How to organize yourself and your time? Give up time wasters. Stages of creating a self-organization system

IN Lately Psychologists note an increased amount of stress among the population. No wonder, because in cities there is a high pace of life, and, trying to be on time everywhere, a person gets quite overexerted. Therefore, it is important for everyone to be able to and know how to organize their time with maximum benefit for myself. As a result, this will allow you not only to keep up with everything, but also to find opportunities for personal affairs and relaxation. This skill is needed not only by adults, but also by children. After all, it is from an early age that it is most effective to learn something.

Why do you need the ability to organize time?

Some people find it strange to learn how to manage their time. Some people think this is the lot of bores. Most likely, everyone is familiar with a type of personality who is always and everywhere late? It is unlikely that it can cause pleasant sensations. But proper planning not only protects you from being late, but also allows you not to live with the feeling of “again a wasted day.” So, the advantages of organizing time:

  • The constant rush will disappear.
  • Absent-mindedness goes away.
  • There is time for hobbies and meeting with friends.
  • There is no feeling that days are going by “in vain”.
  • Creation of working days and weekends.
  • No processing.

As you can see, obviously, knowing how to effectively organize time is useful for every adult. The main benefit is that this way a person is saved from nervous tension, anxiety and subsequent stress. In other words, by managing your time wisely, you can maintain your health.

Ways to organize time

Behind for a long time existence, there were many ways to organize your time. There is no single correct type, since they need to be chosen based on the individual characteristics of the psyche. For example, each category has its own time management principles. It’s clear that organizing a student’s time is easier than organizing the time of an employee in a significant position.

Basics for planning

First things first, buy yourself a diary. What it will be like is up to you. Some people prefer a notebook lined by dates, others prefer weekly divisions, and others need blank sheets of white paper. Either way, you'll need something to record your schedule on. Don't try to find the most expensive or cheap option. Choose what you like. The main thing is that you feel comfortable using it.

An option for advanced people is electronic diaries. There are a lot various kinds programs that can be customized to your taste. Also, most of them have synchronization with a smartphone or tablet.

Key point: you should always keep your diary in front of your eyes and promptly make changes to it.

Before starting work

If you have not tried to organize your time before, then you will have to go through many difficulties. Therefore, immediately remember the phrase “The best is the enemy of the good” and try not to worry. When a person learns something, he does not do everything well right away, and this is a normal phenomenon.

You should always strive for the ideal, but along the way, not everything will work out correctly, and this is normal, since organizing your time is not so easy without knowing how to do it. So be persistent.

Decide on a life concept

In any business, it is important to realize your goals. To do this, in time management (the so-called branch of science on how to organize your time), it is customary to distinguish three types of goals. These are long term goals, medium term goals and short term goals. In general, the only difference is in the stage at which you decide to implement them.

That's why important rule- write down your goals. Be sure to do this on paper. This is the only way you can complete them. Why is this necessary? When you write down a goal, you accept it and materialize it. When you see a list of goals, you see your business plan. This is how you separate the wheat from the chaff, the unimportant from the main. After all, before deciding how best to organize your time, you need to decide why you need it.

Set clear deadlines for achieving goals. Why is this necessary? Blurred deadlines mean vague goals, resulting in an impossible achievement. And by clearly limiting yourself to a time frame, you take on certain obligations.

The Trick to Making a Goal Plan

For those who are just learning how to organize their time, it is difficult to separate important goals from unimportant ones. This is especially difficult in terms of long-term goals. Do a simple exercise: take blank sheets of paper and write down absolutely all your desires, from simple to incredible. Anything that comes to mind. Then put the lists aside and come back to them after a couple of days. Then, from what you have written, write down only what is meaningful to you. This will give you your list of long-term goals.

Features of medium-term goals

You need to have a three-year or five-year plan in front of you. In other words, something global. You need to divide it into a large number of small goals, broken down into monthly blocks. These are small steps towards our own great achievements. It is important to take into account areas such as health, recreation, sports, education, and entertainment.

Always keep the resulting list before your eyes, as you can make adjustments to it over time.

How to organize your time correctly?

