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In my 20s, I am afraid of getting old and afraid to die, but after entering the 30s, I no longer focus on my actual age, but I am more and more willing to measure myself by psychological age, and now I sometimes feel that I am not mature enough.
Last week, I wrote a sentimental feeling about psychological age, and received many readers' thanks, saying that this article solved the confusion in my heart for many years.
So let's continue today, and I'll move on to how to enter the third stage, adulthood. Today's article is very material, will give you constructive guidance, so the length is also relatively long, it is recommended to collect first, find a time to slowly read Oh!
On the road to growth, our psychological age will naturally enter adolescence from childhood, but from adolescence to adulthood is a qualitative leap, if we do not deliberately cultivate, we may not be able to enter adulthood throughout our lives.
Over the years, there are 5 keys that have helped me a lot, allowing me to jump out of my black and white box a little bit, have more diversified thinking, be more tolerant of people and things, and have a completely different state of mind in my heart.
Some readers also left messages asking for a list of books, saying that when I returned to China a few years ago, I bought a copy of "Psychological Age and Growth Wisdom" in a dilapidated and old bookstore on the side of the road, full of books.
At that time, looking at its cover, I guessed that it was just chicken soup text, but the ghost made God buy it.
Later, I found that it was really a rare and good book, which benefited a lot and gave me great inspiration! The 5 keys I want to share with you today also mainly come from it.
The first key: boundaries
I love Adler so much that when I read The Courage to Be Hated a few years ago, I was so empowered that I mentioned it many times, consciously or unconsciously.
In Adler's thought, there is a very important concept of "subject separation", which actually represents the boundary between people.
In Adler's view, all of man's troubles come from interpersonal relationships, to put it bluntly: all your troubles are either because you are in charge of other people's affairs or because others are in charge of your affairs.
People with psychological age in childhood and adolescence lack boundaries. Childhood psychology people are easy to let others cross their boundaries, such as others are rude to ta, but also endure;
Adolescent psychology is easy to cross the boundaries of others, interfere with things that belong to others, and like to manipulate others.
The boundaries between people are invisible, so it is normal to blur it, confuse it, and ignore it.
But if our psychology wants to enter adulthood, the first step we must take is to constantly learn to see this invisible boundary.
When I first went to Germany with Marx, I would unconsciously take the initiative to make some Asian friends, because I felt kind.
Every time they get together, they often hear them complain together that "Germans are friends and don't take their hearts", saying that Germans are very polite to people on the surface, but they are always separated from you by a veil and cannot communicate with each other.
At that time, I didn't know why... But later, I gradually realized that the "no-heart" they complained about was actually the German sense of boundaries.
Not just for friends, but even for your own family. Just like every time we go to dinner at my mother-in-law's house, I always hear Marx and my sister-in-law thanking my mother-in-law and praising her for making delicious dishes!
I used to roll my eyes at this and think, "Is it necessary?" Your family is too polite! ”
But a few years have passed, and I now agree with this approach from the bottom of my heart, even if it is a family, there must be boundaries between each other. Parents invite you to dinner, that is their choice, do not take it for granted, you may experience being loved and happy with a grateful heart.
Under our Asian culture, we will feel that good friends should be serious about righteousness, insert knives in both ribs, and go to the soup to fight the fire. In reality, how many friendships or love between you and me have finally lost to the trifles of life.
Boundaries represent respect, and knowing your own boundaries, you have self-esteem; knowing the boundaries of others, you begin to learn to respect others.
The second key: the big picture
The second key is the whole picture, and only if you have the first key will it be possible to have the second key.
Because the global refers to the global situation within your boundaries, there is no boundary, and there is no so-called global situation.
For example, in our parenting, if the child does not want to write homework, every time he takes home home home, he will write it procrastinated and grinding. You decide you want to change that!
So for this matter, what is your boundary, your overall situation?
First of all, look at the boundaries, is it a matter of the child to write homework or not to write homework, or is it your business?
If you think it's your business, you might think of rewards, punishments, or the like, "Don't hang out without writing homework," or "Write your homework to show you an episode of cartoon."
However, it seems to be caught in a vicious circle, the child's internal drive is getting weaker and weaker, and every time you write homework, you need your coercion and inducement.
Of course you get into this awkward situation, because that's not your whole picture, you're in charge of someone else's business, it's not a place you can control.
