"The Courage of Happiness" Author: Kishimi Ichiro
In life, each of us has different family backgrounds, life experiences, and life concepts. Only by pursuing happiness is the unchanging theme and consensus of people.
However, some people may have this question about the title of "The Courage of Happiness": Isn't happiness very simple, easy? For example, on a Sunday afternoon, if we temporarily put aside all pressure, listen to a song, make a cup of tea, read a book, and calm ourselves down, we will feel closer to happiness. So, why do you say that "happiness requires courage"?
In fact, in the opinion of the author of this book, this is not considered true happiness. Because once people get rid of this scene, they will feel a little uneasy, and the pressure of life will come with them, and their minds are filled with many miscellaneous things such as children's breakfast, leaders' documents, parents' medicines, etc. It seems that happiness always lasts for a moment, but worries last.
Therefore, the book "The Courage of Happiness" tells us that in order to realize the pursuit of life, people must first give up the pursuit of "constant" and "permanent" things, calmly accept the occurrence of impermanence and accidents, and separate those troubles from others, so that they can be liberated from the daily rush and complexity. And such happiness is not easy, only "great courage" can be obtained. This is a long-term practice, not a short period of mooring and rest.
The author of this book is the Japanese philosopher Kishimi Ichiro, an Austrian psychologist and an obsessed with the "father of self-inspiration" Adler . He has been studying this person all his life. Kishimi Ichiro is committed to promoting Adler's theory and wrote the famous bestselling book "The Courage of Hate". Today we are going to talk about "The Courage of Happiness" is its sister chapter. Through Adler's theory on education, he thinks about how people become happy in modern society.
So, let’s get to the essence of this book.
People’s misunderstanding of Adler
We have interpreted the book “The Courage of Being Hate” before. In this book, a young man who was confused and confused in interpersonal communication had a conversation with a philosopher. During this conversation, the young man realized that to live freely in a complex interpersonal environment, he must establish his own self-esteem system, learn to "separate topics", and not be afraid of others' annoyance. So he quit his job in the library and chose to become a teacher to practice and spread Adler's ideas through education.
In the book "The Courage of Happiness", time passes, and the young man visits the philosopher again three years later. But this time, his question is: whether to abandon Adler's thoughts. He believes that the so-called "Adlerian thought" is a scam. The two started a conversation again on this issue.
it turned out that in the past three years, the young man had become a middle school teacher. He was full of ideals and applied Adler's theory to the school classroom, but it turned out that he was deeply disappointed. For example, Adler emphasized the "separation of topics". Children, parents and teachers each have their own topics. Parents and teachers should not interfere with their children and should "not criticize or praise" the children.
Youth acted according to this educational philosophy. If the child gets full marks, he will not praise him, and if he is cleaned well, he will not criticize him; if he forgets to do his homework, he will not criticize him, and if he makes trouble in the classroom, the classroom will be in chaos. In the end, young people can only exert the most severe punishment to calm those students.
Therefore, the young man concluded that Adler's thoughts seemed to make people feel enlightened and obtained the unreproachable truth of the world, but if they were truly practiced, they would be empty and unrealistic. The so-called "separation of topics" will only make people one-sidedly give up their own responsibilities and make the problems around them worsen. Especially as an educator, how can young people let their students go their own way?
However, philosophers pointed out that it was the youth who misunderstood Adler. Because Adler's thoughts are a complete set of ways to tell people to inspire themselves and achieve happiness, rather than a simple separation of topics.Young people "do not praise or criticize" students, which is a "mechanical" imitation of Adler's thoughts, and failing to understand the full picture of Adler's theory will lead to failure in educating children.
So, how does Adler view education?
In his opinion, the purpose of education is to help people achieve self-reliance and get rid of the self-centered lifestyle. Because Adler had witnessed World War I with his own eyes and experienced large-scale self-harm and destruction by humans. In this process, he saw many dark sides of people such as selfishness, greed, and cruelty. The reason is that all this comes from the independence of many people.
Some people grow up under the love of their parents, the care of the school, and the care of society. Although they are physically mature, they cannot get rid of their dependence on others mentally. These people are often called "giant babies", "mama babies" and so on today. When they cannot achieve their goals in a reasonable way and cannot control their desires in their hearts, they will gradually experience extreme behaviors such as attacks and plunder.
