Self-control: How to take control of your time and life?

Chapter 13 Self-blame and self-imposed obstacles (2)
For example, many people instinctively want to retreat and avoid when love comes or enters a deep relationship.In psychology, it is called "intimacy phobia".They can't control themselves, are afraid to develop the relationship further, and then resort to some procrastination and negative behaviors to rediscover a sense of security and confidence for themselves.

Hatif, from Washington, said: "Jenny and I fell in love and after three months our relationship took off and we got engaged. Was it too soon? I felt the same way, and I was scared, I don't know Why, one night, I didn't reply to her text message, and I hung up her phone the next morning. I think, I should really think about it, I don't want her to disturb me these days, and I don't Dare to find her."

What is Khatif afraid of?Listen to Jenny's point of view: "He's a coward!" Jenny was upset. "He stopped coming to me all of a sudden, for no reason! I don't think he wants to marry me at all, he just wants to be alone."

During the exchange, I said to Jenny, "Look, Ms. Jenny, maybe you should think about it from another angle. Perhaps Khatif is also concerned?"

"Oh, what's his worry?" I said, "He's about to hand over his body and mind, and entrust his future life to another person. At this time, there must be some kind of fear, which is a normal psychological phenomenon.”

Jenny suddenly realized: "Please tell me what to do, how to get rid of his timid idea?" I suggested that Jenny should not take any action. If he doesn't reply to text messages and calls, let him not reply.However, the time should not be too long, and Jenny can put the intimacy of the two people on the cold side for two weeks.If Khatif hasn't figured it out herself, she can take countermeasures.

"Go and knock on his door, fix him hard, tell him what you really think about this relationship, and dispel his worries. At that time, he will suddenly discover his naivety, thus eliminating the inner hesitation and Back off, and his love for you will grow stronger!"

Psychologists tell us that humans are born with two fears.The first is a lot of noise, so do you know what the second is?It is this "falling feeling".From the moment we fell to the ground from the mother's body, the fear of falling has become a subconscious instinct of a person.We also have this feeling when we are very close to success, and a voice will suddenly stop you.

Overcoming withdrawal requires you to "hold on a little longer."

Adding 99°C to 1°C will make water boil.If your efforts only persist until 99°C and give up, then you will never be able to boil this pot of water.If you persist for a while, you can achieve your goal; if you give up at this point, your work results will be no different from 0°C.

Take smoking cessation as an example. Professor Rhodes, who has been in my course center for two months, obviously does not understand this truth.If he had known this earlier, he would have spared him the pain of liver cancer that would kill him, and would have lived a few years longer.Among all smokers who successfully quit smoking, as many as 80% of them relapsed into the old ways and resumed smoking, such as Professor Rhodes.And those smokers who can persist to the end can quit smoking.Unfortunately, this does not include Rhodes.

Once you make a commitment, you have to keep the promise to yourself, and then stick to it, and finally achieve success.Otherwise, you will enter a cycle of "affirmation-conflict-denial-regression", creating self-obstacles, and then overturning all previous efforts.

When Rhodes came to talk to me about his quit smoking problem, he had been on it for three weeks and was in a very painful and conflicted phase.He needed to get over his ambivalence, and unfortunately, he didn't get through that stage.Rhodes once sent an email before his death, confessing this:

"If you have not made a clear decision to quit smoking, no matter how good you are, you will not succeed. Please learn from my lesson. If you want to really change something, you must have a clear and firm attitude."

How to stop yourself from continuing to throw rocks at your feet

It may not be a big problem for a person to occasionally set up obstacles in his life, and there may even be some benefits. For example, choosing this way to stop progress when facing an insurmountable obstacle can temporarily relieve the pressure and save his face.However, if you habitually set up obstacles and make excuses for yourself, it will not only hinder your correct understanding and objective evaluation of yourself, but also hinder your potential, greatly affect your mental health, and weaken your self-control and adaptability to society .

It's like constantly throwing stones at your feet - throwing some stones occasionally can train your ability to avoid and overcome obstacles, but if you throw too many, these stones will block the road and prevent you from moving forward, which will lead to The failure of your life.Therefore, we must prevent habitual self-imposed barriers and stop the behavior of throwing stones at our feet frequently.

First, you have to accept yourself and have a healthy "self-esteem experience."How we feel about ourselves is an emotional experience of self-affirmation and self-reliance.A healthy self-esteem experience can make people moderately adhere to their own ideas, desires and needs, appreciate their own behavior, and thus correctly evaluate themselves.

In order to do this, first understand how you feel now: "What do I want to change?" Then make a plan and implement actions to achieve the goal of changing yourself.Accepting yourself requires you to respect your current state, rather than being full of depression and anxiety.If you accept who you are, your behavior will reinforce that fact, prompting others to feel your confidence and treat you with kindness and respect.

For example, what do you do when you accidentally do something wrong?Avoiding and denying is a kind of barrier-building behavior. Facing problems and analyzing the reasons is the expression of self-acceptance. The latter can help you gain self-esteem experience, promote self-development and others' respect for you.

A healthy "self-esteem experience" requires that we be neither overly self-esteem nor blindly inflated.These two extremes will cause a person to care more about "face", and it is easier to form self-imposed barriers, sinking deeper and deeper in the quagmire of self-blame or narcissism, and it is difficult to get out.

