Xian Yu answered the reader's question: Xian Yu, why did you write chicken soup?

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Recently, I launched the "Xian Yu Answers Reader's Questions" activity. If you have any questions you want to ask, please leave a message and I will answer them in order.

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Since writing the series "Xian Yu Answers Readers' Questions", I have received many titles from friends, such as "Life Mentor", "Chicken Soup Master", "Emotional Blogger" and so on. I like these titles very much, but they also made me think, such as " What is the difference between "philosophy" and "chicken soup"? "

Let's talk about the word "chicken soup" first. It originated from an American named Jack Canfield. He could only talk about so-so for the first half of his life. By the late 1980s, he still owed $140,000 and relied on noodles every day. live. On his 45th birthday, he used a large piece of paper to draw a large $10,000 bill, hung it on the wall, stared at it, and one day was inspired to start a motivational book writer.

Once written, there are about 100 short stories, all of which are inspirational, productive, and positive. He thought that his grandmother would make chicken soup to cure all his diseases, so the title of the book was "Chicken Soup for the Soul". , such as "Chicken Soup for the Soul of Cardamom", "Chicken Soup for the Soul of Parents", "Chicken Soup for the Soul of Pet Lovers", "Chicken Soup for the Soul of Golfers" and so on.

Influenced by "Chicken Soup for the Soul", some inspirational or inspiring articles are also called "chicken soup essays".

What about "philosophy", it should be the abbreviation of "philosophical principle", which is usually a philosophical theory about life issues and a theoretical form of outlook on life, which mainly discusses the purpose, value, meaning, and shape of life. Its function is to make people understand the fundamental principles and truths of the universe and life, and to play a guiding role in people's lives.

Combined with our past experience of "drinking chicken soup", we can conclude that the differences between philosophy and chicken soup are:

In terms of content, chicken soup focuses on storytelling, and is often cited through a positive short story to draw a positive conclusion, while philosophy focuses on logical speculation, emphasizing thinking and proof, so it will be easier to understand. difficulty.

In terms of function, chicken soup likes to output emotions, emphasizes psychological identity, or inspirational or heart-warming or comfort, so that people can be spiritually comforted, or people's negative emotions can be relieved, or it can give people confidence and stimulate people's positive emotions. Philosophy, on the other hand, has truth and focuses on guiding people to make correct cognitions, so it is instructive for people's life practice.

But these are not enough for us to distinguish chicken soup from philosophy, and the judgment standard has a lot to do with people's cognition. In a word, some people think it is chicken soup, and some people may think it is philosophy. The same sentence may be thought of as chicken soup when you are young, but it may be thought of as philosophical when you are mature, and vice versa.

I don't think it is necessary to distinguish so clearly. As long as it is useful, there is nothing wrong with drinking chicken soup. But I have had this experience: after reading a lot of successful learning books, I have a strong rebellious psychology towards this kind of content, and even for all positive content, there is a kind of disdain in my heart, when others mention it, I will also mock: "Why do you like watching chicken soup so much?"

In fact, when I recall that the reason why I am like this is that chicken soup or philosophy is useful, it is still useless if I don’t insist on practicing it. I didn’t persist, so I blamed my failure, powerlessness, and inferiority on my doubts about these contents. How much? It's a bit like "you can't eat grapes and say grapes are sour".

Of course, some chicken soups are really useless, because they mostly express emotions, but they are not helpful for solving practical problems, so people will say, "Chicken soup can't kill people, but it can't save people."

I want to say a little more about the "poisonous chicken soup". The poisonous chicken soup is still very popular among young people, such as:

"It's good to delay for a while, and it's good to delay all the time",

"There is nothing difficult in the world, as long as you are willing to give up."

"All roads lead to Rome, and some people were born in Rome."

"Sometimes you don't know what despair is if you don't try hard."

"Being ugly is a disease. Otherwise, how would a plastic surgery hospital be called a hospital?"

"If a person gets back to you in seconds, it can only mean that this person is just playing on the phone."

"You think he can't express it, but in fact he just doesn't love you."

"Many people say that they choose Beijing, Shanghai and Guangzhou because of good opportunities for development, but when they say development, they actually mean part-time jobs."

"99% of the things in the world can be solved with money, and the remaining 1% needs more money to solve."

After reading it, does it feel good? I feel a little relieved in my heart, as if these words express the "truth of life".

