Harvard Emotional Intelligence Class

Chapter 47 Correct understanding of self-evaluation of self (2)
(Section [-] Challenge yourself, change self-abasedness into self-confidence

According to the survey of society, psychologists have found that there are five main factors that seriously affect people's self-confidence, initiative, and enterprising obstacles:

1.self-abasement

Excessive self-criticism often manifests itself as excessive self-criticism, which leads to "suicide" in the mind and loss of aggressiveness.

2.timid

Timid psychology will inevitably obliterate your dreams, imagination and originality, because you are always afraid of going wrong and you will lose many opportunities.

3.lazy

Because they refused to study hard and work hard, they became mediocre and incompetent, and some originally talented people lost their enterprising and creative spirit.

4.One-sidedness and narrowness of character

A person's personality is a particularly important and positive factor, but it must be sound and complete. A one-sided and narrow personality will hinder the display of creative talents and have a negative impact on interpersonal relationships.

5.The impetuosity and vulgarity of motives and interests
This unfavorable factor will make people conform to the crowd, hot and cold, impetuously chasing a certain fashion, but in fact they still don’t know what they want, so they try to stop or stop.

Obviously, these five major obstacles are in the final analysis a negative mental attitude and a lack of self-confidence and initiative.These mentalities are often developed unconsciously in the process of personal growth.

When you were young, when you saw other children climbing a tree, you always stood aside and watched, but you never dared to try it yourself. You thought other children were too naughty, but you had already learned to behave yourself, so you lost the opportunity.Going to school, there are cultural activities held in the class. If you can sing, you dare not sign up for it, and you dare not go on stage, for fear of making a fool of yourself.If you don't seize such small opportunities, it seems that there is no loss if you give up again and again, but in fact, your loss is huge, because your mentality and choices have formed a passive habit.So when the critical moment comes, how do you discover and seize it?The only thing waiting for you is to miss and lose.

Practical life tells us: the motivation and opportunity to strive for success is just like this, come and lose, and come and go after losing.The question is whether you can change yourself, whether you can awaken a positive sense of self.If it is not a positive attitude, self-confidence and initiative, where will there be any motivation and opportunity?Even if opportunities and goals are dangling in front of your eyes, you can't help but find them, or dare not seize them when you find them.Therefore, what we lack is not mainly opportunities and conditions, but positive self-awareness.

People are very envious of those who have achieved success. In fact, the biggest difference between those who have created miracles and us is that they all have a strong sense of self-confidence.If a person's success is compared to the fruit on the land, then self-confidence is the seed of the fruit of success.Having seeds does not mean that there will be fruits, but intensive cultivation and hard work are required.But if there is no seed, it is absolutely impossible to grow fruit. If a person does not believe that he is capable, valuable and successful, how can he consciously strengthen his self-confidence and establish a successful mentality?
For individuals, strong self-confidence can often enable mediocre men and women to achieve miraculous careers, careers that those who are talented but capable but doubtful and timid dare not try.The size of your achievements will never exceed the size of your self-confidence.Napoleon's army would never have climbed the Alps if Napoleon thought it too difficult.Likewise, if you have serious doubts and mistrusts of your abilities, you will never achieve anything significant in your life.The prerequisite for success is self-confidence.

A river is never higher than its source.Success in life and career must have its source, and this source is dreams and self-confidence.No matter how talented you are, how capable you are, or how educated you are, the success of your career will never be higher than your self-confidence. "He can because he thinks he can; he can't because he thinks he can't."Self-confidence is very important to our success, and many scientists and inventors regard it as the most important factor.Edison, the inventor, said that self-confidence is the first element of success.Napoleon Hill, an important representative of American success studies, also repeatedly emphasized self-confidence. He even said that self-confidence is life and strength, self-confidence is the foundation of entrepreneurship, and confidence is a miracle.

