Effort Alone Is Not Enough; Method Matters More By: Wu Man Lan Jiang (01) A friend shared in the comments his arduous struggle story. Born in a rural area, his parents knew nothing about education. What he remembered most vividly from his childhood was the overwhelming malice from his parents. For instance, when he went to a math competition, his father looked at him with a strange expression before he left and said, "Better not go out and embarrass me. Can you really do it?" He went to the exam under this heavy psychological shadow. When he returned, his father had a gloating face: "Haha, you failed, right? I knew you couldn't do it..." In fact, he did very well. But no matter how good his grades were, they could never earn a gentle smile from his parents. Many details, but the commenter said that if you think this is tragic enough, your imagination is too limited. When he grew up and entered society, the lack of childhood education showed everywhere. Because he was alienated from interpersonal relationships, no matter how well he did his work, he was ignored by everyone. He gritted his teeth and fought hard, but even a small progress in life cost him several times more than others... Such stories, though not common, are not isolated cases. In reality, many young people are overwhelmed by life. They have worked hard and paid a lot, but because the darkness in their lives is too thick, many fall in the darkness before dawn. (02) I think I mentioned this before: at my previous workplace, there was an employee who was very hardworking and diligent, but never received a response from management—actually, management was in a meeting discussing this person's appointment. Everyone felt that his effort was far above his current position, but they disagreed on which position to promote him to. But eventually, a decision was made: management decided to promote this hardworking employee to regional manager. However, unexpectedly, on the night before the decision was made, the employee had a mental breakdown. He left a letter, cursing the company for being heartless, exposing some dark secrets, and using many curse words, leaving everyone speechless. This is what I call the night before dawn—of course, not to say that promoting this employee would solve all problems. A bomb will always explode; a boil will always come to a head. Our immature minds will trouble us for a long time, and the suppressed grievances hidden in our hearts will eventually reveal our true colors. So—effort alone is not enough. It's better to know the rules and methods of effort, which will help our life development. (03) First, human beings have two attributes. One is independence, the other is sociality. Independence means that individuals are independent of each other: you eat yours, I drink mine, and we are unrelated. Sociality means that all humanity, ecologically, appears as a huge organism, and each person is a small structure of society. Simply put, no one can do without others; we must obtain self-worth validation from others. The former is narrow ability. Some people don't trust their emotional intelligence but never doubt their ability. Because ability is individualistic, there's a joke: I am stronger than Yao Ming and Nie Weiping combined. I play basketball with Nie Weiping and play Go with Yao Ming; it would be strange if I didn't beat them—this means that even your shortcomings, you can find someone shorter than you, so many people are confident in their abilities. With superior ability, young people rush into the workplace excitedly, but then encounter the White Dragon Horse Law. (04) What is the White Dragon Horse Law? It refers to the White Dragon Horse who went to the West with Tang Seng to fetch scriptures. This guy could fly to the sky and dive into the earth, could spit fire and play in water, and his appearance was not ordinary. He felt very cool, but after joining the team, he found that the team didn't need any of his abilities; they only required him to lie down obediently and carry the nagging Tang Seng, slowly crawling forward. If he crawled slowly, he got whipped; if he crawled fast, he also got whipped. This is really unreasonable. The workplace is like this: many of your abilities and specialties are not used at all. What the position requires is mechanical processes and tedious daily routines. Such work is monotonous and trivial; doing well brings no credit, doing poorly brings blame. It's really a bit inhumane. So in popular chicken soup articles, there will always be one like "You Must Be Strong and Irreplaceable" that causes a stir immediately. But after the stir, everyone finds that this chicken soup is nonsense—in this world, no one is important enough to be indispensable. Without anyone, the earth still rotates. Strength is relative, weakness is absolute. No matter how strong your ability, without you, others won't starve. So, you must have a clear understanding of ability. Independent ability is indispensable, but social ability is more important. (05) Social ability also requires effort to be effective. But the rules and methods of this effort are completely different from independent effort. Independent effort, such as wanting to be an excellent mathematician, you can just close the door and not leave for thirty years. If you don't starve to death, after thirty years you break out, and maybe you'll scare people. But social ability is the most painful practical discipline, with a strong defeatist style. What is a strong defeatist style? It means that when this ability is lacking, you lose opportunities. You are looked down upon. For example, the boss takes you to meet a beautiful female client. You see her and say, "Beauty, want to hook up?" The boss sees your behavior and won't take you again. You learn the lesson, reform yourself, and master more romantic interpersonal skills. But then you find that you have completely lost such opportunities. You have the ability, but no place to use it. Social ability is an unreasonable ability; it only appears when you are not prepared. And the cultivation of this ability requires real-world experience and tempering. But sadly, the more you lack this ability, the fewer opportunities you have to temper it; the fewer opportunities to temper, the more insufficient the ability, until you become a marginal person, crying out to heaven and earth but getting no response. How bitter. —Unless you change your thinking, give yourself a kind of ability, transform an experience-based life into a wisdom-based life, and find the method of ability cultivation in advance under the premise of lacking sufficient practice. (06) People all over the world are full of complaints about their own education systems. This complaint is justified because before school