Peng Kaiping: May you live a life full of joy

Because of COVID-19, "quarantine" has suddenly become a familiar word and behavioral pattern for us - whether it is long or short, more or less, active or passive, we all reduce social interaction to a certain extent and enter different level of isolation.

“Such a large-scale social isolation will indeed have a huge impact on our work, life, emotions, learning and other aspects. We humans have a habit: do what we often do, and We live peacefully, comfortably and happily with regular things and scheduled things. But when the rules are broken, it is easy to produce various emotions: anxiety, fear, uncertainty... How to alleviate our anxiety during social isolation? How can we maintain our social relationships under such circumstances? In fact, we humans have five innate skills that do not require learning, imitation, or money..."

Before the Spring Festival, accept Beijing In an exclusive interview with the Daily and Beijing Daily clients, Peng Kaiping introduced his unique skill "Five Shis" to thousands of readers and viewers with a smile——

Yan Shi: Smile in front of the mirror every day, and face the mirror every day. A smile from a friend and a smile to nature every day will improve our mood.

Words: Maintaining the habit of communication is particularly important. For example, a husband and wife spend half an hour every day chatting about trivial things and sharing wonderful experiences.

Shenshi: People need to move. Don’t lie there all the time. If you can’t go out, you can do yoga, exercise, or even do some small housework, change clothes, and take a bath at home, which will change our mood.

Heart-to-heart advice: Open your heart. When you are in a bad mood, find someone to talk to. Psychological counseling is actually a kind of heart-to-heart talk. You don’t have to find an expert. You can also share it with friends and relatives.

Eyes: Use your wisdom eyes and Zen mind to discover the beautiful details around you, such as the advantages that have not been discovered before in your loved ones...

Psychological anti-epidemic

What is happening in front of you A friendly teacher Peng, who has various resounding titles: the founder of positive psychology in China, the dean of the School of Social Sciences and the director of the Department of Psychology at Tsinghua University. He has represented China at the United Nations "International Happiness Day" commemoration conference for two consecutive years. A big report, and the international citation rate of its scientific research results has been at the forefront of Chinese psychologists for many years...

With such a big figure in the academic field, I thought it would be difficult to get an interview, but unexpectedly I made an appointment, and the appointment was made Within a week, considering that it was difficult to enter the campus under the epidemic control, the interview location was thoughtfully arranged at an off-campus office of the Positive Psychology Research Center of Tsinghua University.

"Let's just chat casually." He took off the headphones that were in the online conference just now and said with a smile.

The topic starts with the psychological hotline set up by the Psychology Department of Tsinghua University for this epidemic.

At the beginning of the Gengzi period, the epidemic struck unexpectedly. Frontline medical staff wearing white protective suits have become the center of attention. In fact, there is a group of people working hard to build another line of defense against the epidemic in places we haven't paid attention to - in the cloud and on the phone lines.

On January 25, 2020, the first day of the Lunar New Year, the Department of Psychology of the School of Social Sciences of Tsinghua University and the Beijing Happiness Charity Foundation jointly launched the "Fight the Epidemic, Psychological Assistance" public welfare project - February 2 A 24-hour free emergency psychological assistance hotline was opened on February 9, a dedicated hotline for medical staff was opened on February 9, and a dedicated hotline for overseas Chinese and international students was opened on April 7. Volunteers for the hotline are selected from tens of thousands of people. They must not only have a background in professional psychology, but also master the methods of positive psychology. In terms of personality, they must have strong empathy and be good at motivating. The department also treats volunteers They have received professional training.

On the 120th day since the hotline was opened, the emergency psychological assistance phase has ended, and a longer-lasting normalized public welfare psychological service has been fully launched: in addition to the telephone (4000100525) form, there is also one-on-one psychological services online consultation, online group psychological counseling; inviting many Chinese psychological experts to provide professional training in clinical psychological counseling, psychological hotline technology, cross-cultural psychological counseling...

When the hotline was busiest, 13 seats were opened ( (including an English hotline), which by the end of 2020 had received more than 14,000 calls, provided 192 crisis interventions, with 0 errors, 0 complaints, and 0 accidents.

