Hello everyone!
Today, with you an interesting topic, I will take you into the famous Galapagos Islands, examine the evolutionary "achievements" of some animals on the islands, and see what enlightenment we have for our personal growth.
I'll start with some simple, guided descriptions in the introduction, then look at the unique survival patterns of the two animals in the Galapagos Islands, and finally explore how we can achieve personal growth and be better selves on our own "islands."
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" data-track="4" > introduction</h1>
Recently, I was re-reading Darwin's book "The Origin of Species", hoping to draw inspiration from life and work from it.
Talking about the classic work "The Origin of Species" will inevitably remind us of the Galapagos Islands, when Darwin came to the Galapagos Islands in 1935 on the Berger, he found all kinds of strange creatures on the islands. Many creatures are very different from their cousins who grow on land, especially in terms of lifestyle, such as the unique marine iguana on earth, a species of amphibious iguana that swims into the sea to feed.
The main reason for this is that the Galapagos Islands live in a very different environment from the nearest land, which is a huge challenge to the survival of the animals on the island, and because of its ocean barrier from the land, it is almost isolated from the world, and the animals cannot migrate to a more suitable place like their cousins on land.
Therefore, in order to survive on a small island with barren and limited resources, animals can only constantly adjust their survival patterns and evolve. Here, survival is the first driving force.
Modern science has also confirmed that animals that survive on islands tend to evolve more rapidly than cousins on land.
At present, there are many "independent worlds" similar to the Galapagos Islands on the earth, whether it is the cause of plate drift or the islands formed by volcanic eruptions, or those independent continents, all of which are far away from the land in the ocean and are basically isolated from the land, such as the Galapagos Islands is about 1000 kilometers away from the nearest South American continent.
In the independent worlds, the evolution of various organisms has completely diverged from their cousins on land, which has also made the animal populations on the earth more colorful, such as the marsupials of Australia and New Zealand, the penguins of the Antarctic continent, and the lemurs of Madagascar.
Below, we follow in Darwin's footsteps and ascend to the Galapagos Islands to see how two strange animals on the island survive.
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" data-track="13" > blood-fed sparrow</h1>
There is a kind of bird in the Galapagos Islands, named "sharp-billed ground finch" in China, and the English scientific name is Geospiza difficilis, which is completely different from its cousins on land, whose land cousins mainly feed on insects and seeds, and the food of the sharp-billed ground finch is the blood of boobies!
The sparrow is a small finch, so weak that it cannot fly over the windy and rough oceans to reach the other side of the more suitable shore (which is common to all animals trapped on the island), and when the magical power of nature traps it in the Galapagos Islands, they have to fight backwater.
The Galapagos Islands are poorly resourced, lacking insects and seeds to ensure the survival of the spiky-billed ground finches, so they turned their attention to the innocent booby, a large seabird that makes a living from fishing. The sparrow flew to the side of the booby, pecked mercilessly near the booby's tail feathers, then sucked in blood, and their beaks were already stained red when they turned their heads.
In fact, when I first learned about the sparrows, I thought that their way of survival was to steal (peck) bird eggs like skuas, or steal fish caught by, and I never expected to become vampires, perhaps there is no right or wrong on the road of evolution.
As for why the have no intention of expelling them, there is still no scientific conclusion, and some scientists speculate that the may think that the spiky ground finches are helping them peck at parasites, like the relationship between the starling and the cow.
For us humans, the behavior of the sparrows may seem uncomfortable, but it is undeniable that they were successful, and they survived in the Galapagos Islands.
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" data-track="20" > Santa Cruz Island tortoises facing life and death</h1>
Meanwhile, the Galapagos tortoise subspecies, the Santa Cruz Island tortoise, faces an existential threat.
The Galapagos tortoise is a species endemic to the Galapagos Islands and a species of tortoise. As we all know, turtles are cold-blooded animals, and the environment that is too cold or too hot is not suitable for their survival, and their movement is slow, and it is difficult to avoid any natural and man-made disasters.
Santa Cruz island tortoises live on the island, basically arid wasteland, fortunately the island has a large shade, become the tortoises ideal oasis, can hide from the strong daylight during the day. Of course, they don't have to worry about predator attacks, because they have no natural enemies on this island, and the only enemy is the environment.
Every morning, the tortoises set off from this shaded area, cross the long sand, slowly climb to the food-rich foraging area, after eating and drinking enough, they need to return to the shade before the noon sun is hot and the ground temperature rises, otherwise their lives will be in danger. The tortoises repeat their Buddhist lives day after day, much to the envy of us as humans.
