A reader asked me in the background:
Recently, I have been entangled in various trivial matters and interpersonal relationships every day, and I am very tired and confused, how should I deal with it?
I told him that he could try the "renunciation" rule proposed by Liu Zhenyun.
To put it simply, it is to cut off our relationship with ourselves, with external objects, and with others, so that we can achieve the goal of reducing the burden on life.
After all, life is like a boat, with too many loads to go fast, and there are worries about capsizing.
If you want to live a simple and relaxed life, you must learn to throw away the unnecessary parts of life.
01
Break the mind
The CCTV host once interviewed Zhou Youguang, the "father of Chinese pinyin", and asked him the secret of happiness.
Zhou Lao's answer is very simple: you can think about everything.
The world is complicated, and obsessions are numerous.
The more unwillingness and resentment you have for one thing, the more things can hurt you.
Voltaire once said, "It is not the distant mountains that make a man tired, but a grain of sand in his shoes." ”
So every time you walk a section, you have to learn to stop and dump the sand in your shoes.
Otherwise, those small troubles, every step will sting you and make it difficult for you to walk.
Actress Li Tingyi ruined her career in the second half of her life because she didn't learn this.
She was selected by Qiong Yao to join the crew and play the role of Little Swallow.
But at that time, she couldn't get away due to schedule problems, so she politely declined this opportunity.
Unexpectedly, after the launch of "Huanzhu Gege", it became popular all over the country, and the corner of Little Swallow was even more deeply rooted in the hearts of the people.
After Li Tingyi learned about it, she was annoyed that she had missed the opportunity, and she was angry.
Although she was already quite famous at the time, as long as she participated in the event, she would mention that she missed participating in the Little Swallow.
Immersed in regret, she was absent-minded during filming, and complained again and again when chatting with others.
At the beginning, many people would understand her and persuade her to forget the past and focus back on her acting skills.
But she couldn't let go.
Gradually, no crew was willing to film with her anymore, and she gradually disappeared from public view.
Even after twenty years, she still sobs about it during the live broadcast.
There is a saying that is very true: 80% of the troubles in life are actually self-inflicted.
The more you tangle, the more you bond; The more ruthless the internal friction, the more tired you are to live.
A lot of suffering in life comes from people's mountains of delusions.
As the saying goes, there is nothing in the world, and mediocrity disturbs itself.
When we reach a certain age, we learn to stop distracting thoughts and delusions and focus on everything in front of us, so that we can live our lives as we like.
02
Property
I've heard of a "rule of three sevens":
A high-end mobile phone, 70% of the functions are useless;
A large house where 70% of the space is vacant;
70% of the items in the house will not be used again......
There aren't many things you need to live alone.
When many people get older, they not only like to buy things, but also like to hoard old things.
In their eyes, the clothes they don't wear, the newspapers they don't read, and the plastic bags they use are all indispensable items at home.
They stuff their homes to the brim, but at the same time, these things have also become a heavy burden that they can't give up on the road of life.
The writer Norishi Sasaki, who is in his forties, used to be a very hoarding person.
He lives in a small house in Tokyo, and his room is full of things, books, snacks, clothes, toiletries......
These mountains of objects took up most of the space in his room;
The messy house also made him passive and lazy, and he just wanted to nest on the sofa every day after work.
Over time, he was reduced to a waste wood that he hated.
It was also at that time that his career plummeted, his girlfriend also left him, and after experiencing all kinds of changes, he was determined to change his life.
The first thing he tried was to lose something.
Messy clothes, entertainment purchased on a whim, dusty guitars and stereos, study materials to read in your spare time...... He threw them all in the trash.
When he reduced the items to a minimum, he did not feel sorry for the loss of those things, but felt a sense of fulfillment that he had never felt before.
After that, he began to enjoy his time in a spacious and clean room, reading and writing, and improving himself.
In just two years, he became the editor-in-chief of the company and published the best-selling book "I Decided to Live a Simple Life".
In the book, he said: It is not the sinking mind that begins to give up, but the giving up can bring inner peace.
In many cases, the more superfluous things people have, the harder it is to achieve happiness in life.
Because too many items will only distract you and end up being tired of desires.
As Thoreau said, "A man's wealth is directly proportional to the number of things he can discard." ”
After the age of 40, you don't have to fill your life with things.
The true abundance of life lies in the constant subtraction.
When your life is simple enough, you can free up your energy to manage every inconspicuous little day, so that people's lives can shine with a different brilliance.
03
Leave people
In a variety show, Meng Fei once asked Li Xueqin: How many people are in your address book?
Li Xueqin said a surprising number: more than 4,600.
In this regard, Li Xueqin herself is also very helpless, she said that many people are only with her, but she does not dare to delete it.
The reason is that she is afraid that someone will suddenly contact her, and she will not be able to get over her face at that time.
Meng Fei, who has passed the age of not being confused, directly told Li Xueqin that there is no need to be like this:
No matter how old you are or how high you are, there is hardly anyone who can be indifferent to what others think.
But what we can do is spend more time and energy focusing on those who care about us and the people we care about.
Bringing too many people into your life will only overwhelm your original world.
Only by leaving ineffective social interaction can we spend time on people and things that are truly worthwhile.
In the book "Knocking on the Door", one such story is told.
The protagonist in the book is a middle-aged writer who is keen to make friends.
Every time someone came to visit, he would be eager to open the door, and as he ran, he would shout "coming, coming".
But every time someone came to him, they either asked him to help write a banner and send it to his superiors, or asked him to go to a certain synagogue to cheer.
All in all, all the people who came were people who sought fame and fortune, and they all said things that were difficult for him.
Although the writer was reluctant, he did it one by one in order to maintain the relationship.
Because of this, more and more people are asking him to do things.
In the knocks on the door again and again, the writer gradually lost the time to concentrate on his creation, and his heart became more and more irritable.
So he decided to stay away from these people and work behind closed doors.
For uninvited people, even if he is in the room, he will not open the door to say hello.
In this way, the writer was finally able to get away from the hustle and bustle and concentrate on reading and writing, and after a while, he created better works.
When we were young, we always thought that the more friends we had, the better, so we desperately expanded our circle and made friends.
But after going through a few things, you will know that low-quality socialization is far less than high-quality solitude.
As Qian Zhongshu said: The prosperity outside the door is not my prosperity.
After the age of 40, don't talk to some people who don't speculate, and say things that don't hurt.
What you're going to do is get rid of these people out of your circle.
Only when your circle is clean can you go back to quiet, enjoy solitude, and feel the beauty of life firsthand.
▽
Some people say:
Before the age of 40, you have to do the addition with all your might, so that people have more possibilities in life.
After the age of 40, this state will converge, and you have to do a subtraction to reorganize your life.
In the first half of life, we have accumulated too much complexity;
In the second half, you have to learn to give up the relationship.
As Lin Yutang said: The wisdom of life lies in gradually clarifying and filtering out those unimportant impurities, while retaining the most important parts.
When you eliminate all the people and things around you that you don't need, don't fit into, and don't like, you will find that in the simplest days, there is the best way to live in the second half of your life.