Only when you understand that writing or not writing homework is a matter of TA, you will see that in your circle, it should not be "how to let children write homework", but "how to make children willing to write homework".
That's where you need to go all out!
With clear boundaries, now you need to search your circle for as many clues as possible to see what things really are. This is the big picture thinking.
We are easy to love The House and Wu, turn a blind eye, hear nothing, and unconsciously search for and verify our own correct information, and automatically block out the information we do not want to see and listen to.
Many times, what we think of as "opinions" is really just "prejudices". The so-called "prejudice" comes from our lack of grasp of the overall situation.
If you think your child doesn't want to write homework because he or she plays hard, then you may reinforce your thoughts over and over again when your child is playing crazy but scratching his heart and liver before homework, and give up seeing other possibilities.
To break this, we must first be aware. First ask what we know, is it really happening, or is it an opinion that exists in the mind?
If it's just opinions, let's put it aside... Opinions don't matter, what really happened is important.
Calm down and observe the child. You will find that
Maybe the child just encounters the writing problem, grinding and rubbing, TA has to work hard to write a word;
Maybe it's that he doesn't like to draw picture questions and doesn't know how to express his imagination and expression on paper;
Or maybe he really hates reading and talking...
With these observations, you will grasp the key clues and develop an effective plan.
These plans may be that you intend to exercise your child's writing ability first through interesting maze books and wiring books; or you may consciously guide your child to observe in life that a table can be composed of a rectangle and four lines...
Without limiting ourselves and not giving up on seeing more possibilities, we have a second key.
The third key: order
Next, we come to the third key: order!
Global thinking helps us grasp all the factors that affect things, but we can't grasp it with our eyebrows! If everything were equally important, there was no way to start.
I can say that I do this every day. I mentioned in "Over the Past Few Years, I've Been Doing This Step by Step, Making My Wish Come True" that every morning when I wake up, I will list the things I need to deal with today, and then use the four-quadrant to prioritize everything.
Important and urgent things, have priorities, do them as soon as possible;
Important and non-urgent things can be planned and arranged, leaving time to do;
Things that are not important but urgent, try to authorize others to help deal with them;
Things that are neither important nor urgent can actually reduce what is not done.
In this way, we can ensure that we can transform our limited time into the driving force for moving towards the goal! Instead of arriving at night, it seems that the time has been stolen inexplicably.
On this key to the "order", when I was working in Ireland, I went to London to visit, and there was an inscription on a stone tablet in Westminster Abbey, which was widely recited. It couldn't be better to use it to illustrate the meaning of the order:
"When I was young, my dreams were boundless, and I wanted to change the world; when I matured, I found that I could not change the world, I shortened my gaze and decided to change only my country; when I entered my twilight years, I found that I could not change the country, my last wish was only to change the family, but it was also impossible.
When I was about to die, I suddenly realized: If I just changed myself at the beginning, I might be able to change my family, and then with the encouragement and encouragement of my family, I might do something for the country, and then, who knows? I might even change the world. ”
Yes, we are always caught up in the idea of changing the world and changing others, forgetting that our highest priority is to change ourselves.
This is especially true on the road to parenting, always thinking that chicken babies often backfire. Parenting yourself, as long as your own pattern is bigger and your horizons are open, why worry that your children will not follow the subtlety and hear about it.
The fourth key: objectivity
The first three keys are all macroscopic and holistic. Let's first sort out all our own internal affairs and make a sequence. The next two keys are for specific people and things.
Whether the psychological age is in childhood or adolescence, it is easy to be angry and difficult to see people and things with an objective eye.
To be objective, we must first realize that things have two sides, and not all things have only a good side, or only a bad side.
At this point, I think that my little friend Ban ban mama wrote an article "Since letting go of parenting anxiety, life has opened up a new sky for me!" " is a particularly good interpretation of it.
Just by being aware of the two sides of the matter, the parenting path of the spotted mother has undergone earth-shaking changes.
Even if Blob asked Grandpa and Grandma to "ask for money" all day long, Blob Mom was no longer troubled by anxiety as before, but tried to see its positive side.
The correct way to open it should be: allow the opposite to exist, focus on the positive, do the work in the positive place, and concentrate on discovering the resources of the positive.
Even if it is half a glass of water, you can choose to see the half cup with water, or the half cup that is not full!
