Have you ever had such an experience: you obviously want to learn, but you always lack patience and are eager to achieve; you obviously want to work hard, but you always dry the net for three days and fish for two days, and you are miserable; you want to become strong, but you are confused and helpless, extremely anxious...
But some people, this is not the case. They have clear cognition, clear goals, and stable emotions, as if success can be achieved in conversation and laughter.
Do you also aspire to be such a person? An excellent person with good learning, self-control, concentration, and action.
The book "Cognitive Awakening" tells us that the fundamental differences between people are largely due to the gap in cognitive ability.
The author of this book, Zhou Ling, an ordinary person who once had a similar experience with us, shows us how he relied on cognitive awakening and achieved cognitive awakening, and gradually transformed into an excellent mental explorer and excellent author. Just like his book "Cognitive Awakening", it gives people a sense of empowerment and benefit.
By reading this book, we can understand the thinking rules behind our behavior on the basis of a clear understanding of the structure of the brain, open the cognitive drive, make better responses, and completely get out of anxiety and confusion.
Inside your brain, who has the final say
Zhou Ling writes in the book: "Our ignorance of ourselves makes us look like a 'awake and asleep person.'" ”
The reason why I say this is because many people are confused to a certain age and find that there is a huge gap between reality and dreams. And when the burden on the body is unbearable, the excellent people around them have gone far.
From confusion to clarity, it is inseparable from the awakening of cognition; and the awakening of cognition comes from the cognition of the brain. Only by knowing the brain can we have a scientific understanding of our own psychology and actions, and can we better understand ourselves.
1. Triple brain
In our brain, there are three brains from the inside out: the instinct brain, the emotional brain, and the rational brain.
The instinct brain originated from the crawling age, is in charge of instinct, and can react quickly to the environment instinctively. For example, when encountering danger, it will run away or fight; when it encounters the opposite sex of the right sex, it will pursue.
The emotional brain originates from mammals, is in charge of emotions, happy and sad, excited and afraid, etc. are all because of the blessing of the emotional brain. For example, fear can keep you away from danger, and excitement can make you more focused.
The rational brain is unique to us humans, responsible for cognition, it allows us to produce language, develop technology, build civilization, and so on.
2, triple brain, who is strong and who is weak
Judging from the characteristics of the above triple brain, the rational brain is obviously a more advanced existence. But compared to the instinctive brain and the emotional brain, the rational brain has inevitable weaknesses.
First, the instinctual brain and the emotional brain appear longer and are more mature. For example, if the instinct brain is 100 years old and the emotional brain is 50 years old, the rational brain is less than 1 year old.
Secondly, the instinctive brain and the emotional brain control the subconscious and physiological systems, such as sight, hearing, smell, breathing, blood pressure, heartbeat... It's all controlled by this.
These features suggest that the rational brain's control over the brain is really weak. Therefore, all our behaviors - why do we know that learning is important, but we can't control playing with our mobile phones; we know that it takes time to become stronger, but we always want to rush to achieve results; when we encounter problems, we always take refuge and become easy, just want to stay in our comfort zone... It's a good explanation: Most of the decisions we make are based on the instinctual and emotional brains, not the rational brains.
3, triple brain, how to use
The different characteristics of the triple brain create cognitive and behavioral disparities between us individuals.
Although the rational brain does not have the "energy" of the instinctive brain and the emotional brain, it can drive the instinctive brain and the emotional brain.
Simply put, the rational brain is the overseer on the construction site, he does not have to work directly, he cannot replace the worker, because he can direct the worker to work. If he was to be asked to work, he would expend more energy than the workers would have to do. Therefore, the overseers will not work easily.
Therefore, in order to make the rational brain strong, we need to make this triple brain work together in order to use it for us and achieve us.
Of course, this process, like habit formation, is a process of continuous self-consolidation, the more you use it, the stronger you use it, the stronger you use it.
The word anxiety is engraved in your bones
You will be anxious when you see others achieve good results; you will also be anxious if you want to learn more; you hope to change yourself immediately, and then anxiety will find you... Anxiety always seems to follow, and the slightest disappointment will appear.
Why do we feel anxious so often? Usually, anxiety often comes in these 4 forms, sometimes in combination, sometimes individually, but it all makes you very irritable.
■ Completion anxiety. The daily schedule is full, there are too many things to learn, etc., which will fundamentally make it difficult for us to face easily. As long as there is a slight lack of good work, anxiety will appear like a ghost.
■ Positioning anxiety. If you haven't written an article before, but you want to write a blockbuster; if you haven't run a marathon before, but you hope you can get the first... This wrong benchmarking will make you think that "everything is too late", can you not be anxious?
■ Choice anxiety. When you have a lot to do, you waste your time choosing which one thing to do, and you find that you don't have much time. Faced with this situation of diversity and uncertainty, anxiety will naturally find you.
■ Environmental anxiety. Because of some uncontrollable factors in work or life, we have to face it, and we can only spend a lot of time doing things that we don't want to do. For example, because you work overtime at night, you can't do what you want to do, work out, study. At this time, this ineffectiveness and powerlessness can also make you anxious.
