In psychology, there is a famous one
"The Pygmalion Effect"
Effect. Its meaning is:
"When a person makes a judgment about himself and hopes that he will reach a certain goal.
Then, he will have high expectations for this goal, and he will also have self-confidence in achieving the goal, so that his potential can be greatly exerted to achieve his expected behavioral goals. ”
Therefore, it is also called the expectation effect.
The "Pygmalion effect" is based first on correct understanding (judgment) and then on expectations (goals) of oneself. The two complement each other and are indispensable.
And this effect, applied to two historical figures, is particularly accurate. They are not only fellow countrymen, but also have some commonalities in their names:
One is Li Hongzhang and one is Zhu Yuanzhang.
Let's start with Li Hongzhang.
Li Hongzhang is a very important figure in China's modern history. Together with Zeng Guofan, Zuo Zongtang and Zhang Zhidong, he was called the "Four Famous Ministers of the Late Qing Dynasty", and was once praised by US President Grant as the four great men in the world at that time, along with Bismarck, the iron-blooded prime minister of Germany.
Although Li Hongzhang was the last extremely popular subject, his life can be described by the contradictory idiom of "young man who has achieved ambition" but "great instrument and late success".
Born in 1823, Li Hongzhang won the title at the age of 21, and at the age of 24 he was a jinshi, and at the same time he worshiped under another late Qing dynasty minister, Zeng Guofan, which can be said to be a teenager.
However, the sad thing is that at this time, Li Hongzhang's cognition and life positioning are problematic. In several poems of his youth, Li Hongzhang once wrote this sentence:
"That is, the present pavilion must be the day, which is my article to serve the year of the country."
"The ambition is not to eliminate the three-foot sword, and the wizard wants to try ten thousand words and poetry."
"Wanli please miao, there are fewer sons, and Qianqiu offers advice to Jia Shengtui."
From these verses, it can be seen that Li Hongzhang in his youth wanted to use his own articles and talents to lay a foundation for himself, and his goal was to become a figure like Jia Yi in the Western Han Dynasty.
Jia Yi was a literary scholar of the Western Han Dynasty who wrote the famous passage "On Passing the Qin" throughout the ages. He became famous at a young age, only learned, and at the age of 22, he was appreciated by Emperor Wen of Han.
However, Jia Yi had a characteristic of this person, that is, he was too upright, and when he encountered things that he was not accustomed to, even if he was the emperor's favorite courtier, he also fell in love with pointing fingers.
As a result, Jia Yi, who loved to offend people, was repeatedly exiled, and eventually died in a foreign country at the age of 33.
Li Hongzhang took Jia Yi as an example, and also wanted to use his own writing talent and absolute loyalty to the emperor to impress the Xianfeng Emperor.
But he overlooked that Xianfeng was far worse than Emperor Wen of Han, and the situation in the late Qing Dynasty was far worse than in the early years of the Western Han Dynasty.
Therefore, even though he was only 40 years old, Li Hongzhang still served as an aide under Zeng Guofan, and the two also repeatedly contradicted each other because of their different personalities and styles.
Fortunately, Zeng Guofan was high in wind and bright festivals, and intended to cultivate Li Hongzhang. And Li Hongzhang also gradually found that he and his teacher Zeng Guofan were both characters who could set up a stage to sing, lead the way, and form their own system, so there was Li Hongzhang and his Huai army.
And Li Hongzhang eventually participated in the suppression
Taiping heavenly kingdom
and
Twist army
, became a generation of "ZTE celebrities", and re-embarked on the right track of life.
After talking about Li Hongzhang, let's look at Zhu Yuanzhang.
In 1366, After Zhu Yuanzhang had eliminated Zhang Shicheng's living forces in the "Ding Dynasty", he besieged his "capital" Pingjiang.
A few months later, there were no rescue troops inside and outside Pingjiang City, no grain and grass inside, and Zhang Shicheng led the troops to break through, but the result was unsuccessful.
Desperate, Zhang Shicheng set fire to his mansion and prepared to hang himself, only to be saved by Zhu Jun, who had been ordered to surrender.
Subsequently, Zhang Shicheng was escorted to Yingtian and was "killed by Zhu Yuanzhang forty with the imperial staff". At this point, Jiangnan has been owned by Zhu Yuanzhang, and this year, he was just 40 years old.
The following year, the 41-year-old Zhu Yuanzhang proclaimed himself emperor in Yingtian (Nanjing).
Eight months later, he expelled the Emperor of the Yuan Dynasty, and the Northern Expedition was successful, unifying the Jiangshan.
Compared with Li Hongzhang, Zhu Yuanzhang's origin can be said to be a heaven and an underground.
Li Hongzhang's father, Li Wen'an, was a jinshi in the same year as Zeng Guofan and was the head of the Punishment Department, while Zhu Yuanzhang's father, Zhu Wusi, was a peasant who had faced the loess with his back to the sky all his life, and when he died, he did not even have a coffin and was buried an inch.
Li Hongzhang was 21 years old and 24 years old, and he was in the limelight for a while. Until the age of 25, Zhu Yuanzhang was a monk who was at the bottom of society and could starve to death at any time.
However, Li Hongzhang's cognition of himself and his expectations for his career have all gone wrong. As a result, he has been depressed and confused for more than a decade and cannot find his own direction in life.
On the contrary, zhu Yuanzhang, after following Guo Zixing, soon found himself a natural general, or to put it bluntly, he was a master of controlling people's hearts and playing with power, a natural military expert.
In the three years of wandering, Zhu Yuanzhang has cultivated a pair of insightful eyes, and he has witnessed the ugliest human nature in the world, so he can easily guess the psychology of many people.
At the same time, he also knows how to please his superiors and how to make his subordinates loyal to him.
In addition to being quick-witted and judgmental, he was more cautious and low-key than the rebel leaders who had come from the pawns of the peddlers.
If it were not for Zhu Sheng's "building walls high, accumulating grain in a wide range, and slowly becoming king", Zhu Yuanzhang would have done the same. Down-to-earth, cautious, never take risks, but when you see it, you must immediately shake off your arms to do it, which is the good genes injected into him by the ancestors who have worked on the earth for generations.
The reason why Zhu Yuanzhang failed to form such a perception of himself before the age of 25 was because he had been firmly bound by the land under his feet.
Without the great famine, he would still be like his father and brother, continuing to herd cattle, farming, and living a humble life for the landlord Liu De.
His courage and wisdom can only play an occasional role in the fight with wild wolves and poisonous snakes.
And once he got rid of the shackles of the land and embarked on the road of joining the army, Zhu Yuanzhang completely released his maximum potential.
At the end of the Yuan Dynasty, in the chaotic world, even Zhao Jun used this kind of person to be called king, and Zhu Yuanzhang, who was a dragon and phoenix among people, why couldn't he take sitting on the dragon chair as his life goal?
Since the age of 25, Zhu Yuanzhang has established a correct self-understanding and quickly established a goal in life. This is an important internal factor in his success.