Common sense wins the world: the common secret of successful people

Chapter 2 Common Sense of Thinking--80% of success is won by thinking (1)
Thinking is our ability to summarize and apply various common sense and rules, and it is also a person's ability to analyze and judge the world.Thinking is the basis of decision-making, the guarantee of action, and the fundamental force to control one's own destiny.

How to think, you can win at the starting line?

How broad is the thinking, how big is the world

David Harold was my first boss at the FBI and my mentor.His ideas have had a great influence on me, and we remain in close contact to this day.He single-handedly presided over the administrative reform of the FBI's New York branch, cut some civilian jobs, recruited more excellent agents, equipped front-line investigators with high-tech equipment, and completed an investigation of the CIA's malfeasance during his tenure. It has pushed the open and secret struggle between the two major intelligence giants in the United States to a new climax.

He calls this "war of the mind": "All people's plans can be attributed to the operation of the mind. This is the battlefield of thinking and the test of the mind. Those who stand at the top of the pyramid, if you think they are born with If you are rich, you are wrong, they just know more common sense, do more things that do not violate common sense, make fewer mistakes, and then succeed, standing on top of most people."
Harold's words have influenced my life and made me understand how important it is to act rationally based on common sense.It can be said that in major areas, all acts that violate "basic common sense" are "crazy" and have "extremely low odds of success".

More than ten years ago, when a commercial crime investigation involving $2 million was about to end, his colleague Snow looked at the thick file and asked: "What is it that determines whether a person succeeds or fails?" The protagonist Hesfeld Weaving a huge network of contacts, and even buying state congressmen and New York Police Department detectives to protect his money laundering process from being discovered, he has sufficient funds to start his "career", but he still failed.

Snow posed perhaps the hardest question in the world to answer.How do we get there?At least from this case, wealth and connections are not the final decisive factors. They are "treasures of civilization" that people frantically pursue, but their role in determining fate has been overestimated.This will be the first thought-related common sense encountered in this book: When you envision your own great enterprise, first make sure it is not illegal, so that all the capital you have can come in handy, otherwise no matter how high you climb No matter how big the world is, no matter how big the world is, it will all fall short in the end.

Are there any more?
Then there is the question of the breadth of thinking, as Mr. Snow said in his self-report: "I was only 15 years old when I was admitted to the state high school. I thought that as long as I wrote down everything in the book, I could get a full score in the exam, and then the whole class would admire it. Me, my future life was guaranteed. It didn't turn out like this. I found that although I put in the best effort and worked harder than some idlers, they always came out on top. After graduating from college, I chose It took me a few years to work for the FBI and I realized it wasn't how hard you worked or how good your attitude was that determined these results, but how you developed your mind and how you looked at things."
Snow's emotion was based on the summarization of millions of criminal files, from which he saw different people go from failure to success, from success to failure, or to mediocrity all their lives, and then realized how important common sense of thinking is - very early on. Sometimes it can determine our destiny more than the "basic hardware" such as intelligence, education or family background-if you think wrong, then you must be wrong, and the harder you work, the more wrong you will be.

Survival is the grandest competition on this planet.Everyone will experience success and failure.Among them, there are many reasons for success, and the factors leading to failure are also ever-changing, and they are not limited to a certain cause. For example, some people say that it is the details: "I will succeed if I pay attention to the details, otherwise I will fail." Someone It is said to be strategy: "Life wins in the long-term layout, and loses in short-sightedness." Some people say it is opportunity: "Seize the opportunity and you will succeed. If you fail to grasp it, don't blame your bad luck."
However, it all comes down to our ability to think.Some very simple common sense of thinking, they determine how you think, and also dominate how you make plans and take actions.If there is a problem at the source, then the result must not be what you want.In other words: "What determines the size of your world is how broad your thinking is."
Wellant, a social psychology expert in Texas, said when he participated in one of our corporate trainings: "No matter what success scientists emphasize, people always win in thinking. Thinking is the easiest to say, it is actually a person The ability to recognize and utilize common sense, rules, and wisdom is his ability to judge and analyze the world, and it is also the fundamental force for people to control their behavior. No matter the details, strategies, or opportunities, it is driven by thinking behind it. From birth to death, it will be with you all your life. When you are a child, it will start to determine your success or failure, and it will hold you tightly all the time until you are old."
In the analysis of more than 40 cases of unfortunate failures in the early stage of entrepreneurship, I found that most people did not lose in the high-end links, such as not being able to design the best products, but in some basic aspects related to their own brains. on the common-sense deficiencies--
1. Unable to control one's greed, and should continue to chase the rise when leaving the market;
2. Too much emphasis on the loyalty of employees, ignoring the abilities they should have, making the company an inefficient team composed of obedient mediocre people;

3. Assess future risks for granted when making decisions, so that they always make irrational decisions, which is precisely because of the habit of thinking developed over the years;

…………

And so on, it is not just testing people's intelligence and knowledge, nor is it doing 1+1=2 arithmetic problems.In fact, a person's common sense ability in thinking almost determines how far he can go in this life. This is a part of the advanced mind. You will never learn it in college, and no one will take the initiative to teach you. It depends on your own attitude.When you have this ability and insight into these common senses, you may not feel anything unusual, just like a pair of glasses, the world you see is normal when you wear it, but you may go away when you take it off Wrong room.

