In the station, the queue is always long, you carefully calculate the speed of processing, change to the fastest line possible, but do not expect that the person in front of you has a dispute, the handling has been stagnant; at work, often immediately to the reporting link suddenly found that there is a material not brought, or left the U disk at home; driving on the road, you choose the shortest of the many paths, but you did not expect that there will be a traffic accident on this road.
Why do bad things always happen to you? Do you feel like you're unlucky or unlucky?
In fact, everyone will encounter this situation, will have a similar experience, even those small probability events, the problem is always likely to be a problem, this is the so-called "Murphy's Law".
Edward Murphy was a captain engineer at a U.S. air force base, and in 1949, he participated in a rocket deceleration and overweight experiment when an instrument malfunction occurred. The experiment was to suspend 16 rocket accelerometers above the subjects, and there were two device methods feasible at the time. Incredibly, all 16 accelerometers were misplaced by a single staff member.
From this, Murphy joked: "If something is likely to be messed up, let him do it will definitely be bad." The phrase was quoted at a press conference a few days later and then circulated in society. For example: "If there are two or more choices, and one of them will lead to disaster, someone must make this choice"; "Whatever is possible, it will go wrong", and if there is a possibility that things will go bad, no matter how small the probability, it will eventually happen.
Murphy's Law has 4 main contents:
1, everything is not as simple as it seems;
2, everything is longer than you expect;
3, things that will go wrong will definitely go wrong;
4, the more afraid of what will happen, the more it will happen.
As people gained a deeper understanding of Murphy's Law, many more precise and resonant inferences emerged, such as:
1. Things are thrown away because they are not always needed, and after they are thrown away, they will often be useful to its place;
2. The more you don't want people to see you when you go out, the more you will meet acquaintances;
3. You arrive early and the meeting is canceled; you are late, and the meeting is held on time;
4. When queuing, the other row always moves faster; you change to another row, and the row where you originally stood starts to move faster;
5. If you drop a piece of toast on the ground, both sides of this piece of toast may land on the ground, but suppose you accidentally drop a piece of toast coated with jam on one side, often the side with jam lands first;
6. Worked hard all day the leader did not see, just picked up the mobile phone for 2 minutes, the leader came.
Both Murphy's Law itself and later inferences were based on a view of human nature—fear of making mistakes, fear of rejection.
The transformation of "luck" and "misfortune"
There is a mother and son in American Horror Story: The Deformity Show, the mother is a bearded lady, and the son is a handsome man with a lobster hand. On the surface, the handsome guy is the most normal person in the circus, but in fact (as Lady Beard puts it) his heart is lost. He wanted to step out of the circus with one foot to live the life of an ordinary person, but the other foot was tethered to the circus. He was inferior because of his deformity, how could others look up to him?
Some fans believe that bearded ladies can get rid of deformity by shaving off their beards. However, people can deceive others, but they cannot deceive themselves. Lady Beard accepted her physical abnormalities and only then did she keep her peace of mind. Also participating in the play is an actress with only an upper body, who also has a son in reality. After her son went to school, she generously came to her son's class and said to her classmates, "I only have half a body." I am a laborer and a mother who loves her children. I hope you will treat me and my son as usual. The son of a disabled mother was never discriminated against by his classmates.
The expression "the more afraid of trouble, the more it will happen" describes a fear and worry about things that are unpredictable or uncontrollable, and Lady Beard breaks away from this worry, overcomes her "heart demon", and then gains a new life, including her son, which shows that Murphy's theorem is not an invincible theorem.
The key to cracking Murphy's Law is to accept negative events or ideas and stop deliberately expelling them, so that those extreme projectional identities and cognitive distortions will slowly disappear.
The Korean employment website CAREER once conducted the first "Murphy's Law" online survey in the workplace for 924 Korean office workers, and complained in the statistical results that "it was already late, but the bus and elevator were delayed", accounting for 17.8% of the turnout; "When there is a very urgent business need to talk to each other, the other party is often busy or not in the company", "After a busy job, it is often found by the leader". At the top of the list is "If you have a date with a friend after work, you often have to work overtime until dark that day." A whopping 24.8 percent of office workers voted in favor of it, and the project was crowned the first "Murphy's Law" in the workplace.
