Chapter 35 6.g stop feeling inferior

Everyone has a "wish self" and a "feeling self". "Wanted self" = "True self" = "Feeling self" Seems to be in top condition.However, this is often far from the case.In fact, many times, if a person is in "Self in wish" ≈ "Self in reality" ≈ "Self in feeling" The state is already relatively very happy.More people, in some ways, are more likely to be in this state: "Wanted self" ≠ "true self" ≠ "feeling self" As a result, life is full of one way or another, even extremely weird twists.And this kind of distortion often causes us to make inexplicable decisions or choices that go against rationality, and time doesn't care whether whose choice or decision is rational or not, no matter what, it passes as always.

Almost all possible distortions come from the so-called "feeling" that is actually the most unreliable, but on which we have to rely.Our "feelings" are wildly inaccurate and especially susceptible, and even the most likely to be misguided.The most obvious example is the magical magic we love.All magic works through and exploits our sensory deficits or blind spots. Appearance, that is, appearance and figure, is the most perceptually distorted aspect of a person's self.The reason is also simple, the difference between people is the easiest to distinguish is the appearance.However, it is not so easy to get the truth in the feeling.Because, in the process of aesthetic appearance, everyone will be more or less affected by "compensation psychology".For example, a fat man tends to be more likely to like so-called skinny beauties, and a thin woman tends to be more likely to have a good impression of a stout man.One of the interesting direct consequences of this distortion is that, in celebrity circles, the difference between so-called "beautiful" and "ugly" among those who are generally considered to be good-looking is no smaller than the difference between so-called ordinary people , and possibly even more.

If a person is really handsome, and he himself thinks he is handsome, then when his "feeling self" is equal to or approximately equal to his "real self" with a small error, people may say that he is very confident and he is You will also feel very confident.However, if his "feeling self" far exceeds his "true self", people will judge him as "conceited", and he may be more or less in other places because of this sensory error. Pay some price that he can't think of. When the appearance of this person exceeds the average level, under normal circumstances, this person is not easy to feel inferior, and even if his "desired self" may exceed the "true self", it is often not worse than the "feeling self". myself in ".

However, if the person's appearance is below average, usually, the person is likely to have low self-esteem, and his "wanted self" is more likely to be far beyond the "real self".And the "true self" will always correct the "feeling self" in various ways-although he himself may refuse this correction intentionally or unintentionally.Therefore, the "self in feeling" is restricted, and the "self in desire" is not the best, only better, and the difference between the two will form a very large negative value-the formation of inferiority complex.

If only it were that simple. First, as a member of society as a whole, most people don't realize that sometimes, the ideas that society instills in them may be wrong-in fact, they are often wrong.The reason is also very simple: everyone perceives the world through their own feelings; and as mentioned just now, "feeling" itself is very inaccurate, and is particularly susceptible to influence, and even the most likely to be misled.Obviously, the concept of the whole society is just a combination of the concepts of the vast majority of people, and it is impossible not to contain the so-called "true feeling" that has not been corrected, rough and distorted.

In almost all societies, the most detrimental to the mental health of each individual, from the whole society, may be the definition of "inferiority".In almost all societies at all times and in all over the world, "inferiority" is defined as negative, "confidence" is healthy, and "conceit" is also negative.In fact, imagine that in a society where "feeling" is naturally accurate, all "inferiority", "confidence", and "conceit" are unnecessary concepts.The reality, however, is that we live in a world that is naturally distorted by the very nature of "feeling".

For the sake of our own mental health, it is indeed necessary for us to ignore or even ignore the concepts instilled in us by the whole society in many cases-because many times it is just "the distorted feeling of the whole society".So, I have mentioned countless times in class that low self-esteem is not a shortcoming.It's normal to feel inferior when you should feel inferior.If you never feel inferior when you should feel inferior, then you have a living fossil reference—Sister Furong. Secondly, I have repeatedly discovered the same phenomenon in many exchanges with students in many years of teaching: the more excellent people are, the easier they are to feel inferior.It's just that these people are more reluctant to show it precisely because they are excellent in other aspects, and other people also think that they must be very confident because they are excellent in other aspects.