education begins, children must first apply their social abilities—how to get along with classmates, how to get more attention from teachers—the origin of this kind of education is in the family, but not many families understand this truth. The child mentioned at the beginning of this article: his parents knew nothing about educational psychology and were not interested. They just focused on venting their resentment on the child, gaining an inexplicable dark pleasure while causing devastating damage to the child's soul. Such families are also unique, forming two extremes with families that are well-versed in child education. The best and the worst are on two sides, and in the middle are the majority who are confused and muddled. Social ability has an annoying characteristic: the initial psychological mechanism formation will affect a child's entire life. In fact, many people's lifelong struggle is just to correct their incomplete personality—this is something even the wisest people must work on for a lifetime. What role can school education play? This means that for most of us, social ability can neither be expected from family nor from school. We can only rely on ourselves. (07) In this life, we can only rely on ourselves. Relying on ourselves means we must study the principles and mechanisms of social ability. From a higher dimension, looking down on society, we can give ourselves abilities that do not exist. —Thinking ability! To obtain this thinking ability, we must be careful to repair the damage that previous insufficient education has done to our brains. This damage is mainly manifested in three incomplete thinking modes: excuse-making, blame, and decadence. (08) If family education is too strict, with frequent humiliation and punishment, it will cultivate habitual self-protection in children. After entering society as adults, they tend to find excuses first when encountering problems. Let me give an example from my past: a supervisor made a mistake in his work. It wasn't a big deal, and management didn't intend to pursue it. But he was terrified and came to explain. Supervisor: "Listen to me, the situation at that time was like this..." Executive: "Shut up!" Supervisor: "...Why can't I explain?" Executive: "You're not explaining; you're making excuses." Supervisor: "...I'm not making excuses; I'm just clarifying..." Executive: "What is an excuse?" Supervisor: "...At that time, I didn't anticipate..." Executive: "Answer me first, what is an excuse?" Supervisor: "...Why don't you listen to me? Listen to my explanation..." Executive: "...Answer me, what exactly is an excuse?" Supervisor: "...Well, I understand. Explanation is an excuse..." Executive: "Good that you understand." After the supervisor left, the executive said to the people nearby: "He understands nothing. He didn't understand at all. If he really understood, he would laugh heartily and seriously analyze his mistake. If he really did that, my position would be too low for him." —Do you see this story? In the workplace, the gap between people is manifested in thinking ability. Everyone seems to understand this sentence, but unless you are willing to immediately start repairing your thinking defects, this so-called understanding is just another self-deception. (09) Repeat: the gap between people is manifested in thinking ability. Improving your thinking ability is something no one can help you with; you can only rely on yourself. Many people have a clever way to resist the improvement of thinking ability. That method is blaming others. Blaming is a common sight in human society. No less than 80% of human suffering comes from mutual blame. The reasons for blame are varied: "I work so hard for you, getting up early and working late, who am I for? Isn't it all for you?"... Blame is like poison fire; the more you blame, the angrier and more painful you become. And the blamed party is burdened with deep guilt and can't live happily either. But this pain is 99% self-inflicted. You complain, saying that everything you do is for the person you blame—but if that person didn't exist, wouldn't you live? You would. You would find the next target to blame. Stop blaming, and the person's IQ will soar by at least 20 points, instantly becoming a highly intelligent person. But this is hard to achieve, really hard. Because there is a decadent outlook on life, like a big millstone, weighing you down in the depths of your soul, making it hard to break free. (10) The decadent outlook on life is laziness to the bone, not wanting to do proper things. Not doing proper things goes against human nature. So such people fall into mental panic, find excuses, and blame anyone. This trick is also called preemptive strike: obviously I'm wrong, but I attack first, find excuses and complain about you, so you have no time to urge me to work hard. The decadent outlook on life comes from a misunderstanding of the world. They think what they see is the whole world, but it's not. Outside your field of vision, there is a lofty and wonderful realm of wisdom. Obtaining this pleasure doesn't require much mental effort; it only requires repairing the deficiencies and shortcomings in your personality, and healing the psychological wounds from growth—but these wounds constitute part of our realistic thinking, hindering our repair and efforts. People are sick; does heaven know? It doesn't matter if heaven doesn't know; as long as we know ourselves, that's enough. (11) In short, if a person's efforts are not effective, it must be that there are some old wounds in their personality or soul. These wounds form part of our thinking. It is the excuses and blame centered around the decadent outlook on life that greatly reduce the effectiveness of our efforts in reality. Everyone in this world is ordinary. Few have obtained generous psychological resources from their parents from birth. Everyone moves forward slowly with incomplete minds. No matter how bad your family situation is, it at most limits your starting point, but it cannot limit your destination. What harms us most is the disguised decadent psychology. Some friends talk about striving, but in their hearts, they think about bars and beauties. This short-sighted interest orientation constitutes the best reason for our excuses and blame, thus undermining the value of our own efforts. Try it. Humans are naturally social creatures. The best way to work hard is to first repair your intelligence, turn decadence into positivity, and add motivation to yourself. Change excuse-making and blame into peaceful progress. At that time, the value and meaning of effort will appear. At least in a relatively large probability, it can make your emotional intelligence show an incredible advantage. It also lets your life go further.