A few days ago, Yu Xu, the general manager of Nanjing Wanda Mao, who just ushered in the successful opening of Nanjing Wanda Mao, fell to his death and ruled out homicide. Just as her career was reaching a new milestone, she died in a hurry, which made people sigh.
Almost at the same time, Liu Aiping, the principal of Ganzhou No.4 Middle School, who studied Chinese classics at the school gate every day, committed suicide by jumping off a building because of depression.
Their deaths may all be related to psychological stress.
In the same period, an article was widely circulated on the Internet-"How easy is it to destroy a middle-aged person?" The story inside makes people feel the pressure of middle-aged people more deeply.
Liu Liping, the former editor-in-chief of Guangzhou Daily and the founder of the famous WeChat official account "Liu Bei My Ancestor", forwarded this article in a circle of friends. Later, a number of messages about suicide were sent one after another. Fortunately, the police were called in time to discourage rescue.
The dead are gone, and the living should be alert.
When people reach middle age, psychology is the most fragile and sensitive. This is a period with the heaviest physical and mental burden, especially for entrepreneurs and managers. Contradictions from work and family, and high expectations from society and self have left many middle-aged people in a tense atmosphere. Once you have a straw, you can crush the camel.
Whether you feel the "middle-aged crisis" or not, the psychology of middle-aged people is indeed prone to crisis.
If stress is the standard of middle age, what we can do when stress comes is to keep our body and mind healthy. At this time, what we need most is-resistance.
Jiu Shi pointed out in the book "The Law of Resistance-Rebirth in Adversity" that three attitudes should be paid attention to in the process of cultivating resistance, one is to face the present situation directly, the other is to understand the problem flexibly, and the third is to think scientifically and rationally.
When failure experiences and difficulties come, there may be negative emotions such as anxiety, fear, anger and anxiety. When negative emotions appear repeatedly, they will fall into a vicious circle and be hard to extricate themselves.
Emotion is innocent, we should accept it, not ignore or suppress it.
The book "Anti-pressure-the law of rebirth in adversity" points out that negative emotions should be solved immediately. There are four solutions, the first is exercise, the second is breathing, the third is music, and the fourth is writing.
1, sports
Aerobic exercise can make us healthier, and also help to reduce stress and eliminate anxiety. It has both psychological and physiological effects. For example, when you are angry, you can leave the company and take a brisk walk. When people walk, their breathing will stabilize unconsciously and their mood will be very comfortable.
Exercise is definitely the most effective way to relieve stress. Whether you go to the gym or go out for a run or swim, it will help you forget the stress.
2. Listen to music or play music
Music can activate the areas of the brain that respond to inertial stimuli, but in order to avoid those intense music such as punk or rock, we can choose some music that people can happily immerse themselves in, such as Mozart or Bandelli.
Besides listening to music, you can also play music.
I think this method is very good, and I often practice it myself. Often play the harmonica, organ and piano by yourself, and there won't be too many negative emotions when you are immersed in it.
Step 3 breathe
Breathing and relaxing is also a way for us to leave stress for a while.
The focused breathing method recommended by the author is as follows:
Regarding breathing, I personally think it's better to go to a psychological clinic and ask a psychologist or counselor how to relax. Relaxation methods similar to breathing include muscle relaxation and imagination relaxation.
Step 4 write
Writing includes free writing, keeping a diary, taking notes repeatedly, etc.
In writing, expressing one's inner emotions, thoughts or some vague feelings is conducive to resolving negative emotions from the brain and body, and has the function of calming and concentrating.
Many psychological counselors, including me, will recommend keeping a diary every day to tell themselves what they did today and gradually eliminate negative emotions in their writing. On the one hand, we talk to ourselves and express our hidden emotions, and the diary becomes our listener; On the other hand, because of immersion, it is easy to pull away from negative emotions.
Immersing yourself in your own world, forgetting yourself and focusing on "ecstasy" are conducive to cutting off the vicious circle of negative emotions.
Now there is a kind of psychotherapy, that is, writing therapy, which releases psychological pressure through writing, and I am also studying this topic.
The reason why many emotions appear is actually the result of our "not thinking".
What don't you want to open?
According to the emotional ABC theory put forward by American psychologist Ellis, incentive event A is only the indirect cause of emotional and behavioral consequences C, while the direct cause of C is the belief generated by individual's cognition and evaluation of incentive event A. In short, human behavior does not come from the induced event itself, but from people's views and beliefs about it. For example, one person is happy when he sees the rain, and thinks he can walk in the rain. Another person feels too bad and goes home and sighs. This is a different understanding and belief in the same thing.
