In fact, many of us have lived in the tomorrow we dreamed of many years ago. We just don't realize it ourselves.
When I was young, we thought it would be a great thing to eat KFC every day. Now I give you food every day, and you don't want to eat it.
At that time, everyone didn't have a computer, so they had to avoid teachers and parents when they went to Internet cafes. At that time, everyone thought that life would be complete with a computer of their own. If they have a computer and can eat KFC every day, there will be nothing else in life. In retrospect, this is not a thing at all.
Although we have achieved our dream of tomorrow, we don't seem to get the happiness we imagined. This also includes the income of many people. With the growth of age, the social status of peers around me has also improved in recent years. They all have their own small sideline businesses, many of which earn millions, far exceeding expectations.
But after asking around, it seems that no one is really doing well. Generally speaking, I am still very tired. Even with an annual salary of one million, I feel that my quality of life is not very high.
This is very strange. Obviously, our income is increasing year by year. Why is life not more comfortable? Isn't it said that good money can buy everything, including happiness?
How can we make life peaceful and happy? Traditional chicken soup for the soul often tells us:
"Get up in high spirits every day, go out for a morning run" and "prepare a nutritious breakfast for yourself" can make a beautiful day.
These things seem reasonable, but they are useless. Because our uncomfortable feeling comes from a real problem to face and deal with.
Without solving these problems, it is meaningless to lie to yourself that life is beautiful.
Wealth does not necessarily lead to the improvement of quality of life because:
Although the income of many people has increased a lot, our expenditure on "buying comfort" or "buying a sense of accomplishment" has not increased with the income year-on-year.
The consumption habits that everyone developed in their early years are very deep-rooted. If you are not born rich, but become rich by your own efforts, your living habits and consumption habits cannot be changed overnight, but always bear the brand of scarcity for many years.
China people's long-term economic habit is to save for a rainy day and slow down consumption. According to my observation, many rich people, especially the rich generation, do not live a luxurious life as the outside world imagined. On the contrary, many people are quite frugal, which is unnecessary.
In A Dream of Red Mansions, it is said that three generations have learned to eat and wear, and that consumption is also a university question that needs years of study and practice.
Many people only learn to spend money to buy "expanded reproduction" and at most learn to spend money to buy face, but they don't know how to spend money to make their subjective life more comfortable, so there is no qualitative leap in living standards compared with ordinary people. To put it bluntly, I still live a low-quality and low-level life.
In which dimensions can money be spent to improve the quality of life most effectively, quickly and directly? Without chicken soup, here are some core ideas of the middle class:
1
Spend money to reduce all low-value trifles.
Trivial things are things that take up a lot of time and energy but are of extremely low value.
You know, the most scarce and expensive thing for the middle class is time. The essence of high-paying jobs is that their bosses and customers are willing to spend a lot of money to buy their own time, but who knows that many inexplicable people and things in life value our time so much, which is the most direct reason why we are unhappy.
To improve the quality of life, the first thing to do is to get rid of trifles.
For example, housework is decisively handed over to aunts, making full use of the advantages of cheap labor in China; When traveling, don't carry your own luggage and throw it to the courier. Make full use of China's powerful logistics. For example, the chores that can be handled by subordinates and assistants at work are also thrown out as much as possible; More extreme, like George Clooney in Up in the Cloud, even all calls are filtered by remote assistants.
In addition, don't take part in things that only save a little money or make a little profit, but consume your time.
For example, the daily punching of many apps, comments and rebates from merchants, and discounts on activities are in a mess. Although these things seem easy, every little makes a mickle, which will make your life full of all kinds of chicken and dog fragments and your mind unable to refresh.
People's energy is limited. If there are too many choices in front of them, they will forget their actual needs. Once you cut off all trivial things and give yourself a psychological rest, your brain will naturally have more space to be liberated to face more important things.
2
Buy things that can shorten the decision chain.
Simply put, it takes "several steps" to do one thing. The fewer steps, the better, and the more the worse. With the increase of income, it is the direction of consumption upgrading and a shortcut to improve the quality of life to replace things with "few steps".
In the past years of poverty, people had few choices, so they were obsessed with increasing options. At that time, all kinds of multifunctional things were the most popular, and it was best to put songs in the microwave oven and watch TV in the refrigerator, so a large number of strange and complicated products were born. And this design idea has been handed down.
The traditional TV industry is the hardest hit, not to mention the elderly. Now even I can't turn on the TV ― first turn on the TV, then turn on the set-top box, and then switch back and forth between the two remote controls. I don't know what a bunch of buttons on the remote control are for.
So I chose HDMI to watch movies on the computer, and it was quiet in an instant.
I think our generation has gradually stopped watching TV, probably because of the pursuit of quality of life, and we can no longer tolerate these stupid designs.
Fortunately, smart homes are on the rise now. Recently, I renovated my home, turned on and off the lights, humidified and cooled the air, all of which were solved by human body induction and indoor and outdoor sensors, and my happiness was bursting. It can be seen that automation is the ultimate weapon to reduce brain thinking choices (shorten thinking chain).
Too many choices today is not a good thing. In today's information age, information explodes. Technology should help the brain reduce what it processes, not increase its processing power.
To buy something, we should judge whether it is worth buying by shortening the thinking steps, rather than looking at the quality of the brand and whether it is expensive or not. This is the only way to improve the quality of life.
three
Minimize meaningless and unnecessary social interaction.
