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This article is from WeChat official account:Mr. L said (ID: lxianshengmiao) , author: Lachel, original title: “Doing Things with Thresholds”, title picture from: Visual China

A classmate asked me a question, which was very interesting and said:

Teacher, what is the purpose of our learning? Isn’t it to make life better? So why do you have to make yourself so hard?

This question is very interesting. I have said in many articles: Learning is actually a thing that goes against instinct, because it requires you to break old habits and behavior patterns, explore new practices and patterns, and then gradually internalize it after continuous training. . This process must be hard.

Not only study, but also “hard work” for thinking and self-improvement. Because the brain has one of the most basic needs, which is to save energy. Anything that needs energy to do is against its nature.

So, why do we spend so much time and energy on studying, thinking, using our brains to make ourselves “painful” instead of rest, recreation, and entertainment?

Of course, there may be many answers to this question. For example, some people may have to study purposefully for the purpose of research, promotion, and job hunting; some people may simply like the process of exploration and knowledge. Everything has a desire to “break the casserole and ask to the end”.

In this case, the sense of achievement of seeking knowledge overwhelms the sense of rejection of energy consumption, so for them, learning is not only not hard, but a process of enjoyment.

For example, readers who follow me, many of them may belong to the latter.

But today, I want to talk about it from a more pragmatic perspective:

Why should we spend our energy and time on “pain” instead of making ourselves more comfortable.

I hope to give you some ideas and inspiration.

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I want to make an analogy with exercise first.

We know that the logic of physical exercise is as follows: first use a low intensity to stimulate the body, so that the body does not adapt, so the body will work hard to adapt to it; when it adapts, increase the intensity by one level, so the body will not adapt again. Adaptation, we need to adapt to it again… Repeat this process continuously.

Until you reach a more ideal state, then maintain this strength to avoid physical slack.

For example: You have never run before, so you may only be able to run for 10 minutes at the beginning. Take your time, wait until the body adapts for 10 minutes, then gradually increase to 15 minutes, 20 minutes…This is a process of constantly forcing the body to adapt. Until the end, you can run for an hour at a relatively stable speed, then maintain this intensity to avoid “regressing” yourself.

Strength training is the same. Start with the simplest action and the lightest weight to reach your limit; when you get used to it, you can increase the weight…until you reach an ideal weight.

In other words, the essence of exercise is to constantly give the body an external challenge, make it feel uncomfortable, and then desperately change itself to adapt to the external challenge. Wait until it adapts, and then give it a new challenge… Keep repeating it and let it fall into the cycle of “unsuitable-adaptation-new inadaptability…”.

So, why do you want to do this? Why should we continue to give it a new challenge?

The reason is very simple: you will exercise, it must be because you have a goal, and there is a gap between the status quo of the body and the goal. But this gap will not be made up spontaneously, so you must continue to give it a new stimulus and break the steady state it is now in, so that it can get closer to the goal step by step.

For example: We sit in the office every day, is this a comfortable state? Obviously it is. So, “sitting” is a state adapted to the office style. In the short term, it is comfortable.

But in the long run? It’s not. In fact, sitting for long periods of time can bring about many health problems, such as pressure on the spine caused by long-term muscle tension, decreased blood and oxygen supply of the heart and brain, increased risk of high blood pressure and hyperlipidemia, and so on. Sitting for a long time is only adapted to the “small world” of office, but it is not adapted to the “big world” of our entire life.

That’s why we emphasized: we must not sit for a long time, butGet more active and constantly change the state of your body. And if possible, participate in more aerobic and anaerobic training to make the body stronger and more flexible, so that it has more possibilities and can adapt to greater surroundings.

Why are you talking about this? Because the brain and the body are actually the same.

The brain is an organ that strictly adheres to the principle of “use advancement and abolishment retreat”. At every moment, it is based on every thing we do, every action we take, every thought generated, and every response to external stimuli as its own To adjust its internal wiring.

