Chapter 6 2.c Control your emotions

Let’s talk about pain first, because often we don’t seem to need to control our happiness.No matter who you are, your life is full of all kinds of pain, including physical, mental, and even from two directions at the same time, and it may be inexplicable pain, lingering.From the pain of being afraid of injections in childhood to the pain of being isolated by children; from the pain of unsatisfied desires to the pain of not being understood or sympathized spiritually; including but not limited to being in pain while lying on the hospital bed The pain magnified by the laughter of the nurses...

A deep sense of pain can distort or obliterate our ability to perceive other things.When a person is in great pain, he may even completely lose his sense of the outside world.If it was Meng Jiangnu who cried down the Great Wall, then I guess that when you pricked her with a needle, she might not feel the tingling pain on her skin at all, because all her mind is being used to cry the Great Wall down. . Even under normal circumstances, we are often not very aware of our pain.The most common misconception is that when we feel miserable, we automatically imagine ourselves as the most miserable person in the world.This is very natural, because we feel our own pain firsthand, and it is difficult for us to truly empathize with the pain of others.So, if we don't make an effort to discern, we will of course feel that we are the most miserable.

My experience is that the benefit of understanding this mechanism is that if we really understand that the pain we face is not as intense as it is felt, it is easier, or at least easier to bear it.I often remind myself that no matter how painful I am, at this stage, I am definitely not the most painful person. I asked myself, are you suffering more than him?I can give a few examples at will. There is such a person, maybe you know him.In 1832, when he was out of a job, which obviously made him very sad, he made up his mind to be a statesman, a state legislator, and unfortunately he failed.Taking two hits in one year is certainly painful for him.He started his own business, but within a year, the business closed down again.In the next 17 years, he had to travel around and go through hardships to repay the debts owed when the business closed down.He ran for state legislature again, and this time he succeeded.There was a glimmer of hope in him, thinking that his life was over: "Maybe I can succeed!" The next year, in 1835, he got engaged, but his fiancée died tragically just a few months before marriage.The blow to his spirit was too great. He was haggard and bedridden for several months.In 1836 he suffered from neurasthenia. In 1838 he felt in good health and decided to run for honoree of the state legislature.But he failed. In 1843 he ran for US Congress again, but this time he was unsuccessful.Until 1860, 17 years later, after more trials and failures, this man was elected President of the United States, and his name was Abraham Lincoln.But his bad luck did not end. In 1865, he was assassinated.

There are even more exaggerated ones.Psychologist Scott Parker has documented in detail some of the most exaggerated, dramatic cases he has ever encountered. It was a 14-year-old boy. In November when he was 8 years old, his mother died suddenly. In November, when he was 9 years old, he fell from a ladder and broke his arm. In November, when he was 10, he was involved in a bicycle accident that fractured his skull and left him with a severe concussion. In November, aged 11, he fell through a skylight and fractured his hip. In November, when he was 12, he fell off a skateboard and broke a bone in his wrist. In November, at the age of 13, he was hit by a car and broke his pelvis…

When I feel pain, I always pull out these two records from my notebook and read them again.So far I have not been as unhappy as the boy--he is so unhappy, even regularly!One winter, I had a bad cold and lay in bed.Suddenly a little upset.So, I turned over the notes and looked at them.Although I knew it was a bit unkind to think so, I couldn't help but look at the wall calendar that had just turned to November, and thought, that boy is also lying on the hospital bed... The thing with pain is that once we even manage to use our minds to take our own attention elsewhere, the pain disappears almost automatically, and it won't come back until you bring your attention back to it.

In addition, the reason why we don't have to be overly afraid of pain is that psychological research tells us that our brain has a self-protection function-to forget pain.If you want to know if your own brain has this function, it is easy to do: take out a pen and paper, and list the things that made you feel painful yesterday; the things that made you feel painful the day before yesterday; the things that made you feel painful last week Painful things; things that hurt you in the last month; things that hurt you in the last year... You will find that you can list less and less.If you don’t try hard to remember, you can hardly remember the pain ten years ago. The most interesting thing is that even if you do, you will feel embarrassed if you don’t——because you can’t understand now Can such a small matter be so painful?