And in fact it is not.Let us assume that someone - let's call him A - is very good.Then one thing is easy to imagine - A, like all people, is unlikely to be perfect.It is more likely that the A is very good in some areas, but not very good in other areas, or just average, or even below average. But the problem is that excellent people often have too high standards for themselves, and even take it for granted that they should be quite excellent in all aspects.Therefore, A's very good aspect (let's assume 99 points on a 100-point scale) is far behind his mediocre aspect (65 points) - the gap is as high as 34 points.

And another person who is not so good - let's call him a B - is good in one aspect (80 points) for him compared to another average (60 points) he has. Look, the difference is only 20 points.Therefore, from the perspective of self-satisfaction, the better A will suffer more gaps than B. If only the gap itself is considered, then the better A will feel more pain, even though he is practical in every aspect. is better than B. From this perspective, on the contrary, people with average qualifications in all aspects are less likely to feel inferior.Generally speaking, one person is not much worse, because the difficulty of being extremely weak is no less than that of being extremely strong.Therefore, people whose aptitude is near the average level, from the perspective of probability, have little possibility of encountering a huge gap.

Therefore, starting from the perspective of self-feeling, Sister Fu Rong has absolutely no reason to feel inferior.From an objective point of view, Sister Furong's self-confidence or conceit actually has nothing to do with other people.But the problem is that it actually attracted anger - then who is feeling inferior?People who were irritated by Sister Furong probably thought this in their hearts--I'm fine (I think I'm much better than you), why do you jump out? ! Here lies the crux: Is the measure of self-confidence and inferiority in oneself?Or do you want to use others as a reference?In fact, it should be neither in oneself nor in reference to others.The difference between beauty and ugliness, strength and weakness, and smartness and stupidity do not depend on personal ideas, nor will they change because of anyone's own opinions.

