Author | Fan Deng Reading · bluestone
Anchor | Fan Deng Reading · Yang Gun Gun
There is such a problem on Zhihu:
"What do you think is the most important ability?"
In almost all answers, one thing is mentioned: "the ability to control emotions."
Emotions are in our shadow, and people who know how to control them are actually half successful.
People who are truly capable will not be slaves to emotions, but masters of emotions.
When things are not impatient, calm and calm to deal with; do things reliably, words and deeds are consistent, such a person is a master of life.
In psychology, there is a term called the "mustang effect."
There is a vampire bat on the African savannah that specializes in sucking the blood of wild horses, and wild horses cannot get rid of them, resulting in many wild horses being tortured to death.
But in fact, the blood sucked by bats is far from enough to make wild horses die.
The real cause of death of wild horses is their own overreaction when bats suck blood, and their rage and wild running lead to their deaths.
The Wanzhou bus crash incident, which is still shocking to this day, is a true portrayal of this effect.
Passengers got into an argument with the driver because the vehicle had already passed their destination.
After that, the two gradually lost control of their emotions, and the dispute escalated from verbal attacks to physical confrontations, which eventually caused the vehicle to lose control and crash into the river.
The dispute between the two caused fifteen living lives to be fleeting.
Having sat on the ground, this thing alone could never have caused such serious consequences.
What caused this outcome was the loss of emotional control between the passengers and the driver in the dispute.
The two sides did not control their emotions, so that a very ordinary story turned into an accident.
Aristotle always believed that "man is a rational animal" and that the greatness of human nature lies in restraint.
Once emotions are allowed to flood, people will become emotional animals and lose the ability to rationally examine themselves.
In this case, one can make many mistakes with incalculable consequences.
Your own impulsiveness will eventually be compensated for by the regret of a lifetime.
There is such a story:
A father asks an angry child to do something, and whenever he is angry, he nails a nail in the fence.
Soon after the nails filled the fence, his father told him to remove a nail if he did not get angry for a day.
Over time, the nails were all removed, but the traces were always there.
As the saying goes: "A good word is warm in three winters, and a bad word hurts people in June." ”
Our inadvertently uncontrolled emotions may leave "nail marks" in the hearts of those close to us.
Evil words hurt people only between the whiskers, but comfort and healing the wounds will cause the sea to dry up and rot.
All the bad emotions, the last to pay the bill is yourself.
There is an interesting story about the master of traditional Chinese studies, Ji Xianlin.
Mr. Ji Xianlin ate with the Zang Ke family in a restaurant. A little boy was playing next to him and accidentally fell.
Ji Xianlin helped him up, but the child's mother thought that he had pushed his child and began to add up.
However, Ji Xianlin did not argue, did not get angry, and let the child's mother vent her emotions.
It wasn't until the people around them couldn't look at it anymore and began to help Ji Xianlin speak that things were resolved.
Later, Zang Kejia asked him why he didn't argue, and Ji Xianlin just smiled and replied:
"If everyone has something for all to see, why argue and disturb their own mood?"
The demeanor of a generation of Guoxue masters has since leapt onto the paper.
"Anger is not to be taken, joy is not to give", is the self-cultivation path proposed by Xunzi, telling us that we should not be affected by emotions.
"Not to be happy with things, not to be sad with oneself" is the supreme realm that Fan Zhongyan pursues, telling us that emotional stability is a realization of self-worth.
Zeng Guofan, a major minister in the late Qing Dynasty, has always been talked about for his strong emotional control ability.
"It is not as fast as thinking, it is not as good as being, and the intention is not as good as being calm", which is the strict requirement he has always had for himself.
His miraculous feats against Hong Xiuquan made him rise step by step, but he was never carried away by such feats, but always handled every matter calmly and with restraint.
His personality is even more vividly displayed in an anecdote.
Zeng Guofan's four-lift palanquin and an official's eight-lift palanquin met in an alley.
The official saw that the palanquin was four lifted, and thought that the other party's identity was lower than his own, so he asked the palanquin to pull Zeng Guofan out of the palanquin and slap him.
But then he found that the other party was Zeng Guofan, and hurriedly got out of the car and prostrated his head to apologize.
However, Zeng Guofan was not angry, but smiled and helped him up.
When encountering bad things, Zeng Guofan chose to laugh it off.
This not only wins the favor of others, but also reduces unnecessary conflicts.
Thus saving time and energy for yourself, you can deal with more and more important things.
Only those who are informal, can achieve great things.
Whether it is Ji Xianlin or Zeng Guofan, it is their ability to control emotions that has created their noble personality and made them famous in history.
Correctly understanding emotions is the first step to achieving emotional control.
There is a poisonous chicken soup that people regard as the norm:
"The adult world should have quit emotions long ago."
It is an excessive stigma of emotions, seeing emotions as flood beasts, trying to forcibly suppress our instinctive emotions with reason.
On the surface, this will make us a "quiet" adult, but in reality it is just a camel with a deadly straw.
There's been a buzzword on the Web lately called emotional freedom.
Its connotation is that you should not be a slave to emotions, but should be the master of emotions.
And mastering emotions is never about suppressing emotions.
In "Strange Story", Zhan Qingyun's view is even more to the point:
"The most important thing about emotional management is that you have to believe that there is no emotion that should not be."
It is better to block than to loosen, and we should realize that having emotions is a normal thing.
As Cai Kangyong said: "Admit that you are a person with emotions, and also admit that others are people with emotions." ”
What we need to do is we reconcile with normal emotions; what we need to avoid is that we are controlled by extreme emotions.
If you also have a hard time getting along with your own extreme emotions, then I suggest you take a look at the following methods:
(1) "Twelve Seconds Principle"
When we are angry, this anger can often only last for twelve seconds, and after these twelve seconds, the emotion can be alleviated.
At each impulse, consciously remind yourself to be silent for twelve seconds.
This can effectively help us reduce the mistakes caused by the impulse.
(2) "The Law of Emotions 28"
Eighty percent of any anger is based on the usual accumulation, and only twenty percent is the thing itself.
Therefore, we must pay attention to reasonable venting in peacetime.
In work, study, life encounter unsatisfactory things in time to communicate with the people around you, you can also regularly calm down to meditate, or go out to relax.
Without that eighty percent accumulation, there would be no anger that twenty percent caused.
(3) Empathetic thinking
The daughter of John Will, the manager of the French Mullard Brothers, was rebellious and broke his head.
One day he witnessed his daughter kissing a boy, and he was furious.
His wife advised him to think about her feelings from her point of view.
So he decided to calm down and communicate with his daughter. Only later did I find out that my daughter had made such a move in order to get his attention.
Let's imagine that if Will had not put himself in his shoes and communicated with his daughter, his anger would have hurt her, perhaps with irreparable consequences.
We encounter similar situations in life, and in these moments, empathy is very important.
We can communicate our feelings with each other in time like Will, or we can calm down and think about why the other party is doing this.
When you understand the other person's feelings, your emotions will dissipate.
The famous American psychologist Anthony Robbins said:
"The secret of success is to know how to control the power of pain and pleasure without being countered by it."
When we achieve emotional freedom, look at the world again.
You will find that life does not have so many negative emotions, and there are not so many things that make us impulsive.
Managing emotions brings not only a peaceful state of mind, but also a positive attitude towards life, a perspective of re-viewing oneself and the world.
Click "Watching" and may you be the master of your emotions and be truly happy.
Author | Bluestone is committed to being a young writer with thought and depth after 00.
Editor-in-Chief | A doctor
Typography | Zheng to the north
Music | Lemonjam - Love Letter