Tens of thousands of phone calls were made, and the key words were focused on "anxiety", worrying about themselves and their parents. The longest rescue lasted for 9 hours, with several people relaying layer by layer. Finally, the general manager came to the rescue, and finally stopped the thought of jumping off the building. "They made a phone call and took the first step to survive. Normal people may not take it seriously and think it is just nonsense, but for those who are struggling in the darkness of life, the psychological assistance hotline is a light. "Therefore, letting more people in need of help know about this hotline and this method has become Peng Kaiping's biggest concern.

Although their psychological assistance hotline has been listed on the State Council client, it has been used by officials at all levels including the National Health Commission, the China Government Website, the Beijing Municipal Government, the International Department of the Ministry of Education, the All-China Federation of Trade Unions, and the Chinese Psychological Society. It is recommended by institutions and authoritative departments, but Peng Kaiping said: "There are still too few people who know about it."

Patients' psychological recovery requires a process, and the families of those who died need psychological counseling. Affected by the epidemic, the depressed emotions caused by being unable to leave the house for a long time are also accumulating. Some people pay too much attention to negative information, some do not want to move, and those with particularly severe symptoms may vent their negative emotions on the people around them...

After all, the hotline can only passively provide help. How can we help more people adjust themselves and avoid panic? In this long and wide-ranging psychological anti-epidemic war, the Department of Psychology at Tsinghua University convened 23 psychologists, 186 supervisors, 3,453 volunteers, and 2,836 assistants to launch what can be called the largest psychological war in China. In addition to hotlines, intervention work also uses a variety of platforms to popularize psychological science among the public, with more than 200 million beneficiaries trained; the online version of the "Epidemic Response Safety Manual" has been published and has been read a total of 33.8 million times; Tsinghua University has even established a cross-border The "Psychological Rehabilitation Research Commando" of the discipline...

At the end of 2020, a new book titled "Live a Happy Life" was published. In the preface, Peng Kaiping wrote: "This special event in 2020 The battle may also remind us that happiness is the outpouring of blessings and thoughts to others, and happiness is the protection of peace and health. We must cherish the hard-won peaceful life, embrace each other, work together, and live happily and actively, even in the face of challenges. Despite pressure and difficulties, we must live out the feeling of elation. ”

Accident: The psychologist saved by Hongxue

In 1979, Peng Kaiping was admitted to Peking University from Yueyang, Hunan. He would become a top psychologist in the future, but when he was a freshman, he had poor grades in all subjects and spent most of his time in the library reading miscellaneous books. He only scored more than 60 points on his first general psychology exam. .

How can someone who can get into Peking University be a "scumbag"? The reason is simple - he was thinking about how not to study psychology.

The 1976 Tangshan Earthquake caused widespread concern among Chinese people about earthquake disasters across the country. Peng Kaiping, who was in junior high school at the time, was very interested in earthquakes and even invented a seismic detector by himself - an electrode circle was placed on a flat plate with a wine bottle in the middle. When the plate vibrated, the bottle would fall and hit the electrode circle. , that circle is connected to an alarm clock. As a result, the alarm rang the night after it was installed, and all the neighbors were alarmed. Everyone went out for a long time but there was no movement. Later, it was discovered that a mouse had knocked the bottle over.

“I studied science in high school. At that time, I dreamed of becoming a geophysicist who studies earthquakes. The college entrance examination application subjects were Peking University Physics and Geophysics.” But Peng Kaiping received the admission notice. But unexpectedly, I found that I was assigned to the Department of Psychology - I checked the box "Are you willing to obey the state's allocation?" and ended up having to study psychology? After calling the Peking University admissions teacher, I found out that the psychology department had just been established and students were transferred from various departments.

From that moment on, Peng Kaiping made up his mind to correct his attitude and study hard. It didn't take long for him to sprint to the top of the class. He was the youngest and made the fastest progress. Later, Peking University allowed him to stay at the school to teach because of his learning potential. After graduating in 1983, Peng Kaiping stayed at the school to work as an assistant to Professor Chen Zhonggeng, who studied personality and clinical psychology. He started teaching in 1985, and the first course he taught at Peking University was "Psychological Testing". Later, he served as a class teacher, counselor and secretary to the department director of the Department of Psychology at Peking University, and later became an assistant to the department director.

Now, as the dean of the School of Social Sciences at Tsinghua University, Peng Kaiping welcomes new students and bids off the graduating students on behalf of the school every year. Regarding the confusion of young students, he gave a professional explanation: "No one's life is smooth sailing. Many troubles are caused by you thinking too much and doing too little, which may not really be worth worrying about. Even if You did accidentally make a less than ideal choice. There is still a long way to go in life. You can adjust your direction and run towards new goals. "When facing major choices in life, I think the two most important points are: clarity. Choose standards and actively take action. ”

Choice: Trade-offs at the corner of life

Once upon a time, Peng Kaiping had the opportunity to work in a central government agency. Facing the "opportunity", my mentor Professor Chen Zhonggeng said something meaningful: "Young man, you must seriously think about what kind of career is most suitable for you, especially don't let your future self regret the decision you make now." Professor Chen helped Peng Kaiping carefully analyze his personality characteristics, academic background and the status and influence of psychology in China. "In the end, we all agreed that as one of the first batch of graduates from the Psychology Department of Peking University to teach in the 1980s, , I can make special contributions to myself, Peking University and the Chinese psychology field by staying in the psychology field."

As expected, Peng Kaiping later chose to engage in psychological testing research and became one of the earliest scholars in this field in China. , his book "Psychological Testing" was published in 1988 and was the first domestic textbook on psychological testing at that time.

In May 1997, Peng Kaiping received a doctorate in social psychology from the University of Michigan. His mentor, the famous psychologist Professor Richard Nisbet, approached him to discuss his future plans - should he go to a university to continue psychological research, or should he become an executive in a multinational company? "What is your 'soul's call'?"

"The word "soul's call" shocked Peng Kaiping and made him never forget it. He is determined to do what excites and excites him, and to do what others cannot.

In that year, Peng Kaiping actually received teaching appointment letters from 15 universities, including Cornell University, University of Illinois and other prestigious schools; the University of Chicago Business School even generously offered him a An annual salary of US$100,000 was a very high salary at the time. But Professor Tian Changlin, the president of the University of California, Berkeley, impressed Peng Kaiping with a sentence: "You should be a person of historical significance, do things of historical significance, and do things that others cannot do... You have the opportunity to become a member of the world-famous Berkeley University The first Chinese psychologist since its founding 130 years ago.” Professor Tian Changlin who spoke these words is precisely the first Chinese president in Berkeley’s history.

In this way, Peng Kaiping chose Berkeley, which also set a precedent for later Chinese scholars to teach in the Department of Psychology at Berkeley.

China needs positive psychology

Obtained tenured teaching positions in psychology and East Asian studies at Berkeley, a century-old university, and was appointed director of the social and personality psychology major at the University of California and the Scientific Leadership Council of the American Psychological Association. member and other international positions. In 2008, Peng Kaiping, who “always felt that his ideals had not yet been realized,” returned to Beijing to help Tsinghua University rebuild the Department of Psychology.

There are many stories circulating in the society that Peking University and Tsinghua University are "in love and killing each other." Why was he, a Peking University graduate, invited to Tsinghua University to serve as the first director of the psychology department after the reconstruction?

In fact, Tsinghua University established a psychology department as early as the 1920s. Wang Guowei, one of the four major tutors of Tsinghua University, was the first scholar to introduce psychology to China. His famous "Human Words" Also comes from the psychological theory "The Three Stages of Enlightenment." The psychology departments of Peking University and Tsinghua University have the same roots. In 1952, the Department of Psychology of Tsinghua University was reorganized and merged into Peking University. Peng Kaiping, who stayed at Peking University, even worked as an assistant to Mr. Zhou Xiangeng for a period of time - Mr. Zhou was the founder of experimental and applied psychology in China and the last chair of the psychology department at Tsinghua University before the department reorganization. In the face of several invitations from Tsinghua leaders to go to the United States, and in the face of Mr. Zhou Xiangeng’s son bringing his father’s last wish, hoping that Peng Kaiping would help Tsinghua restore the Department of Psychology, Peng Kaiping embarked on a journey to return to China to “help.”

When Peng Kaiping entered Tsinghua University, he was accompanied by two fresh and unfamiliar words - positive psychology and happiness technology.

These are the two directions he chose: one is to use the engineering advantages of Tsinghua University to do technological psychology, and the other is to do positive psychology. Positive psychology is a brand new field, first proposed in 1997. "The biggest challenge facing mankind in the 21st century is not pollution, war, famine and plague. The cause of the largest number of human casualties is low happiness." Positive psychology proposes to pay attention to and study the inner positive power of people.

Living in this era, we should be happy, with abundant material resources and developed information... However, too many people often feel anxious, irritable, depressed, and have difficulty concentrating. Why? Because the economy, society, culture and other aspects have changed dramatically, our psychological construction has not kept up. "We are all working overtime and rushing, we want to get rich, we are constantly involved in involution and comparison... These are the driving force for action, but the psychological damage caused is also huge. So we often see people on the Internet and in life because of a little Angry anger occurs over trivial matters, sleep quality decreases, depression patients increase, and anxiety is everywhere... This post-modernization trap is a common problem faced by people all over the world, and many developed countries have experienced it. The key is how to get rid of it. Coping, solving? " Peng Kaiping believes that Chinese psychology has obvious biological, economical and pathological tendencies in the past stage, which should be changed and more attention should be paid to and studied on how to improve people's positive tendencies and psychological potential. This is both a social demand and a paradigm shift in the discipline.

He pointed out that for positive psychology to take root and flourish in China, it needs to be adapted to daily life, technology, Chineseness and popularization.

Science and technology includes science and technology, science seeks truth and technology seeks application. The Happiness Technology Laboratory (H+Lab), jointly established by the Department of Psychology at Tsinghua University and TusHoldings, is the world's first research laboratory on happiness technology and is a technology entrepreneurship initiative of the Department of Psychology at Tsinghua University. From brain-computer interface to artificial intelligence, from sleep technology to positive education, are you anxious? Come on, you can measure it with saliva... The brand image of the laboratory is three-dimensional H, which represents happiness, health and harmony.

He strives to match the concepts, views, and thoughts of positive psychology with traditional Chinese wisdom, such as translating "positive nature" into "conscience" and the practice method of positive psychology called "unity of knowledge and action" ", translating flow into "blessed flow"...

He is firmly at the forefront of the promotion and popularization of positive psychology. His Weibo is updated frequently and contains many short videos. Each topic is a hot topic in society and a pain point in life - the draft Family Education Law is submitted for deliberation. He talks about "the four negative psychological effects of parents spanking their children"; we spend every day He spends a lot of time on social media, talking about "data emotional infection" and telling you "don't let online information control your emotions"; not long ago, his public welfare video "Tsinghua Psychology Professor Reveals the Five Major PUA Routines" was even posted on Weibo. Bohot search...

At the end of last year, his new book "Live a Happy Life" teaches anxious people how to save themselves from unhappiness, teaches young people how to become popular people, and warns parents not to use praise " Kidnapping "children...it boils down to one thing: teach you how to gain happiness from everyday little things."

The "Happy Gardener" program they launched went to campus to promote positive psychology. "I think positive psychology may be a carrier that can help psychology get out of the ivory tower and go to the public."

"I clearly promote Chicken Soup for the Soul"

Happiness is not just a concept , "I think it's false because I don't understand."

Chicken soup for the soul, Ah Q spirit, blind optimism...Positive psychology seems to have become accustomed to such misunderstandings. "The optimism we advocate is not equal to the Ah Q spirit. It is not a spiritual victory over the negative things in the past, but a positive belief in the future. It is an action force that believes that tomorrow will be better. It is a positive influence on us. A kind of positive guidance based on a clear understanding of reality."

Peng Kaiping smiled and "whitened" Chicken Soup for the Soul: "Our language is often too realistic, too dark, and too critical of our past. He always talks about things that are cynical, sarcastic, and cynical, and he thinks they are particularly wise. In fact, they are poison. In other countries, "chicken soup for the soul" is a compliment, but in China it is a derogation.

Chicken soup always has a nourishing effect. I promote chicken soup for the soul with a clear-cut stance - the key depends on whether it is real chicken soup or chicken essence, whether it is real or false. What we are against is not chicken soup, but hypocrisy. ”

It has been less than 10 years since the establishment of the World Positive Psychology Society, and the China Positive Psychology Conference was held only 3 years later than the World Positive Psychology Conference. The University of California rated the World Positive Psychology Tsinghua University is one of the six major centers for learning. Last year, the Chinese Psychological Society established the Positive Psychology Professional Committee.

He has many golden words, and I have been struggling with them for a long time. I chose this sentence as the end of this article. : “Happiness is often misunderstood as simple joy and immediate emotion, but true happiness requires reason, wisdom and struggle.

Source Beijing Daily

Author Zhao Ting

Process editor Tai Shaofeng