Super self-control: not being a slave to habit

Chapter 5

Change the mood: Wild horses can be tamed too
Human emotions, like all other psychological processes, are regulated and controlled by the cerebral cortex, which determines that people can consciously control and regulate their emotions, can control emotions rationally, and be the masters of emotions.

Any habit can be cultivated and any bad habit can be changed.In order to better achieve your goals and work and live more happily and healthily, you must change bad emotional habits and develop positive emotional habits.

—William James
don't get angry
In fact, nothing affects our lives more than our emotions.There is a classic Western proverb: "If God wants to destroy him, he must first make him crazy!"

On the prairie of the western United States, there is a kind of vampire bat, which is small in body, but it is the natural enemy of wild horses.This kind of bat often attaches itself to wild horses, pierce the skin of wild horses with their sharp mouths, and suck blood.No matter how the wild horses hop around and run wildly, there is nothing they can do about the little bats.The wild horse kicked and bumped with its body, but it had no effect on the bat. The bat still bit the wild horse, its head, and its legs. Finally, the wild horse died helplessly because of rage and blood loss.

In fact, the blood sucked by the little bat is extremely limited, and what really killed the wild horse was its rage.The same is true for human beings. Only by actively controlling their emotions can they control their own destiny.And once the emotions are out of control, anger will flood people's reason like a flood that bursts a bank, making people do incredible stupid things.

In fact, most of the time it is just some trivial things that make people angry. It is bad emotions that lead to people's irrational behavior.Research has shown that every rejection, insult, or disrespectful gesture sets the tone for a person's emotions.In the process of accumulating these hidden dangers, people's impatience continues to increase, until finally, people's self-control ability is destroyed by the "last straw", and they completely lose control of emotions, which leads to thunderstorms.When a person is angry, he consumes much more energy than usual.Because of the loss of brain energy, self-control is further disintegrated, and people do irrational things, hurt others, and eventually bring trouble to themselves.Desperate, hot-headed venting can often carry enormous destructive power.Decisions fail, relationships deteriorate, plans fail to execute, and so failures make sense.Any successful person has extraordinary self-control.

During the Three Kingdoms period, Zhuge Liang, Prime Minister of Shu, personally led the army of Shu to attack Cao Wei in the north. Sima Yi, the general of Wei State, took a closed city truce and ignored Zhuge Liang.He believed that if the Shu army attacked from afar, the backup supplies must be insufficient. As long as the time is delayed and the strength of the Shu army is consumed, the Shu army will definitely be able to seize the opportunity and defeat the enemy.

Zhuge Liang was well aware of Sima Yi's "silent" tactic, so he sent troops to the city several times to scold them, trying to provoke Wei soldiers and lure Sima Yi out of the city for a decisive battle, but Sima Yi remained silent.So Zhuge Liang sent someone to send a woman's clothes to Sima Yi with the method of aggressive generals, and wrote a letter saying: Zhongda dare not go to war, he is no different from a woman.If you are a shameless man, you will come out to fight the Shu army, if not, you will wear this woman's clothes.

"A soldier can be killed but not humiliated." Although this insulting and contemptuous letter angered Sima Yi, it did not change the wily Sima Yi's mind. He suppressed his anger to stabilize the morale of the army and waited patiently.

After a stalemate for several months, Zhuge Liang unfortunately died of illness in the army. The Shu army had no leader and retreated quietly. Sima Yi won without a fight.

If Sima Yi couldn't bear the momentary anger and went out of the city to fight, then perhaps history would be rewritten.

Two steps to make "I" not angry

The first step is to recall and evaluate your past behavior to see if your past anger was justified.If you can think about whether the object, reason and method of anger are appropriate before you get angry, the number of times you get angry will be reduced by 90%.

The second step is to find a reviewer.There are two selves in people's consciousness - "the watching me" and the "angry me".Among them, the "watching me" observes the "angry me" as an outsider, so that he can understand his true emotions more clearly.This bystander will help you re-examine your behavior, objectively evaluate the irritating situation just now, and see if it is necessary to be angry.

Self-control expert hot comment
Self-control experts believe that if you are suffering because of something, in fact, it is not the thing itself that makes you suffer, but your own judgment or thought.Many times, the root cause of a person's emotional impact is a disagreement in his own perspective on things, and these can be corrected.Therefore, people should consciously learn to control their emotions.