Once you buy a diary, get into the habit of writing in it every day. Get into the habit of planning your day the night before. This approach will allow you to save several hours. What are the advantages of this approach?

  • The order of doing things.
  • Drawing up a travel route.
  • In a dream, the subconscious mind absorbs information better.
  • A daily plan and long-term goals allow you to rank your tasks.
  • Additional motivation.
  • Visibility of active and completed goals.

In other words, planning each day - useful thing. It also allows you to correctly This will allow you to immediately mark ineffective things.

Consider your biological cycles. For each person there are individual periods of activity and its decline. Therefore, it is logical to plan your affairs taking them into account. For example, labor-intensive activities with a high concentration of attention should be carried out during periods of activity. This will allow you to work efficiently.

Be sure to divide all your goals into categories. This makes it easier for you to highlight micro-goals within them and complete them. For example, what do you mostly do during the day? Let's say it's work, home, self-care, free time and dream. Create a list of goals based on these categories.

Ask for help? - Yes!

Many people find it strange to delegate their affairs to others. In fact, this needs to be done. As much as you might like, your time and your personal capabilities are limited, so feel free to delegate some of your responsibilities. Decide on goals and tasks, find those who can accomplish them, and delegate them. Discuss milestones and due dates. Don’t forget to reward the performers at the end of the task.

How to organize a child’s time and teach him this?

Modern parents note that children have become inactive. Give them free rein, they will sit at the computer all day long. In fact, today you can find two diametrically different concepts of behavior: completely neglect the children, do not let them take a break from school and classes. In this matter, it is important to maintain a golden mean.

How to organize a student’s time so that he has enough time for studies and hobbies, sections, clubs, etc.? Train him already primary school plan the day. Talk to your child about what he might have to do. For example, school, lunch, coming home, relaxing, preparing homework, helping around the house and personal time. Don't put pressure on him, just help him with leading questions. At first, help your child follow the action plan. Over time, he will be completely independent in this regard.

Paradoxically, those children whose day is maximally occupied with school and clubs are the ones who know best how to manage their time. The point is that they know how much they need to do, and so they try. At first, you need to clearly control your child’s trips here or there, but over time you will no longer have this need.

How to organize your child's free time? - Remember that parents - best example for children. Therefore, if you know how to plan time, manage it and make effective lists goals, then the child will easily adopt this system from you.

In any case, remember that learning effective time management takes a long time, as it should become your habit. And it takes a lot of time to form a habit. Don’t despair if you can’t do something or forget to write something in, everything comes with experience.

Another useful trick is to learn introspection. This way you can determine which things are ineffective during the day, and which ones are effective.

Sometimes even the most busy man may be haunted by the feeling that he spends too much time on unimportant things. Does it happen that before you start work, you spend five minutes looking for a lost document, another five minutes - the desired message in e-mail, littered with piles of virtual spam? Thus, a whole hour accumulates per day, which is spent searching for lost things. And this is just for one day - then these hours are summed up and year after year turn into whole days and weeks.

Many people suffer from poor self-organization. And while they may console themselves that a creative person is able to work effectively amidst the chaos around them, such disorganization can end up being very costly. For example, a promotion that will slip right under your nose due to a lack of the necessary qualities. Lack of discipline increases the amount of stress and also reduces creativity. In general, it does not allow a person to be effective and live up to his potential.

Five tips to improve your effective self-organization skills

Let's look at several ways that will improve the formation of self-organization skills, and thus bring you closer to achieving your desired goals.

1. Use a notebook And to this day it remains one of the most powerful tools of self-organization. You can jot down important thoughts while talking with your boss or colleagues. Or it will help to record the necessary information when communicating with a client over the phone. One way or another, all the necessary data will be collected in one place. You no longer have to rely only on your memory - after all, events in modern world change so quickly that the human brain is simply not able to retain the necessary information for a long time.

2. Take about fifteen minutes each day to organize your day.. This could be writing a to-do list the night before, or preparing for the work day ahead. It is important that your time is not wasted spontaneously - by thoroughly thinking through the things that need to be done and what is needed for work, you will increase your efficiency significantly.

3. Every thing has its place . Some mothers teach their children that their toys and other things should have their own “home.” Try to become such a “mom” for yourself for a while. Let a certain place on the shelf become a “home” for your keys. What about clothes, magazines, writing instruments? By accustoming yourself to order, you can save a lot of time and protect yourself from unnecessary stress.

4. Clean up your desk regularly . Often it becomes the area where it accumulates great amount old papers, unnecessary projects and other unrelated documents. Cleaning is one of the the best ways organize your space for more productive work.

If you are struggling with poor organization at home, then the first step is to get rid of useless things and clean up. Throw away old clothes, medications that are past their expiration date, and unnecessary items.

5. Develop a system to maintain order . Once you get rid of the clutter and clean up, you will experience a feeling of great relief. But we hasten to warn you that it is unlikely to last long. Things around you will persistently strive for entropy - this will be facilitated by the flow of new objects or documents. To counter them, develop your own system for maintaining order. For example, timely destruction of unnecessary files will help prevent the accumulation of garbage on the desktop.

Learning to be organized is not an easy task. However, if desired, anyone can do it. Implement the described rules into your life - and soon you will definitely begin to enjoy the results that organization and discipline will bring.

How to become organized person? It is known that people who do not possess this skill are late for meetings, do not know how to prioritize tasks, cope with them, and find it difficult to collaborate and communicate. They quickly get tired, lose control of themselves, and get nervous, which prevents them from being successful and in demand. It is obvious that everyone to modern man you need to learn how to organize your day, life, everyday life.

Where to begin?

Being organized is difficult - you need to come to terms with this right away, otherwise you shouldn’t start studying this issue, so as not to immediately break down under the yoke of unusual circumstances. Self-control implies a person’s great desire to get away from the current regime, as well as changing habits. What is internal composure? This is a kind of upbringing - everyone who has children knows how difficult it is to retrain them. However, the younger generation, with a little resistance, still succumbs and relearns. Moreover, the period of such re-education takes only a few weeks, or even days.

Thus, starting your path to self-organization and further successful life, you should treat yourself like a child. Demand changes from yourself, but do not oppress for the first mistakes, rejoice at every new achievement or good habit and then be proud of yourself.

Step one - desires and goals

How to become an organized person? First of all, figure out what you want. You can write 100 wishes on paper, any, even the most non-standard ones. Next, on a separate sheet of paper, write down the criteria for what you think is a happy life. Based on the above, it will be easy to identify the most important tasks - starting from them, set 5 main goals for the next 5 years. Too many goals will quickly make you give up, as will too short a time frame, so follow your dreams slowly but surely.

Step two - plan your day

Do you think that a diary is only necessary for business people? No! An organized person should have one too, so get one convenient organizer, write down everything you have planned there. Check not only work and everyday life, but also leisure and entertainment. This way, you will keep track of what you managed to do, see that you are resting on time, and also understand your own resources.

Step three - highlight the main thing

Being organized is a priority. If you understand the importance of a certain task, it will be completed in the near future, and failure to complete other, smaller or insignificant tasks may not even be paid attention to. Accordingly, the most important task should be in first place on the daily to-do list, and everything else should be achieved as much as possible.

Step four - assessing your own life

It is difficult to engage in self-organization without knowing how satisfied you are with your life, so evaluate your satisfaction with the main areas - development, business, health, family, friends, leisure. Rate each item; based on the results, it is easy to understand in which direction you should put more effort. For example:

  • if you want to work and develop in business, work harder, study, improve your skills;
  • be healthy - eat right, exercise;
  • family is important - give it more attention and time for loved ones, they themselves will begin to reach out and appreciate every moment;
  • Want cozy home- make repairs, clean up on time;
  • relax - put a piggy bank, save money for travel.

In this way, goals are simultaneously achieved and the level of satisfaction in life areas increases.

Step five - financial reporting

Organizing yourself means learning to lead equity. When receiving all types of income, write them down in the income column, and when making purchases, record the amounts spent as expenses. At the end of the reporting period, that is, before the next salary, you will be able to evaluate expenses and their necessity. Highlight the unnecessary ones in red - this is what you could do without, and direct the savings towards accumulating funds for large purchase or rest.

