I've written before about what is the best state in life? It means being completely focused on what you are doing right now, whether it's studying, working, thinking, or having fun.
But for some, it can be a luxury.
No matter what time it is, their brain is always working, processing a lot of information, there is no way to empty out. As a result, they are particularly prone to the phenomenon of“Thinking too much.”.
For example:
Want to concentrate on work, the mind is always involuntarily surging all kinds of thoughts, worries and worries, to distract themselves;
Encounter a little small things will think a lot, often over and over to think, and even affect sleep when serious;
Often there is“Choice difficulties”, especially do not like to make a choice, because they always reversed the choice of thinking, weighing, consuming a lot of energy;
And, life is always subconsciously on a lot of things to remain vigilant, encounter a matter, the first reaction is always“Will there be a problem”...
In the eyes of outsiders, their minds turn quickly, thinking problems are also very comprehensive, appear very“Smart.”.
But only they know, this feeling, in fact, very very painful.
Because they have to put a lot of mental energy and energy into dealing with these thoughts that come into their head, and so, in everyday life, almost all are in a state of“Full operation”. As a result, it's especially easy to feel exhausted even if you don't do much each day.
This is especially true when they need to make decisions and take action.
For example, a normal person may have 80% of their energy available for action, but they only have 30,40% of their energy available, and this part of their energy, you also have to fight the Random Thoughts that takes up 50% , 60% of your brain power.
So, one of the characteristics of these people is: always think a lot, but often trapped in their own thoughts, really put into action, very few.
In psychology, this phenomenon is called“Overthinking”, it has a more common name, called“Spiritual internal friction”.
Obviously, this phenomenon in an introverted, sensitive people, will be more likely to produce. They are indeed the main victims of internal strife.
If you have experienced a similar problem, then today, I would like to talk to you about my experience and experience.
First of all, or talk about, why there is the phenomenon of internal friction in the spirit of it?
The first factor is overactive DMN.
As I've said in previous articles, our brains are actually working when we're doing nothing. This is called the Default Mode Network (DMN) .
What does the DMN do? It's combing through bits and pieces of information in the back of the brain, reactivating information that may have been forgotten. In computer terms, it is“Indexing” the brain.
So, even if we don't do anything, the brain is actually continuing to use about 20 percent of our daily energy. Because of this principle.
Similarly, people with more active DMN tend to have better long-term memory, imagination, creativity, and so on. That's why-because their DMN is more active, therefore collates the information the efficiency to be higher, the effect is also better.
But the problem is that the brain regions involved in the DMN are highly overlapping with those involved in the network of self and others and emotional judgment.
In other words: people with more active DMN's are also more likely to think about“Other people's feelings” and notice“Bad things”. This gives them a big advantage: greater empathy.
But this, in turn, creates a huge problem: internal friction.
On the one hand, the DMN is overactive, making it difficult for them to concentrate on their work. Because the DMN constantly competes with the Task Positive Network (TPN) for attention.
On the other hand, when the DMN is not clamped down by the TPN, it is more“Free”. It will constantly send all kinds of negative thoughts from the memory to the consciousness, constantly reminding itself of their existence, ... Whether they are big, small, past, future, long-term, short-term, serious, slight...
To some extent, this does help to solve the problem, but also help us prepare for the future. As a result, these people are rarely“Inconsiderate” and tend to think holistically.
But it is precisely because of this, leading them to“Think more, do less.”.
Why? Because our brains are loss averse. Faced with the same gains and losses, we dislike the latter about twice as much as the former. Put crudely, we may be inclined to act when a choice is 67% good for US and 33% bad for us. That's a crude way of putting it
(for risk-averse people, the ratio may be even higher to impress them.)
Similarly, our brain has a function in processing all kinds of information out of loss aversion, called threat recognition. It acts like a radar, constantly scanning everything around for possible threats to keep itself safe.
And what is the signature of threat recognition? It tends to exaggerate and highlight the potentially threatening details of a thing, ignoring the safe, normal details that keep us from seeing the whole picture.
