2.c 控制自己的情绪

Make Time Your Friend 2.c: Controlling Your Emotions

> By Li Xiaolai · 2008-05-19 · [Original (web archive)](https://web.archive.org/web/20111113104234/http://www.lixiaolai.com/archives/463.html) (Chinese)
> Our translation from the Chinese original.

Let's talk about pain first, because usually we seem not to need to control our joy. Whoever you are, life is full of all kinds of pain, physical, mental, even pain coming from both directions at once, and possibly baffling pain that won't go away. From the pain of being afraid of injections as a child, to the pain of being isolated by other kids; from the pain of desires that can't be satisfied, to the pain of not being understood or sympathized with; including but not limited to lying in a hospital bed in pain while also having to endure the pain magnified by the nurses' cheerful chatter and laughter……

Feeling pain deeply distorts or wipes out our ability to perceive other things. When a person is in great pain, he may even completely lose his perception of the outside world. If Meng Jiangnü really did weep down the Great Wall, then I guess if you had pricked her with a needle at that moment, she might not have felt the sting on her skin at all, because all her mind was being used to weep down that Great Wall.

Even under normal circumstances, we often don't understand our pain very well. The most common misunderstanding is that when we feel pain, we always unconsciously imagine ourselves to be the person in the most pain in the whole world. This is very natural, because we feel our own pain in person, whereas it's very hard to truly feel others' pain as if it were our own. So if we don't make an effort to distinguish, of course we'll feel our own pain is the greatest.

My experience is that the benefit of understanding this mechanism is that if we really understand that the pain we face isn't as intense as it feels, it becomes easy, or at least easier, to endure that pain. I often remind myself like this: however much pain I'm in, at this stage I'm surely not the person in the most pain.

I ask myself: are you in more pain than he was? I can give a few examples at random.

> [Translator's note: quoted by the author: a widely circulated account; not Li Xiaolai's own words.] There was a man you may know of. In 1832 he lost his job, which obviously grieved him, but he resolved to become a politician, a state legislator; unfortunately he failed. Suffering two blows in one year was no doubt painful for him. He set about starting his own business, but in less than a year the business went under again. For the next 17 years he had to rush about everywhere, going through every hardship, to pay off the debts he had run up when the business failed. He ran for state legislator again, and this time he succeeded. A glimmer of hope sprang up in his heart; he thought his life had [Translator's note: the original breaks off here, 有了, "had …," with the object missing; something like "turned a corner" is meant]: "Maybe I can succeed!" The next year, 1835, he got engaged, but a few months before the wedding his fiancée unfortunately died. This blow to his spirit was really too great; he was haggard at heart and bedridden for months. In 1836 he also suffered from nervous exhaustion. In 1838 he felt in good health, so he decided to run for speaker [Translator's note: the original writes 仪长, with 仪 ("ceremony"); 议长 ("speaker") is meant; translated by the intended sense] of the state legislature. But he failed. In 1843 he ran for the U.S. Congress, but again did not succeed. Not until 17 years later, in 1860, after going through more hardships and failures, was this man elected President of the United States; his name was Abraham Lincoln. But his bad luck didn't end; in 1865 he was assassinated.

There are even more extreme ones. The psychologist Scott Peck once recorded in detail the most extreme, most dramatic case he ever met.

> [Translator's note: quoted by the author: a case recorded by M. Scott Peck; not Li Xiaolai's own words.] It was a 14-year-old boy. In November of the year he was 8, his mother suddenly died. In November of the year he was 9, he fell off a ladder and broke his arm. In November of the year he was 10, he had an accident riding his bicycle, fracturing his skull, with a severe concussion as well. In November of the year he was 11, he fell through a skylight and fractured his hip. In November of the year he was 12, he fell off a skateboard and fractured his wrist. In November of the year he was 13, he was hit by a car and his pelvis was broken……

When I feel I'm in pain, I always dig these two records out of my notebook and read them through. So far I haven't been as unlucky as that boy—he was too unlucky, even unlucky on a regular schedule! One winter I had a bad cold and lay in bed. Suddenly I felt a bit fretful. So I dug out my notes and read them. Although I knew it was a bit unkind of me to think this way, I couldn't help glancing at the wall calendar, just turned to November, and thinking, that boy's probably lying in a sickbed too……

Pain is like this: once we can actually use the mind to shift our attention somewhere else, the pain almost automatically disappears, and it won't come back until you pay attention to it again.

