[Reading Notes] Chen Yihe's "Aesthetic Effort: 150 Aesthetic Life Practices × 18 Aesthetic Development Exercises"

Beauty seems to be very similar to wisdom, both are things that feel important but don't actually need to have.

This is a small book that can be read in about three hours, divided into two volumes.

"Book 1: A Manual of Aesthetic Efforts" teaches readers how to improve their sensitivity to details from different aspects of life - from introspection, choice, feeling, to external environment, living, eating, interpersonal relationships, clothing, etc. Practice the aesthetics of life that suits you, get beauty (feel good), and become a person of taste . At the end of each chapter, there are corresponding exercises (practice suggestions) to train the reader's sense of beauty.

"Book 2: Inspiration Checklist" consists of different types of creative workers, sharing their beauty and inspiration sources.

Although this book is short, it made me reflect on many details of life - it is true that laziness saves time, but I also compromise the good feeling . While reading this book, I was also imagining, if I was more attentive in my daily life, how would I be different from the present in the eyes of others? If you want to be a person with taste in the eyes of others, you have to start from the aesthetic aspect.

Based on the reading time and the percentage of gain, I would give a higher recommendation.

Recommended degree

★★★★☆ (4/5)

read notes

The following reading notes only cover what interests me in this book, Book 1: A Handbook of Aesthetic Effort.

What is "beauty"?

Aesthetics means "feeling good". Aesthetics can improve the quality of life, but the pursuit of aesthetics means choosing attention , which is a kind of trouble to some extent. The author also mentions in the Preface:

Beauty seems to be very similar to wisdom, both are things that feel important but don't actually need to have.

In the fast and exciting environment of modern society, only a few people know the importance of wisdom; wisdom can softly change the thinking mode, so that the same thing, the same object, and the same emotion have different ways of facing. But can we survive without wisdom? Of course you can! Just as "beauty" can be replaced with "no sense", "wisdom" can only be replaced with "knowledge". Even though life is a little less deep and quality, life can still go on.

Being aesthetically pleasing means not compromising on a mediocre life – when you have a choice, you are sensitive to your external environment, your own senses and emotions, and you make choices that suit you. Fortunately, "most of the beautiful things you can get are free."

Conditions that help practice aesthetics

As mentioned above, even if you lack wisdom , you can live smoothly with enough knowledge. The goal of universal education is to allow most people to adapt to society smoothly, so the focus is on the latter:

…The general educational situation is that it overemphasizes technology and career orientation, lacks the construction of belief and logic, and fails to fully explore the relationship between the inner (conceptual proposition) and the outer (thinking about aesthetic forms).

To develop a sense of beauty, you must first have a feeling. Reason removes feeling; imagination produces feeling. On top of rational life, we can try to supplement emotional imagination in addition to satisfying practical functions .

In pursuit of beauty, one has to break free from inertia, regain ideological dominance, and make appropriate choices. Ideas are expressed through language , so knowledge and vocabulary in related fields are also conditions that help to practice aesthetics.

Are your adjectives for things very singular? Cute, great, beautiful, beautiful, romantic, these intuitive and simple adjective judgments make the description and feeling of things become single.

… Knowledge is not just the knowledge of the profession, it can also be one’s own logic or opinion. As we accumulate more and more of our unique insights, we will have a set of understandings of the world, and our own unique appearance of the world.

The ability to be particular is obtained from knowledge, and the way of feeling is found from details.

The process of acquiring knowledge takes time, which is why we all think beauty is so important, but not everyone can get it. When we can only use our free time to get close to beauty, do you want to spend the day lightly and happily, or try to study seriously?

The difference between hobby and entertainment

Hobbies are things you like to do, but require time, effort and attention; entertainment is to kill time or make people forget about it .

If you are interested for a long time, you will accumulate knowledge...and gain a sense of accomplishment, self-confidence and energy from it.

Many office workers can't tell the difference between hobbies and entertainment, because "the sensibility of life has become the rationality of occupation, and the self-interest in life has become the mainstream entertainment of the public." To have a good quality of life, we should spend time on hobbies rather than entertainment.

When you realize that you are repeating wasting, you need to stop.

Is it possible to make work a hobby? In this regard, the author puts forward what I think is quite interesting:

The key to turning work into interest is actually the mentality of "game"...  

It is difficult for work to become an interest, often because we have gains and losses in our careers:

When the stakes are high, the game isn't a game, it's a bet. When work becomes a gamble, no one is happy for fear of losing the gamble at any time.

read

What we want to read reflects what we need right now. In addition, through reading, we can compare our world view , practice method , and thinking logic with others (the author of the book), so as to obtain more thoughts and feelings about life.

