With the change of age, people's requirements for happiness have also changed.
However, it is much more difficult to maintain a good attitude than to achieve a goal. Learning a skill is not at the same level as understanding a truth, so happiness is getting farther and farther away from us, and we even forget what happiness looks like for a long time.
But the pursuit of happiness is the nature of each of us and the right of each of us. So how can we keep ourselves happy in this unpredictable world?
I believe the book The Minimal Action of Happiness will tell you the answer.
Liu Xuan, author of The Minimal Action of Happiness, son of American writer Liu Yong, Ph.D. in Psychology of Harvard University, high flyers of Juliet Conservatory of Music, prose columnist and host, and expert in music, fashion and entertainment.
The author is my favorite psychological elder. He looks trendy and fashionable on the outside, but he is very traditional and romantic on the inside.
Unlike some psychological works, this book is so profound that people want to sleep after reading it. On the contrary, it is humorous and vivid, which is very in line with our real life. In the book, even small things like brushing your teeth and washing your face have become closely related to psychology.
The author analyzes the psychological principles of many small things in life in a simple way. Even people who haven't studied psychology can see clearly, and can even use it directly in our lives.
Let's take procrastination as an example
We all know that to conquer the world, we must conquer ourselves first. How to overcome procrastination is a compulsory course for each of us on the road to success.
But too many examples tell us that willpower alone is not enough to overcome procrastination, because procrastination contains many complicated psychological factors and cannot be completely solved by brute force.
Like a car. When you can't start it, it's useless to keep turning the key and stepping on the accelerator. You must turn on the engine and see what's wrong.
So, we must first know what kind of procrastinator we belong to, right?
The book divides procrastination patients into the following four categories:
The first is a sprinter who wants to fight to the last minute.
Some people like the feeling of getting things done at the last minute, and even get a different kind of stimulation from it.
But doing so will inevitably bring a lot of unnecessary pressure to yourself, and the actual effect is not reliable.
The second comes from people's escape mentality.
Such people are used to being full of assumptions, such as criticism and failure when things are finished, and naturally don't want to finish things because they often have fear.
In fact, almost everyone will expect what they should do, but not everyone will delay and escape. This kind of procrastination, which is afraid of results, mostly happens to people who lack confidence in their abilities.
The third is the consequence of hard choices.
Some people easily hesitate and waver in their own decisions. Every choice seems right and wrong, so they can't decide how to do things, so the longer they wait, the more they consume their spirit.
Especially when you can't judge whether doing these things is valuable or whether you can make yourself happy, procrastination naturally occurs.
The fourth kind is people who are particularly impulsive and seek excitement.
This type of people procrastinate because they always focus on more interesting things.
Such people are easily distracted and have a poor sense of time. When doing what they like, they don't notice the change of time, but they don't care about what they don't want to do, which leads to things always being put off until the last minute.
For the above procrastination, the author gives specific solutions, so I won't go into details here.
But there is one of the "three rules" given by the author for procrastination, which I particularly like, specifically.
"Nothing more than three rules" means: choose three things from your to-do list every day, and only three things will be completed first. Don't list more than three things for yourself at a time.
Moreover, the author suggests this distribution.
The first thing, you can choose an easy thing to do, such as replying to an email, which is very simple and easy to do.
The second thing should be related to future plans, such as doing some research for the report at the end of the year. It doesn't have to be done today, but it's definitely good to increase the progress every day.
The third thing is to do something that must be done today.
Why do you want this arrangement?
Because willpower is like a muscle, we also need to warm up inside.
When you are in the gym, if you do extremely intense muscle training from the beginning, you are likely to get injured and the efficiency will not be very high, but it will be better to finish a low-difficulty project first and warm up step by step.
This principle also applies to life and work.
In addition, the application of the "Three Laws of Things" can also make you choose and choose among many chores, thus slowly learning to break, give up and leave your life.
Look, is this simple?
There are no rigid and abstruse psychological terms, but things in life can be explained so easily with psychological knowledge, which is really suitable for many ordinary people who have no psychological foundation to read.
Of course, even if you are a psychology major, it is excellent, because you can see different interpretations of psychology in the book, which is also a kind of life wisdom worth learning.
In short, with the smallest action, you can get the greatest happiness in life, which is the smallest action of happiness!