The author | columnist of Chopping Wood Academy
Edit: Sister Xin's Garden
Everyone will only show their best
The circle of friends of adults is always very lively. My friend came to me these days to complain, she said: "A refresh knows that it is not simple, a moment this high school classmate xxx went to Japan to play, a moment that college friend xxx drove a sports car and boyfriend shopping, a flash of god and found that the elementary school classmate xxx who has not been seen for a long time bought a coach bag to show off...
I'm crazy with jealousy, I'm really envious..."
Indeed, in such a circle of friends, it is difficult for mortals like me not to be moved, envy is fermenting in secret, followed by jealousy and negative emotions, and then complaining about themselves...
But what I'm trying to say is that all people only show their best. You only know the scenery and sparkle on the surface, not the heartache behind it.
Watching the TV series "The First Half of My Life", there is a picture that impressed me very much. Housewife Luo Zijun has nothing to do every day, in addition to shopping and going to the beauty salon, the most enthusiastic is to prevent Xiao San and sunshine the circle of friends.
Drying 5,000 shoes bought today, and 80,000 bags bought tomorrow, reveling in the seemingly happy life of a noblewoman.
She asked her friend Tang Jing to help investigate her husband Chen Junsheng, and regarded any young and beautiful woman around him as a suspect.
However, luo Zijun still failed to prevent it, and Chen Junsheng finally fell in love with his colleague Ling Ling. Chen Junsheng's work pressure is very high, and Ling Ling is not only agile in her work, but also has the tenderness of a woman, which makes Chen Junsheng difficult to resist the temptation.
After Tang Jing discovered that Chen Junsheng had cheated, he could only change the hint of the fa to Luo Zijun. Luo Zijun himself also felt that something was wrong, as if her husband was just a coping with her, and the two had already looked at each other.
But Luo Zijun was unwilling to admit this fact, but instead worked harder to post a "happy" family photo in the circle of friends.
Tang Jing had a feeling of helplessness that hated iron not steel.
Or Tang Jing's boyfriend said that she had become a frog soaked in warm water for many years - cold and warm self-knowledge.
Modern people are very good at creating false pleasures, which can first deceive others and fake the illusion of their own happiness; secondly, they can comfort themselves and tell themselves that life is still very good...
The beauty you see is likely to be just some illusory bubble. Above the bubble, there are faintly printed some sad words.
People often underestimate the suffering of others and overestimate the happiness of others.
We often judge other people's insides by their outward appearance, thinking that we have seen it all. And under the sun, more or less, people are performing; in the shadows, what is not seen by others is the truth.
People often underestimate the suffering of others and overestimate the happiness of others. This misconception leads to a greater sense of isolation and low satisfaction with one's own life.
Studies have shown that spending too much time browsing social media, including Weibo and WeChat, increases loneliness and reduces satisfaction. This tendency to see one's own life as more miserable than others may be one of the reasons.
This applies not only to strangers, but also to neighbors, co-workers, and sometimes even familiar friends and family. In the book Mindfulness Beats Anxiety, it is written that we often judge other people's interiors through their outward appearances.
And then suddenly one day, we were surprised to find out that a colleague had suicidal thoughts, a neighbor had an alcohol problem, or the "model couple" on the street corner had domestic violence. When you're in the elevator with people or happily communicating in line at the mall, they look calm and controllable, but you can't see their inner struggles and anxieties.
Social media has pulled our thinking space into a dimension, even if we are not in the same field, we are still forced to constantly compare, so it creates endless troubles.
Even if our lives are not so glamorous, they still have their own temperature
Fernando Pessoa once wrote a poem called "Every Day You Don't Like Is Not Yours", in which he said: "Every day you don't like is not yours, you just lived it, no matter what kind of life you live, you have no life." ”
The movie "Bipolar Angel" is about the huge impact of different people's mentalities on their own situation. Isda and Mary are girls who have lived a very hard life since childhood, Isda is positive and optimistic, laughs at life, and loves her every day;
Mary, on the other hand, was not so optimistic, pessimistic and desperate in her bones, complaining about her life and having had enough of the hard days. She dreamed of being able to get out of the poor class where she was, so she hooked up with a rich man...
