KIEV (Realist English). People are used to putting things off for later, because they believe that they still have 200 years ahead of them and think that something will happen in life and they will definitely start doing it, psychologist Olga Kaira noted on Apostrophe TV.
“But this “something” never comes — and we put all our business in the closet. The concept of “delayed life syndrome” was introduced by Doctor of Psychological Sciences Vladimir Serkin in 1997 when studying the Northerners – people who have been living for years with the idea of moving and who believe that their real life will begin sometime later. But this time never came in most cases,” she said.
Olga Kaira advises to conduct a deep introspection to determine whether a person has the delayed life syndrome or not: “There is such a cool technique when we divide a piece of paper into three columns and write in the first one our dreams and goals that we had for the last few years, and that for some reason did not come true. In the second column write what you did to achieve these goals. And in the third we write the reasons why, in your opinion, these goals have not come true.”
The psychologist says that people should be aware that the path they are paving towards their goal already is happiness:
“They should enjoy the process of achieving their own goals. And if they think that now they will work hard and for a long time in order to become happy in 15 years, then no, this does not happen that way. The path is happiness, not the ultimate goal. Our life consists of certain moments that make us happy. And if we focus only on the future, if we think that now we are living life on a draft and then something incredible awaits us – it’s just utopia.”
She stressed that many people confuse the delayed life syndrome with dreams. “But these are completely different things, because when we dream, we take certain steps to realize them. And the delayed life syndrome is when we try to achieve something, but in principle we do nothing, and the life we are in now does not suit us,” the psychologist noted.