Wang Xiaobo said: All human suffering is essentially anger at one's own incompetence. We want to be in a hurry, we want to have an immediate effect, which is the source of anxiety.
How to relieve anxiety and find inner order?
■ Restrain desires. In the book "Micro Habits", it is mentioned that the number of micro habits should not exceed four, the number is large, and the energy is easily dispersed. As the saying goes, greed is too much to chew. Therefore, restrain the desire to do many things at the same time, and learn to give up, after all, people's energy is limited.
■ Face reality. The future is out of reach, and basing ourselves on the present is the most important. Clearly know the gap between yourself and others, accept your current level, and reconcile with yourself, in order to learn, grow, and progress in a down-to-earth manner.
■ Choose important things to do. There are many things to do, choose the most important and urgent thing to do at the moment, after all, this is the top priority, but also the premise of quickly completing the goal, and at the same time can protect you from emotional fluctuations.
■ Accept the environment. Calmly accept the unchangeable things, calm your mind, don't let yourself get caught up in emotions, and do what you can in the limits, after all, doing is better than not doing well.
■ Face the core. Get rid of distractions, face the core, look at everything rationally, force yourself to do it and break through it little by little.
Of course, in the process, don't fight anxiety. Just like an adolescent child, the more you let him not do anything, he prefers to do it. The same is true of anxiety, and confronting it cannot only eliminate it, but will only encourage its arrogant depression.
Therefore, in the face of anxiety, what we have to do is to accept and let go, and shake hands with ourselves.
Patience, the longest practice of a person's life
Plato said, "Patience is the basis of all ingenuity." "But reality tells us that patience is really limited.
How long have you not finished reading a book? How long have you not been serious about playing with your children? How long have you not quietly watched the flowers blossom and fall? ......
Let me ask you: Why is our patience always limited? The answer, again, is related to our nature. The instinctual brain and the emotional brain only care about comfort, not whether you play with your phone or do something else.
So how can we improve patience? We need to know three laws that can multiply our patience.
The first: the comfort zone theory.
I think everyone has heard of this theory. Doing what you are good at will be easy, but it may make everyone feel bored or even often distracted, at this time in the comfort zone; doing things that you don't know well but know something will make everyone feel challenging, and there will be a full sense of accomplishment, which is in the stretching area at this time; when you do something you won't do at all, it will make people feel afraid of difficulties, and you will be in a difficult area at this time.
You know, our nature is to be easy to evacuate, eager to succeed, just want to lie flat in the comfort zone, which is the complete opposite of the law of the comfort zone.
But lying in your comfort zone, you may not get the life you want.
Therefore, only by jumping out of the comfort zone can we have gains, progress and growth. We can follow the principle of deliberate practice, expanding our abilities to the edge of our comfort zone little by little.
The second: compound interest curve.
The compound interest curve is known as the "Eighth Wonder of the World", and its law is that the early stage will be very slow, and even make it difficult for you to see whether there is progress; later, when you reach a certain critical point, it will start a rapid growth mode.
It's very similar to what we want to learn or accomplish. For example, I was recently learning English and have been learning for 77 days. At first, my hearing was very weak, short sentences were difficult to understand, and it was easy to repeat them. But after almost two months of studying, I was able to repeat it very well, albeit with a bit of a stumbling look.
Therefore, if you really want to do something, in the right direction, firmly believe in and practice this law, sooner or later you can also have gains.
The third: the learning curve.
Any learning does not happen overnight, at the beginning it progresses quickly, then it slows down and enters a platform period; then it progresses quickly, slowly, into the platform period.
Take my weight loss as an example. When you first start exercising, you can quickly lose two or three pounds, three or four pounds, but it is difficult to lose a little thinner. Therefore, in addition to exercise, I also try to eat fat-reducing meals according to the recipe. After about twenty days, I lost almost 10 pounds of weight. At this point, another inflection point has been reached, and it is a little difficult to be thinner.
To really lose weight and lose fat, it usually takes two or three months to break through to the state you want. However, many people may not know, often insist on 1 month, see no effect and give up.
It can be seen that patience is not the result of perseverance, but the result of long-term goals.
So, how can we improve our patience?
■ In the face of the nature of refuge and ease, calmly let go of the burden of impatience, accept yourself, and start by accepting your lack of patience.
● In the face of the temptation of comfort, learn to delay gratification - first tasks and then relax, turn confrontation into communication.
■ In the face of the difficulty of giving up easily, take the initiative to change the perspective, such as listening to books if you don't like to read, and jumping rope if you don't like running. At the same time give meaning to action, knowing the meaning and benefits of doing it.
Therefore, in the face of patience, we must be prepared for a lifelong effort. No matter what stage you are at at the moment, you need to sink your heart and slowly cultivate patience in order to see the sky through the clouds.
Write at the end
As Zhou Ling wrote in Cognitive Awakening: "Growth is the process of overcoming nature. ”
When we understand the structure of the brain and the laws behind the root causes of all problems, we can more calmly understand our behavior, open the driving force of self-change, and finally become what we want to be.
There is no fixed number in life, no tossing, time will also pass, so it is better to do than to do nothing, and it is better to start than to give up.
So, take action!
@ Donkey Little Donkey Reading To take reading seriously