If you were born in 1910, the probability of depression in your life is less than 1%; if you were born in 1950, the probability of depression in your life becomes 3%; if you were born in the 1970s, the probability of depression in your life becomes 7%; if you were born in 2000, you have depression at least once in your life. Depression is the killer of modern human beings, and 70% of suicides are depression. In China, 250000-280000 people commit suicide every year. The human brain can not be changed, happy people and pessimistic people, their state is very stable, because 50% is genetic.
Trying to change yourself
The most important factor affecting happiness is the psychological variable you can control. Although we especially emphasize the uncontrollability of mental illness and personality, people are still able to wither. People can change themselves by themselves, not by drugs. So how much can people adjust themselves? 25%! At the level of 1 / 4, they can change themselves.
How can we change ourselves? First, learn to forget. If we have trauma and frustration in our heart, we should learn to adjust, and the most important thing is to forget. Second, we should learn to be tolerant. Tolerance means that when there is a conflict, we should not take human factors too seriously. The third is a positive perception of the past, including gratitude. The fourth is to learn to recall positive experiences, and recall three good things every day: happy things, satisfied things, and grateful things.
Face life with optimism
Generally speaking, the above four points mean to face life with a positive attitude. This kind of future oriented positivity is summed up in one word, which is called optimism. Optimism is a belief that good things are more than bad things in the future, and a stable personality quality.
The study found that optimistic and pessimistic people have three different instinctive reactions when they encounter failure, which are called different forms of explanation. First, an optimist thinks that failure is temporary, while a pessimist thinks that failure is permanent after the first failure. Second, the optimist thinks that failure is individual, and the pessimist can think of a series of problems when he encounters a little bad. Third, pessimists always feel that they are not capable enough and do not work hard enough after their failure. Optimists blame others. What are the benefits of optimism? Optimistic people live a long life. Optimistic people recover very quickly after surgery. Optimistic people have mild symptoms after catching a cold. Optimistic people are not easy to get depression. All these are its benefits. Of course, people who are too optimistic are not good either. They have insufficient risk management and no sense of hardship. Being too optimistic sometimes leads to failure. Therefore, flexible optimism is flexible optimism.
In modern society, optimism is the third element of success. Success is equal to ability plus motivation plus optimism. Bezos, President of Amazon, founded the company in the basement in 1995. He did not see any profit for 8 years. During the period, he also experienced the Internet bubble. He talked about what is the key to success. He only chose optimism.
Learn to talk to yourself
How to maintain a positive and optimistic attitude? To teach you a way of self dialogue, we should first change our internal language.
Replace 'I must' with 'I hope'. When it comes to something at stake, such as promotion, you can't say 'I'm determined to get it'; I hope to be promoted. The subtext of these words is that I know that sometimes my efforts may not be effective, so I just do my best.
Don't say 'finished'. Don't say that at any time. It should be said 'yes, it's bad'. But you can't say 'it's over' - there must be something worse. I think it's easy for you to despair if you say 'it's over'.
Replace problem analysis with problem solving. The language of problem analysis is to reflect on myself: what's wrong with me, why I'm like this, how I'm so unlucky, how I didn't find any mistakes? The language of problem-solving is to focus on things - do I have any plans to make up for the losses, what I want to do, who can help to solve the problems, how to think and how to do the best for myself? These problems point to the reality and the future .
Flexible causality instead of rigid causality. What is rigid causality is to use one negativity to explain another negativity. For example, because leaders don't like me, they fail to promote me. Because they fail, others look down on me. Because they say bad things about me, they retaliate against them. It's no use. You should speak creatively. I'll teach you some happy ways of speaking. The leader criticized me, so I have to work harder, because only in this way can I change his impression of me.
Put the dilemma in time. It is optimistic to change 'I don't have this ability' into 'I don't have this ability so far' and 'I can't do it' into 'I can't do it so far'.
If we want to negate, we can only negate behavior, not personality. It should be denied like this: I was a little nervous in my speech at this conference, but I was not nervous in the first two. Therefore, when we negate, we should not negate people, but negate things. This is better. Liu Xiangping is a professor of psychology at Beijing Normal University