Countdown Confession

Go all out, come on, college life

Welcome to The Psychology of Self-Development. Hello, I am Chen Haixian. In this lesson, we continue to talk about the psychological comfort zone. Many times, we have an instinctive intuition about change, thinking that change is actually very simple: we just need to do the opposite of the behavior we want to change. If we procrastinate, then find a way to be more diligent; If we are late, make a plan to get up early; If we have a bad temper, learn to be polite to others. If we can't do it, it must be that our willpower is defective, or we don't understand the methods. However, from the perspective of your psychological comfort zone, you will understand that things are not that simple. Sometimes, you can't change, not because you don't know the method, but because you don't know yourself. You have developed your own adaptation mechanism, but change requires you to give up this adaptation mechanism and use another adaptation mechanism. You need to face the true love and fear in your heart, change your way of thinking, and step out of your psychological comfort zone in order to gain new experiences and usher in real changes. Maybe you are thinking, I also know that it is my psychological comfort zone that is preventing me from changing, but how do I know the love and fear in the heart of my emotional elephant? People say there are horse whisperers who can understand horses. Are there any elephant speakers who can translate the love and fear of elephants to us? In this way, our rider will know what response to take. Psychological Immunity X-ray: Four Column Table It really does exist. Today I am going to introduce such a tool called: Psychological Immunity X-ray. It was invented by Robert Kegan, a Harvard psychologist who studies adult development. Why is it called "psychological immune X-ray"? Kagan believes that just as people have a physiological immune system to reject microorganisms that do not belong to the body, people also have an immune system in their psychology, which will reject us from adopting new behaviors to maintain the balance and stability of the psychological structure. The essence of the psychological immune system is an anxiety control system. When we behave in new ways, our immune system makes us feel anxious. To avoid this anxiety, we fall back on old ways. In fact, this is the psychological comfort zone we talked about earlier. Kagan believes that the psychological immune system is present in every behavior that blocks change. In order to understand how the psychological immune system prevents people from changing, he invented X-rays of the psychological immune system. It means that this thing is very powerful. It can show out what you are really afraid of just like an X-ray. What exactly is it? It's actually a four-column table. If you are interested, you can also follow us to draw a "psychological immune X-ray" of yourself. Before taking X-rays, let's first assume that there is such a girl, let's call her Amy. Amy had just graduated from college and was working in an Internet company. Companies often hold meetings to discuss the design and direction of some products. Amy is a very thoughtful person, but in these meetings, she is always embarrassed to express her thoughts. Even if she finally speaks out, if others express different opinions, she will quickly become silent. Sometimes, she clearly disagrees in her heart, but if someone asks her what she thinks, she will instinctively say: "Yes, that's it." Slowly, others begin to ignore her ideas, and she herself is very distressed and hopes to change. The first column of the psychological immune X-ray: the behavioral goals we wish to achieve. Amy has many goals, such as she hopes to be happier; she hopes to be more creative; and she hopes to make more money. But these targets are not recognized by the immune system. Happiness is the goal of emotion, being more creative is the goal of ability, and making more money is simply the goal of results. The goals of our psychological immune system are marked by behavior. So here, the goal Amy should write down is: She wants to express herself more confidently. Expression is an action. The second column of the X-ray: What behaviors are you doing that are contrary to your goals. Amy listed a lot. For example: She is often silent, waiting for others to speak first, and then echoes "yes, yes, yes"; If she disagrees with other people's opinions in her heart, she will generally not speak out directly, but will respond with silence; She speaks so quietly that everyone cannot hear what she says, so she often ignores her speech. These are behaviors that are contrary to the goal. However, her goal is obviously to speak more confidently, so why does she do so many behaviors that are contrary to her goal? This may sound strange, but the real reason is that these actions bring her secret benefits. So in the third column of the X-ray, what she needs to think about is: What are the hidden benefits of these behaviors that are contrary to the goal. In other words, what is the benefit of expressing yourself without confidence. If you don't know what this benefit is, you can ask yourself a question: What's the worst thing you're worried about if you don't do this? I asked Amy this way: "What do you think is the worst thing that can happen if you don't agree with others and if you express your opinions confidently?" She thought for a while, sighed, and said: "I'm worried that if I express my different opinions , others will have thoughts about me, and I will be regarded as an alien. I am also worried that if I say something wrong, others will think I am stupid." It turns out that she did this to avoid conflicts with others, to avoid being ostracized by others, and to avoid others seeing her making a fool of herself and thinking she was stupid. It is the emotion that drives the elephant, now translated into a language that the rider can understand. But this is not enough. We still can't understand why she is so worried? What makes her equate expressing different opinions with being ostracized? What makes her equate what she said is wrong with others thinking she is stupid? This