Harvard Emotional Intelligence Class

Chapter 51 Breaking Through Your Own Mindset (2)
A British newspaper held a prize-winning activity with high prize money.The title is: On an under-inflated hot air balloon, three scientists who are related to the rise and fall of mankind are carried. The hot air balloon is about to crash, and a person must be thrown out to lighten the load.Among the three people, one is an environmental protection expert, whose research can save countless lives from dying due to environmental pollution; the other is an atomic expert, who has the ability to prevent a global atomic war and save the earth from destruction; One is a food expert who can bring grain to barren land and lift hundreds of millions of people out of hunger.

The bonus is generous, and the answers to the letters are mixed.The winner of the huge bonus is a little boy, and the little boy's answer is - throw out the fattest scientist. ★
This story brings profound enlightenment to people.Sometimes, what is complicated is not the problem, but the eyes that see the problem.When people think about the problem, they add all the experience and knowledge accumulated in their life.As everyone knows, this is not just a person's thinking inertia, but also a person's burden.

The last species to survive in nature are not the strongest or the smartest, but those that can best adapt to environmental changes.

Humans are animals of inertia, and resistance to change is a natural reaction and an inevitable process.Not everyone can accept change immediately and wholeheartedly. Accepting new things means giving up old things and changing old life patterns.Human beings are inherently resistant to change, so it is human instinct to resist change.We are used to the telephone today, and we can no longer work and live without the telephone. You must know that when Bell first invented the telephone, people laughed at the impossibility of talking to a box full of wires.

If you just want to maintain the comfortable and smooth life in front of you and don't think about changing it, it is likely that you are used to it, or the fear of failure is against any new attempt. "Everyone does it this way", "I've never heard of such a thing since I was in this line of work..." Once self-limitation, only stick to the existing rules, interesting new combinations and innovations that break the rules, There will never be a chance to show up.Either way, resistance to change can hold you back from moving forward.

We have all heard the story about the frog, if you put a frog in 80 degree hot water, it will jump up immediately until it escapes the hot water to save itself, but if you put this frog in a pot of cold water , the frog will not jump, because this is its favorite environment.However, when we slowly heat the pot, we will find that the frog is likely to be scalded to death in the pot.Because the water temperature changes too slowly, the frog can't feel it. By the time it feels that it must leave, it has lost its physiological functions.

When the frog was put into 80-degree hot water, it quickly noticed the change. It knew that staying in this kind of water was dangerous, that it was doing wrong things, and that it had to escape to survive.But when the temperature of the water in the pot slowly increased, it didn't feel the change quickly, and continued to stay there. Even though it felt some slight changes, it still thought that it could withstand small changes by luck, so it continued. Staying in the pot, which is undoubtedly doing the wrong thing, until the chance of survival is completely lost.

Let’s see how we react in this regard.

With the progress of the times, more and more people are driving, and more and more traffic accidents have been seen and heard.Carry according to the newspaper, a city carries out statistics on traffic accidents, about 40% of the people who drive accidents are caused by the boss driving himself.Why is the boss prone to problems driving?Do some analysis.One is that the boss has a lot of entertainment, so there will naturally be entertainment that cannot be rejected. After drinking alcohol, the alcohol is not under the control of the boss. When encountering a single line, isn't it just a matter of a few dollars to violate the regulations?So without restraint, the BMW became a Mustang.The third is that the boss is often able to call the shots, no matter in the enterprise or in the society. In the office area, pedestrians will naturally give way and let them go first. Once driving, they forget that they are the driver at this time, thinking that others will also give way when driving. So rush in and occupy the road.

Also, if you are a leader who is often driven by others and often sits by yourself, if one day you go out to do errands independently, you will go to the wrong door: when you see the car, you will not go to the driver's seat, but go straight to the leader's seat.There was even a strange scene: someone presented the award to the top leader, and the top leader stood at the position waiting for the award, but that person went straight to the podium, and both the award recipient and the award presenter felt a momentary embarrassment.In this kind of transposition, why always make mistakes, this is the fault of inertial thinking.