The analysis is clear, but what about the solution?The answer is that if you want to achieve a healthy state of not judging yourself with others, the first thing you need to learn is: stop mocking others.In life, we rarely really encounter situations where the "weakness" of others affects our "strength".More often, mocking others' "weakness" is just to prove one's "strongness", but the real "strongness" does not need to be proved, and the "strongness" that needs to be proved is actually only the "weakness" that clearly proves itself .The feeling of "strongness" obtained by mocking others is bound to be far away from the "true self". What you get is just "conceit" in the eyes of others, and the "confidence" you feel is nothing but a distorted and serious illusion .Therefore, carefully observing from a third-party point of view, we always see the ending: mocking others can only cause harm to oneself in the end—often, it is a full range of harm from all angles. People who mock others must eventually be ridiculed by others, or others other than others.This is simply a vicious spell.I have had a situation very similar to this in my own experience.When I was in college, I don't know why, a low-level game was popular in the boys' dormitory, stripping pants.Every now and then, a group of people would attack a certain boy with inexplicable reasons, which made the boy finally naked and ashamed.At that time (the early 1990s), there were a total of 12 people in our dormitory including me, and I was the only one who had never participated in any such games.Even when all of them, including the stripped one, were laughing, I couldn't help laughing, maybe because I just couldn't see the fun in it.After graduating, I suddenly thought one day that in the entire dormitory, I was the only one who had never been stripped naked, and no one had ever tried to do that to me.Everyone except me has been stripped naked.Because he is the strongest, the third child in our dormitory has never "lost his virginity" in four years.However, four years later, on the last day, of course, the late festival will not be guaranteed-ten people collectively surrounded him.Ten seconds later, he said, "Can I come by myself?" The answer he heard was "Of course not!" Five minutes later, he was stripped naked and locked outside the dormitory door.This experience has benefited me for life.Nothing showed me more clearly why the old adage is true: "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you". Another more technical method is: forget your own advantages.This is a somewhat exaggerated statement, because it is difficult to forget, especially the advantages that must be forgotten.However, not only does this make sense, it is necessary.The correct way to overcome inferiority complex is definitely not "forgetting shortcomings", at least it should be "overcoming shortcomings".Because there are many so-called shortcomings that cannot be overcome.If it is said that the appearance is ugly, and it is barely possible to spend some money on plastic surgery, what about the five short stature?In any competitive activity, if the preparation is insufficient in advance, the myocardium is not strong enough, and the lung capacity is relatively poor, how can you improve your mental quality just by "deep breathing"?Therefore, those "how to overcome shortcomings" rhetoric is not only stupid but even ridiculous. In fact, to be precise, "try to ignore your own advantages".In a society where the definitions of "inferiority", "self-confidence", and "conceit" are almost all distorted, the most direct benefit of "trying to ignore your own advantages" is that you will be overwhelmed by praise, because you are too "humble" and too humble. "Low-key".In fact, you didn't do anything, you just did something that all mature people are good at - mature people always know how to make others comfortable.In many cases, the so-called "humble" and "low-key" are actually an optimization strategy for self-protection. However, the meaning of "trying to ignore one's own advantages" is not limited to this.If you can control your feelings and deliberately "disregard your own strengths as much as possible", then you will find another important change in yourself: the gap between your strengths and weaknesses is artificially but at the same time natural. significantly reduced—a seemingly paradoxical but perfectly reasonable result.This reduction in the gap is bound to alleviate your needless suffering. There is also a pretty good trick from a friend of mine.Her method is to replace the words "advantages" and "disadvantages" with "characteristics" in her own language.When teaching composition classes, I often tell students, "The language we use limits our thinking."For example, in the stock market, people often lose a lot of money because of the wrong words when thinking.When the stock price held by investors falls, at this time, the word they should have used to describe the shrinking market value is "book loss", not "loss" or "actual loss".However, some people are untrained in their thinking and use the word "loss" or "actual loss" when describing the shrinking market value, so they can't bear the psychological pressure (in fact, they are scaring themselves), and the stocks in their hands Sell ​​it - "book loss" really becomes "actual loss".Conversely, in other cases, some people mistakenly think that "actual loss" is just "book loss", and miss their own opportunities to reduce losses.So, I think my friend's method is one of the most ingenious but the most direct and fundamental solutions I have ever seen.Because words such as "advantages" and "disadvantages" that contain obvious connotations of praise and derogation are no longer used, but completely neutral "characteristics" are replaced, so it is easy to treat your own characteristics calmly, and at the same time, you can be calm. Treat the various characteristics of others with respect.Moreover, there is deeper thinking behind this method.Because many times, the so-called "advantages" and "disadvantages" are relative. Even if the "naughty" children are not liked by the teacher, they have to admit that they are more creative; they are brave enough to take risks, and they may become heroes or martyrs on the battlefield or in the mall; People hate it, but being a teacher is relatively more talented. The last method is: Indulge yourself appropriately.Acknowledging that we are a flawed human being is an important prerequisite for the liberation of the mind.The truth is that a person without flaws is not human.We said earlier that low self-esteem was originally just a normal feeling, but it was defined as negative.In the same way, if we think about it carefully, we will find that even the so-called "vanity" is a natural desire of everyone, but it is also defined as negative.In fact, as long as you don't hurt others or harm the interests of others, you don't have to be demanding about your own shortcomings. What about "low self-esteem"? What about "conceited"? What about "vanity"?If it's just because of your "low self-esteem", "conceit", or "vanity", the people around you are hurt. In fact, it is not you who have the problem, but them-they are too fragile. All methods take a little time and effort to get right.Get out a piece of paper, a pen, and make a list.List your strengths on the left, and your weaknesses on the right-it won't be too much to spend a day, because you need to distinguish between "Is this really my strength?" and "Is this really my shortcoming?" Then, Then try to guess how others perceive your strengths or weaknesses.You can even learn about it by insinuating - I believe you will be surprised and even stunned, just like every one of us.In this process, what you have accomplished is: understand the "true self" and "feeling self", and the difference between the two, and even "your self in the eyes of others".Then carefully distinguish your own shortcomings, are there any that may hurt others?If so, find a way to overcome it.Everyone must have some "innocuous shortcomings"-indulge in those areas appropriately, believe me, such "appropriate indulgence" will help you overcome those "shortcomings that may hurt others".