2015 19th Friday "Elephant and Elephant Man" "transient" reading notes

Jonathan Haidt, a psychologist at the University of Virginia, in his book "Elephant and Elephant Rider", parallels: The emotional side of us is an elephant. And the rational side of us is the elephant's "Riding elephant". Sitting on the back of an elephant, the cyclist had the power to appear to be the dominant elephant. But in fact, the Elephant rider's control is not stable. Because he is so insignificant compared with the elephant. Whenever the 6-ton elephant is unwilling to move in the direction he points out, the rider loses the initiative and is completely defeated. For the vast majority of us, elephants defeat the Elephant rider, which is something we have become accustomed to in our lives.

Jonathan likens himself to elephant riding and elephants. The metaphor is inspired by the author's experience of horseback riding. Once the author rode an outing, he felt that the horse was controlled by himself, and was complacent; suddenly, the twists and turns, came to the edge of the cliff, he scared silly, forgot how to control, and his horse in his nothing to do the case, continue to move forward, and did not lose control and fell out of the abyss. After a cold sweat, the author suddenly has an epiphany: you sit on horseback, it seems that the reins can command the horse to turn, walk, forward and backward, but only when the horse is willing to listen to you when this is effective; if the horse has his own ideas, you have no way. In fact, the horse does not need your command in many cases. As a psychologist, the author of the Epiphany immediately after the association: human self-image is not a horse riding in the immediate people?
Next, the author from Lenovo back to the speculation, he used scientific language to explain this. From a psychological point of view, man is a complex body. People are not only the body of the mind, left brain right brain, emotional rational complex, the most important is the automation system and the control system of the complex. That is to say, our human psychology is controlled and automated by two systems of dual control. It is sensible and emotional, conscious and unconscious. Perhaps in the author's view, the person to some extent, the uncontrolled tendency is more prominent, so he replaced the horse with an elephant-the control system is a riding elephant on the back of a man, refers to the rational, conscious, controlled thinking, in addition, including the inner feeling, instinctive reaction, emotion, intuition ... Wait, it's the elephant. The author concludes that the so-called ego is the combination of elephant riding and elephants.

How can life be happy? The author's answer is: love and work. This is actually the wisdom of the predecessors. Freud said more than 100 years ago, Tolstoy has said almost the same thing: "As long as people know how to work, how to love, people can live a wonderful life in the world." The author adds, he analyses, that most people have three attitudes to work: errands, careers, vocation. But this division and the work itself does not necessarily have a relationship. A company executive can work as an errand, but a hospital handyman can assume that his job is a vocation. The key is: What do you think the job is and what it is.

1. The basic principle of elephant and rider: elephants (emotions) are responsible for most of the work, whereas the riding Elephant (rationality) acts only as a consultant or servant, and our rationality works only when the emotional brain runs smoothly.
The level of the elephant: body, right brain, irrational, subconscious, automated, difficult to control
The level of the Elephant Man: The Mind, the left brain, the reason, the consciousness, the control

2. Theory of control and Automation:
1) elephants contain our inner feelings, instinctive reactions, emotions and intuition, which are the constituent elements of an automated system, and the elephant rider is conscious and controlled thinking.
2) Most of the psychological process occurs automatically, without our conscious attention or control, although we sometimes perceive the flow of "stream of consciousness", but it is to follow its own rules of association, without laborious guidance. With this relative control process is quite a bother, we can only consciously think of one thing at a time, if the two direct confrontation, the end result must be automation to win.
3. Emotional Intelligence: Understanding the ability to control your feelings and desires. For example, those who can withstand the temptation of candy for a while to obtain more candy children, not only by willpower, but using their own limited self-control to divert attention, a person with high emotional IQ, his heart of the Elephant rider must be skilled, know not to direct conflict with the elephants will be the case, Skillfully distract the elephant's attention and soothe the elephant obey orders.

