Break the superstition of success

There are too many superstitions about "success", and there are many so-called "success studies" in various chicken soup jokes. Buck's book uses the results of scientific research to break superstition and set things right. This book can help you know more about what success is, and maybe make you decide to give up the pursuit of success rationally after understanding this.

Regarding the relationship between extremes and success, the author cites two kinds of people as examples: students and leaders.

After the top students in the school leave the society, they usually become professionals or first-class talents in their respective occupations. But these talents can only be regarded as senior migrant workers, and there are few so-called cattle people. On the contrary, a survey shows that the average GPA of American millionaires in high schools is only 2.9 (out of 4.0), which is the level of middle school students.

The author thinks there are two reasons for this:

Let me talk about leadership. Whether leadership has any function has been puzzling management scientists. Some leaders seem to be dispensable in the team, while others (such as "Jobs") can turn the tide. In this regard, Professor Tam Mukunda of Harvard Business School put forward a theory that there are actually two kinds of leaders.

Using this theory to classify all previous American presidents and "predict" their influence on the world, the accuracy rate can reach 99%. The conclusion is that "unfiltered" leaders can really influence and even change the world. Although changing the world is a good change, it at least shows that if you want to do "great things", you have to go to extremes.

So, how can we go to extremes? In fact, the ultimate is not what you want to buy. Buy it if you want. I'm afraid you have to have extreme genes.

Most of us, like dandelions, have extremely low requirements for the environment and can survive anywhere. However, some people have turned into orchids because of genetic variation, and the requirements for the environment are extremely high. If the environment is not good, their viability is far less than that of dandelions. On the contrary, if the environment is just right, they can achieve great success.

Phelps is a good example. His body is long, his legs are short, his arms are thin, his hands and feet are big, and he can't run fast, so he is uncoordinated as a whole. This size makes him unfit to move on land, but he can swim freely. What would an "orchid" like him look like now if he hadn't come into contact with swimming by accident? Without extremes, it is impossible to achieve extreme success, but with extremes, it is possible to lead a bad life.

Based on this understanding, we need three conditions to succeed: breaking the routine, not being filtered, and the environment is suitable.

Extreme success is not suitable for everyone, and it needs the cooperation of genes and environment. The opposite of success is not failure, but mediocrity. Success or failure means going to extremes.

Although it is said that the average GPA of American millionaires is only 2.9, and their grades are not very good, statistics also find another similarity between them, that is, they all boast of being particularly persistent and do things from beginning to end. This is also the case. Persistence is essential if you want to succeed.

How did the cattle people persist? The author has done relevant research, which can be used to illustrate this problem.

Navy is a very powerful force, and their training is surprisingly cruel. In the training, there is an evaluation. 1 10 hours, no rest, no sleep. You must keep marching and swimming for a long time. As long as you can't hold on, it means being eliminated. They use this method to select soldiers and line up those who can't hold on. Then, they investigated the results and found that it was not the strongest person who persisted in the end, but the most optimistic person.

Similarly, another statistic found that those salesmen who can insist on selling are optimistic people, and the salesmen with optimistic quality ranking 10% can sell 88% of the sales.

Optimists always tell themselves that the difficulties are temporary, and this failure is due to a special reason, not my fault. These people who can persist do not rely on rational understanding of the world, but optimistic self-deception.

On the contrary, those who are particularly accurate in everything may be depressed patients. According to the author, among American lawyers, depression is 3.6 times that of other professions, because this profession does not allow them to be blindly optimistic, and they must consider the worst situation before going to court.

In this way, self-deception is a kind of welfare. In fact, we have been deceiving ourselves by telling stories.

For those things that are not optimistic, what we need is to tell good stories. For example, people in Nazi concentration camps need to tell stories to themselves to find the motivation to live. As mentioned in A Brief History of the Future, everyone has a narrative self in his brain. He is always telling himself a story, and we all live in our own stories. This is actually a very healthy psychological mechanism. The value of a story lies not in its truthfulness and accuracy, but in providing the meaning of life.

Never giving up and persisting is a necessary condition for a successful person. However, long-term persistence does not come from physical strength and willpower, but from optimistic spirit and stories we tell ourselves.

Although sticking to the end is a necessary condition for success, what you stick to should also be in line with your actual situation, and not everything can be successful. Then the problem is coming. What if you find something worth sticking to?

It is also very simple to say, that is, don't think too much, try new things more and get ideas in action. There is a famous saying in Silicon Valley, "Failure is quick, failure is frequent"-failure is much faster, that is what it means. In fact, there is a lot of luck in success, and the key to distinguish between good and bad luck lies in whether you often try new things.

When we try more and get in touch with different fields, it is easier to find what we are really interested in. At this time, another problem will appear. Is it practical to stick to this interest?

At this time, we can use "WOOP" psychological comparison method to connect dreams with reality. This method is the abbreviation of several English words:

These four steps are common, but their main function is not to help you realize your dreams, but to filter out unrealistic dreams. If a dream is unrealistic, after analyzing it in this way, you will feel strongly that it is not feasible. Once you find a feasible dream in this way, the remaining thing is to stick to it.

Persistence and attempt mentioned above are a pair of contradictions, followed by a pair of contradictions, introversion and extroversion. On the road to success, which is easier for introverts or extroverts to succeed?