In the cognition of these people, from childhood to adulthood, the people around them are all around them. "Original" is the center of the world. Of course, they will not take into account other people's thoughts and feelings; therefore, we need to achieve "independence" through education so that they can correctly understand themselves.
Moreover, the "independence" here does not only refer to economic and life independence. Just like we see many young people, even after graduating from college and working in society, still have many problems that cannot be solved by themselves. They need to rely on their parents and those around them from time to time. If you are criticized by your leaders at work, you need your parents to enlighten me; if you have conflicts with your friends, you need someone to mediate; if you encounter doubts in your relationship, you need someone to comfort and answer them. If a person is always caught in these problems, feels painful for it, and even becomes unconfident and dares to socialize, it is also a kind of independence.
Under this condition, Adler proposed to "separate the subject", and teachers, parents and children each take their own responsibilities and do not interfere with each other; teachers do not criticize or praise, and when students need help, teachers lend a helping hand; instead of saying that teachers do not praise or criticize everything about students.
Andler also believes that "independence" education is not only a problem for children, but also needs education for adults. When people educate their children, they must also strengthen their awareness of independence from time to time. Therefore, he also regards psychology and psychological counseling as a kind of "adult education". Through conversation, self-inspiration and other means, those adults who are not independent enough can truly grow and develop themselves, so that they have more courage to face life and achieve happiness.
So, how should we understand the implementation process?
Understand human development from education
Adler believes that there is an important way to achieve independence, that is, "respect". This respect is not only a moral politeness, but also a feeling of respect for a person; but also a true and realistic view of others and recognize their personality and abilities.
For example, if a teacher sees a student who usually acts very isolated and is often distracted in class, the teacher calls the student to the office and says, "You should take the initiative to integrate into the students, follow the teacher's rhythm during class, and listen carefully." In our opinion, the teacher's behavior may be fine, and many teachers do this too. But from Adler's thoughts, this is a manifestation of lack of respect. Because we don’t know what is the essence behind the phenomena of “isolation” and “distractedness”.
It may be that the child is indeed not good at socializing and has no concentration; but it is also possible that the child is in his own thinking and rhythm. For example, Einstein , he started to study college courses by himself in middle school. Both teachers and classmates think he is very slow. In fact, the problems he thinks have long exceeded the level of classroom teaching. If the teacher denies Einstein at this time and forcibly demands to be consistent with other children, this will kill his personality.
If an educator always asks his children with unchanging standards, it will easily affect the children's values, resulting in them looking at and dealing with problems in a single way, and not knowing how to adapt and adjust. Such a case is introduced in the book
. When a man goes for psychological counseling, he always holds the attitude of this: the world is dangerous and everyone is my enemy. Why? Because when he was a child, he met a very ferocious dog with his friends. At that time, his mother taught him: If you meet a dog on the road and feel scared, don’t run away. The more you run, the more you will be chasing you, so he didn’t run away. As a result, the children all ran away, leaving him alone being bitten by a dog, and he was particularly lonely and helpless.
So since then, the boy felt in his heart: My mother is lying to me, my friends have abandoned me, no one is trustworthy, they are all enemies. In fact, whether a group of children runs or not depends on the actual situation. Why should a group of children be afraid of a dog? Even if they want to run, they can run together. I guess the mother didn't expect that her words would cause her son to have such a serious knot.
In fact, the meaning of respect is also here. If this mother recognizes the child's personality and encourages him to solve the problem by himself instead of acting according to his own standards, perhaps so many problems would not have happened.
Therefore, Adler believes that only when a person is fully respected since childhood can he learn to accept himself and find the "courage to be independent". Otherwise, people are easily hit during their growth, feel inferior, and finally give up on themselves. This is actually dragged down by inner fragility.
In order to verify his ideas, Adler conducted in-depth analysis of those "problem students" and divided their psychological motivation into 5 stages.
The first stage is called "request for praise", which means you want to hear praise from parents and teachers. Students at this stage especially want to play a "good child" or "excellent student", and they will study hard and perform fully; this is also the theoretical basis of many "encouraging education", but if they are not praised, the children will feel that their efforts are meaningless and they will soon lose their enthusiasm.