To put it simply: There are nearly 100 billion neurons in the brain, and these neurons are connected to each other to form a network of about 500 trillion connections. Every second, the connections between neurons in your brain are changing. To give a few examples:

You see something, then, a series of visual recognition neurons, from the shape, contour, color of the object, to matching it with the object in memory, such a set of neurons, the connection between each other is Will be closer. So that the next time you see it again, the recognition speed will be slightly improved.

You are faced with a situation and have a certain emotion. Then, the neuron cluster that “responsible for storing this situation” and the neuron cluster that “generates this emotion” will be weighted higher in connection with each other. Thus, the next time you encounter the same situation, you will be more likely to have this emotion.

You do something and get a reward from it. Then, the next time you face a similar task, the reward circuit will learn “I might get a reward from it”, so as to secrete dopamine in advance for you Provide motivation for your actions.

Another example: There is a concept in neuroscience called “environmental enrichment”, which refers to: exposure to a more complex environment can stimulate the neuronal connections of the brain, thereby constructing more complex and more complex Efficient network.

The experiment found that keeping a white mouse as a pet and letting it live in a room can improve its intelligence, making it more capable of solving problems than a mouse raised in a cage.

In other words: the brain continuously models the external environment, and uses the information obtained from the external environment to continuously modify and perfect this model, in an attempt to make this model more comprehensively reflect the external environment and become the external environment A better simulation, a better “mirror”.

This is what I mentioned in the previous article: The fitting of the mental world to the real world.

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Okay, here comes the problem.

It is obviously impossible for us to know the full picture of the real world. Then, how do we know whether our current mental world can fully “fit” the real world?

In other words:How do we know whether the environment we are adapting to is the “small world” or the “big world”?

There is actually no way to know. But we can make certain assumptions about this.

The first hypothesis is: the whole world is probably like this, and there may be places I don’t know, but generally it won’t go too far. What happened in the past will happen in the future, and the beliefs I believe in the past will also apply to the future.

This assumption, I call it “stable mode”. Its basic idea is: the world is static, my framework can reflect the whole picture of the world on the whole, and what we need to do later may just be tinkering.

Another hypothesis is: Everything I know is just the “past”, but the future is uncertain. It may be in line with my expectations, or it may not be at all. I need to keep up with the changes in the world so that my mental world will not deviate too far from the real world.

This assumption is called “change mode”. Its basic idea is: the world is changing all the time, so there is no fixed point that “fully reflects the real world”. What we have to do is to constantly adjust the mental world to prevent it from being affected by changes in the real world. Leave it behind.

Based on these two assumptions, there are some very interesting points.

For example: as people get older, people will become more inclined to the former. So Douglas Adams wrote this passage:

Any technology that I had when I was born is part of the ordinary future order of the world; any technology that was born between my 15 and 35 years old is a revolutionary product that will change the world. ; And any technology that was born after I was 35 is against natureThe law will be condemned by the gods!

Why? Because the youth is the time when the brain “models”, the brain will continue to draw input from the surrounding environment and adjust the link of neurons at a very high frequency to build a stable model.

After the age of 30-35, this model is basically formed, then the main task of the brain at this time becomes a “perfect model.” That is, fine-tuning various parameters of the model without changing the foundation.

Another reason is that changing modes require more energy. why? Because it requires a person to be in a “self-monitoring” state for a long time, constantly getting input, changing the link, and adjusting the wiring, which is very troublesome.

Conversely, the stable mode is much more convenient: in the face of information and input that may conflict with the existing framework, just ignore them.

So, we often say that as a person grows older, he tends to become more stable, more conservative, and more stubborn. A large part of the reason lies in the difficulty and need to change the entrenched mental model. The cost is quite high, so there will be very big resistance from the brain.

Another example: Under normal circumstances, what is the default mode of the brain? You might think it’s the latter, but it’s not, it’s the former.

Why? Remember a basic point: the brain has a very basic need to save energy as much as possible. So, what is the brain inclined to? Put yourself in an environment that is as stable as possible and try to minimize the “accidents” you receive.