The so-called introversion and extroversion cannot be generalized. According to the author, about 1/3 people are strongly introverted or extroverted. The remaining two-thirds are in the middle, sometimes introverted and sometimes extroverted. A simple criterion for judging introversion and extroversion is how much stimulation you need from the external environment.

The author first draws the conclusion that extroverts are dominant in this world, and studies and analyzes it.

Extroverts earn more, are considered to be more suitable for leadership, have more contacts, and more importantly, extroverts live happier lives. Finally, after repeated verification, it can be said that it is one of the most reliable conclusions in psychology-extroverts are more satisfied with life.

Is there no place for introverts? That's not true. If we examine the real level of people, we will find that introverts are the highest level. This is probably because introverts practice deliberately, need to train alone, and can stand loneliness. Therefore, the world is a little unfair to introverts, because their level is usually underestimated.

However, as mentioned above, most people are not absolutely introverted or extroverted. These undervalued introverts in the middle zone can try to learn to be extroverted. After all, if you want to enter a high-level field, you need a mentor, and if you want to get ahead in any field, you need to cooperate with others.

Teacher Wan's comment: We are all looking for dynamic balance in contradictions. Sometimes you have to try more, sometimes you have to persist, sometimes you have to be outgoing, and sometimes you have to be honest and introverted. Generally speaking, introversion is too bad.

There is a famous saying that 90% people think their driving skills are above average, which is called "overconfidence". The author made a detailed study of this phenomenon: let 50,000 people who refer to a certain business training evaluate themselves and see what level their performance in training is compared with others.

Results 80%-85% people think their level is in the top 20%, and 70% people think their level is in the top10%-this is the self-evaluation of ordinary employees. If the target is a professional with high social status, they will have a higher evaluation of themselves.

Overconfidence is so common that it shows its benefits in an evolutionary sense. It is past success that will bring us confidence, and self-confidence will bring us optimism. As mentioned above, optimism is an important psychological quality that people can persist in. Optimism will bring more success, which forms a virtuous circle.

Can an insecure person pretend to be an extrovert in front of others? Facts have proved that this is not feasible. Feynman has a famous saying: The first principle is that you should not deceive yourself, because you are the easiest person to be deceived. If you pretend too much, you will even be cheated and think you are really a master.

There was a lively topic some time ago. A so-called "Tai Chi master" challenged a martial arts master and was knocked down in minutes. The same incident was found in Japan in 2006. Kung fu master Liu Longquan offered a reward of $5,000 to compete with MMA players in the open competition, which was also won by KO in less than one minute. Both cases show that people who pretend to be confident are easily deceived by themselves.

If self-confidence can't be faked, how should it be cultivated? That is "self-care". This method is to look at yourself from the perspective of a friendly outsider. * * * is divided into three steps:

There is a common phenomenon: the most powerful person is also the person with the most workload. Someone has done a survey, and basically the strongest 10% people in each field have done 80% of the work in this field. These people are like the extremely successful people mentioned in the first section. The problem is that a person who invests so much time in his work will inevitably have an impact on his life.

Some people have done research, especially powerful masters and talented people, and most of them have neglected their families. Einstein needed a long time to think, so he had little time to spend with his family. He himself said, "My wife is my employee, but I can't fire her." . Mozart continued to compose music in another room when his wife gave birth.

If you think they are so smart, can't you spend more time with your family? In fact, it will reduce their productivity. A study on men found that scientists, writers, musicians, painters and even criminals can't maintain high output once they get married.

However, if you just want to be an ordinary person, then balance is a better choice. Studies show that if you work more than 55 hours a week, you might as well do nothing after 55 hours. At the same time, giving children enough time to play will improve their learning efficiency. Children with particularly good academic performance can also be children who love to play.

The premise of all this is that you want a more complete life, not an extreme achievement. It is impossible for a man like Jobs to finish his work before 10: 30 in the morning and then choose to relax.

Having said so much before, it has been shown that success is not rewarded by hard work. Success means making difficult choices in a series of contradictions.

There is no way for others to answer these questions for you. The key is that you should take the initiative and take the initiative to choose.

There is a study that interviewed some people who are particularly successful in a certain aspect and summed up four aspects that all successful people want but lack:

The problem is that you can't get full marks in all four dimensions. You have to make a choice. People like to have choices, but they hate making choices. But after all, you have to choose. Consciously choosing is better than unconsciously being led by the nose by the situation. There are two concepts that can help us make better decisions, namely "chooser" and "chooser", "maximization" and "satisfaction".

The so-called "choosers" are all passive choices. They evaluate the options and choose the best one. The "chooser" takes the initiative to make a choice. They first ask themselves what they want, and then see if there is a suitable choice for them. If none of them are suitable, they can even create new choices. For each choice, you can "maximize" or just "satisfy".

Therefore, the key now is that you should be a proactive "chooser", take me as the main factor to adjust the options and adopt the strategy of "satisfying" some options.

If you want to be an extreme success, then you can adopt the strategy of satisfying happiness and meaning and concentrate on maximizing your achievements and legacy.

In short, success is not an algorithm, but a choice. What kind of person you want to be, your choice can be adjusted at any time, but the most important thing is "active" choice.