Test your own bottom line

"Father of Applied Psychology" Professor William James once said to his students: "Accepting the fait accompli is the first step in overcoming any misfortunes that follow, and you must be brave enough to take on this responsibility."

This is of course, only by following this method can you develop the best ability to solve problems psychologically.Once we have prepared for the worst, what are we going to worry about losing?Everything can be done all over again.When you allow yourself to accept these things, you will immediately relax, feel the peace you haven't had since the accident, and then you can think normally.

You also think this sentence is very reasonable, right?But there are still people who let worry destroy their existing lives.The crux of these people is that they dare not accept the worst situation, they are unwilling to jump out to change the status quo, let alone construct a new life, and they cannot think of salvaging some valuable things from their mistakes as much as possible.What's more serious, instead of creating new wealth, they start from this failed experience, plunge their minds into more intense and ruthless struggles, and eventually become depressed and become victims of their own emotions.

Carnegie once wrote the story of an oil company boss in the book "Human Weakness".This is what the boss said:
"Our company has several oil trucks and supporting drivers. According to the regulations of the Price Management Committee at that time, the gasoline we gave to each customer was limited. But later I discovered that some oil delivery drivers often secretly reduce customers. Then sell the oil that you secretly left behind to others in private, and earn ill-gotten gains from it.

“One day, a man who claimed to be a government investigator came to me and asked for red envelopes. This man claimed to have evidence of malpractice by the company’s drivers. If he didn’t comply, he would hand over the evidence to the district attorney. I didn't know until this point that people still do this kind of bad business, and I was shocked.

Don't do bad things, don't be afraid of ghosts knocking on the door.This matter has nothing to do with me at least, so I don't think there is any need to worry about myself.But according to the law, the company must be responsible for those unruly employees.I am concerned that if the court finds out about this, my business will suffer from bad reputation.I value my career very much. This is what my father built 24 years ago. I cannot let everything be destroyed by my hands, otherwise the career that once made me proud will become a nightmare that makes me want to die.

"I was so worried about it that I got sick very quickly, and I had sleepless nights for three days and three nights, and I was always worried about being caught by the courts. I didn't know whether to give the man a $[-] red envelope or just ignore his words. These two thoughts are churning in my mind all day long, and I live in nightmares all day long.

"I just asked myself, 'What's the worst thing that could happen if I don't give that guy a red envelope and he sends his incriminating evidence to the D.A.'. At worst, my career would get a bad name. But at least I'm Not going to jail, at worst this thing will destroy me.

"I just said to myself 'That's it, even if the business is gone, at least I can live with this outcome. What's going to happen next'.

"That is, I have to find a job, but it's not necessarily such a bad thing. With my knowledge of petroleum, I don't have to worry about food, and several big companies may be happy. Hired me. Thinking of this level, I felt much better, my worries gradually eased, and my emotions gradually stabilized. What surprised me the most was that at this time I had clear thinking ability and was able to follow We thought as usual.

"I thought, if I told my lawyer about my current situation, he might be able to recommend a good course of action for me. You might laugh at this, why didn't you think of a lawyer to solve the problem in the first place? Honestly, it's In the first few days when the incident happened, I couldn’t let go of anything but worry and worry, and I didn’t have normal thinking ability at all. Now, I can think normally again, so I immediately decided to see him in the morning the next day my lawyer.

"You must want to know the outcome of the matter. You may not believe it. The lawyer advised me to go to the District Attorney early the next morning and tell him the truth. I took his advice and did. After listening to the prosecutor, unexpectedly, he told me that this kind of extortion has happened several times in the past few months. The person who claimed to be a 'government investigator' was actually a criminal wanted by the police.

"It was an experience I will never forget. Since then, whenever I am faced with a worrying problem, I have used it to relax myself. It has been tried repeatedly."

Some people may say that making some bad assumptions at the beginning is not a lack of confidence in yourself?My principle of life is only to succeed, not to fail.In fact, this kind of wish is beautiful, and everyone hopes that they will be smooth sailing without failure.However, bumps are inevitable on the road of life. In many cases, external factors often affect your development.These factors are impossible to conform to a person's desire.When this happens, if you don’t prepare for the worst, first of all, your mentality will be unacceptable, which will cause you to panic, and what’s more, it will affect your resistance to deal with emergencies Ability.Secondly, because you are not prepared and cannot make timely remedial decisions, you will lose the best solution and cause greater losses.

make some worst assumptions
Have you ever been forced to be helpless, have you ever tried to touch the bottom line of things that you dare not even think about?What would you do at that moment?what would you say to yourself
Remember Carnegie's advice:
What will happen to us if all of our affairs are smashed?
In this case, why don't I do it this way?