Without knowing how to spend money, it is difficult to create reserves. In an unstable economy and frequent layoffs at work, there must be a cash reserve.

The rules of personal organization and self-discipline are well known to people who have achieved success in this industry. The process of learning to organize yourself can take a long time, so it's important to use a few tips to help you become more organized and stay organized throughout your life.

There's a place for everything

An organized person always lives in order, so when you accustom yourself to organization, start small - lay out documents down to utility bills, check the condition of your cabinets, dishes, whether each thing has its own place. You should collect everything unnecessary and throw it away, and if other family members create another mess or do not take care of the order you have established, explain to them the importance of self-organization. By making relatives allies rather than enemies, achieving success will be ten times easier.

Duplicate

How to become collected and organized? Learn to save your time when restoring documents. Often they are lost and need to be copied or other manipulations carried out. Having several duplicates in stock will save time and demonstrate efficiency. This advice applies to both work and home situations.

Write it down!

An organized person may get tired and forget something, so trust the paper. Write down everything you think is necessary, even if someone finds it funny. It’s better to look into a stylish notebook than to stand in a thoughtful state, wondering why you came to this or that department.

If you have an idea - do it!

Self-discipline, self-discipline is not easy to learn - when you organize your day, you have to leave your comfort zone. However, this is necessary, otherwise nothing will be achieved, and any goal will become impossible. Be honest with yourself, don't let laziness or despair overwhelm you. By relaxing, you will achieve nothing - you will rest after you have done what you have planned.

Get enough sleep

It is impossible for a person suffering from chronic lack of sleep to organize himself. So easy to achieve reverse effect, worsening your health, so try to go to bed on time. Spend your time before bed outside, walking on fresh air. This way you will improve the quality of your sleep, and in the morning you will feel a surge of energy.

Away with self-flagellation

How to organize your time to get everything done? To do this, you need to track how long it takes to complete any of the tasks. Based on the data received, it will be clear which tasks should be completed first and which ones take longer. At the same time, you should not then torment yourself with questions “could I have done this faster”, “could I have acted in such a way that the task would have been more effective”, etc. The job is done, so there is no point in oppressing yourself with insolvency. Any type of doubt is an opponent of the organization - this is how human psychology works.

Conclusion

Being an organizer of your life means being able to concentrate on goals and be proud of yourself. External situation, conditions, surroundings - all these factors do not always satisfy our needs. How can you become more organized in such situations? Just take it and do it! Armed with the recommendations described above, putting aside emotions, begin to organize yourself! This is the only way to achieve what you want despite the conditions.

Are you constantly, everywhere, late, losing things you need and never completing your plans on time? Unfortunately, disorganization is the problem of many representatives of the fairer sex. Men suffer from this deficiency much less frequently. But the situation is completely fixable. The main thing is to truly want to change your life, says psychologist Elena Godina.

“Please note that disorganization always manifests itself as a complex,” says the specialist. “If a person always comes to work or to meetings exactly at the appointed time, then order reigns among his things. And he will never let you down with projects and obligations. And vice versa ".

Start by making a plan for every day, the psychologist advises. Make a note to yourself: “I should be at work by so-and-so hours,” “Meeting with M at such-and-such hours.” Before you do this, figure out what time you need to leave your home or office in order to be on time, how many minutes or hours it will take to get there. And also arrange all current affairs and meetings in order of importance and priority.

Try to get enough sleep. Did you sit at the computer at night, read an interesting book or watch a movie, and as a result decided to relax a little in bed after the alarm went off? Five minutes easily turns into 15, and now being late for work is guaranteed.

Don't make promises you can't keep. For example, don’t say that you can be at a meeting in an hour if you need an hour just to wash your face, have breakfast, get dressed and leave the house, and another hour to travel. More real time- two hours. Voice it out. It’s the same with work: you understand that it’s impossible to complete it in a short time - don’t take it on! Let your boss know exactly when you can actually get the job done - say, not today, but by tomorrow evening. Otherwise, you will earn a reputation as a careless employee.

