Every festival, especially such "big festivals" as "May Day" and "Eleventh", it is normal to receive several "red envelope bombs". If you have to go to the wedding in person, basically the monthly salary will bottom. In addition to red envelopes, relatives, friends, colleagues, etc. also gather from time to time, and activities such as birthdays and visits to relatives and friends are also common human contacts.
This is called human affection - people keep in touch with others by giving red envelopes, gifts and other social resources, and maintain good relationships through daily interactions. Mr. Leung Shuming once said, "Chinese's life has always relied on family and kinship, but recently it has become a large supra-family group; 'Because of relatives and relatives, because of friends and friends' their path is still familiar, so they always enjoy people's feelings when things happen. "Human relations are an important form of social interaction, and they are understandable in themselves. However, for many young people today, sometimes the burden of human favor is too heavy, and even affects normal life. How should we break the game?
First of all, learn to set up a favor account. In reality, people often feel that the burden of human feelings is heavy, but only at the level of feelings. How much they spend on favors each month, and what proportion of their income these expenses account for, many people don't really know in their hearts.
There are two problems in this unclear burden of human feelings: first, the relevant expenses are actually within a reasonable range, just because they feel that they are passively spending money and feel uncomfortable in their hearts; Another situation is that personal expenses have put you in an embarrassing situation of not making ends meet. Human relations are not terrible, what is terrible is that the cost of favors exceeds reasonable limits. Therefore, it is necessary to set up a favor account.
This account can be used to specifically record how much you earn, how much you spend, and what percentage of your total income is related to your own expenses due to personal contacts. On this basis, we must set up the necessary warning line in combination with our actual situation and financial planning. Everyone's situation is different, and so is the level of the cordon. But the most basic consensus is that the cake is so big that you can't let people's personal expenses excessively affect their normal life. Once there are too many personal expenses, it is important to find a way to keep the favor account within a safe and reasonable range. If the activity is concentrated for a period of time and the favor account is overdrawn, it is also necessary to return the account to a virtuous circle as soon as possible.
At the same time, this favor account is not only financial, but also psychological. Don't compare favors, and you can't ask for favors. Whether it is family and friends or workplace relationships, learn to refuse when it is time to refuse. For many people, in fact, it is not necessary to go, must send, must be invited, must help. When receiving an invitation, we must first make a basic judgment on the importance and necessity of this matter, and make a decision based on our own time schedule and financial ability, rather than suffering in vain for reasons such as "embarrassed to refuse" and "afraid of losing face". To "reduce the burden" of human interaction, we must first learn to "reduce the burden" for your own mentality. You know, refusing an invitation to a workplace dinner will not make you look "unsocial" from now on; Politely refuse an ordinary friend's wedding invitation for appropriate reasons, and I believe that the other party will also understand.
A mature person with an independent personality should know how to start from reality and establish his own boundaries and principles, which will gain more respect from others. Of course, rejection is about methods, learning to express it peacefully, and sincerely explaining your own difficulties and related considerations. At the same time, it is necessary to discuss things on a case-by-case basis and let the other party feel that they are only rejecting this matter, not rejecting and denying people.
We must realize that in interpersonal communication, human feelings are very important, but for various reasons, there are also many bad habits and irrationalities. In any case, we should not be slaves to human feelings, and we will always have the right to choose.
The famous psychologist Adler said: True freedom is the courage to "be hated". As long as we bravely "do subtraction" based on our own actual situation, be loyal to our hearts, and not be swayed by external evaluations, and do not curry favor, it is the real burden reduction and the beginning of freedom.
(The author is an associate professor at the Institute of Developmental and Educational Psychology, Wuhan University)
Chen Wu Source: China Youth Daily