The cat-kicking effect: venting one’s displeasure to a subordinate creates a chain reaction due to the venting of anger. The story of the cat-kicking effect In psychology, the “cat-kicking effect” is described as follows: a father was criticized by his boss at work, and came home and scolded his child who was jumping around on the sofa. The child was so angry that he kicked the cat that was rolling around. The cat fled to the street just as a truck drove by, the driver rushed to avoid, but the child on the side of the road was hit and injured. This is the famous “kick the cat effect” in psychology, depicting a typical contagion of bad emotions. People’s discontent and bad mood, generally with the chain of social relations will be transmitted in turn, from the high status to the low status, from the strong to the weak, there is no place to vent the weakest will become the ultimate victim. In fact, this is a kind of psychological disease contagion. This involves a “poise” problem. The old saying: restrain oneself, restore manners. To restrain oneself is to be calm when things go wrong, to control one’s emotions sensibly; to be kind to others, to give comfort and encouragement to the weary hearts around. A senior monk gave his disciple the orchids that he loved and planted all over the yard before he went away on a trip, and instructed him to take care of them carefully. One night, the disciple forgot to bring the orchids back to the house, and it happened that the wind and rain were so strong that the orchids, which were in full bloom, were knocked to pieces. The disciple was anxiously waiting for the master’s scolding. When the monk returned from his travels and learned the reason, he just said indifferently, “I didn’t plant the orchids just to be angry.” The disciple was inspired by this and came to enlightenment. Indeed, in today’s white-hot competition, it is challenging to maintain an open-minded posture at all times. However, to maintain poise under pressure means overcoming one’s psychological weaknesses and implies an increase in charisma. ”Before you enter, take off your worries; when you come home, bring back joy.” A housewife hung such a wooden sign on the door of her room. In her home, the man is a harmonious group, the children are generous and polite, a kind of warmth, harmony, full of the entire space. Ask about that wooden sign, the hostess smiled and explained: “Once I saw in the elevator mirror a face full of fatigue, a set of tightly locked frown, sad eyes …… took myself by surprise. So, I began to think, children, husbands see this sad face, what will feel? If I were across from this face, what would be the reaction? Then I thought about my children’s silence at the dinner table, my husband’s indifference, the real reason behind the fact that I thought they were wrong, was me! I had a long talk with my husband that night, and the next day I wrote a wooden sign and nailed it to the door to remind myself. As it turned out, it wasn’t just me who was reminded, but the family ……”
The housewife’s unconscious, plain and simple words brought life back to an otherwise dead family. If we pay a little attention to this kind of open-mindedness and compassion for all aspects of life and work, “kick the cat” this bad transmission chain can be cut off. In life, each of us can not never make mistakes. After making a mistake, someone can timely criticism, which is the blessing of those who made mistakes. If no one had brought it up in time, we might not have known that we had made a mistake. As a result, it would have gone further and further down the wrong path, even ruining everything for ourselves. Someone has offered criticism, whether we accept it or not, at least the criticism lets us know that we have made a mistake and will make us alert. As long as we pay attention, then we will make fewer or not make the same mistakes in the future. In fact, criticism, in our daily work, study and life is indispensable. There is a need for mutual criticism and correction between friends and family, colleagues and superiors and subordinates. We live in a society with many temptations, and one mistake can become a thousand hatreds. Criticism can make us alarm bells ringing, even if the criticism is wrong can let us prepare for a rainy day, prevention before it happens, so we do not need to be angry because of the criticism. Criticism is something we all encounter in life, and we should treat it well. A person can accept criticism, you can be good as a stream, less mistakes; if you listen to criticism, you can do a vain as a valley, work, study, life can be less detours, less mistakes. If you can not listen to criticism, once you hear the criticism of the opinion of angry, or thunder, headstrong, stubborn error, such people, sooner or later to fall heel. As the saying goes, the authorities are confused, the onlooker is clear. We should remember that good medicine is good for the disease, and advice is good for the line. Although criticism makes us angry for a while, as long as we can calm down and think, we can see our own shortcomings and thus benefit from the criticism going forward. It is a blessing for a person to have someone in his or her life to criticize.