At the end of the year and the beginning of the year, many friends are always wrapped in "retrospectives and prospects". While thinking about these questions, I also fell into year-end anxiety.
At the end of the year, a personal inventory is carried out to review your growth and shortcomings in the past year, which is a comprehensive and objective summary. However, if you take a provocative self-assessment and only see the shortcomings of the past year and not the achievements, this can lead to questioning of your self-worth, which can trigger year-end anxiety.
Research in cultural psychology has found that compared with Western culture represented by Europe and the United States, East Asian culture emphasizes self-criticism, humility, and self-inadequacy. Because of this, in terms of specific actions, we must remind ourselves to look at the time that we can't go back holistically, and not to focus too much on the regrets of the past.
In addition, we can also practice gratitude exercises. Compile and document the positive experiences and highlights of the past year, even if they seem trivial or not a major achievement, such as reminiscing about the beautiful scenery you enjoyed together on a holiday with friends, and the comforts of a conversation and friendship. Grateful to nature, grateful to friends, grateful for life, looking back on these good years will greatly improve our sense of happiness and reduce anxiety.
The social psychologist Festinger has long pointed out that social comparisons are inevitable. Indeed, we are always making social comparisons with the people around us, and even with strangers on the Internet.
The so-called "people are more angry than others", social comparison will exacerbate personal anxiety and tension and other negative emotions. Even though we know that social comparisons can have negative effects, this idea always unconsciously runs into our heads. This is because people have a cognitive motivation that desperately wants to know their position, and social comparisons can satisfy the realization of this motivation.
In this case, we must first acknowledge the universality and rationality of social comparisons - this shows that it is futile to completely eliminate social comparisons, and it will only make you more annoying, but this does not mean that we should be "captives" of social comparisons. On the contrary, while comparing society, we should also warn ourselves that each person's life trajectory is unique, and social comparison is only using a standard scale to measure different people, and we can find our own scale.
You might as well use the time to take stock to examine yourself and ask yourself what kind of life you want to live and what kind of person you want to become. When we have a clear and exclusive goal, we are less susceptible to social comparisons.
In addition to looking back on the past, we also look forward to the future. "Future" is a neutral word that encompasses both good hopes and uncertainties.
Some scholars have pointed out when describing the characteristics of the times in the world today that we have entered the era of BANI. The so-called bani era is taken from the capitalization of the first letters of the four English words brittle, anxious, nonlionear, and incomprehensible. These words highlight people's uncertainty about the future. In the case of individuals, uncertainty about the future can affect the individual's clarity of purpose.
Psychologists have done such a study. When people use vague, abstract statements to describe future goals, their sense of uncertainty about the future increases, anxiety follows, and they are less motivated to accomplish those goals. Conversely, when people use clear, unambiguous, and concrete statements to describe their future goals, they feel less uncertain about the future, less anxious, and more motivated to accomplish the goals they have set.
It can be seen that the best way to eliminate uncertainty about the future is to think concretely. So, when we are making New Year's resolutions for 2024, we might as well write clearly and unambiguously – if we plan to develop the habit of reading in the new year, we can further concretize the goal as follows: read 10 books and write 10 reading notes in the new year.
However, here is a reminder that when setting New Year's resolutions, you must set realistic goals based on your actual situation. Because unrealistic goals, no matter how detailed the plan is, will not have any effect on the individual, and may even hit our self-confidence and make us lose the ability to execute our actions.
The end of the year and the beginning of the year are a beautiful time to reflect on the past and look forward to the future, and it should not be a source of anxiety. Everyone's pace of life is different, and what suits you is the most important thing. In this process, please be gentle with yourself and meet every challenge and opportunity in life with a peaceful and calm attitude.
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