For example. Suppose a choice has 10 factors, 5 of which are favorable and 5 of which are unfavorable. At this point, if you see the whole picture, then it is 50-50, you choose to act or not, are reasonable.
But because of loss aversion, we might wait until it's 70-30, when it's 70% in our favor.
At this point, we add threat identification. Because of threat recognition, it may be easier to focus on the three downsides and miss the seven upsides-for example, we may focus on only five, three of which are downsides, two is advantageous.
So, for us, it becomes 40-60.
(disadvantage: 3/5 = 60% ; advantage: 2/5 = 40%)
That is, the presence of loss aversion and threat recognition blinds us to the full picture, and on that basis, retains the bad and leaves out the good.
Is there any way we can still do this? Apparently not. We've been“Intimidated” by it.
This is the second factor: the fear generated by threat recognition.
As I said before, most of the time, it's not the problem that gets in the way, it's our fear of the problem.
But is this fear real? Not really. As can be seen from the previous analysis, the existence of this fear, from our vision of one-sided, from our hearts to the loss and threat of rejection. It is false and untrue. We are scaring ourselves.
In fact, the brain actually provides another tool for making up, which is our“Extended memory,” our past experiences of action, success, and experience.
In your past life, every time you succeeded in“Doing” something-maybe it was making a decision, maybe it was taking a brave step, maybe it was trying something new... ... The Brain writes it down, stores it in“Extended memory,” and adds a point.
When the brain detects a threat, it invokes information from an extended memory to counter and neutralize the threat.
But for the mentally challenged, because they think too much and do too little, “Extended memory” is inherently weaker, making it harder to fight fear.
Therefore, a person who is suffering from severe mental infighting is actually trapped in such a negative cycle:
You have a problem and decide to look it over first
This“Review” leads you to over-exaggerate the threat and develop fear;
This fear further weakens your intention to act, and you need more energy to fight it before you can take action, thus causing procrastination;
Most problems get worse by procrastination, and eventually force you to take action, so you feel“I made a bad decision.”
Over time, this feeling will increase your self-doubt, weaken your confidence, and thus weaken your“Extended memory,” making you less able to fight the fear...
What is the result of this negative cycle? Is a decline in happiness.
On the one hand, this tendency toward inactivity and self-doubt threatens a person's sense of worth and meaning, making him feel“Powerless,” and thereby reducing life satisfaction.
On the other hand, a classic 2010 paper found that when people fall into the DMN, they are almost 100% less happy (Killingsworth and Gilbert, 2010) .
This means that the longer a person spends in life with DMN, the lower their overall level of happiness.
The reason for this is simple: When we focus, we experience the feeling of having“Racked our brains to get over the hump.” It's a positive cycle that stimulates our reward circuits and makes us feel good.
On the other hand, when we are dominated by the DMN, not only do we get distracted and fail to“Rack our brains” as much as possible, but we also experience a series of negative, unpleasant thoughts, make us feel powerless.
This is the problem with inner conflict:
It will not only drain your energy, reduce your ability to act, and make you feel exhausted;
It can also reduce your life satisfaction and happiness, and even affect your sense of meaning.
So, having said all this, how do we overcome the spiritual infighting?
SHARE 4 effective methods. Might as well in ordinary life, more to consciously train, make them a habit.
1. Control your thoughts
Think about it: what actually happens when we get caught up in the inner turmoil of the mind?
We're all caught up in our own negative thoughts, getting caught up in the fight against them and exhausting ourselves, aren't we?
So, how to deal with it? So you don't have any negative thoughts at all? Unfortunately, this is impractical, as the name implies-DMN is a“Default” state, it is the normal state of life.
But we can allow ourselves to“Tolerate” these negative thoughts and take control of them instead of letting them dominate our thinking.
1) when we have a negative thought, accept it and say, “I know, I'll deal with it when I have time. Now leave.”.
2) keep a notebook to keep track of your negative thoughts. When they occur, jot them down and then stop thinking about them.