4 Why does the brain try not to think of something, and it pours into my mind?
1) When the control process attempts to influence the brain's thinking (don't think of something), it actually has a definite goal. Every time we pursue a goal, a part of the psyche automatically monitors progress in order to make the necessary corrections or to guide the achievement of the goals. The brain feedback system works well when the target is the target of action (e.g., arriving at the airport on time), and when the target is a mental target, the brain's response system is in trouble, so automated processing is constantly self-checking and the idea runs out immediately.
2) A simple example: the idea in the mind of our party is "don't make a fool of yourself", and the automated process begins to search for any clues that are related to stupidity.

When 52 of people disagree about something, they actually feel the first, and then come up with reasons to refute each other. Elephants decide right and wrong, beauty is ugly, and ride-like people put together a statement, the reason for their rebuttal to tell each other, as a lawyer role.

6 As long as we can control our own interpretation of the event, we can control our own world, most of the epiphany is only three minutes of heat, the only way is to retrain the elephant, rather than convince the ride Elephant Man
1) meditation. Consciously take control of your thoughts, concentrate on them, and empty your mind. Meditation is about changing the automated thinking process and taming the elephant in your heart. When you lift your attachment, it means you tame the elephant in your heart.
For the Buddha, psychological attachment is like gambling roulette, someone else in the wheel control the game: the more addicted to it, the worse the loss. The only way to win is to leave the table. The only way to leave the table and not care about the ups and downs of life is to meditate and tame the Restless heart. When you give up the joy of winning, you lose the pain, and the latter is definitely higher than the former.
2) Cognitive therapy. Depressed people have three kinds of cognition, namely "I am a bad person", "My World is Dark", "My future is hopeless". Automated thinking in a depressed, melancholy human brain is often filled with all sorts of constructive grey thoughts, especially when things go wrong.
The most important thing about cognitive therapy is to train patients to master their own ideas, write down their ideas, point to distortions, and then find alternatives and more correct ways of thinking. The success of cognitive therapy is that it teaches elephant riders how to train elephants, rather than simply arguing with elephants and defeating elephants.
Only a little bit to change their own automated thinking process in order to change their emotional style in the process. In fact, many therapists combine the techniques advocated by cognitive therapy and activism to create what we call "cognitive behavioral therapy" today.
3) Prozac solution. Prozac is what we generally call "selective serotonin re-absorption inhibitor (SSRI)" Anti-depression drugs, such as: Paxil, Zoloft, Celexa, Lexapro and so on. Prozac enters the synapses first, but it is selectively only affecting synapses that use serotonin as the nerve conduction. Once in such synapses, Prozac resists the process of re-absorption. Those who take Prozac, the serotonin of some synapses in the brain will be higher, so the response of the connected neurons will be more frequent.
Another myth about Prozac is that Prozac increases the concentration of nerve growth hormones in the hippocampus of the brain. Because people who show negative emotional style, their blood pressure hormone concentration is usually relatively high, these stress hormones are high, it is easy to kill the important cells in the hippocampus, and one of the functions of the hippocampus is to cut off will kill their own pressure response. As a result, people with negative emotional styles may often suffer from minor neurological damage to the hippocampus of their brain.
At the moment, we're not quite sure how to use it, but we know it works: no matter what kind of mental illness, such as depression, anxiety-induced disorders, panic disorder, social phobia, pre-menstrual anxiety disorder, eating disorders and obsessive-compulsive disorder, Prozac effects are better than placebo or non-therapeutic control groups.
But the public debate about Prozac is mainly two points: first, this is the practice of copying shortcuts; second, Prozac does not only relieve symptoms, but sometimes change the patient's personality.

7 personality can be divided into three levels: the lowest level is the "basic material" (most people focus on this), the second level is "individual sexual adjustment" (including personal goals, defense and adaptation mechanisms, values, beliefs, etc.), the third level is to make up "life story", so-Called Life story is: In the Long river, People from their own experience of the impermanence of the story of the subjective, without these life impermanence, joys and sorrows, is not a wonderful life story.
People in the "individual sexual adjustment" This personality level of the pursuit of life goals, can be divided into four categories: work and achievement, interpersonal relationships and intimacy, religion and spirituality, productivity (contribution to society and leave the legacy of society).

