Excerpt from Dialogue
The so-called fate is that your inner mind is constantly projected outwards and unfolded in this world one by one, and eventually, over time, your "heart" profoundly shapes your life.
Peking University clinical psychology master, well-known psychological counselor, more than 20 years of practice, with nearly 10,000 hours of psychological counseling experience, authored "Why home will hurt people", "thank you for their imperfections", "dreams know the answer" and other more than ten psychology bestsellers, readers all over the world.
When it comes to the word "choice", I have a kind of feeling, really like crossing time and space, back to when I was just admitted to Peking University, I was only eighteen years old. Today, I would like to bring all the experiences, experiences and feelings of the age of forty-six to talk to my eighteen-year-old self.
When I think of "traveling through time", I feel a little proud - whether I can go back to the past or not, the "regrets" in my life do not seem to be particularly many.
Why? I thought of a very important reason: when I chose the path of life, I always believed in my feelings and always followed my feelings to make decisions. Such a life seems to have an inner sense of self-consistency and inner satisfaction, and any time you look back and re-examine, it seems that there are not too many regrets.
Is there a "destiny" in the end?
The theme we are sharing today is "Choose Your Destiny". The words "choice" and "destiny" sound very ordinary, but I believe that many people will always feel that there is an external "god of destiny" when they hear the word "destiny", which controls your life.
Is fate in the hands of the "God of Destiny" or in his own hands? This has a lot to do with "choice". There are two kinds of choice: one is autonomous choice, which we also call active choice, and the other is passive choice. If you are always "passively choosing", then the feeling of being manipulated by the "god of destiny" will be very strong, and you will feel as if there is really an external force that dominates and weaves your destiny and drives you to certain paths.
But if, for the most of your life, you can make active choices with an autonomous consciousness, then you will have a completely different feeling -- the so-called fate, like a force that arises from within, constantly projecting outwards, constantly unfolding. In this case, you will not be so easily affected by the external "god of destiny".
Speaking of this topic, I might as well share the story of a friend of mine. Because I was a counselor, he came to talk to me one day and said he was having trouble with something very important. As he recounted the course of events, he kept repeating the phrase: "This is destiny." ”
When he first said this sentence, I only thought it was an ordinary emotion, and everyone would sigh with fate. But within a few minutes, he said again, "This is fate." After a while, he said for the third time, "This is fate." As a counselor, I have a very clear awareness of how three things are. If a person repeats a sentence three times in a short period of time, it means that the sentence has a deep meaning.
So I asked him, "What do you mean by the constant saying, 'This is fate?'" This is called "concretization technique" in psychology, and after this question, he unfolds.
He had many blind dates, probably as many as thirty. To say that his family and personal conditions are quite good in our hometown, but blind dates are always unsuccessful. The last time he was given a blind date, as soon as he entered the door and saw five or six girls sitting there, one of them was the most ugly, and he "giggled" in his heart, thinking, Don't be her. As a result, the girl who was ready to be introduced to him by others was the one who even made God agree.
His trouble was: Don't men all like beautiful women or girls with good conditions? Why would I choose a relatively poor one? He felt that at that moment, his head was knocked unconscious by an external "god of destiny", so he made a vague choice. So he said again and again, "This is fate." ”
Listening to his story, I as a consultant will feel very absurd: obviously you promised it yourself, it was your own choice, why did you rely on "fate"? Because he couldn't understand why he had made such a choice.
We talked for a while more, and gradually we understood. He once had a particularly well-off girlfriend, but eventually chose a girl with relatively poor conditions as his wife.
Why is that? We need to know that not everyone wants to find a "particularly good" partner. If you choose a particularly good partner and treat the other person as a "goddess" or a "king", then between you, the other person will always be on top, and you will always seem to be shorter than others. See you once in a while, it feels awesome, the other party is really beautiful, the conditions are really good, but all day with such a person, you are always in such a "inferior" position, you will have a deep sense of inferiority. People who have too much inferiority complex and are not willing to live in inferiority are not willing to choose those who have particularly good conditions to be their lifelong partners, but will choose a person with poor conditions.
What are the benefits of this? First of all, controllable, the other party is completely in your expectations; secondly, the status of two people is always your high, the other is low, you can put your inner inferiority complex on each other.
Back to my friend's story. In fact, he chose the other party according to a very deep need within himself, but because he could not understand his own need, he called it fate. When this need is analyzed clearly, he understands that it is his own destiny that he has chosen his own destiny.
The choice he made may seem unreasonable to others, nor to his own mind, but it is a very reasonable choice for his heart.
Speaking of "choice", one of my clients once relayed a quote from his friend, which I later liked to quote: "Life is made up of thousands of choices, and when making choices, you often have to face a basic contradiction: is this a choice for yourself or for others?" When you are old, look back on your life, and if you find that in the vast majority of cases, you are making choices for others, then your life will be in vain. My visitor quotes this phrase to mean that you can't fail yourself.
Follow your heart and respect your feelings
Speaking of which, you may wonder: what exactly is "living up to yourself"? Many people will think that when I make choices, I also go through various considerations and considerations, but my life seems to be not very good.
