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A guide: teach you how to benefit from bad experiences.

Shenzhen Translation Bureau is its compilation team, focusing on technology, business, workplace, life and other fields, focusing on introducing new foreign technologies, new perspectives and new trends.

Editor’s note: Everyone often experiences bad life dilemmas and experiences. But in the face of pain and remorse, what else can we do besides depression? The author of this article, Benoit des Ligneris, introduced the common treatments in cognitive behavioral therapy, and combined his personal experience, summed up a set of concise and easy-to-operate psychological cognitive models, hoping to inspire everyone. This article is translated from Medium. The original title was “How Reframing Negative Experiences Can Make You Happier”.

My wife caught my sense of chaos when I returned home with the frustration and negativity caused by the reorganization of the company. I started thinking slowly, as usual, and she listened to me. After a conversation, my wife suggested that I go out for a jog.

So I put on my running shoes and went out.

In terms of fitness, I not only insist on exercising daily, and have participated in many standard marathons, many cross-country races, several super marathons and triathlons. For me, running, cycling, and swimming are the keys to a balanced life. After all, physical-level exercise is beneficial, which has been discussed in countless literatures.

But the jogging that night has nothing to do with these benefits.

Because there was nothing to do during the running, in addition to hearing my heavy breathing, I found that I started to consciously replay the scene of the day in my mind.

This process, known as cognitive reconstruction in psychology, refers to re-experiencing past events, thoughts, concepts, emotions and feelings in memory, and then giving these events one or more new interpretations.

Usually, this happens naturally. If you happen to be in a bad mood or under a lot of pressure, cognitive restructuring will make the situation worse, and even evolve into a Hollywood-style dramatic performance-you are the hero (or villain) in the movie, The other roles are yourself, your colleagues, andIncarnation of the world around. In this play, there are not only dialogues and monologues, but even soundtracks.

However, on that day, I found that I can have more control over the process of cognitive reconstruction by:

• First realize that you are refactoring the scene;

• Then understand the process through a different mental model.
  

  I will consciously call a mental model that I actively choose, so as to avoid being driven by emotion to create an uncontrollable spiritual soap opera-I have experienced and used this technique countless times.

  The establishment of such mental models and their use in daily life are, in fact, part of the field of cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT), which has evolved in recent years. In simple terms, the goal of CBT is to change specific cognitive pathways that can cause pain or mental health problems, thereby improving the way you see yourself, others, and the future.

  

  The relationship between mental models and your perspective on the world.

  When you actively call the left brain (biased half-brain), your right brain (biased and visualized, etc.) activity will be inhibited to a certain extent, thereby helping you to interrupt the continuous sinking vortex.

  I am using a relatively general model that can be applied in any situation- zone of concern / zone of control. This is a super simple method, because it points out that the only way we can regain happiness is to let the scope of our attention completely overlap with the scope we want to control.

  Let’s use guilt as an analogy. Guilt is not really a negative emotion in essence, but if we have guilt emotions about things and behaviors that we can’t control, think about how bad it is.

  

  When you are overwhelmed by negative emotions, it is obvious that you are deeply affected by uncontrollable things, and at this time your control domain is very small.

  Use focus and control domains to reconstruct your negative emotions
  

  Here’s how to start refactoring your experience by using a model of focus and control.

  Step 1: Locate your negative emotions, especially guilt or grief

  Although this process may be unpleasant, we must find out exactly what kind of negative emotions are causing trouble. In particular, pay attention to the existence of guilt, you will often feel it in the stomach or lower abdomen. Use this negative emotion as a clue and slowly find all the emotions related to your dilemma.

  At first, it helps to ask yourself the following questions: What did I do (or didn’t do) that caused the situation later? What made me feel responsible for the situation? Should I be responsible only for the content of my work, or for my colleagues, and even for the work of the reporting target?

  What you do is label emotionally related people, scenes, events, feelings, fears, and even animals as your personal focus. Just by doing this, you have made great progress, because you can clearly know that you are concerned about these people, these animals, these objects and ideas. Negative emotions are no longer a vague group without clear boundaries, it has become a checklist that can be put into action.

  Step 2: What is your control domain?

  Now that we’ve identified what a focus domain is, let’s look at the control domain. What can you control in the event? What did you do (or didn’t do) that triggered what happened afterwards? Especially in a series of events, it is necessary to locate what is your responsibility, which leads to guilt.

  This form of self-questioning and self-answering is usually relatively easy, because we are already accustomed to doing root-question analysis of questions, which is a scientific analysis paradigm commonly taught in higher education.

  This step also requires imagination (the right brain is here again!). You will unconsciously start to imagine another version of yourself, because you have made different choices in past events to avoid the difficult situation now. By thinking about you and your past actions, words, and thoughts, you will gradually focus on your control.

  Taking the company reorganization event mentioned above as an example, I revisited and sorted out the scenes of some management meetings, and I quickly found a series of nodes where I can react differently-each choice here is in myWithin the control domain.

  The third step: stop, take a step back, pay attention to the whole situation

  Now that we have made clear what the focus and control domains are, it’s time to see how they are related.

  Remember, in this model. If you can’t compare the two domains successfully, you will still feel unhappy. On the contrary, if they perfectly coincide, you will live happier.

  This is a bit of a mind game-you have to use all your creative and analytical skills to clearly define what is out of your control, what is within your control domain, and what is your responsibility Or fault.

  Since this series of events happened in the past, we are unable to make any changes to the event itself, so we can only understand it in a different way and reconstruct it. You can do two things:

  • Narrow your area of ​​interest

  • Expand your control domain
    

    

    If you can successfully reduce the focus area and expand the control area, you are on the starting line to dispel negative emotions and start growing.

    How can I narrow my focus?

    Let’s start with responsibility. Everyone has their own different worldview. As a physicist, for me, I like to talk about the universe’s extensiveness. After all, we are all small stars. Our body is made up of atoms and is linked by extremely weak atomic and electromagnetic energy. These atoms can be broken up in an instant, and then we can no longer perceive this wonderful universe.

    I am relieved every time by this fact: how can I be held responsible for all this? Regardless of the situation, including incurable diseases and death, this deduction can narrow my area of ​​responsibility.

    If you can’t resonate with this inference, I don’t recommend using it. Speak internally, face the mysteries of life and the universe, think about your own answers and models, and use your own language and experience to interpret it. Using other people’s thoughts and feelings is likely to be completely useless: you must make it part of you and internalize it into yoursbelief. Our goal is to be able to replay this deduction in the brain anytime, anywhere.

    It is worth mentioning that this will not make my sadness or empathy thin, but rather it will be clearer and sharper.

    You may need to find more ways to narrow your focus. For example, another idea was to decide that I should not pay attention to how other people view the incident.

    How do I expand my control domain?

    For the past two decades, I have been meditating daily and I have been trying to free myself from ego. Just like many predecessors and masters (Stoic, Buddhist, philosopher, priest), I also believe that I am the enemy. In order to exist, the ego must be in control. Every time I try to use my power or status, it’s because of my insecurity and this untouchable ego. As the years grow, I can even say that any thought that I want to control is directly related to my appearance.

    In fact, the only thing I find I can control is my thoughts. For example, I have control over how to define what is important, fair, horrible, interesting, sad or stressful. These emotions and thoughts just appear in my consciousness. But they will eventually pass away at a certain node.

    This is a spiritual problem that we have been exploring since the beginning of the social development of human civilization. Use your own understanding of the world, don’t use mine. Use your own point of view to decide where to control your deeper thinking and form your understanding of the event.

    Ask yourself what exactly I can control. Can I expand this circle of control to do better? Or is it better to understand in a different way?

    Possibility beyond control and attention

    For some difficult problems, you can think outside the dimension of attention and control. Sometimes you have a lot of anxiety and find that these emotions are related to childhood or the shadows of the past. At this point you may have to think more deeply, or perhaps seek the help of a psychotherapist, to reconstruct these events and become happier.

    Also, in each cycle, use the control you really have to restructure your focus. Because only when you really understand your control can you restructure your attention-and it is the process of refactoring that is the source of happiness.

    One last thing.

    Refactoring is not the last step. Your negative emotions and experiences will not be weakened by this, or even disappear magically. This will not cure all the anxiety and negative emotions in your life. In the face of life, you still need to put into action and work hard.

    Especially when you feel that you are not completely honest in thinking, expressing, or acting in an event that causes negative emotions, the control / focus model does not help you the most. Facing an incurable friend or family memberDisease, you will encounter the same problem. We still need to move forward.

    Use your negative feelings to help you become a better version of yourself. Focus on what you can control, let go of the illusion that you can control everything and cause pain. In front of love and appreciation people, 100% are present. In daily problems, control your emotions and temper, including interaction with everyone around you.

    

    Life will throw you new challenges. By applying this mental model frequently, you will gradually learn how to maintain contentment and equality with what you have, and grow into a better version of yourself.

    Our life is a great experience. Then, take advantage of this learning opportunity and grow into a real person.

    Translator: yanyan