8 when life is in crisis, our approach to crisis can be divided into three basic ways: actively face (take action directly to solve the problem), re-evaluate (first to clarify their own ideas, and then find their own favorable practice), to avoid (deny or evade the occurrence of the incident, or by alcohol, drugs, etc. to suppress their emotional response).
People with basic optimistic personality traits (first-level personality traits) develop a set of approaches (second-level personality traits) that alternate between positive and re-evaluation.

9 It is not the optimistic mentality that can grow after adversity, but the sense of the event that the optimistic person can easily find out.
Anyone can benefit from adversity, but pessimistic people have to take a bit more effort, consciously taking some steps, through self-directed psychology slowly to the straight path. The first step is to change your cognitive style before encountering adversity, and secondly, to cherish and build your own social support network; third, religious beliefs and rituals can help us grow, because religious beliefs and rituals not only directly allow us to find the meaning of events, but also strengthen our social support; Whether you're ready or not, once you have a problem with your life, after a few months, be sure to take out a piece of paper and write down your feelings. Write down the event process in 1510 and answer both questions before you make a conclusion: why did the event happen? What good lessons can I learn from myself?
10 Classification of Knowledge: Explicit Knowledge (Explicit) and tacit knowledge (tacit)
Explicit knowledge refers to the fact that we know, consciously speaking, that we are not restricted by time and space conditions. Tacit failure is the process (emphasizing "Knowing the reason", not "knowing it"), to take and this kind of knowledge does not need other people to help, but with personal values. The tacit knowledge exists in the elephant, it is the skill that the elephant accumulates from the life experience. and tacit knowledge will change with the environment of time and space. Wisdom comes from tacit knowledge.