brings up the fourth column of the X-ray: She has a big hypothesis in her mind. This assumption is hidden behind her unwanted behavior. It is this assumption that makes the so-called "benefits" of these behaviors true. The assumption is: If I express a different opinion, conflict will arise. It turns out that this major assumption operates in the elephant's mind. The rider usually only sees the elephant's emotions, but does not clearly know what the elephant is afraid of. Now, the elephant's anxiety is translated into a language the rider can understand and enters the rider's consciousness. This assumption is certainly not groundless. It has to do with our life experiences. When I asked her why she thought so, Amy said: "My father is an old-school soldier who worked as a local official after retiring. He is very strict and doesn't speak much. He always thinks my mother is nagging. Sometimes, when my mother speaks, he will glare at her." She made a glaring expression for me. Obviously, this expression was repeated so many times in her life that it became a very deep imprint in her heart. She said: "At this time, I will silently say in my heart: 'Mom, please stop talking.' Because I know that if my mother talks again, a big quarrel will inevitably come." Like self-hypnosis, this silent recitation, along with the anxiety during silent recitation, was engraved in her brain and became part of the psychological immune system, allowing the elephant to repeat its old path over and over again. Looking back, we can better understand why change is difficult to happen. Because there is a serious conflict between the desire to change and the motivation not to change. As a classic metaphor goes: We want to make the car run, but we have one foot on the accelerator and the other on the brake. And energy and power are painfully consumed in this idling sound. X-rays of the psychological immune system allow us to clearly see this conflict. However, we can't just blame those behaviors that prevent us from changing, and we can't blame our psychological immune system, because they once protected, and maybe still protect the weak and vulnerable you. Like a dutiful grandmother, the psychological immune system does everything possible to prevent you from going to new places for your safety. And you will one day break away from her arms. Recall that today we talked about the X-ray of the psychological immune system, which provides a clear tool to translate the language of the elephant of emotions into a language that the rider can understand, allowing us to see what is preventing us from changing. Let's review it again. This X-ray is divided into four steps: Your goal of change; The behaviors you are doing that are opposite to the change; The benefits behind these opposite behaviors; The major assumptions that make these benefits true. Psychologist Jung once said: If the subconscious things cannot be transformed into consciousness, it will become our destiny and guide our life. Similarly, if you don't know the forces that hinder change and the important assumptions behind such forces, it may seem that you are living in common sense, but in fact? You are living in your own assumptions. The X-rays of psychological immunity we are talking about today can allow you to see them. This way, you can think about them consciously. Chen Haixian If you have something you want to change, I hope you will also put it into the X-ray of your psychological immune system to reveal what you are really afraid of. I look forward to you sharing your gains in the message area.

Once upon a time, there was a man who had a stable job and a decent life. He had no bad hobbies and just liked good food. He pays great attention to keeping in shape and never dares to eat more. Suddenly one day he lost his job and faced great pressure in life, so he relaxed his demands on himself. He began to overeat, eating a lot of high-calorie and high-fat foods, and the more he ate, the more he wanted to eat. In the past, when he went to a restaurant to eat, he was satisfied after ordering one plate of food. Now, he orders two or even three plates of food and is still not satisfied after eating them all. The more he eats, the fatter he gets, and the fatter he gets, the more he wants to eat, and his life is in a mess... Of course I made up this story, but this phenomenon is a scientific existence. You can replace "eat" with something else, such as drugs, sex, or gambling. The truth is that people's "satisfaction" may get out of control and needs to be managed. What we are going to talk about today is an article in the New York Times on July 2, entitled "What Cookies and Meth Have in Common" (What Cookies and Meth Have in Common), written by Richard A. Friedman, professor of psychiatry at Weill Cornell Medical College. This article is a research review that tells us about the physiological mechanism of "addiction" and "satisfaction". This is a bit of a scary mechanism. 1. A mechanism Let's first consider the most basic question: Why do we eat? You might say we eat to survive - but you are thinking rationally. Animals have no rational thinking, and may not even realize the causal relationship between eating and survival. Why do they eat? Even if we skip a few meals, we won't starve to death. Why do we eat? ——To enjoy the process of eating and the satisfaction brought by eating. There is a reward system in the human brain. When you do anything that is conducive to survival and the continuation of your genes - such as getting food, winning money, having sex - your brain secretes a chemical called dopamine. Dopamine is your brain's reward for this behavior! When you feel dopamine, you feel extra excited, stimulated, and happy. Your brain uses dopamine to tell you to do this again next time. With this reward system, even if an animal cannot understand the significance of doing so, it will be happy to do it purely for the purpose of pursuing the feeling of receiving rewards. So at the lowest level, we do things to get feelings. We're in it for dopamine. This New York Times article tells us that in the past ten years, scientists have gained a new understanding of the reward mechanism of the human brain. If