In other words: what will happen to our lives under normal circumstances? It will become more and more similar, and a set of processes, specifications, and procedures will be formed and established, so that you can live in these set procedures, and try to avoid contact with “unexpected information” that contradicts them.

This is Karl Friston’s very classic “Minimum Free Energy Hypothesis”. He believes that the brain does not like accidents, any accident will cause interference to the system, or will change the internal layout of the system(and this requires energy) , Or you need to exclude it. Therefore, the brain naturally tends to remain in a stable and unchanging environment, minimizing the accidents that it can come into contact with-that is, “free energy”.

So,We will see that many people usually have their own positions and ideas. When they come into contact with information that contradicts their own positions, their first reaction is often rejection, denial, and questioning-which is what I said “Verification of bias” and “motivational reasoning”.

This is actually very natural, because our brains are shaped like this.

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In short: If we don’t impose any constraints, what would our life style be like?

The high probability is: We will walk in the originally set direction for the rest of our lives, and then follow the rules given to us by society in all aspects of life, and dare not step beyond the thunder pool.

That is: from the beginning to the end, always live in the “stable mode”.

Is this a bad state? Actually not necessarily. Just like a question that a friend asked me before:

If a person’s life is very stable and carefree every day, although his vision is very narrow, but he does not know this, then it is necessary for him to learn, think, and “out of daily life” “To see the bigger world”?

My personal opinion is: This is actually a question of personal orientation.

If you agree with the stable mode, and you think you can live in this mode for the rest of your life without encountering any risks or impacts, then there is actually no problem. This is your freedom.

But in my personal opinion: this is difficult.

The concept I personally hold is the mode of change. Because in my opinion, the entire world is in an environment, from the industrial revolution, to the invention of electricity, to the invention of the Internet, to the invention of artificial intelligence…everything is accelerating, even the acceleration is accelerating-you past The recognized rules may not exist at all in the future; the skills you have mastered and survived may be completely eliminated at some stage.

In such an environment, it is actually very difficult for a person to maintain a stable model and be independent.

So, based on the change model, what are we going to do?

Yes, Find those unchanging rules, and based on these rules, adjust yourself to adapt to changes in the outside world.

What are the unchanging rules? For example, as small as how we perceive the world and think about problems, as large as how the world is organized and operated, how people are connected, how systems and networks are formed… These are “frames.” The “content” of the world’s technology, business, fashion, and lifestyle may change, but the framework is difficult to change in a short period of time.

So, you will find that the fields that I study and study, such as psychology, cognitive science, business, sociology, management…In fact, I start from the micro and macro separately, trying to grasp the operation of society. “Framework”-This is a way to “grab the unchanging rules”.

So, how do you adjust yourself and adapt to changes?

Finally came to our original topic-the answer is also very simple: by constantly giving the brain more challenges and fresh stimulation, let the brain slowly get used to and adapt, so that it can play a higher level under the changing mode Work efficiency and output.

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I have said in many articles: The essence of our brain is a Bayesian system.

What is a Bayesian system? Simply put: the brain will first build a model (called a priori model) of the world, and then according to every information you receive, For every action taken, this model is adjusted (posterior model) to make it more in line with the “real”.

So, essentially: What is your brain? It is the weighted sum of all your inputs and all outputs.

For example: When you are irritated by other people’s words and lose control of your emotions, it is equivalent to telling your brain: next time you hear similar words, increase the weight of the “irritation” module.

If you continue like this, you will only get more and more easily emotionally out of control and let yourself run wild in this direction.

But when you are irritated and about to lose control of your emotions, if youBeing able to restrain yourself, let yourself take a deep breath, divert your attention, slowly pull back your emotions, and calm yourself… You are equivalent to telling the brain: lower the weight of the “irritation” module, and “calm” The weight of the module is increased.

So, what I often say is: Don’t think that a behavior has no effect if it is small. No, it will affect the weight judgment of the brain subtly, and it will form a shape of the brain over time.