But Murphy's Law wants to tell us much more than "the more scared you are, the more it will happen."
It cautions against ignoring small-probability events, because as long as there is a cause for the accident, it will happen. And no matter how unlikely it is, it will always happen and cause the greatest possible economic losses.
This is easier to understand with the "Hayne's Law" explanation.
The "Hayne's Law" is a law on flight safety proposed by Pabus Hain, the inventor of the German aircraft turbine. Hayne's Law states that behind every serious accident, there must be 29 minor accidents and 300 failed precursors and 1,000 accident hazards. Any unsafe incident can be prevented.
After world war II, the RAF counted the causes and locations of aircraft crashes during the war. The results were shocking—the most frequent time for accidents was not in a fierce firefight, but a few minutes before landing on the return of the mission.
Psychologists are not at all surprised by this result, they say it is typical of "false security" psychology. After the high tension, once the external stimulus disappears, the human psyche will have an "almost irrepressible tendency to relax." The pilot was highly concentrated in the enemy's gunfire and bullets, and although the external environment was harsh, it was not easy to make mistakes because the brain was in extreme excitement. However, it is precisely a momentary relaxation at the time of landing that is enough to "lose nothing".
Meet "Sally's Law"
Murphy's Law has an individualistic pessimistic color, but from the perspective of dialectical unity of opposites, there should also be laws that are opposite to it and embody positive optimism, which is "Sally's Law".
It originated from the story of the heroine in the movie "When Harry Meets Sally" who finally ushered in a happy ending after several twists and turns, and was later used to describe the phenomenon that many unexpected bad things can lead things to a positive direction.
South Korean employment website CAREER conducted an online survey of Sally's Law while conducting an online survey of office workers. The results showed that "every time I was late, the leader was not at work" accounted for 34.3%, ranking first; "sometimes deliberately going out late, but always arriving at the company early" accounted for 32.9%, ranking second; and the third place was "in the case of a shortage of funds, often the next day is the date of pay".
Murphy's Law is an objective existence that the weak will use as a reason to fail.
I have never studied this law carefully, and I think that since so many people say this, this should be what it means. It wasn't until I saw the provenance of Murphy's Law one day that I realized that many people misunderstood.
The work of wiring the sensors is not Murphy himself, but someone else to do it, but this is by no means the same as saying, "If you have a hunch that something might go wrong, you're bound to go wrong." The correct understanding should be: if you overlook a link that is likely to go wrong, it is likely to go wrong.
There is a Chinese proverb: "What to be afraid of, what to come." This is actually another expression of Murphy's law. When you are arrogant, Murphy's Law will make you know that it is powerful; on the contrary, if you admit your ignorance, Murphy's Law will help you to be more rigorous.
In addition to rigor, we should also maintain an optimistic mindset.
Pessimists talk about excuses to escape reality, both ancient and modern. For example, the historical excuse master, Ran You, who was once criticized by Confucius. The Analects of Yongye says that Ran Qiuyi said: "If you do not speak the way of the Son, you will not be able to do enough power." Zi Yue: "Those who lack strength, the middle way and the waste." Imama painting. He later became one of the "Seventy-Two Wise Men" of Confucius.
Optimists often solve difficulties through methods, and the famous lyricist Su Dongpo was degraded three times in his life, but he was still optimistic and open-minded. When he was relegated to Huangzhou, "only the breeze on the river and the bright moon in the mountains." Hear what you hear, and see what you see. When he was demoted to Huizhou, "three hundred litchi were eaten every day, and he did not quit being a Lingnanian"; When he was relegated to Danzhou, "Mangshoe did not set foot on Vanity Fair, and a leaf light boat was sent to the void". Throughout his life, although there are ups and downs and uncertain, he is optimistic by nature, "who is afraid, a smoke and rain will be a peaceful life." ”
A true gentleman should "not complain about the heavens and not be a special person."
Pay attention to a good psychological state, pay attention to probability, abandon the psychology of fear, escape, and luck, and focus on changing the things you can change, so that the direction of things can be better in a high probability. Easy to make mistakes is the innate weakness of people, we try to think about things as thoroughly as possible before things happen, foresee all kinds of difficulties that arise, and prevent problems before they happen.
Being an optimist with a sense of distress is the best answer to cracking Murphy's Law.