Do you think you could feel good by caring about yourself?

I do not as thinking for yourself concentrates you on your problems thus making them bigger and bigger. The opposite makes them appear irrelevant thus making you happy.

Devil advocates around?

More or less you should care about yourself in order to have strength to live. However, I'd agree that it's better to evade thinking about yourself and your own problems. I am more apt to think that solving a problem is rather forgetting it than poking a hole in your head and trying to find the real reason for it.

What really should make us feel good is caring about other people in a true altruistic way which of course is kind of impossible.

Surfer,

I am not sure what you mean by " you should care about yourself in order to have strength to live". Of course you should care about yourself, it's a natural thing, it goes back to your instinct of preservation.

I totally disagree that it is better to evade thinking about yourself and your problems. The best approach is to deal with problems right away and in the most direct way. Not dealing with your problems in a timely manner makes them worse. For example, say you have a cold - you are coughing, sneezing, don't feel well. For most people having a cold and not feeling well is a problem (health problem to be exact). So, following your logic, you shouldn't care about your cold and you just let it be. A day or 2 pass by and it gets worse, your throat starts hurting, you are feverish. Still, you ignore it, don't do anything about it. A couple more days pass by and you can barely get out of bed. Still you take no drugs, you don't do anything. Just because you have been ignoring that small cold, now you are bed ridden with a thermometer up your ass. Take it to the next level - you have cancer - it's a problem. You know about it, you know it's not malicious but you ignore it, you don't treat it, time passes by and because of your stupidity you have a malicious cancer and you are about to die.

You don't need to poke any holes in your head to find the reasons for your problems. Most people have fairly simple problems in life and 90% of the time they know exactly what to do. The reason why people fail is because they don't act. They ignore their problems for too long.

Caring about others in an altruistic way won't make you happy because happiness is a choice. You can be the most altruistic person and still feel miserable. Happiness comes from the way you perceive and look at reality, it is a choice. There was a comic strip from the Peanuts illustrating that. One of the characters is in a bad mood for no reason, so she is sitting on the couch pouting. Her brother comes, all caring and concerned saying "I see you are not happy, here's some cookies and milk, I hope this would make you feel good. Please tell me what else can I do to make you feel happy?"
"You can't do anything. What if I don't want to feel happy?" she says.

There you have it.

okay, you put it in a bit different flat and, of course, it's kind of destructive to ignore health issues and it will aggravate the problem if you do so. Writing the reply above I referred to people whom are over-concerned with their own inner problems and while trying to solve them they enter some endless circles.. and again I'll say that I'd choose the easiest and simplest way.

I don't see anything wrong in case one had a bad childhood, bad habit as drugs and alcohol or painful break-up to leave it all behind, forget it and go on rather than trying to find its initial cause and solve the problem from its root. I know that logically it may sound a nonsense but if it makes me feel better I'll choose it.

yoga is the best thing to feel good.

I am interested too in yoga practices too though not practicing it almost at all. But I know it works.

menina, can you recommend some book, available course or technique that you have tried?

10k U

to triers

i like the books, the articles and all written by Swami Rama. i like reading 3 web-sites:
1./ http://www.swamij.com/swami-rama.htm
2./ http://www.geocities.com/swamiramabio/index.htm
3./ http://www.himilayaninstitute.org (unfortunately this site is not available now)

also i like all the articles on the web-page of the Bulgarian Yoga Association:
http://www.yogabg.com/

regarding technique there is different kind of photos and short instructions in the net how to do every asana. but i don't recommend to try practising them without yogic instructor. i found my yogic instructor several months ago and now I practise hatha yoga (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hatha_yoga) every weekend.

i'm not sure people understand what yoga is indeed. yoga gives you different feelings which can be described in the books but cannot be felt by yourself. ...and of course it is the way which you walk all your life.

Thank you for the reply, also many useful links.

Actually it seems that I have tried some similar technique like Hatha so I know what you are talking about.

Maybe some day I'll try again. Now it's also too hot.

Surfer,

After your last post, I have a better idea of what you really meant and it does make sense. I was thinking in a more practical sense. You are right some people worry for the sake of worrying. And then, there is the difference - just sitting around and worrying won't solve your problems. Taking an action and coming up with a feasible solution is where it is at.

Speaking of painful breakups I agree that it's best to forget the whole situation and move on. But alcoholism and drugs, well you gotta stop. How do you stop? Some psychologists advise realizing the problem and confronting it, finding the root of the problem. It works in some cases but not all. Relationships and stuff like that - it doesn't work for those. I hate people overanalyzing their love life and why they got dumped, etc.

geek, didn't expect so much interest. Thanks for replies. Let me tell you again what I mean.

Health (and other problems) doesn't depend so much on external circumstances like whether, food, etc. See Deepak Chopra books (science), most spiritual books around (including yoga), psychological books.

Ofcource one should take basic care of himself, but being the primary focus on his efforts will lead to no good as he can't get himself to a perfect state thus leading to unhappiness. No, you will never fell "good enough".

I know a man that saved his life by trusting in god and stopping to care only about himself as in the past.

Yoga seems to me yet another drugs alternative. Probably better than alcohol, TV, Computers, etc. but still there.

I would say trying to not get from the others for yourself is the first step. Then explore possibilities.