Chapter 18 imitate others

Not learning to walk in Handan, but temporarily giving up on yourself and acting like someone else. British psychologist Hartley believes that sometimes it is good to pretend to be someone else, not only for a change of taste, but also for discovering one's potential talents. Hartree's insight comes from his own personal experience: When he was young, he was very lacking in writing talent, and he was most afraid of composition classes.One day, the teacher sent another composition topic. When he was looking at the paper and sighing with exhaustion, he suddenly thought of a well-known writer he saw on TV not long ago. .Hartley then imagined himself to be the writer, translating his original sentence into what the writer might have written.For example, he originally wanted to write about the man walking into the room, but this Hartley-style sentence was flat and vulgar. He thought that if he were the writer, he should write this sentence as the tall man walking into the room.After repeated scrutiny, using one's own belly to measure the heart of that person, the sentence finally turned into the tall and thin man walking into the dimly lit room in pain and exhaustion.

The teacher saw it and greatly appreciated it, saying that his writing skills had improved a lot.From then on, whenever Hartley got a writing errand, she pretended to be the writer and wrote for herself, and the result was that the writing got better and better. Hartley believes that if you can keep pretending, then it becomes real and that he becomes yourself.As he wrote repeatedly pretending to be the writer, the writer's style eventually became his own. This kind of learning to be like others is quite interesting. It is a kind of mental operation between identification and imitation.When we identify with a certain person, we usually refer to that person as our spiritual guide in the general direction of life, but subtly, we will still unconsciously imitate them in some details of life.When we imitate someone, we usually mean to deliberately imitate some externally visible characteristics of the other person, but rarely give up on ourselves and devote ourselves to it.Hartley's imitation is to temporarily give up oneself and act like someone else, which is difficult for ordinary people to do.