This is mainly because we often don't realize that socialization is a black hole of time and energy, but its significance may not be as great as imagined.
It may be understandable that college students are keen on socializing-after all, there is a need for job hunting and courtship, but once you have worked for several years, you will find that socializing is the biggest source of fatigue and stress, and it is very necessary to re-examine it.
Social networks have the greatest impact on our lives and are the easiest to form a time black hole. We often find that the circle of friends can't be brushed up, and it is more irrelevant information, but the dynamics we really care about are at a loss.
Try to see a circle of friends once a day before going to bed at night; Clean up email and chat records regularly; Keep 1-2 social software at most, and delete apps that have not been used for one month; Another example is to clean up the official accounts of Weibo, Zhihu and WeChat, leaving only a small amount of information flow with relatively high quality.
More importantly, you should stop any interaction that makes you unhappy in time, whether in front of your aunt or your nagging colleagues. When you feel uncomfortable, stop replying.
The same is true of all kinds of parties. We all have a few years and spent a lot of energy and time on these things.
The reason why I bring such a burden to myself is because I am too shy to refuse. In fact, if you refuse a few more times, people around you will get used to it.
The cost of a party is not only money, but also the time and energy spent at a party. These intangible things are really not necessarily worth more than the meal you spent.
I know that some people have been practicing for several years, but they are not willing to be together except their family and relatives. Not bad now. Others insist on turning off the phone on time every day 10, saying that suddenly the whole world becomes quiet.
People's energy is limited, and it is impossible for us to maintain every relationship, especially now that the meaning of praise is only "reading", so it is of little significance to maintain such a relationship.
Try to block some less relevant people. In the process of choosing, you will know who is important to you, so that you can focus more on better and more valuable people and things.
four
Buy something that can reduce the feeling of losing control.
A sense of control over things around us is the basis of our emotional peace. However, today's endless situations can constantly flood in, cut in and interrupt what we should do in various ways, so we can't help but pay attention to the head and care about the end, thus creating a sense of powerlessness that is out of control.
Many people's work itself is out of control. Our original intention is to work hard and earn more money, because we want to give our families a better life. We are always thinking about promotion and salary increase. As a result, the workload is getting heavier and heavier every time I get promoted. Instead, I have no time to spend with my family. Work, boss, and customers began to occupy all the time.
Negative emotions often come from feeling out of control. When the brain realizes that it is out of control, our life will naturally not be very comfortable, nor will it be very quality.
Driving is the most annoying thing, because we need to pay close attention to the road conditions, but at the same time there are many conditions to deal with in the car.
For example, a big man drives his children to early education classes every day, and Xiong Haizi, who is crying and joking, is at his wit's end. Children are always noisy in the car, toys and snacks are useless, and they have to drive to coax children. Usually, they are also defeated at this time. This is the moment when life is out of control.
For another example, convenient modern communication tools have completely lost the boundaries between people's lives and work.
Before people arrive at the company, we often have SMS, phone and email reminders. Hundreds of WeChat groups can reply to thousands of messages every day, which has taken up a lot of his time. This 24-hour standby state is also the time when life is out of control.
The straight man took some ladies for a ride. A group of women chattered in the back row, from the hottest beauty fashion to celebrity gossip, all those technical terms and the names of small fresh meat could not be understood. I want to be alone for a while, but I can always feel that kind of embarrassment in the rearview mirror, which is even more out of control.
At this time, if you buy a new generation Cadillac XTS, the sense of loss of control can be significantly reduced:
In the face of noisy Xiong Haizi, there are only three steps:
The new generation Cadillac XTS has specially launched multi-account personalized customization. Next time Xiong Haizi is naughty, try listening to his favorite anime music and it will be quiet in an instant.
In the face of the ensuing death warrant work, it is also a three-step process:
The unique Hybird speech recognition system, like a witty and efficient personal assistant, completes the speech control more accurately and excellently, so that the 24-hour standby life is under control.
Facing the embarrassing situation of chattering in the back seat, there are three steps:
XTS's HD streaming media rearview mirror projects the ultra-wide-angle image of the rear of the car on the 9.2-inch rearview mirror, making the car body, seats and passengers block the rear view of the car a thing of the past.
XTS's Apple CarPlay system can also help control driving. Answering phone calls, replying to short messages and playing mobile music through Siri voice control can greatly alleviate the busy time and improve the quality of life.
The reason why I push Cadillac here is because this topic reminds me of a question in Zhihu, asking why some men stay in the car alone instead of getting off the bus when they get home.
Being able to have this problem shows that many people can't understand the significance of cars to men today.
Cars have become the last refuge and fortress for middle-class men today. There is an excellent answer with more than 4,000 praises: "I don't want to get off the bus because this is a demarcation point. Push open the car door, you are daily necessities, a father, a son and a husband, but not yourself; In the car, a person wants to be quiet and smoke a cigarette in the car. This body belongs to him. "
This explains why many people not only like to park their cars in front of their homes for a while, but sometimes even walk around their homes for a long time. There are countless nights when they can drive at high speed with the stereo on.
In fact, middle-class men nowadays are not short of money. What they lack most now is a sense of control over life and spiritual shelter. Whoever can convey this feeling can meet the needs of the middle class.
Click to read the original text and enter Cadillac official website to learn about the new generation Cadillac XTS. Let this car take you to the new world.