In addition, the reason we needn't be overly afraid of pain is that psychological research tells us our brains have a self-protective function—forgetting pain. If you want to find out whether your own brain has this function, it's easy: take out paper and pen, and list the things that caused you pain yesterday; the things that caused you pain the day before yesterday; the things that caused you pain last week; the things that caused you pain last month; the things that caused you pain last year…… You'll find you can list fewer and fewer. If you don't try hard to remember, you can hardly recall the pain of ten years ago; the funniest thing is that even if you do recall it, you may well feel embarrassed—because now you can't understand how such a small thing could have caused you that much pain back then.

Actually, our brains need to forget pain; if your brain didn't have this function, imagine how miserable your life would be! It's precisely because our brains have this function that older people often become nostalgic. People getting on in years often sigh that "public morals are declining day by day," but this is obviously not the fact. Because for the past several thousand years, every generation of old people has felt public morals were declining day by day; if their feeling were true, we should now be living in hell—but the world we live in now, even if it's not great, isn't that bad, is it? Dickens put it well: it was the worst of times, it was the best of times.

When older people look back on the past, the things that once caused them terrible pain have long been completely forgotten, or long since stopped mattering, while the things they can remember clearly are all beautiful—so of course they're nostalgic! So nostalgia is a misperception. It may even be no more than an illusion. Someone used this metaphor: if memory itself is grapes, then the process of recollection is fermentation. Everyone tends to strive to make their own history cleaner and more beautiful, so they often unconsciously patch up their memories in various ways, even process them further and more finely, and only then feel satisfied.

According to statistics, after a person unfortunately undergoes an amputation, he often suffers extreme inner pain. You can imagine that pain: close your eyes and imagine your arm being cut off…… Within 6 months after the operation, amputees keep having thoughts of suicide. But if after 6 months the person still hasn't succeeded in killing himself, the likelihood of his taking his own life is no longer great—the pain is gradually being forgotten, replaced by more hope. And after 18 months, cases of amputees ultimately committing suicide are very rare indeed—even if there are some, it's often no longer because of the pain of amputation.

Our brains' ability to forget pain is even of great significance for the smooth reproduction of the whole human race. Imagine: giving birth is probably the greatest physical pain a woman may face in her life—if she isn't so unfortunate as to live in the era of Liu Hulan. Yet less than a year or two after such an astonishingly painful experience, she'll again want to have another child. People often have no understanding of how their own brains work: if you get the chance to meet such a woman, you can ask her, out of great curiosity, don't you remember how much it hurt? She's sure to be taken aback for a moment (because she suddenly realizes it really did hurt like hell at the time, but now it doesn't matter; yet she has never thought carefully about why), and then, in subconscious flustered confusion, she'll give you a baffling answer: you've never [Translator's note: the original writes 你有没, with 有 ("have"); 你又没 ("you've never …, after all") is meant; translated by the intended sense] had a baby, you don't understand!

As people able to use our own minds, once we understand this mechanism our brains have for forgetting pain, we can solve another kind of pain that can't be forgotten because it keeps recurring.

One of the most painful things may be this: "How is it that I understand all the principles, yet it just doesn't work?"—nobody wants to make the same mistake, and everyone understands it's very stupid, yet how is it that you fall in exactly the same place again? You suffer over it, lie awake late at night, curse yourself over and over. But when you wake up, really just a few hours later, you're back to your former state, without any change. Even the next time, late at night, after cursing yourself under your breath many times, you remember that not long ago you cursed yourself the same way, and can't help sighing: how can I be so hopeless, how can I forget the pain as soon as the scar heals!

One of my most surprising experiences while teaching is this:

> To really solve students' problems, I have to repeat principles that countless teachers have actually long since explained to them, one after another; worst of all, while some students consider my repeating them again necessary, many more students again turn a blind eye and a deaf ear to them. Sometimes I can't help despairingly imagining that some day in the future these students will still meet the same awkward situation, so they'll pay to attend some other class, and then another teacher, perhaps as despairing as I am, will repeat once more the principles we've all repeated, while these students don't realize at all that they're merely wasting time once again—because they still won't take it in, or simply "won't have heard it."

Now do you know why you never learn? Because when you meet setbacks, or face the punishment your past wrong decisions finally bring, you're in too much pain. And such pain is bound to be automatically put in the queue for forgetting by your brain, and in the end disappears completely from your brain. Moreover, you should know that the strength of this self-protective function of the brain differs from person to person. Some people find it harder to forget pain than others, and some peoples are even better able to remember pain than others—after the Second World War, Jews hunting down, even assassinating, Nazi members around the globe is a good illustration; they even have a set of methods for keeping pain firmly in mind.

