Seven Psychological Fables and Philosophy Page 3/7

(III) Planning fable: Fold a piece of paper 51 times 

Imagine that you have a piece of white paper that is big enough in your hand. Now, your task is to fold it 51 times. So, how high is it?

A refrigerator? One floor? Or is a skyscraper as high? No, it's too different, this thickness exceeds the distance between the earth and the sun.

    Psychological comments 

So far, I have asked more than a dozen people about this fable, but only two people said that this may be an unthinkable height, and the highest height that others thought of was the height of a skyscraper.

The height of folding 51 times is so terrifying, but what if you just fold 51 pieces of white paper together?

This comparison shocked many people. Because a life without direction and lack of planning is like simply stacking 51 pieces of white paper together. Do this today and do that tomorrow. There is no connection between each effort. In this way, even if every job is done very well, they are just a simple superposition for your entire life.

Of course, life is more complicated than this fable. Some people, if they decide in a simple direction and continue to do it firmly throughout their lives, their lives finally reach a height that others cannot reach. For example, a friend of mine lives in English. He spent more than ten years of hard work, and the amount of memory of words alone reached more than 100,000, which reached a height that ordinary people could not reach.

There are also some people whose life direction is also very clear, such as starting a company as a boss, so they need a lot of skills - professional skills, management skills, communication skills, decision-making skills, etc. They may try to do this and then do that at the beginning. None of them are particularly proficient, but in the end, the direction of starting a company and becoming a boss combines these seemingly scattered efforts from the past. This is also a complex folding of life, rather than a simple superposition.

    Remember: visible power is more useful than invisible power. 

Nowadays, it is popular to find answers from invisible places, such as potential development, and success studies, thinking that our lives need to be saved by some miracles. However, in my opinion, Mao Zhengqiang, a consultant at Dongguan Hengyuan Psychological Counseling Center, said more correctly, "Utilizing existing abilities through planning is far more important than exploring the so-called potential."