A mentally retarded person is always doing wrong things and getting into trouble. Every day of his life seems to be full of accidents, like a car that keeps going wrong.He creates his own anger, curses the injustice of fate, and his confusion about fate is endless.On the contrary, people with strong minds live in another kind of calm state. They are calm and elegant, very calm in the face of pressure, follow the steps when problems come, are good at resolving troubles, and have excellent decision-making and action.They can quietly do what they feel is right and achieve something.

All these differences are caused by the gaps in people's minds and thinking.The loser just violates some of the simplest common sense related to thinking, which may lead to the failure of his life.

If "common sense" is wrong, thinking will cause problems

The composition of the advanced mind is not complicated, it refers to the sum of our various thinking abilities.Such as observation, understanding, judgment, choice, feeling, memory, hypothesis, imagination and reasoning, these branches of thinking come together to determine and guide our behavior, which is the embodiment of a person's advanced mind.It is this ability that determines the gap in people's thinking and affects all aspects of life and work.

Among them, three aspects play the most important role:
1. The ability to acquire knowledge;
2. The ability to apply knowledge;
3. The ability of abstract analysis and reasoning.

We know that quite a few people lose in the first ability - the ability to acquire knowledge.Maybe you have obtained all the qualifications from elementary school, middle school to university, master, doctor, etc., and you feel that the knowledge you have learned is enough for you to deal with most problems.It sounds like there is no loophole in theory, and the traditional education system does give you such a promise.But have you ever thought that maybe a lot of the knowledge you acquire is wrong or ambiguous?Perhaps they have been intentionally processed to different degrees to mislead your thinking into a well-designed growth track?A lot of this kind of knowledge is used as the truth like "the earth revolves around the sun", and it has become a well-known "common sense" through generations or peer-to-peer transmission. People rely on this "common sense" to look at things and think about problems .

But alas, they could all be wrong.

It is no surprise that people's subconscious thinking inertia always likes to design a trap for us-making us think that what "everyone knows and agrees with" is right.Start accepting illusions at the source of knowledge acquisition.Where is the real missing common sense?Not only public knowledge, but even the habit of scientific thinking and the mastery of analytical methods, some people fail.

For quite a long time, people only understood "common sense" as a form of concept or knowledge display, such as seeing a signature pen: "Oh, it's just a pen for writing." They didn't explore it What color should be used in which occasions or in different documents is not considered as much wisdom, but it may kill one of his business in the near future.Some people may not be as interested in a piece of business common sense as they are in a movie he is watching. Even if this common sense will determine the success or failure of his negotiation tomorrow, his instinct will drive him to watch the movie first before talking.When he walked out of the theater, he was completely lost in interest.

Just treating this business common sense as a "knowledge point" was the first mistake he made, but it was not the most serious.Because most people are doing it without realizing it.The biggest mistake is actually that we repeat the same mistakes one after another, often getting our shoes wet by the same river.Some basic "common sense" contains the requirements for human intelligence, it is a part of the advanced mind, and it is also the main component of the way of thinking, which represents whether our "common sense thinking" is normal or not - the understanding of these "common sense" is correct Whether or not it determines a person's level of thinking, which in turn affects his life's achievements, and even determines whether he is a "smart person" or a hopeless "fool".

I also found that people are always reluctant to accept the reality, they just want to hear a good story and then immerse themselves in it.Just like fans of bubble dramas, they clearly know that what they see is an unreal world, but they really believe in its existence, and spread this fantasy thinking into their lives.

If someone told you, "Hey buddy, you have aliens coming in through your mouth every day when you sleep, they're so small they're like bacteria, they're hard to spot. As long as you sleep with your mouth open, they're Will go in. Who knows what these alien visitors will do in your stomach?"
It's a horrific hypothesis that sounds both implausible and utterly unreasonable.So you won't believe it when you hear it for the first time, and you may even laugh at the other person as a "brain".But if a lot of people are telling you it's true, you'll shake your mind and gradually start to believe it, until eventually you're convinced.Before going to bed, you try to keep your mouth shut to prevent alien monsters from getting into it.You will keep warning others: "There are aliens, they will enter your body when you sleep with your mouth open, so be sure to sleep with your mouth closed!" You may also educate yourself Children, let them sleep from an early age to get used to shutting their mouths.As a result, this ridiculous lie becomes "common sense" ingrained in your mind and lowers your IQ.