Self-control expert hot comment
"Assuming the worst" does not mean that you are easily pessimistic and have poor self-control.No matter what difficult problems you encounter, you must first calm down, prepare for the worst, and actively hint to yourself that there must be a solution, definitely, definitely!
change key words

I wonder if you have noticed that what we say actually has a great impact on our attitude and emotions.

Generally speaking, words used in daily life can be divided into three categories: positive, negative and neutral words.Using different types of words in language will bring different changes to our lives.

Language is wonderful.It can change our way of thinking, strengthen our will, strengthen our courage, and make us dare to face all challenges.However, our daily language habits can also affect how we feel and what we know about ourselves.If you do not master the expression habits and do not identify and select, then the facts may be distorted due to improper use of words.For example, when you describe a person's achievements, if you use "good", it is difficult to feel admiration, because this word is very ordinary.

The problem with many people is that they have a large vocabulary, but not many that are actually used frequently.Many times we use words as "shortcuts", but these "shortcuts" are often deceptive and limit our emotions and feelings.To take control of our lives, we must consciously improve the words we use so that they take us in the direction we want.

It is important to know that language itself is emotional.For example, when you say the word "hate" every now and then—

"Hate" your hair, "hate" your job, "hate" this, "hate" that, when you hate more times, will your negative emotional state become more severe?This leaves the "I like" sentence pattern behind.

It's amazing how well words can change your mood when you use them as "emotional guides."

My personal observations over the years have found that as long as you change key words when speaking, it will immediately change people's emotions and thinking, thereby affecting follow-up actions.

So I also started to examine my own feelings: What am I thinking about this?I've believed for years that I can control a situation even when I'm angry, but I don't think I have to be angry to do it, I can do it when I'm happy.Turns out, I don't shy away from being "angry", I just use the word "unhappy" in those situations, and I can show my strengths without being "angry".

What's interesting to me is that when facing the same thing, people express their feelings in different words.Some people use "angry" and "uneasy", some are full of anger, and some don't seem to feel much.I asked a friend in business, “Didn’t it make you mad the last time someone missed a huge ticket for you and it took you two and a half years to get that money back?” My friend replied: "No, I just have some 'regrets'."

As simple as "regret"?It's unbelievable, I've never used words like that to describe my emotions, how could a successful businessman say "regret" in a calm tone in that situation?In fact, he doesn't need to force himself to be calm. Indeed, in many cases, he can calmly deal with things that can drive us crazy.

I started thinking: If I used that word to describe my situation, how would I feel?I think I'll have to do some research.For the next few days, this matter kept circling in my mind, thinking that if I also used such words when I was furious, I wondered if the anger would be reduced.

Finally one day, the opportunity came.That time I checked into a hotel at night after a long journey.Due to the negligence of the assistant, the room was not pre-booked, so I had to wait at the front desk for more than 20 minutes, waiting for the staff to help me arrange it.Exhausted physically and mentally, I really hope that I can throw myself on the bed as soon as possible and have a good sleep.However, the staff were listless, slow-moving, and careless when inputting data.The anger in my chest jumped up all at once, and I really wanted to teach him a lesson.Just as the anger was building, the word "regret" popped up, and I immediately wanted to see if it would actually make me feel better.So I said to the service staff, "Sir, I know it's not your problem, but it's late and I'm tired, and I really want a room where I can take a shower and sleep. I've been standing here for a long time, It makes me feel a little sorry for your service."

Hearing what I said, the waiter gave me a surprised look, and then smiled embarrassedly.I also smiled back, and my anger disappeared in an instant.I calmed down immediately, and the staff immediately accelerated.I just changed a word to describe it, and my emotions immediately turned 180 degrees. Is this incredible?What's even more surprising is that it's not that hard to do.

Over the next few weeks, I tried this word over and over again, and I found that every time I used it, it really calmed me down and brought me back from the brink of anger.In less than two weeks, the word "regret" has become so clichéd that I can just blurt it out without me having to think about it.Whenever I feel like throwing a tantrum, that word has automatically become my first choice to describe my emotions, and I've rarely "thrown up" ever since.

(End of this chapter)