We have to know that when making choices, there is a very important criterion: are you choosing according to the mind, or is it choosing according to the heart? Of course, there are many people who make choices not based on their minds or hearts, but according to the opinions of their parents, teachers or an authoritative figure, which is completely contrary to the creed of "not living up to yourself".
In the case of self-choice, if most of your decisions come from the mind, not from the heart, you will find that this life does not seem to be so "right". So, when it comes to this topic, I particularly like to quote Jobs in his speech at Stanford University: "The most important thing is to have the courage to follow your heart and intuition and know what kind of person you want to be." 」 Everything else is secondary. ”
What he means is to follow your heart and respect your feelings. Your heart and your feelings know where you're going, know what you want, and your mind doesn't know.
Why? We take it for granted that "my head" grows around the neck, but if your mind, your heart, and your feelings are not integrated, even though it is physically "your head," it is filled with "other people's sayings." In Jobs's words, those were "other people's dogmas."
But then another problem arises: your heart, your feelings, is often vague, which can lead to a lack of courage when you want to follow your heart, your own feelings. So, when we look at people who choose according to their hearts and their own feelings, we feel like warriors.
At this time, I would like to share a piece of my own experience. I was born in 1974 and grew up in rural Hebei. I think one of the most important choices in my life was when I was in junior high school and high school. What was the popular thing at that time? Repetition. When I was in my third year of junior high school, there were eight classes in the whole grade, and there were more than 200 repeat students, and on average, each class received more than 30 repeat students. Many people are repeating the study year after year, and the most "senior" repeat student in our class, when I was in the third year of junior high school, he was equivalent to reading the "ninth grade". Why? Because they want to go to secondary school and teacher training, they don't want to go to high school.
This phenomenon occurs because, in those days, there was a world of difference between rural hukou and urban hukou. Once admitted to secondary school or teacher training, the rural hukou can be converted to the urban hukou, which we call "carp jumping dragon gate". Therefore, the admission score line of secondary schools and teachers is higher than that of ordinary high schools, and the competitive pressure is also very large. Since then, I myself have shown a strong psychological quality.
Since entering the third year of junior high school, every time I take the big exam, my grades can advance by one or twenty, and when it comes to the middle school exam, my grades can be admitted to secondary school or teacher training. This is rare among fresh graduates.
At that time, my family was very poor, and if I could change to a town hukou, it would greatly reduce the pressure on my family. At one point, I also wanted to make a choice based on my mind, applying for secondary school or teacher training. Of course, teacher training is not in my consideration, I think I should apply for a secondary school.
Finally, when it was time to fill in the volunteer form, I didn't know why, I didn't fill in the secondary school, but filled in a key high school. In fact, at that time, I didn't know what the concept of going to high school and college in the future was, and I didn't have a clear understanding, but I changed my own wishes according to a very, very weak feeling. With this change, my life was completely different.
If at that time, I applied for a secondary school or a teacher training, and graduated a few years later, the best outcome would be to return to the county, or even to the township for employment, the so-called "state distribution." But I was admitted to a key high school and finally to Peking University, and my life was constantly expanding, so it was a very different choice.
Of course, this experience is very much in my life, and I often make those big choices according to a vague feeling in my heart, and the facts always prove that this feeling, this choice is too right. So, one of the most important pieces of advice I give you is to ask yourself first when making a choice: "Is this my own' choice?" Second, you have to ask yourself, "Am I choosing with my mind or with my heart?" ”
I am engaged in psychological counseling, full of curiosity about people's hearts, and there are all kinds of people who seek help from me, so at this age, I can also be regarded as "reading countless people". The people I've met who "have a better life", who still feel "in a good state of life" in their forties, have a commonality that I call "strong sense of self".
What is a "strong sense of self"? Many people have had the experience that when I was a teenager or even a few years old, a thought arose in my heart - what kind of life I want to live. Because they discovered this idea and followed it, their lives will become very unusual from then on.
In contrast, too many people live their lives in mediocrity, and the difference is that the latter do not have a "strong sense of self." Therefore, when you observe life on a time scale of "40-50 years", you will clearly see that the so-called fate is that your inner mind is constantly projected outward and displayed in the world one by one, and finally, over time, your "heart" profoundly shapes your life, which is destiny.
Many people may say that I did not have such a strong "self-awareness" in the past, what to do? You can start looking now. You can immediately ask yourself: Who am I? Am the choices I make based on my own will or someone else's will? When I make a choice, do I dare to listen to the "vague feelings" in my heart?
Of course, if you don't have a particularly clear sense of autonomy, suddenly let you make choices "according to your own feelings", it is often easy to make mistakes.
I have a suggestion for this: don't start from the beginning on those particularly important issues, to hone your sense of autonomy, to temper your feelings; you can start with the small things in life, such as eating, shopping and other ordinary daily affairs, temper your sense of autonomy, and gradually understand what you want.
Excerpt from Dialogue
This article only represents the author's own views and has nothing to do with the platform
Production: Big C
Reviewer: Liu Zheng
Producer: Liu Chong