Many people often think that the best things in the world have nothing to do with themselves; all the good and beautiful things in life are only enjoyed by those lucky darlings, and they are a kind of forbidden fruit for themselves.They are addicted to the belief that they think they are humble, so their whole life will naturally be humble; unless they wake up and dare to raise their heads and demand "superiority".There are many men and women who can achieve great things in the world, but end up being used to death, silently spending their insignificant lives, because their expectations and requirements for themselves are too small.

Self-confidence is more meaningful than money, power, family background, relatives and friends.It is the most reliable capital in life.It enables one to overcome difficulties, remove obstacles, and make one's venture finally successful, and it is more valuable than anything else.If a person can give himself a high evaluation, his "Qi" will be invincible when he is doing things. Just at the beginning, he can get half of the victory and half the chance of winning.All the obstacles that stand in front of those who are self-abased and self-depressing do not exist in front of such confident and strong people.If we study and analyze the great achievements of people who "create their own opportunities", we can definitely see that when they set out to struggle, they must first have a firm mentality that fully trusts their own abilities.Their mood and aspirations are strong enough to kick away all doubts and fears that may hinder them. Such thoughts enable them to move forward bravely.

(Chapter [-]: Correctly evaluate yourself

Self-evaluation is a term in psychology, which refers to a person's judgment on his own conditions, qualities, talents and other aspects.The appropriateness of self-evaluation is directly related to personal career choice and career success.

There are generally two ways to conduct self-evaluation correctly, one is direct self-evaluation and the other is indirect self-evaluation.

1.direct self-evaluation
Direct self-evaluation is first of all to understand one's own natural conditions, including health, mental state, emotional characteristics, interest tendencies, knowledge level, professional expertise, intelligence, and ability characteristics.As well as written expression ability, hands-on ability, psychological endurance and other aspects of the situation.Secondly, it is to compare with the different achievements that you have achieved in different fields of practice, so as to discover your own strengths and determine your goals.Warren Buffett, the Wall Street stock god in the United States, originally dreamed of being a musician and studied music in college, but soon he found that his strengths were not here, so he resolutely switched to stock investment.

2.indirect self-evaluation
Indirect self-evaluation refers to discovering mistakes in self-knowledge through comparison with other people's behaviors and situations. "I don't know the true face of Lushan Mountain, but I just live in it." This is one of the reasons why some people can't make a correct understanding of themselves.If the person involved is confused, then you might as well use the method of comparing with others and the method of comparing the different achievements you have achieved in different fields to identify it.Most people have a duality in self-evaluation. On the one hand, they like to fantasize and paint their personal situation, development, and future colorfully; on the other hand, they often underestimate their own intelligence and work ability. It is relatively inferior. "I am born to be useful", "the ruler is short, and the inch is long", everyone has their own strengths and weaknesses.Some people may not be able to distinguish the rhythm, but they have superb organizational skills; some people may not understand the mystery of numbers, but they are ingenious and good at crafts; Gardening; Some people may not be able to remember many foreign words, but they have a moving voice and are good at literature and art.Zhuge Liang and so on, and so on.Correct self-evaluation is the premise to help us determine the correct direction of struggle.In practice, in comparing with others, we must break through a certain set of thinking patterns and make our thinking methods as comprehensive, dialectical, and flexible as possible.

People's knowledge and talents are usually in a discrete and hazy state, requiring people to constantly dig, explore, discover and develop, from personal hobbies, ways of thinking, permanence of perseverance, existing knowledge structure, dedication A comprehensive investigation and test in many aspects such as courage and courage can provide useful help for making a scientific self-evaluation.

(The fifth section is full of self-confidence, and the spirit will not collapse
There is a certain student group that advocates that college students elect the most modern and beautiful college student every year and hold a competition.Here's what the staff there said.

He (she) goes to various universities and the streets, and when he (she) sees beautiful people, he (she) shows him (her) the brochure and invites him (her) to participate in this competition.From local to central, various competitions are held again and again.However, everyone has become more and more beautiful, which is almost invisible.

The staff there said: "Probably more and more confident!" This is absolutely correct.

★I will succeed
In July 1900, a psychiatrist named Lindemann sailed into the rough Atlantic in a small boat alone. He was conducting a psychological experiment that had never been done in history, and the price he was going to pay was own life.

