Many traditional self-management strategies fail due to emotions. If you have ever encountered procrastination and other problems because of this, this article is for you.
Have you ever had any of the following experiences or experiences?
- The greater the work pressure, the less likely it is to start working. On the contrary, when the mood is calm and happy, things can be done faster and better;
- Faced with a lot of important tasks Things that are important and urgent, hesitate to move forward, frown and choose something that is neither important nor urgent, just because it can help you temporarily relieve anxiety;
- For places of work and life You are very picky, and the environment has a great impact on your status;
- Facing complex and chaotic situations, you feel a headache;
- In the division of labor with colleagues, you are Creativity, not execution, wins;
- Some say you are a talented but procrastinating person.
If these descriptions fit your situation very well, then you are most likely an emotionally sensitive person. Among this group of people, some people are happy-go-lucky, some are ambitious, some are patient and tolerant, some are stubborn and strict, some are extroverted, and some are introverted, but in terms of self-management and self-improvement, they are all prone to negative emotions. For a series of problems, such as procrastination, disorder, confusion, inefficiency, etc.
You may have tried many methods to make yourself more self-disciplined, more efficient, more organized, and less procrastinating...but often with little success. Just thinking about those methods and tools is enough to make you feel uncomfortable, and you quickly browse the circle of friends to calm down.
A long time ago, self-management was almost helpless against such phenomena. But in recent years, we have tried to integrate the knowledge of personality differences into the field of self-management and have made some progress. Today, we bring you a series of personalized, differentiated, and targeted guides for those of you who are naturally prone to negative emotions, which affect self-management and cause procrastination and other problems.
How to judge whether you are an emotionally sensitive person?
It can be measured in three minutes. For the 12 questions below, take notes with pen and paper or computer. Each description will be scored according to your degree of compliance:
Not at all consistent = 0, Not very consistent = 1, Not sure = 2, Somewhat In line = 3, completely in line = 4
1. I am the kind of person who worries easily.
2. I often feel inferior to others.
3. When faced with huge pressure, I sometimes feel like I am going to collapse.
4. I often feel lonely or depressed.
5. I often feel nervous and uneasy.
6. Sometimes I feel completely worthless.
7. I often feel scared or anxious.
8. I often feel angry because of the way others treat me.
9. When things go wrong, I get easily discouraged and want to give up.
10. I often feel sad or depressed.
11. I often feel helpless and hope someone can help me solve my problem.
12. Sometimes I am so ashamed that I just want to hide.
What is your total score?
This is the "neurotic" part of the famous "Big Five Personality" scale, which corresponds to emotional sensitivity. The lowest score is 0 points and the highest score is 48 points. The median is 24 points. We have not yet found data on crowd averages. Based on the actual contact with more than 100 cases among our young people, my personal opinion is: if your score is 28 points or above, you can be classified as a high neuroticism group; between 14 points and 28 points, you can be classified as a moderate neuroticism score. crowd. So in fact, most of us belong to the medium to high neurotic group.
Although this is just my personal division, I believe that the suggestions in today’s article are indeed suitable for most human beings. Because one of the differences between humans and machines is that they have emotions.
In the eyes of some people, the word "neurotic" seems to have a derogatory connotation, but in our context, neurotic is a neutral word. If you really don't like it, you can change it to "medium-to-highly emotionally sensitive people" or something like that.
The following are self-management suggestions for those of us with moderate to high emotional sensitivity, including myself:
1. Prioritize emotions and let emotions bring efficiency instead of Directly pursue efficiency.
You have probably discovered that when you are productive and when you are not, it is closely related to your emotions. According to my experience, when the mood is calm, it is often easier to enter the state step by step; when the mood is calm with a bit of joy and optimism, the rhythm is often fast and compact, with a little jump and flexibility to advance the work; the mood is calm. When you are slightly sad or stressed, you will be more cautious, pay attention to standards, maintain a meticulous attitude, and make fewer mistakes. The above are normal fluctuation ranges. But beyond this range, emotionally sensitive people often surrender quickly. When you are overjoyed, your heart will be restless and you will not be able to work steadily; when you are overcome by great sadness, severe anxiety, stress or depression, you will lose strength and be unable to move forward.
We found that directly pursuing efficiency itself often makes you worry about gains and losses, worrying about whether your efficiency is high enough, causing self-judgment and anxiety, which in turn damages efficiency.
So our suggestion is: don’t directly pursue efficiency itself, but work hard on the reasons and find ways to keep yourself in a calm and moderate mood, just like running in an orderly manner on track. Your talent is there and no one can take it away. As long as it runs on the track, the results of your work will come, right?
2. You can spend enough time on the following things:
-Cleaning the body
-Cleaning and tidying up the room
- Cleaning and organizing the office
- Sleeping
- Picking your own dining spots
- Picking your own leisure spots
p>At this point, you may have suddenly realized, no wonder I spend so much time doing this! Yes, you are a sensitive person, and this is actually your spontaneous means of emotional regulation. You've heard some simple and crude clichés, saying "Why do we spend so much time on these small things" and "This is too much of a thing"... Yes, you are a "matter" person, So what? It is these characteristics that give you so many "things" that also constitute your talents and advantages in other areas. Some talents and strengths you have already discovered, and some you have not yet discovered. Those clichés are not entirely wrong, but they apply to a different group of people than to you.
3. Reduce the quantity of supplies, pay attention to quality, and "cut off" regularly to ensure less but better supplies.
