Confucius likes to compare his disciples with each other very much. He compares them in front of all his disciples and doesn't mind them comparing him with others. For example, one day Confucius asked Zi Gong in front of all his disciples, how did he compare with Yan Hui? This Yan Hui was a model of moral conduct among Confucius' disciples, and was later called "Restoration of Saints". Zi Gong replied, How can I compare with Yan Hui? I can only know one thing, two things, but Yan Hui can know ten things. Hearing this, Confucius said, you really can't compare with Yan Hui, and even I can't compare with him.
Today, in our opinion, Confucius said in front of all his disciples that Zi Gong was inferior to Yan Hui, which hurt Zi Gong's self-esteem, but Confucius didn't think so, and neither did his students. Because they are used to this way of education by Confucius, they are used to comparing with others, acknowledging their own shortcomings and their own strengths. I feel ashamed to know that you are inferior to others in some respects, and then bravely catch up, catch up with others and even surpass them. When a person accumulates the advantages of more than one person on himself, he is great. This is called learning from others.
Confucius had no aristocratic status when he was a child, and the official school at that time only accepted aristocratic disciples, so Confucius was sent to an official of Zhou's family to study. Confucius met Xiangzi, a musician of Zhou family, here. He studied music with Xiangzi. Xiangzi said that his piano skills were good enough, but Confucius thought that his music skills were not good enough, so he kept on studying and practicing until his understanding of music surpassed that of his teacher Xiangzi. So Confucius later said that his greatest strength was to learn from people who were better than himself. The premise of doing this is to get used to comparing yourself with others and objectively admit that others are better than themselves in some aspects.
Confucius was able to become the commander-in-chief of the state of Lu from a person without aristocratic status (equivalent to the president of the Supreme Court of a country now) and to recruit 3,000 disciples, largely because he had this quality of being good at comparing with others, being brave after learning shame and learning from others. Therefore, it is also his own experience that he teaches his disciples like this. It should be emphasized that there are three forms of habitual comparison. One is to compare yourself with excellent people around you, the other is to compare yourself with truly great people, and the third is to compare yourself with your former self. If a person keeps learning from the excellent people around him and others, he will gradually become better than most people around him, which is already commendable. At this time, this person will begin to learn from those really great people, that is, to reach the peak. Comparing yourself with yourself depends on whether you have made continuous progress and how far you are from others.
For example, Confucius said that "a threesome should learn from each other's strengths, choose the good one and follow it, and change the bad one", and Ceng Zi's "I will visit three provinces every day, and I will learn by myself" are all comparative remarks. The former is to compare with others and learn the advantages of others; The latter compares himself with his ideal self to see if he has any improper words and deeds.
Speaking of which, I'm afraid there are some giant babies who are used to self-escape to laugh at me and accuse me of advocating imitation of others, not being free and not being individualistic. Please never laugh at those who imitate others and learn from others. If you imitate others or learn from others, you won't be the second person. For example, we read the books of three thinkers, extracted the ideas in the books, and combined with the times we live in, then formed new ideas. This new idea does have the shadow of these three ideas, but it is bound to have many differences with them. The same is true of writing. Even if you learn other people's calligraphy, you will eventually get married.
Let's talk about it now. In fact, I don't know whether they are educators or psychologists. These people always emphasize that parents should not hurt their children's self-esteem. In my opinion, this is simply teaching parents to poison their children. Excuse me, are parents friends of children? Is the child a colleague or a classmate? If anyone here has such a view, I can only say that your children are poor. He is so young, so young and so inexperienced. What he needs is parents and a family education teacher, not a friend like you. Your purpose is to raise children. Compared with this purpose, that little self-esteem is nothing. Now you take care of your child's self-esteem, but the child will grow up one day and face comparison one day. He will compare you with other people's parents, and others will compare him with others, such as dating, dating, job hunting, promotion, marriage and so on. There is no comparison. You taught him to be a big man. When the time comes, when faced with comparison and blow, he will escape from himself, dare not face the objective reality that he is worse than others, and even blindly think that others are ignorant, shouting that he should be confident every day. Excuse me, who is to blame? I blame you. You taught me.
Of course, if you say something like "Look, Xiaoming next door won the first place in the class again, you should try to talk less". You are educating the children, not being angry with them. The best education method is to set an example. For example, Confucius compared himself with Yan Hui and admitted that he was inferior to Yan Hui in moral character, so he should learn from him. This is to set an example for disciples and lead by example. Parents should personally practice and guide their children, cultivate their children to be accustomed to comparing with others, and constantly improve the whole set of logic of "being accustomed to comparing, being brave after knowing shame, and learning from others". If you can only scold children, if you are not like yourself, then why teach them? It's like some parents spend hours brushing Tik Tok on the sofa, but tell their children to play less mobile phones. ...