Dr. Lindeman believes that as long as a person has confidence in himself, he can maintain mental and physical health.At that time, the whole of Germany was watching the tragic adventure of crossing the Atlantic in a single boat.There have been more than 100 warriors sailing across the Atlantic in succession, but they all failed and no one survived.Dr. Lindeman believes that these victims were not physically defeated, but mainly died of mental breakdown, terror and despair.In order to verify his point of view, he disregarded the opposition of his relatives and friends and conducted experiments himself.

During the voyage, Dr. Lindemann encountered unimaginable difficulties and was on the verge of death many times. He even had hallucinations in front of his eyes, and his sense of movement was numb. Sometimes he really felt desperate.But as soon as this thought came up, he immediately blamed himself loudly: "Coward, do you want to repeat the same mistakes and die here? No, I will definitely succeed!" The hope of life supported Lindeman, and finally he succeeded.When reviewing the experience of success, he said: "I believe from the bottom of my heart that I will succeed. This belief is integrated with myself in the midst of difficulties, and it fills every cell around me."★
Lindemann's experiment shows that as long as people are not disappointed in themselves and have full confidence in themselves, their spirits will not collapse, and they may overcome difficulties and survive.

(Section [-] Achievements will never exceed the heights that self-confidence can achieve
A psychologist once did such an experiment: he put a hungry dog ​​in a corridor surrounded by wooden boards similar to a maze, and the dog kept running up and jumping up in order to look for food, trying to get out over the board.But every time the dog jumped up, it would be punished with an electric shock. In the beginning, driven by hunger, the dog still jumped up, but the number of times became less and less.After several times of punishment, the dog completely gave up the hope of getting out, and never jumped up again.

Psychologists call this phenomenon "learned powerlessness."A person's loss of self-confidence has similarities to this experimental process.No one is born lacking in self-confidence.Taking learning as an example, students who are naturally not interested in learning and have no confidence in learning from the beginning do not exist.The "powerlessness" and "helplessness" in learning are caused by the accumulation of setbacks from repeated learning failures. If the test scores are not satisfactory for several times in a row, self-confidence will be eroded again and again, until the heart can no longer be motivated to work hard Enthusiasm, a "sense of powerlessness in learning" is formed. Most of the reasons for the "sense of powerlessness in learning" are that after suffering setbacks, they do not pay attention to summing up experience and lessons, lose confidence, lose opportunities that could have been created to get out of adversity, and finally have to give up on themselves completely.

If the negative result of "I can't do well" is the first thing that comes to mind, the enthusiasm and initiative of brain activities will be suppressed, and you will not even have the courage to try, let alone explore and improve.

A man can never achieve more than his self-confidence can achieve.

It is said that when Napoleon led the army in battle, the combat effectiveness of the same army would be doubled.It turns out that the combat effectiveness of the army is largely based on the soldiers' admiration and confidence in the commander.If Napoleon, leading his army across the Alps, had just sat and said, "This is too difficult," there is no doubt that Napoleon's army would never have crossed that mountain.Napoleon's self-confidence and strength increased the combat effectiveness of every soldier he commanded.Therefore, no matter what you do, unwavering self-confidence is the necessary and most important factor to achieve success.

Once, a soldier rushed to deliver a message to Napoleon. Because he was running too fast, he fell suddenly before reaching the destination, and the horse died.After Napoleon received the letter, he immediately wrote a reply letter, handed it to the soldier, and ordered the soldier to ride his own horse and send the reply letter as soon as possible.

The soldier saw the strong horse with extremely gorgeous decorations, so he said to Napoleon: "A gorgeous and strong horse is not worthy of being enjoyed by an inferior soldier like me." Napoleon replied: "There is nothing in the world that French soldiers want." undeserving."

Yes, there are people like this French soldier all over the world.They think that their status is too low, that all kinds of happiness that others have are not their own, that they are not worthy of enjoying.This concept of inferiority and inferiority often becomes the main reason for not seeking to make progress and being willing to degenerate.

(End of this chapter)