0. Basic Framework for change:
-Provides the direction for the Elephant rider. Seemingly bigotry on the surface, but in fact the lack of clear goals, so to provide clear direction.
-Let the elephant move up. Seemingly lazy on the surface, it is often because it is exhausted. It is not possible for a cyclist to force an elephant to accomplish its goal, so it is crucial that you involve the emotional side of the mind.
-form a specific path. It looks like a human problem, but it's often a matter of the outside world. We make the external environment a "path". When you can form a specific path, it's easier to change, no matter what happens to the elephant and elephants.
Help the Elephant Man: Find the Shining spot for your change:
1. The deceptive nature of the brain: by allowing people to understand a problem in a different way, you can turn an elusive change into an easy-to-achieve change that changes someone's behavior and you need to change the environment around that person.
(case: For a different model of two barrels of popcorn, although the popcorn is damp, and the amount is plenty, but the size of the people still eat more than 53%, and they all think that their appetite determines the results of the study rather than the model of popcorn.) ）
2. Willpower is an exhausting resource, and studies have found that people who have previously been asked to resist temptation with self-control have dropped their self-control in another matter.
3. The elephant rider has a deadly weakness, which is that it is likely to be trapped in a spinning halt. Riding elephant people like to think and analyze, and to make things worse, the focus of his analysis is always a problem rather than a bright spot.
4. There is a clear asymmetry between the size of the problem and the degree of resolution. The problem is large, but the solution may be small, and it is this asymmetry that makes the elephant's preference for analysis a step in place.
5. Focus on the highlights. Successful cases and bright spots not only provide a roadmap for change, but also provide hope.
Help the Elephant Man: Find the key steps:
6. Decision-making requires a careful management and self-control of the elephant, and the energy is quickly consumed. The more choices you provide, the more likely you become exhausted.
7. The change brings a new set of options and creates new uncertainties. Ambiguity is the great enemy of change.
8. Any successful change requires the process of translating the objective into a specific act.
Help the Elephant Man: Let the rider find the way to change
9. Elephant Riders make short-term sacrifices in order to gain long-term returns, while elephants are satisfied with their immediate needs.
10. When you paint a compelling destination, you help the Elephant Man overcome one of the weaknesses. The weakness is that he unknowingly lost himself in the process of analysis.
11. For the elephant rider, the constant analysis of the problem will bring him more satisfaction than the real solution to the problem.
12. Changing enemies-the rationalization trend. When elephants are desperate for something, the Elephant rider becomes untrustworthy, destroying the rules that people set for themselves and seeking reasons for rationalization.
13. A clear goal (SMART: Clear, measurable, accessible, relevant, and immediate) is the ability to tell the rider exactly where it is and why it is worthwhile to go to the destination.
14. If you are concerned about the possibility of "making the breach reasonable", you need to eliminate the ambiguity in the target, and you have to propose a "black-and-white" goal.
15. Do not attempt each step is predetermined in advance, as long as you go to the next step, the situation has changed, you just need to know where your direction (start and end), where is now.
Manage your elephant: Let it find the feeling:
16. In a normal environment: analysis-thinking-the paradigm of change seems to work, however, the future is uncertain and a more rational pattern is: observation-perception-change.
17. Change is irrelevant to a person's understanding, but to his feelings. It is this sense of identity that enables me to do and really take responsibility.
18. At the time of self-assessment, elephants tend to interpret reality in the most optimistic way, a "dream of success" that makes it harder for people to know exactly where they are.
19. We need to create a sense of fear or anxiety, and these negative emotions can make our attention more focused.
Manage your elephant: lower the threshold for change
20. People feel more motivated to walk through the distances that are longer but have been taken, as compared to a shorter journey from the beginning. One way to make people more motivated to act is to make them feel that they are closer to completing the task than their ideas.
21. One reason to dare not change is to be afraid-to be successful, we must do it thoroughly, and the things that need to be done seem too much.
22. "5 minute cleaning rule": Once you start cleaning your room, you probably won't be able to really stop cleaning in 5 minutes. You're amazed at how fast things can improve and start to be proud of what you've accomplished.
23. If people are facing a difficult task, and their instinctive response is to escape, then you have to break down the whole task. Reduce the threshold of change to a point where the task is small to allow people to win.
24. A small victory reduces its importance (which is not a big deal), lowers the requirements (which is what needs to be done), and increases people's awareness of their own level (and I Can). These three factors can make the change easier.
Manage your elephant: Increase your popularity
25. People with "stereotypes" tend to avoid accepting any challenge, while the "growing" mindset believes that ability can be enhanced through practice.
26. In making changes, we need to remind ourselves and others again and again of the basic fact that our brains and abilities are like muscle I, which can become stronger through practice.
Let the elephant find a new way: change the external environment
27. Basic Attribution Error: We mistakenly blame people's behavior solely on their own nature, but ignore the environment they are in.
28. A twist in the entire environment can bring about great changes in behaviour.
Let the elephant find a new way: form a new habit
29. Action Trigger: When you meet a definite situation, you make a decision to achieve a clear plan of action
30. The value of the action trigger is: it means that we have made a decision beforehand. Situational-in the cycle of action, there is no conscious deliberation, and this avoids the loss of the rider's energy for self-control.
31. When people make decisions beforehand, they give the decision to control their actions to the surrounding environment. In essence, a cyclist overcomes an elephant by handing the decision over to the environment.
32. The role of action triggers is to create an "immediate habit".
33. The list can perfectly integrate the two measures of reversing the environment and building habits, and in a complex environment, checklists can help people avoid blind spots.
Let the elephant find a new way: pressure from the peer
34. Behavior is contagious at both the individual and the group level.
35. The reason why you do so is because you see that people around you are doing the same.

Change always seems so difficult, because the status quo makes people feel stable, and change brings a series of uncertainties, job-hopping? Where to? What's going on? What if the next job is worse than this? This ambiguity will exhaust our energy, not to meet the future let us fear, so many people secretly decided to "or hide what do not want to go now walk ripe road." ”
People always change when a crisis has to be changed, which means that we need to create a sense of fear or anxiety artificially. (for example, Ren's philosophy of management, fear has been great, to instill in the "now and then there is a tight front, the back of the Kuomintang culture of tight eating" idea. ）
Negative emotions are always more to our attention. You see, countless novels have gained a reputation for focusing on marital problems, and never have a successful novel about a happy marriage. Suppose in such a world, when a husband forgets his wife's birthday, the wife gives her husband a kiss and says, "in the last 14 years, you have remembered my birthday 13 times!" It's awesome! "Take advantage of negative emotions to make life better and make change easier."

Experiment One:
A movie, free popcorn for the audience, big barrels with buckets. At the end of the movie, the man who got the big bucket ate 53% more popcorn than the man who got the small bucket. So Start from the source and take precautions. ）
Experiment Two:
Run-and-jump alarm clock: Run away from your bed after you start ringing and run around the bedroom, forcing you to get up and turn it off. Sold 35,000 in the first two years at a price of $50 (naturally unlikely to occur in China). See, each of us have a certain degree of "schizophrenia", rational tell us should be self-control, should get up, but irrational but let us feel as if to sleep on a few minutes, life will not ask for the general.
Self-control, self-control, sounds like only a group of successful people like genius. Self-control is a kind of resources can be exhausted, a vulgar metaphor, when you as a straight man, a second just endure the torment of the heart refused a beautiful beauty of the cast bosom, after a second in the face of the windfall, you are more likely to stand up to their own.
Look at the experiment three:
The two groups had some hungry students entering a room, there are two bowls on the table, a fresh chocolate chip with a fragrant aroma, a piece of radish, a group of people are asked to eat a few pieces of chocolate chip cookies, the other group was asked to eat a few pieces of radish, and then the experimental staff left, the effect is very good, we are very obedient, very self-control. Then another group of experimenters came in, asking them to test their ability to solve problems, and to list a series of puzzles, naturally these puzzles are non-solvable. As a result, the group that ate chocolate cookies persisted for 19 minutes, and the group that ate the carrot block and did not eat chocolate cookies only tried for 8 minutes to give up, and they had just been consumed with too much self-control. It's like a muscle that starts with a lot of energy, and as the practice increases, the muscles become tired and end up in the dish. (So, if you want to change the way you want to persist, don't let other things burn too much energy.) ）


Specify the direction, kill the decision paralysis, clear the steps

When you face Huawei, Procter and Gamble, Microsoft China, Google, hammer mobile phones and other enterprises to hand over the offer, you tangled, melancholy, scratching ears scratching the cheek, alas, the sound of gas, this is called the happiness of the trouble, in fact, is cheap. Well, there's a technical term called "paralysis of decisions." (So, do you know where your destination is?) ）
"Boating, swimming, shopping or an outing?" "" bread, plum, potato chips, wow fresh orange buy two give one, Coke buy two get one! Well, what do you buy? "Every time I finish the supermarket, I will try to finish the test." Next time do not give a bunch of choices to let you chase the girl picked, directly tell her how the ground is OK.
Surface stubbornness is often caused by lack of clear direction, weight loss? You should not just tell yourself that you want to eat a little healthier, eat a little bit, and get clear and clear, do not eat pork, only drink skim milk. Want your subordinates to make their work a little more detailed next time? Silly not to pull a few orders him: "Next time carefully!" "It just keeps the picture going, and the right way is to tell him:" First, what you do, second, what you do ... "the clear and clear steps of the planning Office make it easier to change. What a silly thing to know why the two-cornered girl said, "Go where you like, where you want to go"?

Emotional identity is the first productive force to change

In a high-end community, a researcher who went from house to house to tell the heads of household that they were a "safe driving" volunteer, asked if they would like to insert a "careful driving" billboard on their lawn (look ugly), and 83% rejected it.
In another community, another volunteer first asked the householder to put a small "safe driving" sign in their house or car, the sign was less than the size of the postcard, the heads of household agreed, after two weeks, volunteers to ask for the billboard, 76% of the heads of households accepted.
The third community, volunteers asked them in the "Keep XX Beautiful" The proposal signed, the head of the household almost all signed, two weeks later, they were also asked to insert billboards, the results of 50% people agree. You can not imagine "keep xx beautiful" and careful driving what is the relationship, but they did so, signed to let them consciously have a sense of responsibility, emotional touch extends to other seemingly irrelevant things.
It's just an emotional kidnapping. Apply to the self-change, the first is the initiative to find brain brainwashing opportunities (chicken soup, inspirational crock soup, etc.), and the second is self-brainwashing (active self-suggestive motivation). Imagine a MLM person, and then look at the actions of the brain residue, and know how powerful emotional identity.