Most people have heard of the concept of "breaking away from others". If you haven't heard of it, you can find the information by just searching. If you are too lazy to search, you can also think of it as "cleaning up useless items, information, relationships and affairs."
Japanese teacher Eiko Yamashita has written several books titled "Departure". In China, I also know several friends who teach people to get along better with themselves through renunciation. In my opinion, emotionally sensitive people need frequent separation.
4. Choose a suitable environment in terms of living, studying and strong social connections.
In terms of living, if your financial situation allows, live in a larger house. If not allowed, try to choose a more spacious bedroom to rent. If the situation is more serious and you live in a first-tier city but cannot afford a spacious bedroom in the center, then another way is to still live in the city center but spend less time at home. After get off work and during weekends, escape from the house and spend time in a café with a quiet environment, plenty of light, spaciousness and good air quality.
The bright cafe is a very suitable environment for reading, studying and self-improvement.
Many people make huge and elaborate exam preparation plans, but never move forward, just because they go home after get off work, and home is really not a suitable place to study. Find a dedicated place for your studies. University study rooms are an option, but some emotionally sensitive people don't like old tables and don't have to wipe off the dust themselves every time. The library is also an option, but many libraries close at 7 or 8 pm, when you have just finished working overtime. Cafes have become a good choice.
If you need to get together with friends, the cafe is your outsourced living room. Many friends who rent in first-tier cities often don’t have a living room if they choose to share a house, because the living room has been tacitly turned into a storage room, filled with boxes and sundries. But you still need to get together with your friends. There are weak social connections, such as the friends you like in your circle of friends, and there are strong social connections, such as those friends who do not send greetings to each other on holidays, but can stand up to support you at critical times. How are they different? The difference between them is that in the former you meet them at conferences, parties and KTV, while in the latter you meet them in coffee shops.
Of course there is consumption in the cafe, but if you order a cup of hot milk or Perrier water, it only costs 20 yuan. There are about 20 working days in a month. If you go there every day, consumption The amount is about 400 yuan, and it does not exceed 600 yuan including weekends. If you are renting a house, this price difference in first-tier cities can only make your bedroom three or four square meters wider, which is of little significance. More importantly, if you stay at home all the time, you will find that there will be more and more things in the room accidentally. You have spent a lot of money on Taobao and bought a bunch of things that you don’t really need. something! What’s even scarier is that housework will increase exponentially! You put things here and there, but you're still not satisfied. Even the packaging of the takeout you order has become a headache for you. What reason do you have for not running out of the house quickly? If you are renting a house, it would be better to use your home as a hotel.
5. Pay attention to investing in mental and physical health.
For emotionally sensitive people, it is very worthwhile to spend more than 10% of their income on psychological counseling and fitness exercises every month. For example, for a person with a monthly income of 15,000 yuan, it is necessary to spend 1,500 yuan every month. Fitness and exercise not only keep your body strong, but also help you maintain a good mood. This has been realized by more and more people. However, psychological counseling still suffers from common misunderstandings. Many people think it is a patent for "patients".
In fact, good psychological counseling can not only bring recovery effects to mental patients, but also provide growth plug-ins for ordinary people. One of the basic views of our course is that due to the cultural influence of today's era, everyone's mental health is generally poor. The upper limit of most people's self-management level is actually locked by their mental health level. To unlock this upper limit, you need to seek professional help and take the initiative to grow.
For most people, choosing a good counselor is the biggest difficulty. We recommend that you use professional psychological counseling apps and professional organizations to help you check and find a counselor that suits you.
If you feel that long-term psychological counseling is too expensive for you, another relatively cost-effective way is to practice mindfulness meditation. Mindfulness meditation is also a misunderstood good thing. Because it has Buddhist cultural origins, some people think it is a religion or even a superstition. In fact, with the efforts of pioneers such as Professor Kabat-Zinn of the University of Massachusetts Medical School and psychologist Mark Williams of the Oxford Mindfulness Center, multiple scientific mindfulness meditation systems have already been produced, such as mindfulness-based stress reduction ( MBSR), Mindfulness-Based Cognitive Therapy (MBCT) and Acceptance Commitment Therapy (ACT), among others. Judging from the literature, the effects of these systems have also been widely supported. Even the book "The Psychology of Procrastination" published 8 years ago already recommended mindfulness.
I myself also spent money to participate in the eight-week Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction MBSR international standard course in 2017, and obtained the course completion certificate, which was a small step in this regard.
After eight weeks of continuous practice, even for someone like me, who has an attention deficit disorder (ADHD, also known as hyperactivity disorder) self-rating scale score of 13 points and is particularly prone to distraction, starting from the sixth week, I finally I have experienced obvious benefits. I have become calmer and better able to face the pressure, anxiety and changes at the end of the year. Although the improvement in concentration cannot be compared with drugs, it is also because the mood has become more stable, making it easier to enter work tasks that require concentration.
If you value science as much as we do and just want to learn mindfulness meditation that is supported by evidence, then a suitable entry-level choice is to choose a course with MBSR qualified teachers on Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction. This system has entered China in recent years and already has forty or fifty qualified teachers. For example, Jade Zhou, the teacher of the eight-week MBSR course I attended, is one of them.
After learning mindfulness, you will find that “prioritize your emotions” in our first suggestion is not absolute. Mindfulness allows us to expose ourselves to negative feelings and confusing thoughts in a gentle, gradual way without getting carried away and leading to procrastination. For most people who have never practiced mindfulness, it is still very useful to "keep an eye out" to protect their emotions.