In fact, our brain needs to forget pain. If your brain does not have this function, you can imagine how miserable your life will be!It is precisely because our brains function in this way that older people tend to experience nostalgia.Older people often lament that "the world is going downhill", but this is obviously not true.Because, in the past thousands of years, every generation of old people feels that the world is getting worse, but if their feelings are true, then we should be living in hell now-but the world we live in now is not so good Well, it's not that bad, is it?Dickens said it well: It was the worst of times, it was the best of times.

When older people look at the past, those things that have caused them great pain have long been forgotten, or they have long been indifferent, but those things that can be remembered clearly are all beautiful-so, of course they will Nostalgic!So nostalgia is an illusion.Even more likely it is nothing more than an illusion.Someone once used such a metaphor: if memory itself is grapes, then the process of remembering is fermentation.Everyone has the tendency to strive to make their own history more innocent and beautiful, so they often unconsciously repair their own memory in various forms, or even further refine it, before they feel satisfied.

According to statistics, after a person unfortunately undergoes an amputation operation, he will often experience extreme pain in his heart.You can imagine the pain: close your eyes and imagine your arm being amputated... Within 6 months after the operation, the amputee will constantly have suicidal thoughts.However, if after 6 months the person has not succeeded in suicide, then the possibility of suicide is not very high - the pain is gradually being forgotten, replaced by more hope.And after 18 months, there were very few cases of those amputees who ended up committing suicide—if any, it was often not because of the pain of amputation.

Our brain has the function of forgetting pain, which is even of great significance to the smooth reproduction of the whole human being.You can imagine that giving birth to a child is the greatest physical pain a woman may face in her life - if she hadn't been so unfortunate and lived in Liu Hulan's era.However, within a year or two of that staggeringly traumatic experience, she would once again have the desire to have another child.People are often unaware of how their own brains work: if you ever meet a woman like this, be curious to ask her, don't you remember how much it hurts?She is sure to be stunned for a moment (because she suddenly realized that it was really painful at the time, but it doesn't matter now; but she didn't think about why), and then in a subconscious panic, she will give you an inexplicable answer: Have you ever given birth to a child, you don’t know!

As a person who can use his own mind, after understanding the mechanism of forgetting pain that our brain has, he can solve another pain that cannot be forgotten due to repeated occurrence. One of the most painful things may be this: "Why does it all make sense, but why doesn't it work?" - No one wants to make the same mistake, and understand that it is very stupid, but how come in the exact same place What about falling down?Because of this pain, I couldn't sleep at night, scolding myself over and over again.However, after waking up, it was only a few hours later before returning to the previous state without any change.Even next time, after cursing secretly many times in the middle of the night, I remembered that I had scolded myself like this not long ago, and I couldn’t help sighing: How can I be so useless, how can I forget the pain when the scar heals! One of the most surprising experiences I've had while teaching was this: In order to really solve the students' problems, I had to repeat the truth that countless teachers have already told them; the most terrible thing is that my repetition was actually considered necessary by some students, but was once again More students turn a blind eye and listen but don't hear.I sometimes can't help but hopelessly imagine that someday these students will experience the same embarrassment again, so they will pay for another class, and then another teacher who may be as desperate as me repeats what we all repeat It makes sense, and these students don't realize that they are just wasting time again-because they still don't listen to it, or simply "don't hear it". Now you know why you always have such a bad memory, right?Because when you encounter setbacks or face the punishment that you once made the wrong decision, you are too painful.And such pain must be automatically included in the sequence of forgetting by your brain, and will eventually disappear completely in your brain.And, be aware that the strength of this self-protective function of the brain varies from person to person.Some people are more difficult to forget pain than others, and even some peoples are more capable of remembering pain than others - after World War II, the Jews hunted down and even killed Nazi members around the world is a good illustration, they even have a set of Remember the painful way. You have also seen that this self-protection function is very meaningful, but if we do not control this function, we will encounter embarrassment ourselves-those embarrassments mentioned at the beginning of the article.So, although we are not Jewish, we have to find a way.Especially when you realize that your ability to forget pain is extraordinary.A specific manifestation of a person's particularly strong ability to forget pain is that this person will easily forgive himself. There are two methods that are very simple but very effective.The first way is that when you are faced with embarrassment, remember to take out a pen and paper and record the embarrassment you encountered-of course, it is best to record it in the same notebook.Such records are very meaningful.Because it reminds you that this is an embarrassment you've ever had.If you don't write it down on paper, you're sure to forget it.Then you have to develop a habit of regularly taking out this book and reviewing it.This habit will often give you a sense of accomplishment, because you know, and can even clearly see that you have made progress, because it is impossible for you to make mistakes that have been recorded in that book—of course, not to make them again. The reason those mistakes are because you keep reminding yourself! Another way is to try to minimize your pain when faced with embarrassment.Control your emotions and don't be swayed by your brain's immediate reaction.Know that all the embarrassment you face must ultimately be partly of your own making.Therefore, there is no need to make excuses, no need to complain about others, no need to feel that the world is unfair to you alone, and remember that "you are not alone" - there must be others in different places and in different times. Same embarrassment and pain.But how many people can deal with pain as calmly as you do now, with the clear awareness that you can't be swayed by your brain's immediate response?When you think about it like this, you are relieved.As long as you're not in such pain, it's hard for your brain to forget the event -- not to mention you've already recorded the event and experience!Just imagine how much trouble these two simple methods will save you in the future and how much time it will save you in the future! In addition, although "forgetting pain" is our brain's self-protection function, this "goodwill" function also has side effects.For example, there must be times in our lives that we need to keep in mind certain information, or even a large amount of information. For example, if you are preparing to study in the United States as a student, you have to take exams such as TOEFL, SAT, GRE, or GMAT (Commonwealth countries) IELTS test scores equivalent to TOEFL may be required), which means that you have to remember at least 12,000 English words-a task that many people cannot complete in their lifetime. Many people do not understand the mechanics of their own brains, so they are automatically controlled by their feelings.They regard memorizing words as a particularly painful thing, and there are always a lot of so-called "interesting memory methods" that are messy and changed every year in bookstores to meet their needs to get rid of pain.In fact, they don't know it, because they treat memorizing words as painful experiences, and the result is that the memory of each word contains pain-the most direct way for our brains to protect themselves is to forget these words ! Therefore, when memorizing vocabulary, in fact, when doing all similar tasks that require memorizing a lot of information, you must find a way to do it as a happy thing from the bottom of your heart.A friend of mine once shared his approach with me.When he finally figured out that he had to get a high GRE score to get a scholarship, he was taken aback by the vocabulary requirement.He said it took him two days to convince himself that it should be a joy. Because, a total of 20,000 words have to be dealt with, and the possible scholarship is about $40,000 per year-and there is no possibility of unemployment for four consecutive years (the fact that he did not get his Ph.D. until five years later).At that time, the exchange rate of USD to RMB was almost 8:1, so it should be equivalent to about 320,000 RMB.And if the annual after-tax income is 320,000 RMB, then the pre-tax income will be almost 400,000 RMB.Then, each word should be worth about 20 yuan -- this is just a year's income. So, he finally understood that memorizing words is very happy.He forces himself to memorize 200 words every day.And when it came time to check the results at night, every time he put a tick in front of a word he had memorized, he had to imagine that he had just counted a 20-yuan banknote.I always feel satisfied when I go to sleep every day, because I made another 4,000 yuan today! This friend of mine was clearly a man capable of controlling himself by the power of his mind.Although in the eyes of many his ideas are simply ridiculous.But in fact, this is precisely the most fundamental reason why he finally achieved more than others.He is not only a person capable of self-discipline, but also a person who has the ability to control his emotions.He gives practical meaning to abstract objects by the power of his mind, and thus has more motivation than those who cannot perceive abstract things.What is persistence?Strategy plus repetition.His strategy made it easier and more enjoyable for him to repeat than others, so in the end he was one of those few who succeeded.