1726 One day in June, 20-year-old Benjamin Franklin studied printing and publishing in London for two years, and finally arrived in Philadelphia after sailing in the Atlantic Ocean 12 weeks. The thought of starting a comfortable American life swept away his fatigue.

But young Franklin was, after all, an ideal and ambitious man. After a short rest, he quickly calmed down and decided to hone himself. In the hotel room, Franklin drew a chart, which he would use to monitor his personal growth. The number of days in a week is written on the chart, and 13 is written on one side. The virtues he listed are temperance, silence, order, frugality, honesty, justice, chastity and modesty. Franklin wanted to spur himself to grow into a perfect person and not make any mistakes in life.

But what Franklin didn't expect was that stains began to fill his form. On the first day, because of the playful character, two "silences" failed and one violated "order"; The next day, he once again violated "silence" and "order", and this time he also violated another virtue-"frugality". In this way, Franklin would violate all the virtues listed in his chart, and the last one was "chastity".

Frustrated Franklin began to realize that he could not be perfect.

If you actively fail, you will be more successful.

The experience of America's founding marshal is not uncommon in life. Many people have a "perfect complex" similar to Franklin. In the church, the priest will advise his followers not to make any small mistakes, because if they are not corrected, they will make a big mistake. At home, strict parents will give their children a 16-hour study plan, because once they are lazy, their grades will drop and their children will lose at the starting line. It seems that the reality is eyeing, and efforts should not be sloppy. However, is this really the case?

In order to solve this problem, a famous psychologist did an experiment. In order to lose weight, the "target direct group" group A was asked to stick to the limited food of 1.500 calories per day (an adult needs more than 1.700 calories per day) and choose a strict regimen; Group b, which is lazy occasionally, is stricter. They can only eat 65,438+0,300 calories, but after six days of strict diet plan, Group B is allowed to have unlimited food choices on the last day of the week. The experimental results show that more and more participants in Group A quit the diet plan because there is no room for relaxation in their plan. Although group B is more demanding and has one day of self-indulgence every week, it can persist.

Relaxing occasionally makes people more persistent.

We know that in psychology, "perseverance" has indeed proved to be the most important factor of success. Experts have found that perseverance, that is, the passion and perseverance to achieve long-term goals, is more important than intelligence and spelling ability in the national spelling contest. In the notorious summer boot camp "Beast Camp" of West Point Military Academy, the people with the highest scores are often the people with the best endurance.

But it takes methods to gain perseverance. No matter Group A, Group B or each of us, most people don't have very tenacious perseverance, but the cleverness of Group B is that they will try their best to stick to it. For group A, let them eat only 1.500 calories a day for several days without relaxing. The original expectation for the future turned into a very painful struggle, and as a result, the weight loss plan of Group A fell through. Moreover, if group A volunteers occasionally violate the regulations and secretly overeat once, they will have psychological burdens such as guilt and self-blame. Changing the method like Group B, such as choosing a stricter diet, but occasionally taking a piece of cake as compensation, will make participants see the meaning of struggle in advance, which will invisibly increase the fun and courage to persist, so they will struggle towards their goals more happily.

Then, why does the occasional overeating in group A cause such a big psychological burden? Because if a person can't relax his nervous nerves and bear great psychological pressure, he is prone to depression when he encounters difficult things. Some excellent people suffer from depression because they have been strict with themselves for a long time and have never relaxed.

Limited willpower

Perseverance is ultimately willpower, which determines whether the goal is achieved. But willpower is a limited resource. Once it is consumed, the reserves will be less and less. So you don't like studying in the classroom all day, and you don't like going home to help your mother with housework. The setting of lunch break is also to restore people's energy. Because people's willpower is limited, they need to relax temporarily and divert their attention to do something relaxing, so that they can recover.

Perhaps realizing this, Franklin finally gave up his virtue chart. Franklin admitted in his autobiography that achieving perfection without setbacks was the most serious mistake in his life. "A hatchet is the best, and a person who pursues perfection should also make himself have some shortcomings." But even without a strict moral timetable, Franklin became the most outstanding scientist, inventor and politician in American history. In science, he conducted many electrical experiments and invented the lightning rod. He also invented bifocal glasses, frog shoes and so on. Politically, he was one of the important leaders in the American War of Independence, and served as the American ambassador to France, successfully making France support American independence. Someone once commented on Franklin: "He got lightning from heaven and civil rights from tyrants." He is also regarded as the most perfect representative of American capitalist spirit.

Therefore, in the process of achieving our goal, we might as well throw a wild field once in a while and indulge ourselves, so that the original painful process can become a happy return. We will overdraw our future happiness in advance and restore our willpower, which will make us more persistent.

This article comes from the magazine article No.8, 20 16, New Theory of Big Science and Technology. Readers are welcome to pay attention to the micro signal of our big technology: hdkj 1997.