When you first join a new team (or new class), you will feel that some people are lower and think you are better than them, and then you will be higher than the average level of the whole group.
However, one day at the party, after communicating with each other, you learned about their academic qualifications, work and study experience, family background, etc., and suddenly woke up and found that you were just so.
That's right, this is yourself, cognitive illusions, which proves that you don't know yourself well enough.
People who don't know themselves are often emotional, insecure, anxious and lack the motivation to work hard.
My friend Xiaoqing is such a person.
One day, we chatted in a cafe and had a good time at first.
For some unknown reason, she suddenly looked blue and began to complain that she had actually been very unhappy recently.
Further questioning revealed that she was struggling with resignation.
Having said that, I find that there is no way to extend the topic.
Because Xiaoqing doesn't know herself at all, she still stays in the thinking of her student days, passively accepts the arrangement of society, and never thinks of taking the initiative to find something that really suits her.
And this reminds me of a friend who is just the opposite of Xiaoqing.
Atian's undergraduate major is environmental engineering, and he has been working in the operation department of Internet companies during his internship and after graduation.
I have graduated for two years, and I am preparing for the postgraduate entrance examination recently. I heard that he applied to the Chinese Department.
After knowing this news, I curiously asked him on WeChat:
Ten minutes later, he finally returned to my WeChat:
Look, Atian seems to be tossing himself, but he can hear his thoughtful and firm tone.
Although he may not really be a good writer even if he is admitted to the master's degree in Chinese Department, there is no doubt that he will go on writing firmly.
This is the performance of people who fully understand themselves, know what they want and know the direction of their efforts.
Even in the face of most people's doubts, we can unswervingly and impartially rush to the established route.
People who often read biographies of celebrities should know the stories of top entrepreneurs such as Jobs, Bezos and Ma Yun.
In the environment at that time, no one thought they would succeed, and they didn't know they could do such a big business, but they clearly knew what they wanted to do.
Therefore, Jobs spent seven months studying meditation in India. Bezos gave up the vice president of the bank trust company and started a business; Ma Yun gave up his post as a university teacher and started a business.
Therefore, knowing yourself may not be successful, but not knowing yourself will be mediocre.
And this ability to know oneself is called self-cognition in psychology.
Self-cognition refers to the insight and understanding of oneself, including self-observation and self-evaluation.
Self-observation refers to the awareness of one's own perception, thinking and intention; Self-evaluation refers to the judgment and evaluation of one's own thoughts, expectations, behaviors and personality characteristics, and is an important condition for self-regulation.
The academic explanation is very complicated, and we only need to simply understand self-knowledge as: a willingness and ability to know ourselves clearly.
This willingness and ability includes knowing who we are and what others think of us.
Self-cognitive ability is definitely one of the most important survival skills in 2 1 century.
Because the current information is highly explosive, chaotic information can easily make you lose your way. Only by recognizing yourself can we effectively screen meaningless information.
Most psychologists' research shows that people who can know themselves more clearly and accurately will often make wiser decisions, establish higher quality and satisfactory intimate and professional relationships, and have better career development and more confidence.
If a person can't know himself correctly in life and can't see his own advantages, he will feel inferior, lack confidence in success, lack initiative and enthusiasm in doing things, and as a result, nothing can be done well.
On the contrary, if a person only sees his own advantages, he will overestimate himself, leading to blind optimism and self-righteousness. As a result, it is often difficult to deal with interpersonal relationships and eventually be isolated by most people.
Now that I understand the necessity of self-awareness for personal growth, how can I know what kind of person I am correctly and quickly?
(1) Keep the habit of reading literary classics.
Keeping the habit of reading classic literary works is the most direct and effective way to get rid of barbarism and ignorance.
Due to the limitation of region and national culture, what a person can experience in his life is nothing more than limited space.
Just like most of us, we just live in a specific city all our lives, and we have never had a chance to touch anything in other spaces except travel.
And this kind of self-knowledge honed completely through life experience often has the imprisonment of thought.
However, the experience that classic literary works can bring is infinite, and every literary work is condensed with the worldly wisdom of that time and space.
It not only brings us thinking, but also deepens the openness of self-cognition.
(2) Get together with friends and get to know yourself in the eyes of others.
Jung once said: people's understanding of themselves is like walking at night. To understand himself, he needs the strength of others.
In the process of self-knowledge, friends are indispensable.
In order to understand ourselves in the eyes of friends more comprehensively and accurately, we need to know what people in all aspects of life think of ourselves.
Partners, friends, relatives and colleagues ...
In daily life, chat with them more and constantly understand their views on themselves.
In this process, cognitive errors caused by "self-help bias effect" can be effectively reduced.
Although other people's opinions are an important part of self-cognition, we must judge them comprehensively and in a balanced way, and never listen to them all.
Because some comments are "malicious accusations" and some comments are "white lies", these situations will inevitably happen.
(3) Creative interpretation of life experience
The formation of a person's inner self is influenced by both biological factors and social factors.
Biological factors refer to genetic inheritance and children's experiences. Social factors refer to a series of environmental influences such as family, education and social experience.
If we want to gain a full sense of self, we must go back to our life experiences.
Alfred adler, the founder of individual psychology, believes that the same experience can be explained in many ways. The formation of self is not bound by our environment, but by our thoughts.
Then, a creative interpretation of our past stories from different angles can help us deepen our understanding of the past and influence our attitude towards life, so as to fully understand ourselves and find what we really want.
Finally, I hope that before I know myself, I must form an inertial thinking-self-cognition is a dynamic result, which needs long-term observation and accumulation, and can never be solved by an article or a book.
Eric Maysel, a doctor of American psychological counseling, once explained this:
Therefore, knowing yourself is a long process. In this process, we know ourselves through constant self-dialogue and self-doubt.
So I hope you can practice all kinds of methodologies persistently and deepen your understanding of yourself.
As Liu Tong said in Who's Youth Is Not Confused: