"Ability and Aesthetics Are Actually in Your Own Control"

This article is Lu Canwei's 119th original piece.

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Today I heard a very special viewpoint, which is about ability and aesthetics.

Recently, I have been in contact with many seniors regarding content writing. They mentioned that they felt their initial writings were completely unpresentable, simply terrible, but after getting past that stage, things improved, and the main thing is to persist in outputting content.

Because they see me outputting every day, many classmates have also started saying they want to write content themselves, yet they have not published their first piece for a long time. When asked, they say they feel their writing is not good enough and need to revise it, resulting in months of revisions without completion.

Ability and Aesthetics

I have always wondered why I was reluctant to write, including my own experience at the beginning, where I might only write one piece in a few months and still be very dissatisfied.

In the past few days, some classmates told me they feel my writing has become smoother, but I still think it’s not great and needs improvement. Then today, I listened to a podcast where a young lady who writes novels shared her thoughts, and one point she made was that for most people, their ability and aesthetics do not match. If one's aesthetics are lower than their ability, then that person is likely a genius.

Generally speaking, the content we read is the cream of the crop, such as books. Books go through many rounds of selection, proofreading, and editing, constantly refined before they are published for you. It’s like a dish that has gone through multiple cooking processes by chefs before it is served to you, of course, it tastes good.

However, once you are accustomed to these, if you are given some unprocessed food, you will definitely find it hard to swallow. A person who has never cooked a dish is likely to produce a terrible meal at the beginning. Therefore, the only thing we can do is to appropriately lower our aesthetics while continuously honing our abilities. We should not stop improving our culinary skills just because we cannot produce a delicious dish.

The Dichotomy of Control

So how do we know if our abilities have improved? We often face a problem where we work hard to improve a certain ability but cannot tell if we have made progress. We then fall into a dilemma of feeling like we might have improved or are just treading water.

In our lives, there are usually two types of things that happen: one type is what you can control, like drinking water when you are thirsty. The other type is what you cannot control, like whether your cat will kill you at night, whether you will be hit by a car for running a red light, or whether it will rain tomorrow.

The Stoic dichotomy of control suggests that we should invest our energy in things we can control and completely ignore those we cannot control. However, the dilemma lies in our difficulty in distinguishing what we can control from what we cannot.

For example, the three great illusions of humanity: my phone vibrated, I can turn the tables, she likes me.

Taking the example of "I can turn the tables," the teammates we match with in each game of Honor of Kings are beyond my control. So if I let myself feel upset because I matched with poor teammates, it means I am overly focused on things I cannot control, which will only make me unhappy. However, if I focus my attention on what I can control, I can criticize my teammates without using foul language, which will only make me feel better.

If I focus all my attention on the idea of turning the tables, and rush into the enemy's high ground alone, I will likely get beaten up by all five opponents. But if I focus on playing cautiously and developing my character, I will likely be able to turn the tables when I have an economic advantage.

It’s similar to a job interview; I can control my preparation before the interview, but I cannot control the outcome of the interview. Writing is also similar; we can control every word we write, the coherence between paragraphs and logic, but we cannot control others' evaluations of our articles.

Focus more on the things we can control and ignore those we cannot.

In Conclusion

If we really do not want to improve our abilities, after all, this is something I can control, then I can also control lowering my aesthetics. For example, if you want to find a partner, you can lower your aesthetic standards to a more realistic level, which is something you can control.

If you are willing to lower those unrealistic aesthetic standards, you will likely find a partner.

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