The second stage is called "attracting attention". When a child makes efforts but does not receive the expected praise; or gives up halfway through hard work, then they will settle for the second best, thinking that "it doesn't matter if they don't get praise, but they have to be different anyway." At this time, some people will become "bad kids", such as making trouble in class, making pranks, etc.; some children are more negative, and will show signs of losing weight, and gain more attention after low learning ability. In the hearts of these children, even if they are criticized, it is much better than being ignored.
But in the third stage, the relationship between children and teachers and parents will undergo fundamental changes. This stage is called "power struggle". Children will begin to resist parents and teachers, along with the value system they support. Therefore, children will use insults and provocations to fight. Some of them show that they are irritable and rude, and even smoke, steal, and break the rules indifferently.
Of course, the essence of these three stages is actually that children hope to be respected and loved, and hope that adults will regard them as an independent individual with their own personality, rather than blaming and demanding themselves.
But if we reach the fourth stage, the child's behavioral motivation will be reversed, from seeking "love" to seeking "hate", which is called "revenge". Children at this stage will deliberately do some serious and hateful things against teachers or parents, such as self-harm, joining bad gangs, participating in crimes, etc. They want to awaken the guilt and guilt in adults and realize their mistakes through these very extraordinary behaviors.
Finally, the fifth stage is "Prove Incompetence". At this time, after the previous four stages of action, the children still cannot see the results they want. At this time, they will completely lose hope, make no efforts, think they are useless, and hope that the people around them will not care about them anymore.Their only idea is to prove their incompetence by giving up on themselves, to prove that the actions of parents and teachers are wrong, and their actions and ideas are right.
It is precisely because of these five psychological motivation stages that Adler proposed that criticism and praise are not very effective when educating children.
When we criticize children, for those who knowingly commit crimes, this is the result they seek; and when we criticize children, we also use our own advantage to convince them, which will make children feel that they are not respected as they deserve.
When we praise children, it is generally the spiritual praise of the lower ones by those in the upper level. The motivation behind the praise is also the hope of strengthening the other party's behavior, and hope that the other party will do what we say.
. For children, there will be competition, and there will be vicious behavior and hostile relationships, which will cause conflicts, conflicts, and even bullying in the campus.
So for young people in the book, as a teacher, if they encounter children being naughty, they cannot just rely on praise and criticism to let their children act according to their own ideas; instead, through management, let these children realize why they cannot be naughty, why they must achieve good results, and form their own value system.
. When a person no longer needs to confirm his own value through the outside world and form an independent value system, this is the realization of independence.
How to achieve happiness
Speaking of this, maybe we will be a little confused: what does it have to do with our realization of happiness and courage after talking about this? This actually belongs to a logical closed loop. In Adler's view, only those who have achieved independence in the education process will find their own happiness.
But the road to self-reliance is not easy. Let’s imagine that it’s not easy to let a person let go of the value system that he has been instilled since childhood and form his own system? So we need courage, the courage to question traditions and break the status quo. As for how to act specifically, Adler gave three suggestions.
The first suggestion is to respect and trust unconditionally. Adler stressed that respect and trust must be unconditional. Because when a person's respect and trust are attached to conditions, that is, trying to influence and change others, this is not an equal relationship.
The book talks about an adler consulting case. He faces a teenage girl with severe mental disorders. The girl was sick for 8 years. She usually barked like a dog, drooled constantly, and she kept tearing clothes and eating handkerchiefs. The doctors before were helpless with her. In the end, the girl's family had no choice but to find Adler.
Magically, with the help of Adler, the girl reintegrated into society and got along very well with the people around her. So, what wonderful method did he use? In fact, it is very simple, it is respect and trust.
At the beginning, Adler just talked to the girl. Although the girl said nothing, Adler chatted with her with interest and insisted. Unexpectedly, after thirty days like this, the girl suddenly spoke. Although it was just a few fragments and syllables, this was a very critical step, and the girl and Adler felt a little bit of communication.
The treatment lasted for a while. One day, the girl suddenly started to beat Adler, and Adler did not resist at all. Later, the girl broke the glass window because she was too excited, and Adler just silently bandaged her. Later, the girl miraculously started talking, and her consciousness gradually returned to normal, becoming a completely normal person.
Adler explained that the reason why the girl barked like a dog and turned into a strange appearance is because she felt that she was treated like a dog, which was a self-harm. In order to solve this problem, Adler gave her full respect and trusted her as a human being, so the girl slowly restored her language function.