Learn to concentrate on the tasks at hand. Don’t do other things at the same time; put aside all other things. Instead of complaining about the complexity of the task ahead of you, try to quickly understand it. Fear, as you know, has big eyes, and it is possible that you are simply exaggerating the difficulties.

At work, you need to work, and not sit on social networks or sharpen your skills with colleagues. It's one thing if you're not particularly busy. And if you have something to do, then complete the task first. Otherwise, you will have to work overtime or even take work home.

Don't let others disturb you. Let's say you're busy important matter, and a colleague, friend or neighbor is trying to burden you with their problems or asking for empty chatter. Don't listen to them just because you think it would be impolite to refuse them communication. Say that you have an urgent matter or work that you need to pay attention to now. Add that you will contact this person as soon as you can, but not now. You're busy right now.

Every thing should have its place. You should have a good idea of ​​which desk drawer the keys are in and which bank cards or rent receipts, and always put them there only. If you have a lot of things and you are not able to remember where everything is, put everything in folders or boxes and label them. You can make a note of where everything is, so you don’t have to rummage through drawers later. If you have a big library, then finding the right book in it is sometimes difficult. Therefore, a catalog will not hurt you. One day you will spend time compiling it, but then, when you look at it, you will instantly know where everything is.

Make copies necessary documents on the computer. Save them on a separate drive or in a separate folder. Then, if something is lost, you can always retrieve the necessary file from the “storage”. It is also advisable to make paper copies of important documents.

Get into the habit of writing everything down. Let's say passwords to accounts on various sites, phone numbers, addresses of companies... Don't count on your memory, it can play a very cruel joke on you. You can record data in a notebook, or in a special computer file. And even better - both on paper and electronically.

“But the most important thing,” says Elena Godina, “do not convince yourself and others that you cannot change and will forever remain uncollected. Everything is in yours and only in your hands!”

If we are lazy and we don’t understand the plan of action, then we need to organize ourselves. In this case, we simply need to organize the process ourselves, during which we create and reproduce all the necessary plans, dreams and ideas.
Human self-organization- the process of spontaneous ordering and the ability to organize oneself: to work, to fulfill agreements with oneself and others, to achieve one’s goals. Self-motivation is a carrot or a stick in relation to oneself, motivating and pushing oneself to fulfill desires and intentions.
Self-organization is a person’s ability to properly organize his life, environment, work, and leisure.
N.I. Kozlov believes that “self-organization is such an arrangement of a situation and such an organization of life when everything that should happen happens easily and naturally, by itself.<..>To organize yourself independently, you need will, the skill of overcoming yourself, your laziness and your fears. The will can and should be developed, but if it is still lacking, you can help yourself by other reasonable means. Practical self-organization is such arranging a situation and such an organization of life when everything that should happen happens easily and naturally, by itself.”
Types of self-organization: technical, biological and social.
The mechanisms of self-organization in them are based on different principles:
- technical - based on a program for automatically changing the action algorithm in case of changing conditions;
- biological - based on the genetic program for the conservation of the species and on the Darwinian triad: variability, heredity, selection;
- social - based on a public social program for the harmonization of social relations, including priorities, values, and laws that change over time.
Technical self-organization
In the technical self-organization of a person, creativity, innovative development, professional growth and increasing the prestige of work play an important role.
Biological self-organization
In biological self-organization, taking care of your health, expedient and purposeful life activities, and the desire for happy longevity play an important role.
Social self-organization
Social self-organization presupposes:
- the presence of a predetermined goal, towards which everything strives independently, self-organizes around it.
- flexibility, variability and adaptability of management structures with increased synergistic relationships that ensure an increase in the overall effect;
- diversification, decentralization, increasing productivity with new work motivation and transfer of information, knowledge, know-how, etc.;
- combination of management and self-government;
- self-education, self-education, self-control.;
- accumulation of structural information, development new goal and change of structure.
The most important task of understanding self-organization is the relationship between the processes of purposeful self-organization and spontaneous self-organization.