I think the reason why people feel this way, emotionally, is because it writes a point of view that everyone is afraid to admit, and logically, it takes another turn from the usual point of view, like "Genius is 1% "Inspiration + 99% perspiration", plus a twist, "but that 1% inspiration is the most important", after adding, there is indeed some truth, so I am more convinced of this sentence. Of course, everyone knows that Edison did not actually say the second half of the sentence, but people are habitually more convinced of this "though but" logic.

But if you think about these words again, "all roads lead to Rome, and some people are born in Rome", "the ugly duckling becomes a white swan, not because of how hard it works, but because its parents are white swans." Effort is useless? Isn't it typical fatalism to attribute both individual successes and failures to objective conditions? "99% of the things in the world can be solved with money, and the remaining 1% need more money to solve." Isn't this emphasizing the theory of money?

You might say, "Xianyu, can't you afford it? Do you really believe this kind of obvious self-deprecation?"

Seriously, I always thought I wouldn't believe it, until one day I realized, why am I always talking about these poisonous chicken soups? And sometimes, these poisonous chicken soup really affects my decision. Seriously, if people say it often, they will believe it.

So I was thinking, "How can I believe this?", I guess it was because it fulfilled a need in my heart. When we face failures and setbacks, if we can blame the failure on the outside world, such as family, background, appearance, or on ourselves, such as lack of effort, self-discipline, and lack of talent, these thoughts are all self-comforting. Reasons, with these reasons, we can avoid the mental pain of "I am a very unsuccessful person", and can live in fantasy with the idea of "If I did it at the time, I could also be very successful", You can psychologically suggest that you are actually a very good person, but because of these shortcomings, the "real me" is actually very good.

So poisonous chicken soup is really cool, it can really relieve some of our negative emotions, but after venting, we can't take the right seat, after all, this is not "real heroism".

Finally, let me talk about why I wrote the series "Xian Yu Answers Readers' Questions".

In fact, writing this series is very out of my style, at least I think so. Before "Xian Yu Answers Readers' Questions", I wrote purely technical articles. In the articles, I would not write any nonsense that has nothing to do with technology, such as chatting about my recent life, etc. Write something like a year-end summary.

And the reason why I started the series "Xian Yu Answers Readers' Questions" is mainly because I have been asked too many questions. Looking back at these questions, in fact, many of them are not technical questions, but questions of value, mentality, and direction. These questions cannot be answered by pure technology, but the pain they can cause is long-lasting. For many of my classmates’ questions, I have written long-form answers separately. Some of them responded indifferently, and they asked the next question after a sentence. , the questions asked, and my limited personal experience, in fact, I can't always respond effectively to these questions, but I still believe that these thoughts written down will be helpful to some students, so I opened "Xian Yu Answers" Readers ask" this activity, and open up these answers, hoping to help more students.

Although I haven't read too many books, starting from college, I've only read hundreds of books when I'm older. As time goes by, many books have already been forgotten, and it's far from being able to have poetry books in my belly. , side by side citations. But for this series, I also tried my best to be conscientious and meticulous, in order to write "How do you understand the unity of knowledge and action? ", I extended reading "The Integration of Knowledge and Action: The Biography of Wang Yangming", in order to write "How to Find a Life Partner You Can Talk About Quickly?", I extended reading "Intimacy", in order to write "How to Learn More Planned, Upgrade more stable and faster? , I extended reading "Feynman's Method of Learning", in order to write "What is the meaning of life? ", I extended reading "Frankl's Autobiography: Living the Meaning of Life", I hope to be able to write a complete answer as much as possible.

Therefore, I also apologize to every questioner here. I did not really answer the question of the questioner, but more abstracted everyone's question, and answered more abstract and broad questions. The purpose is to The answer is more general, and I think this should be able to help more people, but it will also lose some special suggestions for the questioner.

As for the things I wrote, whether they were evaluated as chicken soup or as deep as they were, things like reason are actually written for those in need. Writing an article is not to convince the readers of what the readers say, but the readers themselves already have this awareness, but they are vague and have no way of knowing, and I wrote these things just because they appeared in the At the right time, it is presented in the right language and angle, and the result makes people feel suddenly enlightened. So the same thing, maybe A's honey, B's arsenic, A's philosophy, B's chicken soup.

In the process of writing this series, I also discovered that, in fact, these answers reflect my current cognition and understanding of the world. If photos and videos can record a person's youth, save a file for TA's appearance. , then these articles are a file that I have saved for my thoughts. When I look back at the next age group, such as 7 years later, I will look back and examine some of my thoughts at this time, and there will be many new insights.

I hope I will write "Sai Yu Answers Readers' Questions" again in 7 years.

series of articles

The full list of Xian Yu's answers to readers' questions: https://github.com/mqyqingfeng/Blog

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