Recently, many readers and I have chatted and talked about the problem of inferiority, and the so-called inferiority here does not only refer to external appearances such as you dare not speak publicly.
One reader said that she was obviously facing a very good opportunity for promotion, but she gave up, and she herself could not say the reason, that is, she was mentally afraid of getting this opportunity.
Don't think it's a case, it's quite common, so there's a term in psychology called "Jonah plot."
Jonah was a biblical figure who was capable of saving a city, but he kept running away.
Later psychologists used the term "Jonah plot" to reflect a "fear of one's own greatness."
It's a negative emotional state that discourages us from doing what we could have done, or even from tapping into our potential.
To put it bluntly, we look down on ourselves.
Why do we look down on ourselves?
Recently I read a book called 12 Rules of Life by a Canadian Internet celebrity psychology professor named Peterson. His position in Canada is similar to our Luo Xiang's.
The book writes about a strange problem that doctors often encounter: many patients do not take medicine on time and forget at every turn, but the same people, if their dog is sick, they can give the dog medicine on time.
The author says that in the subconscious of many people, we look down on ourselves, because the people who know us best must be ourselves.
We know what our faults and flaws are, and we often recall what we used to be, which makes us always feel that we are not worthy of good things.
So, subconsciously, we feel that it is not worth bothering to take medicine for ourselves on time, but dogs are different, dogs are so cute, so innocent...
You see, this is probably a more reasonable explanation of the "Jonah plot", we will always focus on our weaknesses, so we will systematically underestimate ourselves, and over time, we feel that we are not worthy of those high goals.
In fact, when we look back at the past, especially the era of learning and growth, we will find that it is the process of putting ourselves on the operating table again and again, we are dissected again and again, and the shortcomings are sliced out, constantly reminding us of how bad we are.
When I was in elementary school, I was a player in the school table tennis team, and I could play well, and my family wanted me to go to the sports school, so I took various tests, sprinting, long-distance running, and ball skills.
However, the last item is a test of personality, a roll is covered with all kinds of strange symbols, you have to circle the corresponding symbols in a very short time, according to the requirements.
Ultimately, I was assessed as a "perturbable personality". This means that I am extremely sensitive to external interference and cannot concentrate for a long time, which is now called attention deficit disorder.
Such a personality, not suitable for playing table tennis, I was brushed off.
Of course, such a personality is not suitable for learning, so, from childhood to adulthood, my academic performance has been hovering in the middle.
In this way, I stumbled all the way and barely managed to enter junior high school, high school, and nihon university.......
The "disturbing personality" has always bothered me, so that I always habitually deny myself, and once something is not done well, I feel that it is personality.
It wasn't until later, after I worked, that I traveled to Singapore with a few colleagues, and almost a year later, a few of us were having dinner at a restaurant in Shenzhen, and there was a picture of Singapore on the wall, and everyone said that the place looked familiar, but they couldn't remember if they had been there.
I looked at it and said:
"We've been, and it was dusk. And I remember that there were a few young Singaporeans sitting around the ground playing cards..." There were seven young people in total, because there were three men and three women, and there was one more young man, and I was still sorry for his singleness; The young man, playing cards while humming "love yourself" in his mouth; Oh yes, the cards they play are "UNO"....
Colleagues were amazed, and they thought it was incredible to remember these details.
It was also at that time that I became interested in the cranial nerves, and later studied a lot of material and found that the so-called "perturbable type" or "attention deficit" did not mean no attention.
It's that people like us use attention differently, other people's attention is focused on one point, while those of us are divergent to multiple points, like the difference between a sniper rifle and a shotgun.
Knowing this, I also began to accept my own characteristics, and at the same time, I also felt the advantages that came from it.
For example, I am particularly sensitive to details that others don't care about, and I always unconsciously associate irrelevant things.
Maybe it's a good detective, but I didn't have the chance, but when I started writing, I found that this trait was really helpful.
Because the essence of writing is a kind of divergent thinking, like casting a net, through a main line, the material and the argument are snared. So, writing makes a lot of people feel difficult, but I'm different.
To say all this is to tell you in my own case that sometimes we look down on ourselves because we have a trait that cannot be changed, and you feel that this trait is dragging you down.
But in fact, there is no good or bad trait, the key is to see if it can match the environment.
The Israeli historian Harari proposed a formula in A Brief History of the Future:
"Knowledge = Experience × Sensitivity".
If you think about it, "experience" is something that can be homogenized, but everyone's "sensitivity" is different.
Some people are sensitive to art, some are sensitive to philosophy, some are sensitive to numbers, some are sensitive to language...
"Sensitivity" is determined by our traits, partly from genes, partly from the environment in which childhood was grown, no matter how it is constituted, once a person enters adulthood, sensitivity is difficult to change.
Some time ago, I gave a personal consultation to an executive who was also a friend I had known for a long time.
He managed a large telecommunications company, and when he got older, the company allowed early retirement, so he became a freelance corporate trainer.
The result was very unsatisfactory, the class was often halfway through, and the following student slept a large piece, the score was very low, he was very shocked, and once wanted to give up.
He said that when he was in the company, he was an expert in this field, exposed to the most advanced ideas and technologies, and immersed in it for many years, talking about dry goods, why not be welcomed?
I'll be honest: because your sensitivity doesn't support it.
Because, I know him very well, and I know that he has no problem in terms of technology, skills, and knowledge.
The problem is that he is not a person who is good at controlling the scene, and a corporate trainer must know how to render the atmosphere, grasp the attention of the trainees, and make the content lively and interesting, which is more important than teaching the content itself.
So my final advice to him is:
Start with a small consulting project, you can also write and write, and wait until you have some fame before coming out to give a lecture.
Once you have fame, you will be labeled as an authority, even if the things you talk about are boring, everyone is willing to pay the bill, for the enterprise, this is a sense of ceremony.
When publicizing to the outside world, it can be said that we have invited a certain expert.
I'm not revealing the inside story of knowledge practitioners, but I want to illustrate a truth:
Everyone has their own sensitivity, and you have to start "within your own degree".
Just like my friend, he is strong in logical analysis, weak in lyrical rendering, which is determined by his sensitivity, if he wants to go against the grain, he will definitely be hit, and he will also fall into a situation of self-doubt and denial.
Whether it is inferiority or self-confidence, these two things are self-reproducing, and if you do things that are within your sensitivity, you will easily do things.
You know, people are a system, every time you do something, for the system is a positive feedback, the system can be continuously optimized, and every time you fail, it is equivalent to entering a negative feedback into the system, the system will become chaotic.
So why do we say that failure is not the mother of success, because maybe failure can give you a little experience, but it will swallow up your confidence and make you feel that you are not worth it.
Well, this topic is here, you have any ideas, you can leave a message to tell you.