Editor's note: This article is from WeChat public number "YouCore" (ID: YouCore), author YouCore Wang Shimin. 36 Krypton is reprinted with permission.
preamble
Many people tell us that we should recognize ourselves, but how to recognize ourselves and how we should go about it, but few people tell us.
In fact, if you can take a hard look at yourself in the following six areas, you'll be able to see yourself a little more clearly:
1. Recognize your own three views
2. Recognize your dreams (desires)
3. Recognize your own behavioral tendencies
4. Recognize your own predisposition
5. Recognize the boundaries of your own capabilities
6. Recognize the environment in which you find yourself
01. Recognize your own three views
Recently, it was a coincidence that two of my classmates changed jobs at the same time, and both of them were not doing well.
Both of them quit their jobs naked before looking for work, and were frustrated after spending a month submitting over 300 resumes without even receiving a few invitations to interview, and the limited number of interviews they did have were awful.
But the two men reacted very differently in the face of frustration.
One said "this year's luck is not very good, find a time to go to the temple to pay homage"; another said "this time to change jobs is too careless, should not resign before looking for a job, once not good after the mentality of the rush, the next time or to find a good job before leaving".
The reactions of both of them exemplify how different worldviews affect our attitudes and behaviors.
The first one's worldview is to believe that there is a Buddha in the world and that he is controlling one's fortune, so when she encounters problems she will think of worshipping the Buddha in order to change her fortune;
The second's worldview does not reflect a belief in Buddha or other supernatural beings, so when she encounters a problem she is more likely to look for a specific cause.
The worldview, together with the outlook on life and values, is known as the Three Views, and they determine the fundamental attitudes with which we view the world, life, and the value of things.
① Worldview
Worldview is a person's general and fundamental view of the world, and it influences your outlook on life and values.
For example, Plato's philosophical system was built on this worldview of the Earth as the center of the universe.
Then again, a person who believes that the world was created by God has a very different view of the world compared to a pure materialist, and therefore their outlooks on life and values will be very different.
② Outlook on Life
Life perspective is a person's view of life, that is, of the purpose, value and meaning of human existence.
For example, some people's outlook on life is that "life is all about eating and drinking", which means that they want to live an easy and happy life.
Some people's outlook on life is to "cultivate for the next life or lives" or to "make a name for themselves in history".
These concepts of life are the expression of the worldview on life, for example, the concept of "practicing for the next life or lifetimes" is the expression of the worldview of "believing that there is a Buddha in this world".
③ Values
Values is a person's general view of the value of things and the fundamental point of view, which on the one hand is expressed as the value orientation, the pursuit of value; on the other hand, it is expressed as the judgment of things with or without value and the size of the value of the evaluation of the yardstick and guidelines.
For example, some people see money as the highest value to pursue, while others see it as something outside of themselves or even as dirt.
These values are the embodiment of the worldview in the way things are viewed. For example, the value of "treating money as dirt" is a reflection of the Buddhist worldview.
So to really recognize yourself, you need to take some time to run through your three views so you know why you hold certain ideas, why you think some people make good sense, why people you think are nonsense have a big following, etc.
02. Recognize your dreams (desires)
My son just started kindergarten, and I asked him: what is your dream when you grow up?
He said he wanted to be a chef.
I asked him again: why do you want to be a chef?
He replied: I can make a lot of good food for myself that way.
A dream is thinking about the future now, so even a very young child has a dream in his heart, and as funny as it sounds, it's a good representation of one of his desires at the moment.
Dreams are essentially the concentration of one's three views on the goal (desire), the reason why we have to take out the dream alone to recognize some, the purpose is to confirm whether your dream is consistent with your three views.
Human beings are social creatures prone to follow the crowd, and often times what we think we are dreaming of is nothing more than a goal to follow.
For example, the dream of the vast majority of people studying in the Yuan and Ming dynasties was to win the imperial examinations and become an official.
In the early days of reform and opening up, under the mercantile atmosphere where it was better to build missiles than to sell tea eggs, the dream of many people was to do business and make money.
This kind of dream of following the trend may be very inconsistent with your three views, so even if you become a government official or make money after a hard struggle, you will not feel happy and have a feeling that your life is wasted. During the struggle, you will also be more anxious than others.
Take the entrepreneurial dream, which has been very hot over the years.
If your entrepreneurial dream is in the "mass innovation, mass entrepreneurship" wave, you need to run through, your entrepreneurial dream is just following the trend, or your three views of the embodiment of it?
If it's the former, you'll be able to think hard about whether other dreams exist that are more in line with your three views.
03. Recognize your own behavioral tendencies
Taking the kids at the attraction during the Spring Festival, it was so crowded.
The slightly more popular programs are two long lines of people, queuing up for an hour may not be able to get a turn, and almost everyone in the queue is anxious and impatient.
I remember while waiting in line for the cable car, when it was almost time for us to get in line, a mom pulled her child and cut in front of us, saying "we were in line before, we just took the child to the restroom" as she cut in.
My subconscious reaction was to back up and get out of the way. A flushed girl behind me got upset and shouted at the top of her lungs, "Why are you so rude, you don't wait in line!"
With patience almost exhausted in a long queue, human behavior at this point is basically an instinctive behavioral tendency.
My behavior tends to be avoidance, while the girl behind me acts aggressively.
Many of our behaviors are subconscious, for example, some people sit and wiggle their legs, some people love to be quiet and alone, some people love to send voice not text.
This type of behavioral tendency is hard to control because it happens before you even realize it.
