[002] Think you can't do it? Breaking Through Negative Limits｜Mental Compass Series｜

Welcome back to Forward Cafe, this is Mr. A. I don’t know if you have such experience. When you have the opportunity to perform a challenging task or try to learn a skill that is unfamiliar but interesting, you know that doing these things will not have any serious risk of loss, or even There is a high probability of getting a good harvest. But before deciding to take the first step, that is, before deciding to take up this task, or making an appointment with the teacher, I always feel an inexplicable unease, even fear. At the same time, the thought of "thinking that you can't do it" has taken over the whole head, making you, who had made up your mind, start to hesitate whether to act or not, and in the end you may miss the opportunity. As a result, after tossing himself for so long, he still stood in place in the end. At the beginning, there may be a sigh of relief, a feeling of luck and escape; however, in the future, all that will be left will be the regret and unwillingness of "if only I had...". This kind of feeling is quite uncomfortable, and it is easy to make a person's state fall into a quagmire, unable to improve, and in this cruel world, it is a real truth that if you don't advance, you will retreat. So what to do? If you are troubled by this state, after reading today's article, I believe it will be helpful to you.

Bring your gloves and tools, everyone, and let's start dissecting this problem. First of all, I don't know if you realize it? The idea that you can't do anything before you even start is actually wrong, or "not in line with the real situation". However, due to the limited amount of information, it is normal to occasionally make wrong predictions or judgments. But when this becomes the brain's automatic response to a challenge, it's likely to be a problem, a problem that can affect your life, so it's imperative to find out why this happens.

Since our brain is an efficient processor, when assessing an unknown situation that may be a potential threat, it only uses some of the most powerful information to make a decision very quickly, which may be too fast for us to notice. . And these "powerful information" usually include similar past experiences and understanding of things, yes, "thoughts." So what kind of thinking causes the above automatic response mechanism? My answer is thinking about "ability". The most influential of these is the belief that one's abilities are innate and fixed.

First of all, in the society we live in, no matter how you love peace and pursue Great Harmony, unless you are a hermit, there will inevitably be times when you need to show your claws and compete with others. Great, but you can't always win. What do you do when you lose? At this time, those who think that ability can be changed will review which aspects of their ability can be better, and then try to improve; while those who think that ability is fixed, will feel that I am not as good as I am now. This opponent, no matter how long it takes, can't do it, so he starts to think about how to prevent himself from losing badly. Maybe he starts to find excuses and try his best to avoid competing again...etc. After all, since the ability can't be changed, and you don't want to lose, you have to use other methods to manipulate the results.

However, the fact is that these first-hand feedbacks from failures can directly point out the problems. As long as they are used well, they are the easiest to make people grow and improve. And because people's concentration is limited, when we spend a lot of energy on the final result, it is easy to ignore everything in the middle process, and even people want to take shortcuts at any cost. The result is that you fail due to your own lack of ability, but you don't spend time and energy on improving it. When you encounter competition again in the future, your stagnant ability and anxiety about the result will easily make you fail again, forming a cycle. This cycle can make people passive and reluctant to act. It is like a student thinks that his ability in a certain field is fixed, such as mathematics, then when faced with a mathematics proficiency test, after all, there is no way to change it, he is more likely to think about it than to learn from the experience of the test. How to have a good performance in the exam, a decent memorization pattern, and a quicker copy of the cheat sheet. If this habit does not change, the student's future academic performance can be imagined.

How to solve it? First of all, go back to the original point, that is, think that "a person's ability and aptitude are fixed", and change him. This is divided into three parts, the first part is "Know it.": Knowing what the real situation is, then "Do it." trying to implement knowledge into behavior, and finally "Be it." Really internalize knowledge into you a part of. The first is the knowledge level. The real situation of innate and acquired influences on abilities and traits is that the "upper limit" of a person's potential is indeed determined to a large extent by uncontrollable factors (such as physical fitness, general environment, etc.); but still It takes acquired hard work to maximize our potential, and it often exceeds our imaginations. We have to constantly think about whether we have really hit the ceiling or are just an excuse to escape. Then, after knowing this, start small and try to dig out the reasons behind each of our thoughts, and when we find that the thinking behind a decision is unreasonable, stop and re-think if there is a better way to do it, and then To execute, for example: when you want to choose whether to participate in an interview one day, and the thought of "you can't do it!" comes up in your mind, instead of repeating the negative experience to make your head burst, try to think "what should I do? Can you perform well, write a good resume? Repeat the practice?” If you still feel uncontrollable about the specific behavior, continue to subdivide it into “Then how to write a good resume? Title skills, graphic layout…”, and even finally subdivided into "Okay, then I'll check the information on the Internet first." Although it may feel like a small thing, in fact, you have already begun to change your response habits when facing challenges. Eventually, over time, one day you'll find that you're on your way to the top of the mountain before you feel like you're a positive person.

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