In the book Psychology of Success, the author mentioned the irrational belief mentioned by Ellis.
However, these beliefs are unreasonable because they have no factual basis.
For example, a good friend of mine came back from abroad the other day and didn't bring me a gift. Although I didn't say anything, I was very unhappy and thought she should bring me a gift. This is an irrational belief. The wrong assumption behind it is that you must be kind to me.
Each of us will have irrational beliefs. If we don't deal with it, let it develop, it will make us fall into negative emotions more and more, fail to achieve our goals, get along with people easily and even cause friction. What many people do is simply tell themselves that it doesn't matter after irrational beliefs appear, or scold others and let irrational beliefs continue. And this practice will hurt our emotions, hurt people around us, and make us unable to achieve our goals.
What should we do in that case? We can change unreasonable beliefs in three steps.
The first step is to test your inner thoughts.
What's our idea? At this step, you don't need to judge, you just need to be aware of yourself.
The second step is to identify irrational beliefs.
Look at your own ideas, whether there are three hypotheses such as "I must do well, you must be good to me, and the world must be relaxed", and whether there are words such as "must", "should", "can't" and "always". If there is, it is mostly irrational belief.
The third step is to rewrite unreasonable beliefs into more realistic sentences and remove all extreme words. Specifically, you can do this:
Change "I must" and "I should" to "I want" or "I would rather". For example, change "I must do it well" to "I must do it well."
Replace "you must" and "you should" with "if". For example, "You must be good to me" can be changed to "If only you could be good to me".
Replace "must" with "can". For example, "everything is easy in the world" can be changed to "everything is easy in the world".
When you have irrational beliefs, try this method and you will get something.
Sometimes, we think we can't. In fact, it's all because we lack self-efficacy, and sometimes we even feel worthless.
Burns' new emotional therapy points out that the sense of worthlessness stems from your inner self-criticism. It's a self-deprecating voice, such as "I'm not good at all", "I'm a piece of shit" and "I'm not as good as others". It embeds despair and inferiority into your heart and makes it grow. You can carry out relevant training, and when the idea of self-criticism flashes through your mind, you can identify it and record it; Find out the root of these thinking distortions; Refute them, thus cultivating a more objective self-evaluation system.
Sometimes, we don't feel worthless, but we also lack confidence in ourselves. At this time, we can try the following four methods to improve self-efficacy:
1. Practical experience
My experience is that a small successful experience can really form a sense of efficacy. For example, I first shared it in public many years ago, when I told my story in front of a real library with more than 20 people. I have never shared myself in front of everyone before. That sharing went well, and others commented on me: "I admire you very much. You are a firm, positive and enthusiastic person, and you have a magic power to attract people around you. " This successful experience greatly improved my sense of self-efficacy. Later, I was able to face more than 200 audiences with confidence without any mistakes. This is the change brought by the improvement of self-efficacy.
2. Template
If you don't have this experience, you can learn from it. Do you know such a story? It seems a little impossible for an athlete to run a kilometer in four minutes. However, after the runner broke, more than 300 people ran a kilometer in four minutes from the second year, and some people kept setting new records in the third year. In fact, this is not because the physical function of track and field athletes has made great progress, but because their sense of self-efficacy has changed, that is to say, the way of observing things has changed, that is, after the myth that no one can run a kilometer in 10 minutes is broken, many people have a sense of self-efficacy that they can do.
encourage
How happy you are if you are surrounded by people who encourage you. In addition to verbal encouragement, letter-based encouragement has long-term effects, such as thank-you cards.
Change your mood and face it positively
Another way is to celebrate. Some people will use their favorite music, and companies can also organize activities to make the workplace atmosphere look brand-new and improve employees' sense of self-efficacy.
There is a saying of neutralization in chemistry. In fact, emotions can also be neutralized. Gratitude is a way. Gratitude is conducive to improving happiness, neutralizing negative emotions and promoting good health. People who are full of gratitude are beneficial to altruism and make people positive.
It is more important to pay attention to what you have than what you lack. We should consciously form the habit of focusing on what we have, because it is easy for people to focus on themselves or what they lack, so we should persevere and consciously get rid of this habit.
There are three ways to change the perspective of observing things and improve gratitude, namely, writing a gratitude diary, thinking about three good things and writing a thank-you letter.
Many of my friends are taking coaching courses. I can see them writing "rich diaries" and recording their "good things" every night. I think this is also a good way to relieve stress.
These are all methods that I learned from books and proved effective in practice.
If none of the above methods can make you resist stress, please seek the help of a psychologist or counselor!
Anti-pressure book list recommendation: