? Su Dongpo Effect: I don't know the true face of Lushan Mountain, but toward which corner of the mountain.

As the saying goes, "people are expensive and have self-knowledge." We should see our strengths and weaknesses at the same time. Only in this way can we know ourselves correctly, foster strengths and avoid weaknesses in our study and work, and achieve good results.

There is such a joke: In ancient times, an emissary escorted a monk to the county seat. While he was eating in a hotel, the messenger got drunk and fell asleep. The monk took the opportunity to shave his hair and ran away.

When he woke up, he was surprised to find that one person was missing. However, when he touched his bald head, he immediately turned from shock to joy: "Fortunately, the monk is still there." But suddenly he was confused again: "Where am I?"

This joke well reflects two poems of the poet Su Dongpo: "I don't know the true face of Lushan Mountain, but toward which corner of the mountain." These two poems not only contain a discussion of society and life, but also a beautiful footnote in self-knowledge. Throughout the ages, what people want to know most but are most difficult to understand is themselves. It is easy for a person to know others, but it is difficult to know himself. Obviously, I stand in this mountain, but I can't see my true face. Obviously, I have a "self", but I can't fully understand this "self". This phenomenon that it is difficult to know oneself correctly is a psychological effect, which social psychology calls "Su Dongpo effect".

An American psychologist did an experiment, which proved that people are easy to flatter themselves, that is, they like to exaggerate their own advantages and narrow their own shortcomings. Psychologists have found 25 people, all of whom are old acquaintances, so they know each other better. Psychologists ask them to rank everyone, including themselves, according to nine criteria, such as sociality, hygiene, elegance, rudeness, humor, beauty, arrogance, intelligence and snobbery.

For example, in terms of elegance, the most elegant person ranks first, followed by the second, and so on. On the standard of rudeness, whoever is the rudest ranks first, followed by the second, and so on. In other words, everyone has to evaluate himself and 24 other people, so that on every standard, everyone will give himself an evaluation, and the other 24 people will also be evaluated.

The statistical results show that these 25 people have exaggerated their own advantages and displayed their own shortcomings to varying degrees. For example, one person ranked himself first in "elegance", but the average ranking given to him by the other 24 people was twentieth in elegance. There is another person who takes "love cleanliness" as the standard and is five places ahead of the average ranking given by others. There is another person who ranks himself six places ahead of the average ranking given by everyone in terms of "beauty", but his ranking is far below the average ranking given by everyone in terms of "snobbery", "arrogance" and "rudeness".

This experiment shows that many people tend to overestimate their own advantages and underestimate their own shortcomings. From this, we understand why people should be modest and prudent, not arrogant and impetuous. Because modesty can overcome the tendency of self-beautification and evaluate yourself more objectively and fairly.

Of course, paying attention to modesty and prudence does not require everyone to belittle themselves at will and think that they can't. "People are expensive and have self-knowledge", which requires us to see our own shortcomings as well as our own advantages. At the same time, self-evaluation is not simply to evaluate yourself, but to pay attention to others' attitudes towards themselves in contact with all kinds of people around you, so as to sum up their evaluations of themselves, and take this as material and incorporate self-evaluation as an objective standard. It can be seen that self-evaluation reflects the social evaluation to a certain extent.

Enlightenment of Su Dongpo's Effect

Revelation 1: The biggest disadvantage is that you can't know yourself objectively.

What is a person's greatest weakness? Some people may feel that they are from a bad background, some people may feel that they are poor, some people may feel that their academic qualifications are not high, and some people may feel that they are not outstanding in appearance. These are the disadvantages of a person in the contemporary social competition, but since they have become objective facts, we can only accept them first. In order to completely change them and improve their competitiveness, only by objectively understanding themselves, recognizing their own advantages and inspiring enterprising confidence can we constantly change these bad situations.

A little boy, accompanied by his father, visited Van Gogh's former residence. After seeing the small wooden bed and worn leather shoes, the father said to his son earnestly, "Van Gogh is a great painter and a poor man who has never married his wife."

The next year, the little boy and his father went to Denmark. In front of Andersen's former residence, the father said to his son earnestly: "Andersen is a great fairy tale writer, but he is the son of a shoemaker." He used to live in this attic. "

The boy's name is Ito Prague, and his father is a sailor, who travels to and from Atlantic ports every year. Although his family was poor, Ito Prague became the first black journalist to win the Pulitzer Prize in American history by his own efforts.

Twenty years later, Ito Prague recalled his childhood and said, "At that time, my family was poor and my parents lived by coolies. For a long time, I always thought that it was impossible for humble blacks like us to achieve anything. Fortunately, my father introduced me to Van Gogh and Andersen. These two men told me that God did not despise humility. "

It is difficult for a person to know himself, sometimes because of the influence of objective environment. A child living in poverty may think that his fate is humble and he will never get ahead, so he will have a sense of inferiority and affect his objective and fair understanding of his strengths and weaknesses, so he will easily lose himself.

Ito Prague's father is wise. He knows how to use big winners to motivate children, let them know that "you can't feel inferior because you are poor", and let us know that the biggest disadvantage of people is not the objective material conditions, but the inability to correctly understand yourself in the inner world. Once a person has no self-knowledge, it is easy to lose self-confidence and enterprising spirit because of poverty, and it is easy to fall into pessimism and depression, which is the most terrible disadvantage.

Nietzsche once said, "The poor have no right to be pessimistic." Because poverty may be innate, which we can't choose, just as we can't choose the form of life, but we can choose the content of life to make life full and fulfilling. This requires first recognizing our own advantages and disadvantages and making positive progress with full fighting spirit.