3) every day, or every week, set aside a certain amount of time to open the notebook and go through the negative thoughts one by one and ask:
·
·
“Is it real?”
Is it likely to happen
·
“Do I have a way to deal with it?”
·
4) once you've thought through these three questions, cross them out; instead, write down ways you can think of and act on them.
In this way, you can reinforce your own initiative and feel that I am in control of my thoughts and that I am capable of doing so.
Then, slowly, when you have any more negative thoughts, you will no longer be trapped by them, but can deal with them, and put them.
2.Exercise Mindfulness and perception
What is the nature of DMN? Is the brain's“Trust horse reins.”. That is, the DMN is activated when we are not deliberately using our brains to focus on an object.
So, to reduce DMN activity, you need to exercise your ability to“Keep your attention on an object.”.
One of the most common practices is mindfulness. You can try it when you are free: find a comfortable position, close your eyes, take about 10 seconds of breathing, focus on breathing, experience the feeling of breathing, don't mind the thoughts going back and forth in your mind, and don't try to suppress them. Lasts about 10-15 minutes.
Another way to exercise is to stop everything you're doing, take a deep breath or two, and ask yourself in order: What Am I seeing right now? Did you hear something? What do you smell? What did my hands and feet touch, what did it feel like? You can also close your eyes and rely on your senses to take a few steps, focusing on the sensory information in the process.
These two exercises, you can use notes to write down, whenever you think of, see the time to do it, and slowly make them a habit.
This can be very effective in strengthening your focus and increasing your ability to control your brain.
3. Attention switching and saturation
What is attention saturation? Put simply: Why are we distracted when we're Working? The key reason is this: The Things We Do Do Don't capture our interest 100% , and our attention is“Not saturated”, creating idle resources.
Thus, our brains activate the DMN, shifting attention from the outside to the inside to allocate these idle resources.
So, a simple way to do this is to increase the demand for attention on what we're doing, and thus saturate it. So it doesn't activate the DMN.
For example: When I'm working, if I'm doing something that doesn't require a lot of attention, I'll take a piecemeal approach. That is, open multiple projects at the same time, Project 1 work for a period of time, switch to Project 2, then work for a period of time, switch to Project 3... ... and so on.
What are the benefits? You're constantly working on a task, and after a while, your brain is bound to get tired of it, and when that happens, part of your attention is left idle, and it's particularly easy to get distracted, it's another thing to refocus your attention, to keep it from turning inward, to ruminate on negative thoughts.
Also, my to-do list will have a list of“Questions” that I will need to think about and make decisions about. In the time of fragments, when I'm doing nothing, I don't turn my attention inward. Instead, I Open the list, Pick a problem, start thinking about it, and use it to fill my attention.
The secret to effective time management lies in these three lists
In other words, we can't stop ourselves from being distracted, but we can steer the goal of distraction in a more meaningful and desirable direction.
4. Make action the default mode
From the previous analysis, you can see that the main problem with mental infighting is that it drains our motivation and blocks our action.
The reverse is also true: the most effective way to overcome mental friction is to cultivate your own habit of“Taking action”.
So here's a simple, crude rule:
If you can't think of a particularly powerful reason for not doing something, choose to do it first.
Think of this as an article of Faith to guide your decision-making and judgment. You can write it down on a post-it note, let yourself see it again and again, remind yourself to take action.
Many times, not to do may have a variety of reasons, may be afraid of trouble, may be a trade-off, may be afraid of uncertainty... ... But without doing it, these things will always be“Unknown,” they will never be solved, they will always remain in your memory, along with the activation of the DMN and squeeze your cognitive resources.
Only by taking action can you turn the unknown into the known, the uncertainty into the certainty, and let them be placed and disposed of without disturbing your thoughts.
Action, on the other hand, is the first step in opening up your own positive feedback loop. Most of the time, it's only when you take action that you realize that the thing I was afraid of wasn't so terrible after all; much of my previous speculation, worry, and anxiety about it was unnecessary.
This is the first step in overcoming your self-doubt and fear.
It's also the first step in getting rid of your inner inner turmoil.