3 Mental Habits Making You Miserable

Posted 2020-11-24 harry1989

喜欢一篇文章，原文链接：https://nickwignall.com/mental-habits-making-you-miserable/?utm_source=quora&utm_medium=referral

We all want to be happier. We search our lives for the next big idea, the next fancy promotion, or the next person in our life who is going to make it all better—whether it’s a new girlfriend, a new boss, or a new president.

我们都想要快乐。我们努力生活，为了下一个想法，下一个幻想或者使我们的生活变得更好的下一个人--可能是一个新的女朋友，一个新的老板，或者一个新的总统。

But for more than 2,000 years, the wisest among us—from the Stoic philosophers of ancient Rome to modern pioneers in psychology and mental health—have been telling us that the source of happiness is not without but within.

但是在超过2000年的时间里，我们中间的智者--从古罗马的斯多格派哲人到现代的心理学和神经学的先驱--都告诉过我们，快乐的源泉不是来自外部，而是来自自身。

Happiness has much more to do with how we think about the world than the world itself.

幸福在于我们怎么去想这个世界而不是这个世界本身。

In my own work as a psychologist, I see evidence of this every day—how subtle but destructive mental habits can sabotage even the best external events, achievements, and relationships in our lives. What follows are 3 of the most common of these mental habits.

我本身的工作是一个心理学家，我每天都能看到活生生的例子-- 即使微小的、消极的想法习惯也能毁坏最好的外部事物、成就和我们生活中的关系。下面便是其中最常见的3个心理习惯。

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1. Expectations Gone Wild

期望变得疯狂

Expectations are an assumption about how things should be along with the certainty that the world will comply and make it so. You expect your boss to be compassionate and constructive in her report on your performance and then you’re shocked and outraged when she’s critical and harsh with you.

Psychologically, expectations are a form of wish fulfillment—temporarily satisfying a desire through an unconscious or habitual thought process. Because you wish for a compassionate boss, you expect that she will be, which, for a moment, makes you feel good.

Expectations feel good because they give the illusion of certainty and order. And high expectations feel especially good because they give our egos a jolt of self-righteousness to boot.

The problem is, the world is neither certain nor orderly, especially when it comes to our fellow human beings. As the great novelist and student of human nature, Dostoyevsky, once said, “Man is a fickle and disreputable creature”

In the long-run, high expectations do more harm than good. They lead to perpetual irritability, strained relationships, anxiety, and even depression.

长期来看，高期望害处大于益处。他们会导致长久的易怒，紧张的关系，焦虑，甚至失望。

The trick is to see expectations for what they are—a relatively primitive defense mechanism against the anxiety of uncertainty and our fragile egos. Because once you do, you’ll be much better positioned to cultivate healthier ways of managing your fears and insecurities:

技巧是看他们的期望是什么--一个相对原始的机械对抗不确定的、易碎的自我带来的焦虑。因为一旦你开始了，你会更好的培养健康的方式处理你的恐惧和不安全感。

• Learn to embrace uncertainty and ambiguity instead of masking it.
• 学会拥抱不确定性、含糊不清的而不是掩盖它。
• Get comfortable with disappointment and regret, allowing it “along for the ride” instead of trying to expel it.
• 与失望和遗憾相处，使它一路随行而不是驱逐它。
• Develop healthy income streams for your identity and sense of self so that you don’t have to rely on criticalness and high expectations to feed your ego.
• 发展健康的自我感觉输入，这样你便不会依赖严格的高期望来反馈自我。
• Lift your hopes high but keep your expectations low.
• 提高你的希望，但是降低你的期望。

Nothing is certain. Accept that and you’ll be happier for it.

没有什么东西是确定的。接受它你将会更高兴。

The Master doesn’t seek fulfillment. Not seeking, not expecting, she is present, and can welcome all things.