So you want to get a three-dimensional view of your behavioral tendencies first, using various assessments, so that you can potentially do interventions in advance for such behaviors in certain contexts.
Why is it important to be aware of your behavioral tendencies? There are three reasons:
(1) You can be clear about what attitudes you are most likely to develop and what behaviors you are most likely to produce when you are not in control.
② When you can, you can try to choose jobs or social roles that are more suited to your behavioral tendencies, so that you spend less energy but do better.
③ You will be more willing to regulate your behavior in specific situations because you already know that some of your behaviors are subconscious behavioral tendencies, so that regulating them will be less of a mental hurdle for you.
Behavioral tendencies can be understood through some character or personality assessment tools, the current popular assessment tools on the market are mainly MBTI, DISC, HBDI, etc. These assessments are not scientifically rigorous enough, there is a large probability of bias, but still have a certain degree of help in understanding the behavioral tendencies of the self.
04. Recognize your own predispositions
Basketball is a sport that depends on height, like the average height of CBA players (Chinese Professional Basketball League) is 2.01 meters, and the average height of NBA (National Basketball Association) players is close to 2 meters.
What happens when someone less than 5'7" is involved in such a circle of long people?
Like the NBA, the history of less than 1 meter 7 tall only 9 people (also are before the 1990s, after 2000 a are not), which is the most outstanding Spotts Webber (1 meter 68) career averaged 9.9 points, 2.1 rebounds, and 5.3 assists, with the other height of the normal height of the NBA star can easily be compared to more than 20 points per game, or a lot of loss of color.
This is the effect of predisposition: if you are not predisposed to a certain field, you can't become a top talent in that field even if you are motivated and exceptional.
Therefore, after understanding your three views, dreams, and behavioral tendencies at the level of your attitudes and consciousness, you also have to recognize your objective innate conditions and choose, where possible, to develop in a field that is more suited to your innate conditions.
These prerequisites mainly include your gender, height, looks, skin color, and so on.
05. Recognize the boundaries of your abilities
If I asked you to lift a 150-pound sack with your bare hands and gave you $10,000 for lifting it, would you possibly come under the challenge?
But if I asked you to lift a 500-pound sack, would you still accept the challenge?
I'm sure you wouldn't take it even if I offered you $5 million.
What exactly is the difference between these two challenges?
The difference is that the former 150-pound challenge is still within your ability or capacity growth boundary, and it's still possible for you to do it if you try hard; but the latter 500-pound challenge is completely beyond your capacity growth boundary, and it's impossible for you to do it if you try hard.
In this example of lifting capacity, the capacity boundaries for weightlifting capacity are relatively clear because they are relatively clear (the average person can probably lift 60% to 100% of their own body weight, and a person who has worked out can lift 1,15% to 1,00% heavier than their own body weight), and therefore you would give up on the challenge of lifting 500 pounds of weight.
But in reality, quite a few things require a combination of many abilities, so it becomes difficult for many people to know if the matter has gone far beyond the boundaries of their ability to grow.
Take also the example of entrepreneurship.
Entrepreneurship is a matter of high requirements on people's comprehensive ability, especially after China's economy has entered the period of refined growth from the period of rough growth, most of the fields have entered the stage of full market competition except for some fields related to the national economy and people's livelihood, the requirements of entrepreneurship under such a stage are much higher than the requirements of entrepreneurship in the early stage of reform and opening up which relied on the resources, guts, and policies before.
However, the vast majority of people who choose to start a business see only the possible benefits of starting a business without assessing whether it exceeds the boundaries of their ability to grow.
Therefore, we also need to recognize our own abilities and the boundaries of our ability to grow so that we don't do something that challenges us to lift 500 pounds.
How do you recognize your abilities and the boundaries of your ability to grow?
A good way to do this is to use YouCore to teach you about competency trees and knowledge systems (reply to 1010 for "How to build a personal knowledge system").
06. Recognize your environment
The three views, dreams, behavioral tendencies, predispositions, and ability boundaries are all five items that are directed at yourself, looking inward.
To recognize yourself, you need to look outward in addition to inward, that is, to recognize the environment in which you find yourself.
An example.
During the period of the two Jin dynasties, when China had a predominantly hereditary system, was it possible for a child of a commoner's family to become one of the three principal officials and nine ministers by learning to be rich?
As far as the historical record goes, never.
First of all, it is very difficult for children from commoner families to be well educated, but even if someone broke through that at that time, under the system of hereditary officials wanting to change the innate origin to become three princes and nine ministers, that is still as difficult as climbing up to the sky.
That's the limitations that the environment places on people.
The natural environment will limit your range of experience and activity; the environment of the times will limit your vision and influence; your upbringing will affect your three views and behavioral tendencies; and the environment of the class you are in will limit the height of your growth.
Therefore, by recognizing the situation you're in, you'll have a clearer picture of yourself and won't cling to what you can't have, and thus will be less anxious.
07. Summary
At the core of what makes people anxious is the realization that they can't do anything about negative changes in the future.
This powerlessness stems from three things:
① Dreams (desires) are not in line with one's own three views, i.e., the goal one is chasing is negative for oneself.
② Dreams (desires) exceed their own innate conditions, the boundaries of their abilities, and the limitations of the environment in which they are placed.
(iii) They don't know what they should do, what they can do, and what they can do about it.
By recognizing your three views, your dreams (desires), your behavioral tendencies, your innate conditions, your ability boundaries, and the environment in which you live, you will be better able to find the dreams you should pursue, determine the extent of your desires, and get clear on how you are suited to go about it.