Later, the girl beat Adler because she treated Adler as someone close to her and was venting her emotions.Adler also gave full trust, believing that the girl was unintentional. This move made the girl feel that she had "friends" and gradually developed a sense of independence.
This is exactly the value of respect and trust to people. When we can see and accept others’ truest appearance, we can win equal treatment and mutual respect for ourselves. The same is true for children. If you see your child making a mistake, don’t rush to criticize or apologize. Instead, inspire them. Different behaviors will have different consequences, and you need to take responsibility for doing wrong things. Then let the child choose for himself, is it because of a momentary impulse that creates huge responsibility, or consciously restrain himself to avoid getting into trouble, and I believe that they will become more and more independent.
The second suggestion is to learn to love yourself and others. Love here not only refers to the love between men and women, but the great love between people. In the eyes of some people, love is demand and possession, but Adler believes that love is giving and fulfillment.
Maybe some people think that this kind of love that gives without seeking reward is a stupid behavior and suffers a loss. I should be allowed to respect me first before I can give love. Just like the young man in the book, he often encounters students who despise him in school, so he strictly disciplines and criticizes him. He believes: "If students respect me and listen to me well, I will definitely respect and trust them."
But in Adler's view, a person's initial love from the heart does not come from others, but from himself. When we establish the ability to respect and trust ourselves, our spirit will naturally fill us up, and we will have extra energy to give more love. If a person does not love himself and wants to see what others have done before giving love, then the world will not be able to form an interpersonal environment for people to help each other. Therefore, we must first learn to love ourselves, then put ourselves in front of others, start with the people around us, take the first step, and love the people in front of us.
Of course, in the process of self-love and love, we inevitably face indifference, hurt and betrayal. There are always people who only want the benefits of love and refuse to take responsibility for love. What should we do at this time? At this time, we need to "separate topics". Love is our own topic. To achieve this, we have a clear conscience; and how to respond to our love is the other party's topic and we cannot control it. What we can do is to avoid "secondary harm" and not turn other people's problems into our own psychological burden.
The third suggestion is to change the "subject of life". The book mentions two misunderstandings about love. One misunderstanding is to pursue "my happiness" through love. This idea belongs to pure selfishness, which is understandable, but cannot last long. Another misunderstanding is to pursue "his happiness" through love. This idea is purely altruistic and will make people lose themselves.
Adler stressed that love is the happiness of two people. If a person always limits his thinking and the subject of life to the level of "I", he will show that he is self-centered and constantly confronts and forces others.
The book tells about a child’s case. The child was afraid of the darkness, so his mother accompanied him every night and tried to coax him to sleep. But whenever the mother wants to turn off the lights and leave, the child will keep crying. The mother asks, "Why are you crying?" The child cries and says, "I'm afraid, the room is too dark." At this time, the mother has already noticed the child's purpose, and she asks, "Do you feel better after the mother comes back?" At this time, the child no longer cries.
We can also see that for children, darkness itself is not a problem. What this boy fears the most is actually the departure of his mother. So even if he cries and tries his best, he must keep his mother.
However, when he is a child, he can indeed gain more attention through this method and meet his various needs. But when he grows up, when he goes to society, is this method still feasible? The answer is of course no. This is also the reason why we say that some "parents" and "mama babies" are born.
In fact, everyone has a process of getting rid of self-centeredness, which does not happen naturally.For example, some parents will also say to their children: "Look at how hard you work for you, you can't be more obedient. Listen to our words and make them happy?" In fact, this is all a behavior of "requesting" and "coercing" from the other party from a personal perspective.
If a person wants to change this perspective, the key is whether he can develop a collective consciousness and consider the problem from a macro and collective perspective. For example, we will modify the sentence just now: "Look at how hard your parents work for our family, are you also taking action for our family and working together, okay?"
This converts the subject of life, not only focusing on "you, me, he" but also focusing on "communities", so that people can have concepts and consciousness similar to "communities" in their hearts, and it is easier to form a friendly relationship with others. Only relationships like
can free people from "self-centeredness", from accepting themselves to accepting others, to accepting the whole world, and realizing collective happiness. In order to achieve this, we can start from around us, such as our family, our classes, our company departments, etc., any group can try it, and it is also worth trying it. And when we turn our perspective from ourselves to the collective, you will find that a person’s respect, trust and love can actually be extended greatly, and you will truly experience the feeling of happiness.
