Among all the books I have read this year, the one that touched and inspired me the most was Li Ruiqiu's "Open the Mind".
In the past, I sometimes felt dissatisfied with my way of doing things and the things I have done, but I don’t know how to do it better.
After reading this book, I realized that the reason for this is because my way of thinking is worth improving.
Every year, someone will give themselves an annual wish list, such as reading 20 books, exercising every day to reach 10,000 steps, and reducing body weight by 3 kilograms.
I have done this myself, but I have a full and realistic backbone, and few wishes have been realized, and most of the others have given up halfway.
The reason is that most people think that they lack willpower and poor self-discipline.
But in this book, this idea is inaccurate. The real reason is that we do not really understand the characteristics of the brain and therefore fail to take the right approach.
In order to better seek benefits and avoid harm and give us a sense of security, after billions of years of evolution, our brains have the following characteristics: try to seek energy saving and stability.
In other words, he likes to take shortcuts and hopes to act in the simplest way; he likes to maintain the status quo, hoping that everything is certain and controllable.
If we don’t have the habit of reading, but we hope to read dozens of books every year, or if we don’t have the habit of exercise, but we hope to walk thousands of steps every day, this will make the brain feel uncomfortable because it breaks the status quo of his habit.
Therefore, even if you force yourself to read or exercise, you will encounter instinctive resistance from your brain, and it is not surprising that you can't stick to it.
so, how to do it better? The advice given in this book is to reduce the difficulty and start with small changes.
This is because our brain has another characteristic: it is malleable, but you must not be too hasty.
Take reading as an example. At first, you can pick up a book and read it casually, even if you read it for five minutes. This is not difficult, and the brain will not have obvious resistance.
This lasts for a period of time, and the brain will slowly adapt to reading because it has become a new "status".
When you can find fun in reading, it will help you develop the habit of reading. The same is true for
exercise. At first, as long as you can convince yourself to move, don’t care too much about the length of time.
Change the angle. This book does not agree with the quantitative goals of setting 20 books and 10,000 steps, and believes that this does not really solve the problem.
This is because, everything has multiple metrics. When you emphasize and highlight one of the standards, it is easy to ignore other standards.
Take reading as an example. In addition to paying attention to reading a few books, you should also pay attention to what you think and gain through reading. Otherwise, no matter how much you read the book, if you leave nothing after reading it, then this kind of reading will not be of much significance.
Similarly, the fundamental meaning of exercise is to improve health, so you cannot just focus on the amount of exercise.
In this book, there is a chapter about emotions, which is also something we tend to think and do wrong.
In daily life, we are often invaded by some negative emotions, such as anger, fear and anxiety. They are like quagmire, and once they encounter them, we often get deeply trapped in them and can’t extricate ourselves.
In fact, emotions are the "alarm" preinstalled by the brain, which can help us quickly deal with various situations and survive better, especially in primitive society. But today, this kind of "alarm" often seems too sensitive.
After realizing this, when we encounter negative emotions again, we can remind ourselves to try to remove the alarm. One of the recommended methods in
book is "expressive writing", that is, record your own mood, feelings and thoughts without considering words, rhetoric and word selection. After writing, you often find that what troubles you are not worth mentioning at all.
After reading the book "Open the Mind", I remembered the sentence from Confucius , "If you want to do a good job, you must first sharpen your tools." To do things well, we often need to change our thinking style first.
. If you want to make some changes, the most effective way is undoubtedly to learn. You can learn from great people, and of course you can also learn through reading.
In this regard, I believe this book can help you.