Organizing your own life by external means
Material http://www.psychologos.ru/articles/view/organizaciya_sobstvennoy_zhizni_vneshnimi_sredstvami
To navigate the outside world, control one’s state and behavior, a person can use external memory, external attention and external motivations.
This is an analogue of the psyche, but on the outside. When a person, for the purposes of orientation in the external world, managing his state and behavior, begins to use the external - external memory, external attention and external impulses, this is not called the psyche.
External memory
You may have an excellent natural memory, but with the amount of information that we need every day today, no brain is enough to remember everything. Then another, external, artificial memory comes to our aid - our ability to collect the necessary information and the habit of recording it on external media so that we can always easily find everything we need.
For effective self-organization of your own life, everything larger number business people use external media: notepad, voice recorder, PDA or laptop. This is our external, artificial memory.
External attention
Being attentive and being able to concentrate on what is important to you is a great skill, but if everything around you is distracting, it gets in the way. Why not put external circumstances at your service so that they control your attention in the right side? What you want to be important to you - let it be, if possible, in your field of vision. From the field of vision it will fall into the field of attention - remember, think about it, and perhaps start doing something necessary in this direction. The most important thing is to let it be in front of your nose.
You may not consider yourself a lover of candy and Pepsi, but if you have a bottle of Pepsi and candy on your table, you can be sure that you will be pouring yourself a drink and eating it in the very near future. It just happens because it gets your attention.
If you want to actively engage in sports, then it is better to place the sports equipment in the line of attention: the dumbbells in the room should not be placed neatly out of sight, but in plain sight.
Organizing your own life using internal means
Material
http://www.psychologos.ru/articles/view/organizaciya_sobstvennoy_zhizni_vnutrennimi_sredstvami
To navigate the external world, manage one’s state and behavior, a person can use internal (natural) memory, internal attention and internal motivations. In general, this is called using your psyche.
Organizing your own life by external means
It is important to remember that to navigate the outside world, control one’s state and behavior, a person can use external memory, external attention and external motivations. This is an analogue of the psyche, but on the outside. When a person, for the purposes of orientation in the external world, managing his state and behavior, begins to use the external - external memory, external attention and external impulses, this is not called the psyche.