Second, adjust your understanding first, and then challenge those unreasonable beliefs.If you have irrational beliefs in your head, they can prevent you from responding appropriately psychologically and behaviorally, leading to self-blocking.Therefore, you must first adjust your own understanding, and then remove those unreasonable beliefs and change the original wrong cognition and behavior.

1. Examine the existence of irrational beliefs in the brain, and after analysis, realize that self-blocking does not come from a certain event or situation, but because of one's own irrational views on these events or situations.

2. Confront these incorrect understandings of yourself, clarify them through rational thinking, and change the irrational beliefs in your heart.

3. Look for alternative correct viewpoints, make them clear and specific, and then replace them with reasonable beliefs, strengthen the training of thinking from multiple perspectives, such as empathy and pros and cons, so as to avoid self-imposed obstacles.

In the specific operation, many students have a lot of irrational beliefs and wrong values.For example, absolute requirements—he requires himself to be “perfect”; overly generalized thinking—he considers himself a “complete failure” when he encounters failure.These are all unreasonable beliefs.

In the course, we first let the students realize the irrationality of these ideas, and then guide them to change them and establish new understandings through self-argument and confrontation-"I can pursue perfection, but I don't have to demand perfection" "Occasional failure It does not mean permanent failure."When they have this new understanding, it becomes easier to accept themselves, and they can reduce psychological self-barriers.

Finally, we must know how to "self-affirm".

A large number of studies have found that the experience of "self-affirmation" can reduce the motivation and tendency of self-blocking.Self-affirmation can make a person's positive characteristics more obvious, making it easier for him to overcome negative emotions such as low self-esteem, self-blame, and anxiety, and let the out-of-control self return to a benign track.

When a person is concentrating on one's own successful experience, it is difficult to think about the failure experience at the same time.They can draw more positive energy from the past instead of being overwhelmed by negative information.If people can express their positive characteristics, they will seldom set up barriers for themselves and can withstand the outside world's evaluation of their abilities.He will say: "I don't care about other people's criticism and negation, because I know in my heart that I have very professional experience in a certain field, and I don't need to be judged by them." He will not have mental disorders due to external doubts.

If you want to have the trait of "self-affirmation", you must carry out self-affirmation training.

The first step is cognitive training.For inappropriate thinking patterns and self-impeding content, describe the problem situation, understand your own way of thinking, and then help yourself clarify the problem, confirm the cognitive goal, and practice contingency thinking ability.

The second step is to learn to see yourself in a positive light.When there are problems, you should think: this is just that a certain link is not perfect, I have succeeded in the previous work, and the next step I have to do is to solve them instead of setting up obstacles for myself to avoid them.

The third step is to conduct behavioral drills.Arrange activities where you can role-play yourself to make the event more realistic.When practicing, you should start with easy activities and then gradually practice more difficult or more complex activities in a gradual manner.After each practice, give positive reinforcement, such as giving yourself an appropriate reward, so as to enhance the degree of self-affirmation.

communicate and talk
Seek support to build a social support system, which is especially important for a person who is in dire need of regaining confidence.In talking, you can discover your weaknesses, and you can also find your strengths and self-confidence.Most importantly, communication can make people rational, instead of blindly fighting alone, trying to solve all problems by themselves.

Mr. Hu is a young man who came to the United States from Dalian for course training after making an appointment.He is just over 30 years old, but he already has a big company of his own.After the initial communication, Mr. Hu told his story like this: "I quit my job shortly after graduating from university, and I have been out for almost ten years. Now the company is not big, and in a good year, it has a profit of 100 million a year. I am very dissatisfied. I am a person who really wants to do great things, and I always long for a bigger career, because only then can I prove myself and be successful. I often think that if I am not successful, I would rather die. With my current goal, No matter what, I have to earn [-] million. I think I am a capable person and I am not afraid of setbacks, but now I am in trouble."

When I asked him in surprise what kind of help he hoped for, Mr. Hu sighed and said, "Now I feel a lot of pressure, I feel very uneasy, and I have an inexplicable uneasiness about the future."

Later, I asked him to join the communication platform of the training center, introduced him to many students, communicated more with others, poured out his thoughts and feelings, and exchanged each other's helplessness and unhappiness.A week later, Mr. Hu became very relaxed. He said to me: "I have discovered my own problems. From now on, I must first lower my goals. Only in this way can I remove the obstacles in my heart."

Communication is an effective way to release stress, and at the same time, the process of communication is also a process of self-reflection.By talking with others, you can quickly get psychological support and enhance your self-confidence.

Our obstacle communication course truly achieves "heart-to-heart communication and true feelings".Among every student who came to participate in the fifth class, we first set up a "barrier-free communication platform", where everyone can sit down easily and communicate with each other face to face without feeling oppressed:

"I'm stupid." "I'm afraid of things happening." "I can't get over it." "I can't face it."

It's okay, just speak up and someone will listen.When listening happens, we're throwing stones out the window of our hearts—they're harmful crap that's clogging your spirit, killing your willpower, and sending you out of control and out of your driveway.

This is the most effective way, but in reality it is the hardest to get support.Ms. Chen, a student from China, said: "There are thousands of neighbors in the community where I live, and dozens of colleagues in my department. No one is willing to sit down and listen to me for five seconds."

Yes, this is the problem, have you found it?The fifth lesson not only helps you discover the hidden inferiority complex and the reasons for self-imposed obstacles, but also tells you the permanent solution.

(End of this chapter)