you want to get satisfaction from something, it's not enough to just secrete dopamine, you also have to receive dopamine. There is something in the brain that accepts dopamine called "dopamine D2 receptors." If you have more D2 receptors in your brain, you will be able to feel a little bit of dopamine secreted, and you will be easily satisfied. But if a person's D2 is relatively small, there are two disadvantages. The first is that he is not easily satisfied. The brain secretes the same dose of dopamine. Others receive a lot, but he can only receive a small part. The second is that activity in the prefrontal cortex of his brain will decrease. We have just said these days that the prefrontal cortex is responsible for rational thinking - this means that if D2 decreases, his self-control ability will decrease. If a person becomes less and less satisfied and more and more unable to control himself, who is he? This is a classic symptom of drug addiction. 2. Addiction is a hardware problem There is an idiom called "contentment always brings happiness" - I used to think that this world view is a bit earthy, but now considering D2, a contented person should be happier. D2 A person who has more is a person who is content and happy. She doesn't need strong stimulation. She can easily be satisfied with a little delicious food, but she will be bored with more. She would be very averse to drugs. People with low D2 are very insensitive to rewards. He finds all the pleasant things in life, such as "little blessings", boring. He is not easily excited, but he craves the feeling of excitement... He needs super stimulation to make his brain secrete more dopamine in order to receive a sufficiently satisfying dose - perhaps only drugs can give him a sense of satisfaction. Please note that this is all a hardware problem in the brain. "Dopamine D2 receptor" is not a metaphor, but a real component like a computer's video memory and hard drive. This means that if a person feels that life is boring, cannot control himself, or is addicted to drugs, this is not a psychological problem, but a physical problem. No matter how much ideological work you do for him, it won't be of much use. This mechanism is the number of dopamine D2 receptors, which determines a person's degree of addiction. So what determines the amount of D2? There are certain genetic reasons. Some people are born with more D2, and some people are born with less D2. But what this New York Times article says is that the most critical factor is the impact on the environment. 3. Stress and Addiction There are two factors that can affect the amount of D2 acquiredly. One is pressure. What I'm talking about here is mainly the pressure of survival, not things like being busy at work. For example, a person's social status is declining, or he feels that the support and care from others is decreasing, and he has a sense of helplessness. This kind of pressure is the most terrifying. In 2010, researchers from Columbia University confirmed by scanning the brains of different people that increased survival stress will lead to a decrease in dopamine D2 receptors. There is also an experiment done with a group of monkeys that can illustrate the problem more directly. The experimenters first let the monkeys live alone in their own cages and taught them to use cocaine on their own. Monkeys are addicted to cocaine. Then the experimenter gathered the monkeys to live together. Soon after, the monkey group naturally produced a monkey king. Then the experimenters discovered that the monkey king's dependence on cocaine decreased. This is because the monkey king now has a higher social status, is always eye-catching, and has social resources, so he doesn't care much about drugs. But those monkeys with lower social status were more dependent on cocaine. Finally, the experimenter put the monkeys back into their respective cages and fed them individually. As a result, the original monkey king began to take drugs again. Taking several studies together, scientists concluded that survival stress will directly reduce D2. This is why poor people are more likely to take drugs. In the United States, there is a trend that once the original middle class people fall out of class and their social status declines, many people take drugs. Another influencing factor is even more terrifying: drug abuse, which itself will further reduce D2! This is a vicious circle! As survival pressure increases, a person's D2 decreases. Because D2 decreased, he felt life was boring and his self-control ability declined, so he started taking drugs. Because he took drugs, his D2 was further reduced... This constitutes a positive feedback process. He gets deeper and deeper, becomes more and more unable to extricate himself, and becomes less and less satisfied. The dose must be continuously increased, and eventually no matter how good the person is, he can't stand it. So drugs are really not allowed! But eating is the same. 4. Poverty Disease This "dopamine-D2" mechanism is not only applicable to drugs, but also to others. Scientists' studies on obese people have similar results. Scientists have even discovered that the degree of D2 reduction in obese people is directly proportional to their body's BMI (body mass index). The more obese people are, the less D2 they have in their brains. If D2 is too little, ordinary food will not satisfy him, so he will increase the dose and eat more food. Then more food will make him fatter. If he is fatter, his D2 will be less. Eventually, he fell into a vicious cycle of "eating more and getting fatter, getting fatter and eating more". Excessive obesity represents poor self-control ability. This is why people look down on overweight people. According to the principle mentioned today, the reason why fat people are greedy is not because they are heavy and need to consume so many things. It's not what his body needs, but what his brain needs – he eats more to satisfy his brain, and his satisfaction threshold is too high! At a certain stage, overweight people can no longer stand the smell of food, or even watch TV commercials for food. Like drug addicts, he became a slave to his addiction. In the past, our column had an