Self-regulation
Every person wants to become a “master of himself,” to master self-regulation skills to create values ​​that are meaningful to him. Of course, this serious and responsible task cannot be completed in one day. This is, first of all, the ability to force yourself to do something necessary. Each of us faces serious work in developing habits and requires serious and long-term work.
Self-regulation is the disclosure of a person’s reserve capabilities. The use of self-regulation techniques presupposes active volitional participation and, as a result, is a condition for the formation of a strong, responsible personality.
What are the main conditions for developing self-regulation skills?
1. 1. Specifically define the task, formulate it for yourself specific goal and learn to manage your time, that is, become an organized person (What is the goal, task of your activity? How and when should it be carried out? What can or should happen?).
2. 2. Be sure to develop criteria for success and failure (if the result is not what it should be, the goal has not been achieved).
3. Write down in a special notebook all the stages of achieving your goals.
3. It is necessary to check all the small results, what and how is happening at the moment, whether it leads to the desired result.
4. 4. If you suddenly discover an error or see something that deviates far from your plan, go back and find the error, the place where the deviation first appeared.
5. 5. Remember that in life there are practically no situations in which you cannot find a solution on your own and you can always ask for help from those who know what to do.
6. 6. Develop your ability to assess the possible course of events and be able to anticipate and foresee possible consequences.
7. 7. It is advisable (where possible, of course) to alternate between easy and difficult tasks.
And so self-regulation is the regulation of activity. It includes:
the goal of activity accepted by the subject
subjective model of significant conditions
performance program
system subjective criteria achieving the goal (success criteria)
control and evaluation of real results
decisions on correction of the self-regulatory system
Emotional self-regulation
Three levels of emotional self-regulation of the individual can be distinguished:
1. unconscious emotional self-regulation. 2. conscious volitional emotional self-regulation. 3. conscious semantic emotional self-regulation.
First level emotional self-regulation is ensured by psychological defense mechanisms that operate at the subconscious level and are aimed at protecting consciousness from unpleasant, traumatic experiences associated with internal and external conflicts, states of anxiety, remorse and discomfort. Here the following mechanisms are distinguished: denial, repression, suppression, isolation, projection, regression, devaluation, intellectualization, rationalization, sublimation, etc.
Second level– conscious volitional emotional self-regulation. It is aimed at achieving a comfortable emotional state through volitional effort. This also includes volitional control of external manifestations of emotional experiences (psychomotor and vegetative).
Most methods and techniques of emotional self-regulation belong precisely to this level, for example: suggestive methods (auto-training and other types of self-hypnosis and self-hypnosis), Jacobson's progressive muscle relaxation, relaxation based on biofeedback, breathing exercises, switching attention and distraction from unpleasant experiences, activation of pleasant memories, psychotechnics based on visualization, emotional release through physical activity, labor, volitional influence directly on feelings - suppressing them or activating them, reacting emotions through screaming, laughter, crying (catharsis), etc.
At this level of emotional self-regulation, conscious will is aimed not at resolving the need-motivational conflict underlying emotional discomfort, but at transforming its subjective and objective manifestations. Therefore, in their essence, the mechanisms of this level are symptomatic and as a result of their action the causes of emotional discomfort are not eliminated. This feature is common to conscious volitional and unconscious emotional self-regulation.
Third level– conscious semantic ( value) emotional self-regulation is qualitative new way solving the problem of emotional discomfort. It is aimed at eliminating its underlying causes - at solving the internal need-motivational conflict, which is achieved by understanding and rethinking one’s own needs and values ​​and generating new life meanings. The highest aspect of semantic self-regulation is self-regulation at the level of existential needs and meanings. This is the deepest and, at the same time, the highest level of self-regulation, accessible to man on modern stage its development.
To carry out emotional self-regulation on semantic level, you need the ability to think clearly, recognize and describe in words the most subtle shades of your emotional experiences, be aware of your own needs behind feelings and emotions, and find meaning even in unpleasant experiences and difficult life circumstances. These listed skills fall within the competence of special integrative mental activity, which has been intensively studied in science over the past decades and has been called “ emotional intellect(emotional intelligence).” The main functions of emotional intelligence include: emotional awareness, voluntary control of one's own emotions, the ability to self-motivate, empathy and understanding of emotional experiences other people and managing the emotional state of other people.