For another example, people who live in cold regions think that drinking alcohol in winter can resist the severe cold, and a few sips can warm up the body-it does feel right, but is it really the case?

The scientist's response to this is: no.

The main ingredient of liquor is alcohol, but alcohol does not produce too much heat in the body.People feel warmer after drinking alcohol. The real reason is that alcohol stimulates blood vessels to dilate blood vessels, speed up the body's metabolism, and give the illusion of increased body heat.In fact, drinking alcohol in winter is not only unable to keep warm, but it is easy to lose heat too quickly.Accelerated metabolism will inevitably consume energy too quickly.People who get drunk often can't replenish their energy in time. They either fall asleep in bed, or they may pass out in the cold outside.The latter condition was dire and many people froze to death.

This is just the simplest example.There are many similar incorrect common senses, which cover people's lives and affect everyone's ability to analyze and judge.For another example, two people go into business with the same funds, whether they have common sense in doing business, the success or failure will be different.One person may lose millions of his old bottom because of basic common sense mistakes; another person, because of this common sense, made preparations in advance and successfully avoided losses.In contrast, the former is not suitable for investment, while the latter has an advantage in thinking, because he is a person who is willing to understand the rules and analyze problems correctly, so he can abide by the principles that businessmen should learn.

Once common sense is wrong, thinking will go wrong.The higher the IQ, the more outrageous the wrong thinking they make under the guidance of wrong common sense, and the more serious the consequences will be.Because people with high IQ always like to think about some important issues, they naturally feel that they are shouldering greater responsibilities, so when they lack common sense, their behavior will have huge side effects-this is beyond his control .

From this, it is not difficult to find that people's cognition of things is always half-knowledgeable or ambiguous, which is the reason for common sense errors.Most people don't like to get to the bottom of something or a certain problem--it's too much of a waste of their "precious energy". They are willing to accept conventional views, or ask others (authority), and then accept this point of view instead of going Wondering if it's really correct.Therefore, in this process, there are various gaps in results between people.

When thinking, don’t let common sense be absent: what Chinese people lack the most in this era is common sense, and the most terrifying phenomenon is also the absence of common sense, so we have seen too many idealists who like heated debates but are too wrong.

Be wary of tradition and prejudice: just because many traditional beliefs are accepted does not mean that they are true.The more common sense people vehemently advocate, the more vigilant you must be and not blindly believe in it.

Common sense thinking is rational thinking: the key is what you call "common sense" and you have an open mind.Common sense is the wings of thinking, the collection of rationality, and the starting point of the mind, not a "cage of wisdom".

Analysis of gains and losses and right and wrong

Do you value gains and losses, or do you pay more attention to right and wrong?

When you encounter a problem, do you judge whether you should do it or not, or analyze the result first?

These are two completely different common senses of thinking, and they are also habits of thinking.They depend on different outlooks on life, and at the same time, they will also affect the direction of our life and the height of our career.If you use these two common senses of thinking properly, you can go in the right direction at the initial stage of decision-making on a matter.

When I was in the United States, I discovered the difference between the two in different fields.For example, when discussing issues, people with decision-making attributes talk more about gains and losses, argue for pros and cons, and finally come to a right or wrong—whether to do or not to do this thing; on the contrary, other people like to talk about right and wrong, see Right and wrong, often quarreling over who is right and who is wrong.The latter seldom have decision-making attributes, and most of them like to let others make decisions for themselves-authoritative judgments often become their criteria for judging right from wrong.

Unfortunately, most of us in the Chinese circle belong to the latter.At least in the United States, from the statistics of the millions of Chinese that I have contacted with the Gaode survey company, about 90% of them (this ratio fluctuates every quarter) answered nearly 20 questions in the survey. They all embody this thinking style, they rely on traditional ideas, like to seek answers from authority, and then simply answer "yes" or "no", instead of choosing those "although...but I think..." full of personality Options.

This shows that when analyzing problems, the Chinese habitually seek help from the established concept of authority.In thinking, they like to argue and get entangled in unclear things instead of calmly solving specific problems.

In a family consultation, Mr. Zhao and his wife drove thousands of kilometers from Omaha, spent $600, but repeatedly attacked each other mercilessly in front of our consultants about their respective views, arguing endlessly : "I'm right!" "No, you're wrong!" Even though they knew the trip was to solve the problem, they still quarreled stubbornly in the consulting room.

In a business consultation, the boss of Chinese businessman Wu was faced with a company that had already experienced a major crisis. The first thing he thought of was not how to make a relevant plan to save his business, but worried about whether the "secret" would be leaked, so that he could be in his own company. His reputation in his circle was badly damaged.This fatal thinking caused him not to make up his mind to face the crisis rationally and turn the danger into a new opportunity. Instead, he adopted the method of "slow suicide" of concealment and delay, until people suddenly discovered that he had nothing left.

(End of this chapter)