Looking for a successful case, the cottage

"Ah! , the child has no medicine to save! "Alas, my husband and I quarrel every day, can not live!" "When we say these words, we are desperate." But is the true immortal also difficult to save? Have you ever wondered what happened to this kid when he was quiet and obedient? Have you ever wondered what happened to you and your husband during the rare period of peaceful coexistence?
An alcoholic may be asked this question: When is the last time you can stay awake for one or two hours? Or a long-time couple, the wife should be asked: When was the last time you felt your husband was listening wholeheartedly to your speech?
In each case, there are some exceptions, and once these exceptions are found, copying the cottage after analysis seems to be a lot easier than the instead focusing without a clue. (To find a successful case, we are in the cottage electronics and other products have been so good, to use life, nature should be a cinch, how I think of "My success can be reproduced")


Decomposition of the target, that what, not accumulate kuibu can not go very far

"200 pounds weight, alas, 150 and 50 catty." "The thought of this whole person is not good, so discouraged."
"How long will it take to chew a book so thick?" Oh, forget it. "Finish losing the book and keep playing with the computer." You are too far-sighted to set goals too high, always let yourself die on the starting line. In fact, starting a task you don't want to do is a harder part than continuing. When you see a room full of dirty things, you should tell yourself, "Just put the jewelry on the table for 5 minutes." "In fact, once you start, many times you are surprised to find that things are out of hand, you actually swept the room clean." The next thing to do is to start again and again and slowly get used to it. Break down the puzzle and each part looks kinder. For an alcoholic, he immediately decided that a glass of wine would not be stained for the rest of his life, and it sounded absurd, and the next day's goal of not drinking seemed more plausible.


Changing the Environment

Why are some children deliberately violating the rules? Because they usually have an illusion: you are the one who dares to be a hero. What needs to be done now is for others to show contempt for and disgust at this behavior.
Designing an environment in which the things that are rational and unwilling to do are not only more difficult, even impossible. For example, to abstain from the habit of network, direct non-networking is the best policy; buy an ipad originally wanted to read a book, the results picked up and started the game, the final solution is to replace the ipad with the Kindle, can only read, and nothing else can do. Making mistakes becomes impossible is the best way to curb the mistakes. This is not only to kill the difficulties in the cradle, is to directly kill sperm, so that difficulties can not be born.
Find a partner: The perception of a group. Whether intentional or unintentional, we will imitate the behavior of others, especially when the environment is unfamiliar or the situation is unclear, we are more likely to follow suit. The survey showed that towel reuse increased by 26% when you put a note on the hotel towel that says "most of this hotel guests will use the towel again at least once during their stay." They accepted the group information.

Once the change begins, it will continue to strengthen itself. "Simple exposure effect": the more you touch something, the more you like it. When the Eiffel Tower was first built, Parisians hated it and felt that the ugly thing was degrading to the city, and now the Eiffel Tower has become the glory of the Parisian face. So, hold on for a while.
How to change?
1) Provide direction to the rider.
A. Outlining key steps
B. Point of destination
C. Replication success stories
D. Finding the Shining spot
　　
2) Let the elephant move.
A. Lowering the threshold for change
B. Seeking a sense of identity
C. Find the Feeling
D. Let your people grow
E. Give confidence to your own people
F. Building a sense of identity
G. Building a growth mindset
　　
3) Build the environment
A. Form a habit
B. Attention to the role of the people around
C. Shaping the environment
E. Using/Leveraging the power of the community
F. Breaking the environment
G. Reversing the environment
In making changes, we need to remind ourselves and others once and for all the basic facts: our brains and abilities are like muscles, and we can get stronger by practicing. We are not born skateboards, scientists and nurses, we have to learn how to be these people. And the reason we can endure the pain in this midst stems from the desire to live in that capacity. The kind of person we want to be, let's make the necessary changes.

　　　

2015 19th Friday "Elephant and Elephant Man" "transient" reading notes