article called "The Disease of Poverty". We have said that poverty is a heritable physiological disease. It now appears that the disease of poverty also includes the reduction of D2. Poverty will lead to increased stress, and increased pressure will lead to a decrease in D2... Once the vicious cycle is started, it will be difficult to get rid of poverty. Friedman was very emotional! The fundamental reason why there are so many obese people in the United States is that American food is too cheap. In the past, even if people wanted to eat, there was still a financial limit. Now you can eat whatever you want. It's too easy to ignite the vicious cycle. But this process can be reversed! The easiest way, Friedman says, is to isolate yourself from the addictive substance. To avoid being tempted, you should not even watch food commercials, which will change you over time. Let's think about the monkey experiment again! If you have a friend or family member who is under pressure, you must pay more attention to him or even give him monkey king treatment! This way he won't go into a vicious cycle. | My Comments The ancients had a saying that "desires are hard to satisfy", but now it sounds a bit outdated. Our era prides itself on free-spirited individuality. When I watched "If You Are the One" before, I found that when male and female guests introduced themselves, they often said "I am a foodie." This was unthinkable a few decades ago - is gluttony an advantage? I think what they mean is "I am a sincere person, face life sincerely, and eat what I want." Having the courage to speak out your pursuits boldly is indeed a lovely personality! But it's best not to overdo it. Loving food and being greedy are two different things. There is a word that may express your personality better than "foodie" - "self-discipline". We can put forward a concept called "satisfaction management". People who have a sense of satisfaction management do not allow themselves to be easily satisfied and pay attention to moderation. No matter how delicious this food is, don't eat until you are satisfied. It is best to stop eating until you are still satisfied. This is not done to stay in shape, but to keep the threshold of satisfaction at a relatively low level. Because we know that once you indulge your sense of satisfaction, it may become harder to satisfy you every time. So, how do children get spoiled? Children who are given whatever they want, eat whatever they want, and play whatever they want are not necessarily happy. Because his satisfaction threshold is getting higher and higher, it becomes less and less easy for him to be satisfied! How can a person who is never satisfied and always pursues various low-level enjoyments be in a happy mood? | From this In the past ten years, scientists have discovered the mechanism of addiction and satisfaction: The brain secretes dopamine, so that our related behaviors are rewarded; Dopamine D2 receptors are the key to receiving dopamine and obtaining satisfaction; Stress and over-satisfaction will reduce D2; With reduced D2, people will be less likely to be satisfied and their self-control ability will decline; The whole is a vicious cycle. The truth we learned from it is called "satisfaction management".

Teacher Xiong, there is a school of thought that regards Confucianism, Buddhism and Taoism in traditional Chinese thought as a flexible way to cultivate one's moral character under different ages and situations. What do you think of this view? For example: When you are young, you should learn Confucianism, make a difference, and be positive. In middle age, you need to lock in your career anchor and know what you are good at. Only by studying Taoism can you make a difference. This view does not matter whether it is right or wrong. It is just based on the principle of pragmatism that I want to use the benefits of different ideological systems for my own use. The key is to see the effect. But I'm afraid the effect won't be very good. There has always been a simple truth in fortune-telling and praying to gods and Buddhas: faith leads to spirituality, or sincerity leads to spirituality. This means that whether it is effective or not is highly related to faith. In life, you will encounter many difficulties and many confusing levels. At such times, there is a high probability that the stronger your faith, the smoother you will pass the level. People with strong beliefs cannot believe in God today, Buddha tomorrow, and atheism the day after tomorrow. For an example of this, you can look at the Book of Job in the Old Testament. The protagonist Job believes in God devoutly, but the devil disagrees, saying that Job only believes in God because he has received too many benefits from God. If God deprived Job of his wealth, relatives and health, Job would definitely betray him. God's attitude was: Just give it a try, and then he really deprived Job of his wealth, relatives, and health again and again. Under the cruel blows again and again, Job always insisted on his faith unwaveringly, but in the end he couldn't hold on anymore. Therefore, the Book of Job is a particularly controversial chapter in Christian theology. The example you mentioned is exactly the opposite of Job. If a person makes a life plan from the beginning and designs different beliefs for different age groups, it only means that he does not take any belief seriously. Since you don't take it seriously, you won't be able to reap the benefits of "being sincere and spiritual". Unless the belief design of different age groups can point to very practical benefits, such as the imperial examination era, if you learn Confucian exam-oriented education well, you can become an official, and if you become an official, you can reap the golden house, thousands of bells of millet, and Yan Ruyu. After becoming an official, you can throw away the Confucian knowledge you originally learned, and turn to praying to gods and Buddhas, reading Feng Shui, and learning numerology, and only hope that your official career will be prosperous and skyrocketing. This was a common phenomenon in the imperial examination era, so Wang Yangming could not stand it and advocated the unity of knowledge and action.