— Lao-Tzu

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2. Emotional Reasoning

Emotional reasoning is when you use how you feel as evidence for what you should believe or how you should act:

情绪原因是当你存在某种情绪时，你应该相信什么或者应该有某种行为的借口。

• You feel irritated with your spouse or partner so you decided that it’s a good idea right now to air all your most pressing grievances with them.
• 你觉得和你的配偶或同伴生气，所以你觉得把你的大部分抱怨强加给她们是一个好的主意。
• You feel lethargic and unmotivated so you decide you need to stay in and rest instead of going for that run or hanging out with friends like you promised.
• 你觉得无精打采、没有动力，所以你决定呆在家里休息而不是出去跑跑或者和你喜欢的三两朋友出去约会。
• 城市的生活很枯燥、工作很枯燥，仅有的一天待在家里是不是很累、很困？ 出去反而会好

It’s tempting to follow our feelings when deciding what’s true or helpful because they’re so loud. And because they’re loud—because we feel them so strongly—they seem persuasive and convincing.

But the strength of our feelings is a poor indicator of truth or usefulness.

The anger and outrage you feel after reading your sister’s Facebook post about gun-control argues loudly for commenting back with a snarky and sarcastic comment that you feel is sure to show her the error of her ways.

Yeah, ‘cause that usually works…

But if it’s so obvious in the abstract that acting impulsively on how we feel isn’t a great idea, why do we all do it so often?

The short answer: because it makes us feel better.

Strong painful emotions like anxiety, shame, irritability, sadness, etc. are aversive, which means we want them to go away, quickly if possible. And acting on these emotions often helps quell them temporarily.

强烈的痛苦的情绪，比如焦虑、害羞、易怒、悲伤等等是令人厌恶的。那意味着，我们希望它们快速滚开，越快越好。这些情绪产生的行为经常能暂时缓解这些情绪。

The problem is, you’re getting in the habit of trading your values—what you believe is true and genuinely helpful in the long-term—for how you want to feel in the moment:

问题是，你会陷入一种习惯，交易你自己的价值--你所相信的和长期来看真诚的有用的--对于你觉得现在有用的：

• Staying on the couch instead of going to the gym is trading a temporary feeling (relaxation) for a long-term value (physical health).
• 待在沙发上而不是去健身馆，是用短暂的感觉（放松）代替长期的价值（身体健康）
• Taking those three shots before going to the party makes you feel better temporarily but in the long-run only reinforces the self-destructive belief that you need something in order to function in social situations.
• 参加聚会前喝三杯酒，会让你暂时感觉良好，但是长期看来只会让你在社交场合失去自信。
• Making that sarcastic comment to your spouse feels good in the moment because it boosts your ego with a little hit of self-righteousness, but in the long run you’re eroding trust and intimacy in your relationship.
• 对你的配偶做挖苦的言论使你在当时感觉良好，因为它通过你自我感觉的正义增强了你的自我，但是长期看来，你在侵蚀你们之间的信任和亲密关系。

To avoid the trap of emotional reasoning, get in the habit of clarifying and elaborating on your long-term values.

避免陷入情绪陷阱，获得良好的习惯，提升自己的长期价值。

When you’re overcome with any strong emotion, ask yourself, What do I really want in this situation? What’s going to make me happy in the long-run?

当你遇到强烈的情感波动时，问问自己，在这种场景你到底想要什么？长期看来什么能使你更加快乐。

Play long-term games, not short-term ones.

Always aim at complete harmony of thought and word and deed.

— Gandhi

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3. Judgmental Self-Talk

Whether you realize it or not, you’re constantly talking to yourself—all day, every day. You’re narrating the events of your daily life, some of which are boring and mundane (What type of squash should I get for dinner?), some of which are epic (He’s so negative… I knew I shouldn’t have married him).

不论你是否意识到，你在长期和自己对话--整天，日复一日。你叙述你生活中发生的事，其中一些是枯燥的、平常的（比如晚上该吃什么？），其中一些是宏大的，史诗级的。

But in addition to narrating the events in our lives, we also talk to ourselves about ourselves: We comment on our recent performance in front of the sales team, we tell ourselves how good we look in those new jeans, we worry about how we’ll handle the upcoming exam and whether or not we prepared enough.