There is such a story in the management world:
Not long after he took office, a young and promising artillery officer went to his subordinate units to check the artillery drills.He found the same situation in several units: In a drill unit, there was always a soldier standing under the barrel of the cannon, motionless.The officer couldn't figure out what was going on, so he stepped forward and asked, and the answer he got was: This is the requirement of the drill regulations.The officer felt strange, went back to check the regulations, and finally figured it out.

In the non-mechanized era, horse-drawn carts were used to carry cannons to the front line. The task of the soldiers standing under the barrels was to hold the reins of the horses so as to adjust the distance deviation caused by the recoil after the cannons were fired and shorten the time to aim again. .Now that the cannon has been mechanized and automated, it is no longer necessary to pull the rein of the horse, but the drill regulations have not been adjusted in time, so there are soldiers who do not pull the rein of the horse.For a long time, the drill regulations of the artillery have always adhered to the rules of the original era.

In fact, in our lives, such "soldiers who don't pull the rein" are everywhere, and inertial thinking is really a fetter on the way forward.

(Section [-], think about the problem from another angle

There is no one-size-fits-all thing, and there is no one-size-fits-all truth. Things must be viewed in a changing way.It will definitely not work to look at the new situation with old concepts and old frames.When things happen, there is always a solution - thinking about the problem from another angle usually solves some problems that bother us.We all usually make the same mistake—bumping back and forth against the same wall until we bruise ourselves.Look at the problem you want to solve from the opposite angle, and you may find the answer you want.It is easy to form a "fixed and unmoved" trend between choosing and accepting.The only feasible way to get rid of the stereotype is to greatly broaden our horizons, change our existing way of thinking, and always be vigilant about falling into "experience".

When a believer was praying, he became addicted to cigarettes. He asked the priest present if he could smoke while praying, and the priest replied "no".Another believer also wanted to smoke.He asked the priest if he could pray while smoking.The priest replied, "Of course."

It is also smoking and praying. Asking to smoke while praying seems to mean disrespect to Jesus; asking to pray while smoking can mean thinking about God’s grace in leisure time. Of course, the priest has no reason to object.

We all usually make the same mistake—bumping back and forth against the same wall until we bruise ourselves.Look at the problem you want to solve from the opposite angle, and you may find the answer you want.

★Why use a key to open the door
The two sons are grown up, and the rich man is old.The rich man has been thinking hard these days, which son should inherit the inheritance?The rich man was puzzled.Thinking of his self-made youth, he suddenly had an idea and found a good way to test them.

The rich man locked the door of his house, took his two sons to a city a hundred miles away, and then asked them a difficult question. Whoever answered well would inherit the inheritance.He gave each of them a bunch of keys and a fast horse, to see who would get home first, and opened the door of the house.

The horse ran so fast that the two brothers arrived home almost at the same time.But facing the locked door, both of them were worried.

The elder brother tried left and right, but suffered from being unable to find the most suitable one from the large bunch of keys; as for the younger brother, he suffered from having no key, because he was on the road just now, and the key fell on the road at some point.

The two were sweating profusely.Suddenly, the younger brother slapped his head and found a way. He found a stone, smashed the lock in a few strokes, and he went in smoothly.

Naturally, the right of inheritance fell into the hands of the younger brother. ★
There is often no key to the door of life. At the critical moment of fate, what people need most is not a key to stick to the rules, but a stone to smash obstacles!

★Farm vs Rattlesnake

A farmer living in Florida bought a farm.After buying it, he felt very depressed.The field was so bad that the farmer could grow neither fruit nor pigs, but only poplars and rattlesnakes.The farmer, however, had a bright idea to turn what he had into an asset—he was going to use those rattlesnakes.