Emotional regulation system
As is known, in humans the morphological substrate of emotional regulation is the ancient (subcortical) and most recently emerged (frontal) brain formations. In their basal (basic) foundations, emotions are associated with instincts and drives, and in their most primitive forms they even function through the mechanism of unconditioned reflexes.
A special role in this process belongs to memory and speech. Memory creates the conditions for preserving traces of emotional experiences. As a result, not only current events, but also the past (and based on them, the future) begin to cause emotional resonance. Speech, in turn, designates, differentiates and generalizes emotional experiences. Thanks to the inclusion of emotions in speech processes, the former lose in their brightness and spontaneity, but gain in awareness, in the possibility of their intellectualization.
The emotional system is one of the main regulatory systems that provides active forms vital activity of the body.
Like any regulatory system, emotional regulation consists of afferent and efferent links (afferent and efferent nerves, i.e. nerves that bring and refer irritation). Its afferent link is one side facing the processes occurring in the internal environment of the body, and the other is facing the external environment.
From the internal environment it receives information about general condition body (which is globally regarded as comfortable or uncomfortable), about physiological needs. Along with this constant information, in extreme, often pathological cases, reactions to signals arise that usually do not reach the level of emotional evaluation. These signals, often associated with vital distress of individual organs, cause states of restlessness, anxiety, fear, etc.
Regarding the information received from the external environment, then the afferent link of the emotional system is sensitive to those of its parameters that directly signal the possibility in the present or future of meeting current needs, and also responds to any changes in the external environment that pose a threat or its possibility in the future. In the range of phenomena fraught with danger, information synthesized by cognitive systems is also taken into account: the possibility of a shift in the environment towards instability, uncertainty, and information deficiency.
Thus, cognitive And emotional systems jointly provide orientation in the environment.
Moreover, each of them makes its own special contribution to solving this problem.
Compared to cognitive information, emotional information is less structured. Emotions are a kind of stimulator of associations from different, sometimes unrelated areas of experience, which contributes to the rapid enrichment of initial information. This is a system of “quick response” to any changes in the external environment that are important from the point of view of the needs.
The parameters on which the cognitive and emotional systems rely when constructing an image of the environment often do not coincide. So, for example, intonation, an unfriendly expression in the eyes, from the point of view of the affective code, have higher value than statements contradicting this unfriendliness. Intonation, facial expression, gestures and other paralinguistic factors can act as more significant information for decision making.
Discrepancies between cognitive and emotional assessments of the environment and the greater subjectivity of the latter create conditions for various transformations, attribution of new meanings to the environment, and shifts into the realm of the unreal. Thanks to this, in the event of excessive environmental pressure, the emotional system also performs protective functions.
The efferent link of emotional regulation has a small set of external forms of activity: this different kinds expressive movements (facial expressions, expressive movements of limbs and body), timbre and volume of voice.
The main contribution of the efferent link is participation in the regulation of the tonic side of mental activity.
Positive emotions increase mental activity and provide an “attitude” to solve a particular problem. Negative emotions, most often reducing mental tone, determine mainly passive methods of defense. But a number of negative emotions, such as anger, rage, actively enhance the body’s defenses, including at the physiological level (increased muscle tone, blood pressure, increased blood viscosity, etc.).
It is very important that simultaneously with regulating the tone of others mental processes Tonization of individual parts of the emotional system itself occurs. This ensures stable activity of those emotions that currently dominate the affective state.
Activation of some emotions can facilitate the flow of others that are not currently amenable to direct influence. Conversely, some emotions can have an inhibitory effect on others. This phenomenon is widely used in the practice of psychotherapy. When emotions of different signs collide (“emotional contrast”), the brightness of positive emotional experiences increases. Thus, the combination of a little fear with a feeling of security is used in many children's games (an adult throwing a child up, riding downhill, jumping from a height, etc.). Such “swings,” apparently, not only activate the emotional sphere, but are also a kind of “hardening” technique for it.
The body's need to maintain active (sthenic) states is ensured by constant emotional toning. Therefore, in the process mental development Various psychotechnical means are being created and improved, aimed at the prevalence of sthenic emotions over asthenic ones.
Normally, there is a balance of toning by the external environment and autostimulation. In conditions when external environment poor, monotonous, the role of autostimulation increases and, conversely, its share decreases in conditions of diversity of external emotional stimuli. One of the most complex issues psychotherapy is the choice of the optimal level of toning, at which emotional reactions would proceed in a given direction. Weak stimulation may be ineffective, while over-strong stimulation may negatively change the entire course of the emotional process.

When studying self-regulation by schoolchildren, negative mental states Four main methods were identified:
1. communication as an empirically found method of group self-regulation;
2. strong-willed regulation – self-orders;
3. regulation attention functions– shutdown, switching;
4. motor(muscular) discharge.
These empirically identified methods of emotional self-regulation can be correlated with the work of basal levels of emotional regulation in the process of normalizing a person’s emotional state (Table).
Table. Comparison of negative self-regulation methods by children emotional states with the activity of various levels of the basal emotional regulation system.

Levels of the basal system of emotional regulation. Methods of overcoming emotional discomfort 1. Level of field reactivity - passive forms of mental adaptation Self-hypnosis, passive discharge; “I stay on my own”, “I try to relax, stay calm”, etc.2. The second level is the development of affective stereotypes of sensory contact with the world. Motor activity; “I hug, stroke”, “I walk, run, ride a bike”, “watch TV, listen to music”3. The level of expansion is active adaptation to an unstable situation. Volitional actions; creation of affective images: “I draw”, “I dream, I imagine”; “I fight”, “I interfere in the actions of those who cause unpleasant experiences”4. Level of emotional control – emotional interaction with other people Communication; “I’m asking for forgiveness or telling the truth”, “I’m talking to someone”, “I’m asking an adult for help”
Literature.