Confused after a long vacation after the college entrance examination? Write a letter to your future self
Some students hope that after they go to university, they will become the opposite of what they are now.
How likely is this?
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Every summer, the most concerned thing is the college entrance examination.
The students who have finished the college entrance examination are not only envied by the younger students, but even the adults sigh: It's so good to be young, and the vacation is so good!
Xiao A is a candidate for the college entrance examination this year. On the second day after the exam, he slept until 12 noon. After getting up, he was a little confused and didn't know what to do.
So he asked online: What will he do in the summer vacation after the college entrance examination?
Someone immediately responded: "Of course you can play whatever you want. There will never be such a relaxing summer vacation in the future. The university is also very busy and tired, so hurry up and play."
There are also people who make a list of books carefully: "You must study quickly, otherwise you will still fall behind when you go to university."
Little A looked through everyone's suggestions and was even more confused: Didn't the teacher say that it is easier to go to university?
What is college life like, and what will happen after I go to college?
Will I "become a person" after entering university?
After college entrance examination candidates, they are often full of longing for the university, and at the same time, they are also confused about the unknown. Some of them hope to become the opposite of what they are now.
For example, some "little transparent" students may think: I didn't have the opportunity to play before, so I was shy and introverted.
After I go to university, I must be cheerful and optimistic, show leadership skills, and become the chairman of the student union and a figure in the campus.
There are also some students who are fed up with the control of their parents' pocket money, imagine: What is this little money? When I enroll, I will start a business, and I will be worth a million after graduation.
The expectation is very good, but these students may not have thought about what the chairman of the student union specifically does, and what is the daily business of entrepreneurship.
Psychologists have found that people may be inclined to process their future self into "strangers" who have little relationship with the present self.
Even when people are processing their future self, the way they think and the activation areas of the brain are different from when they think of the present self.
Specifically, people's processing of the future self is abstract, while the processing of the present self is concrete.
Therefore, when students think about themselves after entering university, they may construct an image piled up with various beautiful adjectives and think "I want to be such a person"; but when they think of who they are now, they think about "I Are you getting fat again" and how to solve low-level things like dinner today.
In psychology, this is a manifestation of the future self-continuity (future self-continuity) is not high enough.
Future self continuity, as the name suggests, is the degree to which people perceive the present self and the future self as a whole.
People with high continuity of the future self think that there are many similarities between their future self (such as the self after graduating from college) and the present self. When imagining the future self, they will have a more vivid and clear picture, and they will also have a clearer picture of the future self. More positive reviews.
And expecting to "become something completely different"-for example, a student who wants to become the chairman of the student union or a million-dollar entrepreneur. Although he has a very positive evaluation of himself in the future, he can only understand that the future self is completely different from the present. Imagination will be more abstract and vague.
What I do now is shaping the future of me
The level of future self continuity is related to people's daily behavior, academic performance, and physical and mental health.
As the saying goes, "The young and strong don't work hard, and the boss is sad."
But if a person has low self-continuity and feels that the future is something in the future, and has little to do with the present self, one may only think about living a day; only when one has a high self-continuity, one thinks that the future self is related to When the current self is inseparable and closely connected, it is more likely to "work hard" now, so as not to "sorrow" in the future.
Canadian psychologist Blouin-Hudon et al. found in a study of college students that there is a significant negative correlation between future self continuity and procrastination tendency, that is, the lower the future self continuity of students, the more procrastination.
This may be because the short-term delay and avoidance, such as throwing down homework to go to the drama, can relieve people's pressure when working on the homework below, but the delay does not allow the homework to be completed by itself, which will bring it to the future self. More negative emotions such as stress and anxiety.
Similarly, research by American psychologist Adelman et al. found that college students with high self-continuity in the future will give more consideration to the influence of current behavior on future results, thereby prompting them to improve their self-control ability.
College students with strong self-control ability are more likely to achieve higher academic achievement.
In addition to academic work, future self-continuity will also affect other aspects of people.
Psychologists used to let people improve the continuity between their present and future selves by asking people to write to themselves 20 years from now, and then discovered that these people are compared with another group of people who wrote letters to their recent selves. , "Exercise" every day longer.
In other words, enhancing the continuity of the self in the future increases people's physical exercise behavior. Only by "exercising for one hour a day" now can we "work for the health of the motherland for 50 years" in the future.
Write a letter to your future, turn your imagination into reality
Since the future self-continuity has many benefits, how can we improve the future self-continuity?
This can be done by writing to and imagining the future self.
Just like the research mentioned in the previous article, writing a letter to yourself 20 years later can improve self-continuity. If you feel that this time period is too long, write a letter to yourself when you graduate from college in four or five years. Row.
What are the similarities between the self back then and the self now?
What was my daily schedule at that time?
What achievements have been achieved, and what are the outstanding qualities?
Finding out more and more similarities, and thinking about the future self more clearly and reasonably positively, the more it will help us to improve the continuity of our future self.
If you are not good at writing, or feel that the form of writing is too grand, then not writing a letter and just doing this part of the imagination can also play the same role.
It is best to choose a specific point in time in the future, and then imagine yourself at this point in time, which is more conducive to the specificity and clarity of the imagination.
Improving future self-continuity can help us overcome procrastination, strengthen self-control, and perform better. Of course, the most important part is to take action.
If you want to become the chairman of the student union, you can start by understanding the progress of student activities and practicing interpersonal skills; if you want to start a business worth millions, you can start by understanding the entrepreneurial process and looking for viable business opportunities; if you want to be a university student, you can start now Start to understand professional courses and read some introductory books.
Letters and imagination have paved the way for us, and moving forward is what we must do now.
So, what do you want to look like after graduating from university?
Is there anything you can do to look like you imagined, starting from this summer vacation?
Yin Jinxiu Source: China Youth Daily