但是我们除了描述我们生活中发生的事情，我们也经常和我们自己对话讨论我们自己：我们评论我们在销售团队最近的表现，我们告诉自己我们穿上这些新牛仔多好看，我们担心将要到来的考试，我们是否准备充足。

This inner speech about ourselves is called self-talk. And, again, whether you realize it or not, you probably have certain patterns or habits of self-talk—in other words, you tend to talk to yourself in a certain way. Maybe you’re in the habit of worrying about how you look anytime you’re around other people? Or maybe you’re in the habit of nitpicking small mistakes you’re made, ruminating on them endlessly for hours, days, even years after the fact.

关于我们自己的内部声音叫做自我对话。再一次，不论你是否意识到，你可能有自我对话的特定模式--换句话说，你意图以一种特定的方式告诉自己。这个习惯也许你在时刻担心周围人怎么看你？ 又或者你在担心自己犯的一个细小的错误，无限地反思它们在事件发生后的几个小时、几天甚至数年后。

In any case, your habits of self talk matter a lot because they’re one of the single biggest influences on your mood. Put another way:

在任何场景，你自我对话的习惯影响很大，因为它们是影响你自我情绪的最大因素之一。换句话说：

How we habitually talk to ourselves determines how we habitually feel about ourselves.

我们怎样和自己对话决定了我们认为自己是怎样的人。

Here’s a quick thought experiment: Suppose a nasty little elf follows you along everywhere you go every hour of the day. And all this nasty little elf does is hurl insults at you—he tells you how bad you look, how dumb you sound, and reminds you constantly that nobody likes you and you’re bound to make a fool of yourself sometime soon.

Now, even if you were a supremely confident person who knew intellectually that none of the little elf’s speech was actually true, think for a second about how you would feel if this was your life—to be constantly berated and insulted every minute of every day? Pretty awful, right?

Well, that’s literally what you’re doing to yourself when you’ve developed a habit of judgmental and negative self-talk. Even though you might know that you’re not a terrible person who always fails and nobody likes, if you talk to yourself like that, that’s how you’re going to feel.

All of which means that if you want to be happier—or at least a little less unhappy—a great place to start is your self-talk.

Get in the habit of paying attention to how you talk to and about yourself? Take notes. Look for patterns. Start to identify your stereotyped forms of self-talk, especially the overly negative or judgmental types.

养成一个”注意到你怎样和自己对话的习惯“。做好笔记。寻找模式，开始发现你的老一套的自我对话模式，尤其是过度负面的或者吹毛求疵类型的。

Once you start to see and identify the most common patterns, you can then begin to change them. Call them out for what they are—unhelpful habits—and ask yourself: What would be a more realistic or helpful way of talking to myself right now?

一旦你开始看到并定位到常见的模式，你便能够改变它们。把它们找出来--无用的习惯--然后问问自己：现在什么是一个更现实和有用的自我对话方式。

Try not to buy your own B.S.

The stories we tell ourselves are far more powerful than we realize. Learn to see these stories for what they are—narrative habits—and then you can learn to change them, and in the process, get your self-talk to start working for you, rather than against you.

和我们自己讲故事的方法比我们意识到的更有力量。学会看到这些故事--描述习惯--你可以学着改变它们，在这个过程中，使自我对话开始为你工作而不是和你对抗。

The soul becomes dyed with the color of its thoughts.

― Marcus Aurelius

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All you need to know

Our habits of thought powerfully affect the way we feel. And there are 3 dangerous mental habits that we all fall into from time to time that lead to unnecessary suffering—Expectations Gone Wild, Emotional Reasoning, and Judgmental Self-Talk. When we learn to identify and address these habits, happiness has a way of finding us, regardless of our circumstances.

我们的思维（想法）习惯强力地影响着我们的感觉。这3个危险的思想习惯我们经常陷入的导致不必要的痛苦--期望变得疯狂、情绪原因、判断自我对话。当我们学者定位这些习惯时，快乐总有一条路会找到我们，不论我们当前的境遇。

Hold on to hope, but let go of expectation.

保持住希望，但是让期望随风而去。

Base your decisions on your values, not your feelings.

根据价值来做你的决定，而不是你的感觉。

Strive to be realistic and helpful in your self talk.

努力在自我对话中变得现实和有帮助。