I want to go to bed early and get up early, but I play with my phone until late at night| wheat field mailbox

Letter

How do you improve your sense of self-identity? I always feel that my current self is not what I want to be.

Ranger

Zhan Xin Jia!

What if I am far from the imaginary "me"? I'm a senior, and I feel more and more that this problem bothers me, and in retrospect, this problem has been with me for several years, and I can't do what I think, which makes me very distressed and even anxious.

For example, I want to go to bed early and get up early, but recently I go to bed at three o'clock in the morning, I can get up at noon, and I have nothing to do, that is, I play mobile phone until late at night; I am a fat man, I want to lose weight, I try many times but always fail; I want to do a lot of meaningful things (such as writing novels), but I am addicted to games and short videos every day; I want to finish the course paper homework as soon as possible, but I refuse to write it.

I've seen a movie called Taxi Driver, where people are contradictory individuals, like he eats junk food while he works out. The more he hated something, the more paradoxical he was to do the things he hated. I felt like I was in such a strange circle, I don't know why, and I hate myself like this. I wonder if this is my fantasy unrealistic or is the reality of myself really bad? I'd like to hear your advice.

Black potatoes

Stills from Taxi Driver.

reply

Ranger and Black Potato: Hello!

The reason I put the two letters back together is because both of your questions are about the "self." What is the "self"? At present, a universally acceptable view is that the ego is shaped by society and by the people around it. And this means that we think we are from our awareness of the feedback we get from them. Specific to your question, we may understand it this way: the ranger wants self-identification from his own imagination of the "better" self that others may approve of; what black potato wants to do on his own is also his own imagination of a more "self-disciplined" self--these standards come from the feedback of society and others.

In The Nature of the Self, Bruce Hood, director of the Cognitive Development Centre at the University of Bristol's Department of Experimental Psychology, says that whether our ego is distant from the masses or panders to and becomes part of the masses, it is someone else who determines who we are. Meanwhile, after much exploration, Hood came to the conclusion that the self we feel is actually a story woven by our brains.

If from this point of view, as the screenwriter (director) of our own story, why not change a "script" for ourselves? Like the protagonists of a movie or TV series, all stories begin in the mundane — just like the life we're living right now. But with such a similar start, the unfolding story is completely different. We alternate between expectations and disappointments day after day, while the protagonist undergoes transformation and growth day by day.

An ordinary and ordinary person, as the plot progresses, meets several friends with different strengths, and they will defeat the dragon and find the treasure together. An ordinary ordinary person who happens to meet a neighbor friend in his childhood, under the wrong circumstances, starts a beautiful relationship (or becomes a best friend who can be entrusted with emotions). An ordinary ordinary person, as usual, went shopping at a convenience store on the corner, because of an unexpected phone call, had to start fleeing or changed from a poor child to a prince. Or, an ordinary ordinary person, on a summer afternoon, left his familiar neighborhood and began a aimless city trip (of course, he can go further), after experiencing all kinds of trivial warmth, he understood the true meaning of life and found happiness again.

Even if it is not in the film and television drama, there is no shortage of "open and hanging" people around, who were once equally ordinary, but now they are enviable - of course, it also makes us more depressed. Why is that? Why can everyone else but not? (Is it really because I'm so bad?) Is it really because of weak willpower, or not working hard enough? ）

When we continue to belittle ourselves and deny ourselves, we should also realize that the "script" we set for ourselves — to get a perfect self, to become a self-disciplined self — this setting brings us anxiety far higher than the happiness it brings to ourselves.

In daily life, it is a fact that we get a sample of "good" from society and from others, and therefore expect that we can become the "ideal" person in our minds (or perhaps on the contrary, we do not want ourselves to be so), but this idealistic imagination deepens our anxiety. For rangers, it will manifest as "always feeling that the current self is not what they want to be." For the black potato, it is to constantly set a "flag" for itself, but it cannot be achieved.

The reason why this phenomenon occurs is because too strong a desire will deepen the brain's denial of the self, or it will produce a psychology of avoidance or procrastination. Some people may have such an experience, the things they care about the most, should go all out and achieve the best results, but in the end, for various reasons, it ends hastily, or even fails. Obviously, there is plenty of time to rest well, but because I have preset the goal, my heart is always running away from it. Just like Black Potato said, while trying to go to bed early, but at the same time, because of the continuous thinking about this matter and lack of sleep, a little delay in putting down the time of the phone.

It's all because using self-control comes at a price — many experts on addiction argue that people tend to succumb to substance abuse after experiencing stress, such as eating junk food while working out as mentioned by Black Potatoes. And the other fact is that no matter how much we want to control our behavior, most of us will fail – rejecting temptation makes the desire stronger. When we want to avoid temptation and use self-control or willpower, we are likely to fall into a kind of self-depletion. And this means that the more we want to be the self in our minds, the more we need to pay these "prices" that disgust us.

Since the sense of self-identity is low, or you are caught in a strange circle, you may wish to jump out of this "normative" "script" and do something else to divert your excessively strong thoughts (if the mind also has muscles, self-control has made them overworked, and need to do something else to relax it, otherwise it will give in). All because moderation requires moderation. When we no longer incorporate these "ideal" and "self-disciplined" into our "must-haves" or "desires", this pressure will disappear, and we will not have to fight through self-indulgence and become involved in self-depletion. As the saying goes, "There is a heart to plant flowers and flowers, and there is no heart to plant willows and willows.".

The duty replied to | Anya

This article is proofread | Liu Jun

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