Even though Mary knew that she would eventually be abandoned, she still insisted on the so-called "happiness" and finally fell into the abyss... Her life is cursed by herself, or every day is torture for her, because people who don't love their lives will feel that every minute is painful...
The biggest difference between people and people is that you live really happy for more than ten thousand days, or you live only one day, but you repeat it more than ten thousand times in pain and despair.
Most people's lives are not the lives he once saw in the circle of friends. We should not always envy the lives of others, but should put our eyes on our own lives and strive to be positive and enterprising.
Other people's lives are always someone else's, and our lives, even if they are not so glamorous, still have their own temperature.
What you should do is be yourself
If life is only living in comparison, then happiness will never be obtained, because comparison is an uncontrollable factor, and when you place your hope on uncontrollable factors, there is a good chance that you will be disappointed. So what we have to do is to be good at ourselves and not be carried away by the so-called comparison.
What we can do is:
1. Find your purpose in life
If you want to take control of your life, then finding your own goals is a top priority.
One study found that people with goals have a stronger ability to "not like things and not to be sad with themselves." That is to say, they will not be easily shaken by external things. On social media, you can ignore "likes" and comments, strengthen your mind, and guard your self-esteem.
When you really find something you like, the most important thing is your dedication and sincerity in this matter. Other people's praise or criticism is not so important, and it will not be more important than coming and going, competing with others.
2. Explore the meaning of matter for itself
There was once an experiment in which participants were asked to write what made them most insecure, and many participants wrote "no cars, no mansions." In other words, many people feel that what can reassure them is the substance. More generally, it's money.
The most prone place for people to have a comparative psychology is material. When we see others buy luxury cars and designer bags, we get jealous, but we don't feel anything about other people after reading a few books and watching a few movies, thinking that it's just a personal choice and habit.
This consumerist-oriented mentality has largely led to a bias in self-perception, believing that only matter can express its identity.
So, the next time you see who has bought what luxury goods, you can quietly tell yourself that "their material concerns more or less reflect the self-doubt in their hearts" to reduce their own ideas of comparison.
3. Stay away from people who "sell anxiety"
The rapid development of self-media is a stage for everyone to "sing" themselves, and people often fall into the illusion of being surrounded by "millionaires" and "successful people".
You begin to be anxious and overwhelmed, disrupting your otherwise smooth work and life, and falling into an endless cycle.
The best way to do this is to block successful people who have caused you a huge panic and to take out bloggers who make you feel anxious and unconfident.
When you stop receiving the messages that make you anxious every day, you will find that your self-identification with yourself has improved a lot, because your life is already good, and there is no need to make yourself miserable for irrelevant people.
4. The happiness you see is likely to be "posed"
People show their best on social media, such as food, scenery, harmonious family life, and these fragmentary records alone make it difficult to get a glimpse of their lives.
You don't know if these delicacies paid the price of bleeding fingers, whether the scenery was carefully posed, whether they just had another fight...
Because they only want you to see what they want you to see.
We often punish ourselves with the beauty of others, comparing the ordinary and troughs of our own lives to the colorful lives that others show to the public, which is obviously unfair. So, stop comparing your own shortcomings with the excellence of others.
Or you can switch your thinking: you are two completely different people, different life experiences, hobbies, family backgrounds, with different dreams and ambitions, you have no need to compare with each other. If unique individuals pull to the same line to compare with each other, they are doomed to lose both.
Finally, I would like to say that life should not be used for comparison, and too much pain and misfortune in life is because I want to live like others, not to live like myself. If you compare yourself to others, you become uncomfortable. What we have to do is to live our own lives and live our own wonderful lives.