Readers often leave me messages saying that they envy my experience, in fact, because I choose to see the good ones and then write them down for you to see.
Just as I once complained about my experience in Ireland, even if it is written as a tragic experience, I believe you will read it with relish, because I focused on its preciousness and rarity, and stimulated my unlimited potential.
But at that time, whenever my mother talked to me on the phone, she was very sad about my experience and felt that it was not easy for me to be outside alone.
Imagine that a person came alone in a country far away, pregnant, with a big belly, how bad the weather in Ireland is, who knows. I still rush to and from work on the bus every day... In fact, such an experience, you can see it as precious, you can also see it as tragic, depending on how you choose!
When we look at the world with the eyes of problems, the world is full of problems; when we look at the world with the eyes of resources, the world is full of resources.
The fifth key: reasonableness
The last key, in my opinion and the most important one!
Emotion is sensibility and is related to man; reason is reason, and it is related to things. We need to establish a balance between sensibility and reason, between people and things.
Psychological age in childhood, adolescence, can not distinguish between love and reason, they often mix emotions to deal with things, with rationality to treat people, the result is often things not only not solved, but also between people also formed a barrier, into a deadlock.
The so-called reasonableness, the reason why "reasonableness" preceded "reasonableness" is that it has its reason. In interpersonal relationships, we can only be reasonable if we are first empathetic.
As it is said in various parenting books, to reason with children, we must first empathize;
For the child's inappropriate behavior, do not only see the behavior, but see the hidden emotions behind the behavior of the child...
Many times, especially after we understand a lot of truth, we are too focused on reasoning, but the more we talk about it, the more unreasonable it is.
If two couples quarrel, at this time family and friends may come to persuade, often the more they persuade this fight, the more fierce the quarrel. Why? Is there a lack of reason between them at this time? The truth may be understood by everyone, often because of lack of affection.
To give another example from the book, one student beats another student. The first teacher put all his energy into reasoning: "No matter what, it is not right to beat people!" First... Second... Third...
And the second teacher said, "I know you're a child who follows the rules, you definitely don't hit someone casually, tell me, what made you hit him?"
Under empathetic thinking, there is no doubt that in the face of the first teacher, the child can only be angry, or die without admitting guilt, and harden to the end. And the second teacher first went to communicate with the child, and the feeling was communicated, and the child's mind was like opening a door, and then the truth could flow in.
Try it, the next time you face the problem, try to put 80% of the energy on the love, 20% of the energy on the rationale, maybe you will find that the work is more effective!
In today's five keys, boundaries represent respect, understand your own boundaries, you have self-esteem, understand the boundaries of others, you begin to learn to respect others;
With boundaries, there is also a global situation, and with a global vision, you can get away from "stereotypes" and gradually have a pluralistic thinking;
In the overall situation, see the priority, so that we can methodically find the way and path to solve the problem, into action,
Objectively see that all things exist on both sides, allow the existence of the negative, go all out on the front, and you will find that your world is full of resources;
Don't be bound by reason, become a slave to reason, first understand, then reason, reasonable will always be our ultimate key in interpersonal relationships!
The five keys I share today have helped me a lot over the years, and I hope they can be used by you.
Try them and write them on your own handbook every morning, or on the mirror on the washstand, or anywhere you see it.
After a day goes by, look back at them at night and look back on your day. Ask yourself, which of these keys did I use today? If you can, it's best to write them down.
Readers have always told me that they feel that they are in trouble, want to change and are powerless to change. Ask me what to do?
In fact, change is always in the subtlety of every day, every day as long as a small step, small enough that you can't see, but a month later, a year later, you look back and you will find that you have crossed the chasm.
When these five keys are more and more skillfully thought of and used in your life, and even internalized to the point of nature, your own psychological age has taken a qualitative leap and truly entered adulthood!
Yo-Yo Mama in Germany on March 14, 2022
Author: Yo-Yo Mom, studying in the Netherlands to meet love, studying in Saudi Arabia to feel the exotic style, working in Ireland alone through pregnancy, raising two mixed-race female dolls in Germany, sister "Yo-Yo" 7 years old, sister "Ranran" 10 months, Father Marx is a German sociologist with a delicate appearance and a delicate heart. Share the interesting life and cultural collision of Chinese and Western families, and gain insight into German education. His masterpiece "Learning Parenting with German Mothers".