However, from the perspective of human experience, Buddhist life often lurks in a certain crisis, of course, not absolutely, but unfortunately, the Buddhist life of turtles and turtles is buried with huge crises.
On the one hand, their current shaded areas appear to be stable, but in the event of an ecological disaster, such as a tsunami hurricane, or when a large area of plants dies, these tortoises will have nowhere to go.
On the other hand, scientists have found that as the process of global warming intensifies, the threat of sea level rise is always present, and the impact on the small islands where these tortoises live is even worse, and once the sea level rises to dangerous values in the future, the entire island will be submerged.
The future survival of turtles and tortoises can only depend on these external environmental factors, and their populations are quite fragile.
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" data-track="29" > Revelation 1: Self-reliance is king</h1>
The sparrow has become a vampire in order to survive, while the Tortoise on Santa Cruz Island is threatened by sea level rise, what does this "comparison" from the natural world bring to our growth?
It's actually four words – self-reliance.
The essence of biological evolution is really a process of self-reliance. Climate change occurs in all geological epochs of the Earth, sometimes drastically, sometimes in a wide range, over a long period of time, and with far-reaching effects. In order to survive, animals can only evolve through their own power.
This is especially true of human evolution itself, in that era of drinking blood, human beings continued to migrate, constantly adapt to the environment, constantly and dynamically transform the environment, invent various tools, and finally defeated other races, such as Neanderthals, thus having a human society.
The sparrow has evolved itself, fully shaking hands with changes in its surroundings, arguably successful, while the Santa Cruz tortoise faces environmental threats beyond the rate of its evolution, and its future fate will be in the hands of "God's hand" such as whether the sea level rises or not.
More often than not, we are also self-reliant.
I don't know if you have this feeling, when you first entered the university to study advanced mathematics, the first few classes felt difficult, but after learning it felt more and more simple, I later reviewed this phenomenon, and found that the main reason is that on the one hand, I just entered the university to start learning a new course, which is completely different from the high school era, and needs a process of adaptation; on the other hand, there is no more background information for us to understand, we are in an information fault. Sometimes, "everything is difficult at the beginning" is actually the reason.
The reason why the later learning is simpler is because we don't want to be in an academic disadvantage at the beginning, so we will learn autonomously and strive to understand each problem. After a period of hard study, we have also figured out some learning rules, and the subsequent learning feels very simple, layer by layer, indefinite integral, definite integral, double integral, triple integral, curve integral, curved area fraction...
At this time, it is actually a process of self-reliance.
So, in our professional careers, how should we achieve rapid evolutionary growth through self-reliance?
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" data-track="40" > Revelation 2: Valuing any challenging opportunity</h1>
The sharp-billed ground finch on the Galapagos Islands is also a kind of finch, and the bird generally has a commonality, that is, it is small, and once it hears a noise or feels threatened, it will scatter, typically like a sparrow in the community. And how much courage it takes to be able to peck so boldly at a booby n times larger than them, what a challenge it is for the first spiky finch, and they did succeed, and it is precisely because they successfully took such a first step that they finally reached the peak of evolution, and sometimes what we need to take is the first step.
The real challenge we face in our work is how to work effectively when there is nothing and information is extremely scarce.
When we first join a new industry or a new company, it is a challenge for us and we feel a sense of urgency. At this time, we will take the initiative to take various measures, such as doing a good job of pre-study and research before entering the job, humbly seeking advice and learning quickly after entering the job, and keeping up with the rhythm and carrying out the work at the fastest speed.
When we've just been promoted to middle management, it's a challenge for us and we feel a sense of urgency. Originally, we only need to care about the completion of the task at hand quality, efficiency and other factors, now need to be responsible for the entire department, to control the future direction of the department as a whole, to coordinate various resources, to control the operating costs of the department, to pay attention to the department's human resources, etc., and before completely changed a dimension, then we will take the initiative to learn, on the one hand, through learning to master some basic management knowledge, on the other hand, in the daily management practice continues to polish, accumulate experience.
When we accept a task that is beyond what we have experienced before, it is a challenge for us and we feel a sense of urgency. Not only our knowledge structure may not match, but our existing capabilities may not be able to keep up, at this time we need to be able to learn quickly in the short term, humbly seek advice from industry experts, and strive to make up for the shortcomings of knowledge and ability, and maintain good cooperation with relevant parties.
