes and issues of life.

What to do, what to choose?

Which way to take?

The Greeks said

,

.

Gather all my possibilities and illusions and discover who I want to be and where I want to go and calmly accept the adversities and the things that in the end did not go well.

***

Do you want to continue reading about well-being and happiness?

We suggest these notes:

➪A neuroscientist explains 5 elements that you can "train" to increase well-being

➪Mario Alonso Puig provides 5 keys to "change the chip" and learn to manage emotions

➪"Happiness always depends on oneself, well-being does not", says Mario Alonso Puig

➪Well-being and happiness: 3 misconceptions and things you can do 

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