Life

There are four stages in shaping the desired look of life (what the author calls thinking ):

1. learn , imitate the desirable thinking of others, measure
2. Experiment with different life styles and explore different aspects of yourself
3. Get inspiration from movies, novels, music, etc., and make an imagination about the state of life
4. Practice a doctrine that suits you (e.g. minimalism, vegetarianism, humanism, etc.) and establish your own values and standards

It takes practice to know what kind of life you really like.

Don't be afraid to be bored

Afraid of boredom and distracted by entertainment, you will lose the ability to get along with yourself over time . Try to get used to boredom, enjoy boredom, and in a state of tranquility, your observations will become sharper—exactly the conditions for nurturing beauty.

The beauty of relationships

(I think this chapter is so well written that I want to post the whole chapter ><)

For a relationship to be beautiful, distance is an important key. For a person with good taste, in addition to the aesthetic feeling on the surface, the key point for people to feel comfortable in getting along is distance. Relationship.

The biggest killer in a relationship is "should". The relationship between love, friends, and family is the same. When it is involved, it means that there is no distance and personal space.

When there is less resonance among family members, they will not be able to understand your behaviors and thoughts. In the end, they can only use "relationship" to force one party to accept or obey...

Regardless of the relationship, it is an exchange of meaning and behavior :

Family is the exchange of growth support and education, love is about feelings and security, and friends are about recognition and resonance. The basis of any relationship is the interaction and interaction between individuals and the maintenance of self-independence in the relationship.

The beauty of living environment

• Beautiful spaces make people feel. If you feel comfortable because you do n't feel it, you are just adapting to your behavior patterns and habits.
• To enhance the beauty of the environment, we have to spend time scrutinizing, pondering, matching, placing and choosing (not just spending money on expensive furniture).
• To make your home feel beautiful or stylish, you must first keep the space clean, and slowly try to change, add or remove furnishings, and practice aesthetics.

Exercises for this chapter: Try to put a bunch of flowers at home, and then clean up unnecessary clutter or furniture according to your feeling. After changing the decoration, see how the appearance of the home changes.

Organize living environment

• The state of the home is also a reflection of the state of the mind: If you are restless or indifferent to life, the room may be cluttered.
• Let go of all entertainment, let your emotions calm down, and slowly organize your home to make it a beautiful space.
• Keep it simple ("break away"), leaving only the "necessary" and "liked" items. In this way, you can have the luxury of admiring every object that exists.

Problem for this chapter: Try to clear the hoarding and reduce the piles in the house in half.

Smell/olfactory beauty

• Smell can effectively trigger memories and emotions.
• There is no good or bad smell, only whether it matches the personal image or not.
• The smell in the home should be separated from the outside world.

The Art of Eating: Be Kind to Your Body

Let’s start with quitting sugar-heavy beverages, and slowly you will find that water becomes very delicious. After simplifying the diet, the acuity of the actual taste will slowly come back. Try to start by reducing choices and let the taste buds feel the essence of the food.

For Zen practitioners, cooking is also a kind of practice. They establish the habit of cooking while cooking to exercise themselves. Whichever step the cooking progresses, they will pick up the step.

Focus on how your body feels after a meal, not how your taste buds feel when you eat. Many times the food is good or bad, because the strong seasoning will not immediately have obvious feeling or feeling, but after eating, observe whether there is thirst, sweetness or even a little nausea in the tongue, mouth or body. Infer whether the food is good or bad. If the body is comfortable and does not feel burdened after eating, it is food of better quality.

The beauty of clothing/wear

• To build a taste for dressing, start with imitation, analyze and observe the style of the person you want to learn from, and then add a personal touch.
• Practice to observe the outline of the clothing, as well as the pattern, color, and material patterns of the clothing, and feel the change in the relationship between the spatial sense of clothing and the body.
• When there is no pattern on the clothes on the body, the focus will be on the face.
• The color of clothing can also be used to balance the mood, for example, on a gloomy rainy day, wearing white/light colored clothing will make you feel less down.

Consumption

• In modern society, consumption behavior has become a form of interaction between people, not just according to the needs of life.
• Sometimes I buy a favorite product in the store, but the goodwill fades quickly after I get home. It is probably because the environment of the store is different from that of my own. The beauty of the item presented in the store cannot be established/continued in another space.
• Reduce, cherish, filter.
• Use objects sparingly and show the elegance of life.