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" data-track="46" > Revelation 3: Valuing your own "granary" reserves</h1>
Winter is the season of the most scarce food, many animals in order to ensure that they can survive the winter safely, will be in advance of the arrival of winter to store grain, need to hibernate animals at this time will also be full of themselves, such as squirrels, bears, hoofed rabbits and other animals, this is the animal's granary.
We also need our own "granary," but what I mean by a granary of knowledge and thinking is a supplement to our own brain.
The human brain is already very powerful, but we still can't rely on the brain alone to memorize everything. The greatest role of the brain is not to memorize, but to internalize your daily thinking and practice, so as to dynamically transform the world around you.
In fact, this requires us to cater to the commander, a part of the memory to the "granary" of knowledge, that is, the "personal knowledge base" I want to say below, we do not need to remember knowledge, but only need to know where the knowledge is, how to find knowledge, of course, the current SaaS network disk is basically the default with a search engine, so that we only need to remember the keywords can be.
With the assistance of a personal knowledge base, our Commander-in-Chief can focus on the internalization of knowledge experience, which is what is called "bottom thinking" below.
In personal growth, the personal knowledge base and the underlying thinking are our granaries, and the granaries are in hand, and everything is worry-free.
The underlying thinking level
The underlying thinking has been emphasized in many of my articles, and I will not repeat it here. Bottom thinking is where each of us is competitive, is the key to solving all problems, in daily work and life, we must constantly improve our bottom thinking.
The author has participated in some written examinations and interviews for public job recruitment, basically did not read any reference materials, and finally was able to succeed, relying on the underlying thinking.
Taking the structured interview used in this type of examination as an example, many people have a fear of this kind of examination, there are many interviewers, and the scope of the problem is not clear, which will lead to excessive tension in the interview process and affect their own play.
In the framework of low-level thinking, what needs to be done for this type of interview is to go straight to the source. For this type of interview, the origin is to examine how well you match the position and whether you have the ability to solve the problem under the position. Therefore, all you need to do is to understand the position first, fully understand the goals and ideals of the position, and then the job content of the position. With a clear understanding, try to solve the problem with the thinking of this position. In this way, all interview questions can be solved.
Personal knowledge base level
Building a personal knowledge base is something I have always emphasized and called for. In recent years, I have also successfully established my own knowledge base, the classification has been basically fixed, and the content has been continuously expanded. My Knowledge Base is a circular knowledge base divided into the following three areas:
Knowledge collection area: A storage place for knowledge obtained through different sources, without the need for classification.
Knowledge collation area: Classify the knowledge currently required, and gradually migrate the knowledge in the knowledge collection area to the corresponding folder.
Knowledge Summary Area: Digest the important knowledge in the knowledge collation area, convert it into best practices in the form of writing, and deepen understanding in the writing process. Only knowledge that one has truly understood is optimal knowledge.
Why do you need to divide into three zones? Because our daily time is limited, the collation of knowledge and the summarization of knowledge are long-term work, and in the daily work of the knowledge base itself can not be stopped, so in this way, the collection area of knowledge and the collation area of knowledge can be used daily, and the only difference between the knowledge summary area and these two areas is that all knowledge is an empirical summary after filtering, so it has more reference value.
The bottom thinking can also be included in the personal knowledge base, provided that the bottom thinking is written down in the form of language as a summary, while most of the bottom thinking needs to be internalized into your brain, and in the daily practice and practice, any problems encountered can be solved and judged through the bottom thinking.
During the Chinese New Year, I will publish several short articles on the construction of personal knowledge base in a row, and share with you how I built my personal knowledge base, which is my "granary", so please look forward to it!
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" data-track="66" > sailed into the sea and came into being in the sun</h1>
Self-reliance does not mean true isolation from the world, but first let yourself continue to become stronger, to reach the realm of strong and strong, on this basis, open up a new channel in your life.
When you're strong enough, just raise your sails and sail to the blue ocean, because you're strong enough to survive any storm you encounter during your voyage, and any difficulties and obstacles can be solved.
When you are strong enough, you become a better version of yourself, and then you are able to integrate into higher circles and engage with better people.
When you are strong enough, you will start to lay out an upgraded version of the network, you will consider accessing more side jobs, you will start your own self-media career, you will start to participate in various high-end cultural activities, you will participate in various sharing, and even become a sharer yourself.
When you are strong enough, you originally needed to find your own opportunities, and now there will be more good opportunities for you.
I hope that the Santa Cruz Island tortoise can successfully survive the difficulties and obstacles in the future and continue to reproduce.
I hope that everyone will continue to grow stronger, weave their own ecological network, and become a better version of themselves.