So, why do we use our brains to learn, think, and improve ourselves? The reason is actually the same: in order to train the brain, let it get used to this high-intensity brainstorming mode, and internalize it into the model, which becomes a “natural” thing.

Simply put: Continue to do things that have thresholds, and slowly, you will not feel that there are thresholds.

And in this process of constantly “crossing the threshold”, your brain will be shaped more powerful, stronger, and more agile.

This is also the best way to combat our declining brain cognitive and thinking abilities as we age.

For example: I have a habit of encountering any problem. I will not ask for help right away, but I will definitely do it myself, look up information, do experiments, and test various possibilities…it’s true If it doesn’t work, please consult others.

Does this take time? Spend time, but I can get more and more valuable practical experience than directly asking for help. These experiences may not be available right now, but they will definitely be available someday in the future.

You may think this is “troublesome” and you may subconsciously reject it, but in fact, if you adapt to this “difficult, try first” way of thinking, turn it into a Get used to it, you won’t find it bothersome at all.

Conversely, you will find those “reaching out parties” very unreasonable-why do you even ask such a simple question? Why not try it yourself?

Of course, I’m not saying that it’s better to do it than to stretch it out. What I want to say is:

What is the essence of so-called trouble, labor, and hard work? It is the brain’s fear and rejection of “leaving homeostasis” and “consuming energy”.

But once you get used to “doing threshold things”, onceYou are used to this kind of energy consumption and treat it as a new steady state…

You will never feel “troublesome”, “laborious” or “hard” anymore.

So, when you face changes, when you encounter difficulties and need to find a way to deal with it, you will not be easily stressed and anxious anymore. Because ——

Isn’t life like this? Isn’t this the norm?

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Therefore, students often ask such questions:

• Teacher, your reading and learning methods are very good, but don’t you need a lot of reading to use it?

• Teacher, I have learned a lot of methods from you, but they are all difficult. Is it not suitable for me?

……

This way of thinking is actually bad.

Why? It is equivalent to: I know this thing is correct and very important, but I don’t seem to be in a good state. I will do it when I’m in a good state…

This is actually putting the cart before the horse. A good state cannot be “waited”. Only if you do it, will it be possible to reduce the difficulty and make your state “better”.

In fact, what is the difference between good people and ordinary people? To a large extent lies in this: Can you get used to and adapt to the thing of “crossing the threshold” and make difficult things simple.

For example:

The first type of person:

• When I learned a method: Oh, this method is really good, I must use it!

• Encountered the corresponding scene: Did you learn a method last time? Would you like to use it for a try? Forget it, I feel so troublesome, next time…

• I encountered difficulties and obstacles: Did I understand it wrong? Sure enough, we still have to use the old method. Maybe I still have to find a more suitable way for me.

• After a period of time: Teacher, your method is good, but it doesn’t seem to be suitable for me. I have not been able to use it. Thank you.

The second type of person:

• When I learned a method: Oh, this method is really good, I must use it!

• I encountered the corresponding scene: I finally have the opportunity to give it a try. Let me think about what I should do, then write down every step and do a good review.

• Difficulties and obstacles encountered: Why doesn’t it work here? Does it need to be fine-tuned? Let me do an experiment to see how to adjust it better.

• After a period of time: Teacher, your method is very good. I have made some adjustments based on my actual situation. You can take a look. You are also welcome to give some guidance.

What kind of person are you?

Which kind of person do you want to be?

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Finally, let’s summarize briefly.

Why do we spend our time and energy on “painful” learning and thinking? It depends on what kind of assumptions you have about the world.

If you hold the concept of changing models, then doing things that have thresholds will become very important.

Because this can continuously strengthen and train our brain, make it “adapt” to this energy-consuming model, and internalize it as part of the mental model.

So, when you are faced with changes and challenges and need to use your brain to think, you will never feel troubled anymore, because this is a normal state.

Excuse me with you.

This article is from WeChat official account:Mr. L said (ID: lxianshengmiao) , Author: Lachel