You've seen that this self-protective function is very meaningful, but if we don't control it, we ourselves will meet awkward situations—those mentioned at the beginning of the article. So, although we aren't Jews, we too must find ways. Especially when you realize your ability to forget pain is particularly strong. One concrete sign of a person's ability to forget pain being particularly strong is that this person forgives himself very easily.

There are two methods that are very simple yet very effective. The first is that when you face an awkward situation, be sure to take out paper and pen and record the awkward situation you've met—best, of course, in the same notebook. Such records are very meaningful. Because they'll remind you that this is an awkward situation you've met before. If you don't write it down on paper, you'll surely forget it. Then form a habit of taking out this notebook regularly to review it. This habit will often give you a great sense of achievement, because you know, and can even see clearly, that you've made progress, because many of the mistakes recorded in that notebook you can't possibly make again—of course, the reason you no longer make those mistakes is that you keep reminding yourself!

The other method is, when facing an awkward situation, to weaken your pain as much as possible. Control your emotions; don't be swayed by your brain's direct reaction. You should know that part of the cause of every awkward situation you face is surely of your own making. So there's no need to find excuses, no need to blame others, no need to feel this world is unfair only to you; remember "you are not alone"—surely others, in different places and different eras, have met the same awkwardness and pain. But how many people can treat pain as calmly as you do now, and clearly realize that you mustn't be swayed by your brain's direct reaction? Once you think this way, you feel relieved. As long as you're not in so much pain, it's hard for your brain to forget this event—and all the more since you've long since put this event and experience on record! Just imagine how much trouble these two simple methods will save you in the future, and how much time they'll save your future!

In addition, although "forgetting pain" is a self-protective function of our brains, this "well-meaning" function also has side effects. For example, in life there are surely times when we need to keep certain information firmly in mind, even a large amount of information; for example, if you're a student preparing to study in America, you have to take exams such as the TOEFL, SAT, GRE or GMAT (Commonwealth countries may require IELTS scores, the equivalent of the TOEFL), which means you must firmly memorize at least twelve thousand English words—a task many people couldn't accomplish in a lifetime.

Many people don't understand how their own brains work, so they're involuntarily controlled by their feelings. They treat memorizing words as an especially painful thing, so much so that bookstores have always had piles of messy, so-called "fun memory methods," given a makeover every year, to satisfy their need to escape pain. In fact, what they don't know is that precisely because they treat memorizing words as a painful experience, the result is that the memory of every word contains pain—and the most direct way for our brains to protect themselves is to forget these words!

So when memorizing words—in fact, when doing any similar work that requires remembering a large amount of information—you must find a way to sincerely treat it as a joyful thing. A friend of mine once shared his method with me. Back when he finally figured out that to get a scholarship he had to get a high GRE score, he was startled by the vocabulary requirement. He said it took him two days to find a way to convince himself that this should be a joyful thing.

> Because there were 20,000 words in all to get done, and the scholarship he might get because of it was about 40,000 US dollars a year—with no possibility of losing it for four years in a row (what actually happened later was that he didn't get his doctorate until five years later). The exchange rate of the dollar to the renminbi at the time was roughly 8:1, so it should be about equivalent to 320,000 renminbi. And if after-tax income for a year were 320,000 renminbi, then he'd have to earn nearly 400,000 renminbi before tax. So each word should be worth about 20 renminbi—and this was only converting [Translator's note: the original writes 这算 ("this counted"); 折算 ("converted") is meant; translated by the intended sense] one year's income.

So he finally understood that memorizing words was very joyful. Every day he forced himself to memorize 200 words. And in the evening when checking his results, each time he drew a check mark in front of a word he was sure he'd remembered, he'd imagine that he had just counted out a 20-yuan banknote. Every night when he went to sleep he felt satisfied, because he'd earned another 4,000 yuan today!

This friend of mine is obviously a person able to use the power of the mind to control himself. Although in many people's eyes his way of thinking is simply naive and laughable. But in fact this is exactly the most fundamental reason he ultimately achieved more than others. He is not only a person able to discipline himself, but also a person able to control his emotions. He used the power of his mind to give an abstract goal real meaning, and so had more motivation than those who can't perceive abstract things. What was perseverance again? Strategy plus repetition. His strategy let him repeat more easily and more happily than others, so in the end he belongs to the successful minority.

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