What the farmer did surprised everyone because he started canning rattlesnake meat.Almost 2 tourists visit his rattlesnake farm every year.His business is very big.The snake venom extracted from the rattlesnakes he raised was transported to major pharmaceutical factories to make snake venom serum; the rattlesnake skin was sold at a high price to make women's shoes and purses; the canned rattlesnake meat was sent all over the world customers from all over the world.

The village is now known as Florida Rattlesnake Village in honor of the gentleman who made "sweet lemonade" from "poisonous lemons." ★
There is always a solution when things happen - people with high emotional intelligence will know how to think about problems from a different perspective, which will solve some problems that plague us.

(Section [-] Jump out of the "either or that" thinking circle
★ Difficult choices
The company recruits staff, and there is a test question like this:
You drive past a station one stormy night and find three people waiting for a bus: the first is an elderly woman who appears to be on the verge of death, the second is the doctor who saved your life, and the third Three is the man of your dreams.Your car can only hold one passenger, who do you choose?
Everyone's answer has his reasons: choose the old woman because she will die soon, and we should save her life; choose the doctor because he once saved your life, and now it is the best thing for you to repay him. Good opportunity; choose the girl of your dreams because if you miss this opportunity, you may never get her (him) back.

Out of 200 candidates, what was the answer to the last one hired? "I gave the car keys to the doctor and asked him to rush the old woman to the hospital; while I stayed and waited for the bus with my beloved."★
We are often limited by the "either-or" thinking mode. We "get out of the car" by ourselves, and we can get more by throwing away the inherent mode of thinking.

★Private Garden VS Viper
The famous French soprano singer Ma Dimaple has a beautiful private garden.Every weekend, people would come to her garden to pick flowers and mushrooms, and some even set up tents to have a picnic on the grass, making the garden a mess and dirty.

The housekeeper once ordered fences to be erected around the garden, and put up a wooden sign saying "no entry into private gardens", but to no avail, the garden was still being trampled and destroyed.So the housekeeper had to ask the master for instructions.

After listening to the butler's report, Dimeple asked the butler to make some big signs and put them up at every intersection, which clearly stated:

If you are bitten by a poisonous snake in the forest, the nearest hospital is 15 kilometers away, about half an hour's drive away.

Since then, no one has broken into her forest garden. ★
What is the difference between "Private forest parks are forbidden" and "If you are bitten by a poisonous snake in the forest..."? ——Sometimes success or failure lies only in a change of concept.

★Heroine in the novel
Before the writer Maugham became famous, his life was poor.In order to get a price for the article, once after finishing a novel, Maugham published such a marriage proposal in the newspaper:
"I like music and sports. I am a young and educated millionaire. I hope to marry a woman who is exactly the same as the heroine in Maugham's novel."

A few days later, Maugham's novel was sold out. ★
It should be said that Maugham pioneered the hype of modern bestsellers.It's just that today's literati hype is far worse than Maugham's.

You have worn jeans, but do you know the origin of jeans?
★The origin of jeans

In the western United States, a young countryman was going to participate in a bullfight, but he was so poor that he had nothing to change except a pair of torn trousers.Beforehand, he had wanted to borrow a pair of trousers, but his friends said that he was going to a bullfight, and when he came back, his good trousers might turn out to be torn trousers.So no one would lend it to him.

The young man had no choice but to wear ripped trousers that exposed his knees to the arena.Unexpectedly, he miraculously won the first place.When he came on stage to accept the award, he was embarrassed by the torn trousers.A dozen or so photographers in the audience took pictures of him without hesitation, and he felt ashamed.

Unexpectedly, after his photo was published in the newspaper, his ripped jeans became the style followed by many young people at that time.A few days later, the streets and alleys were full of young people wearing ripped trousers.This scene has been handed down to this day. ★
In this era of lack of sex and imitation, everyone can wear a pair of ripped pants, but the courage of a hero and the emotional intelligence that makes a successful person successful cannot be learned in a day or two.

(End of this chapter)