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Dear Jim,

Yours,

Li Hua

It won't sound like a big surprise when I tell you that kindness plays an important role in a person's well-being. It can lead to changes like higher self-esteem(自尊心) and lower blood pressure. Even just witnessing acts of kindness can make us happier.

"From giving away a cup of hot chocolate in a park to giving away a gift in the lab, those performing an act of kindness consistently underestimated(低估) how positive their receivers would feel, thinking their act was of less value than receivers thought it to be," states a study.

 Yet, why is there this difference between what we think someone will feel from an act of kindness versus what they do feel? Why do we underestimate the influence we have on others?

Many of us don't have a real sense of our value. It's been estimated that as many as 85 percent of people struggle with low self-esteem. This "voice" tends to shift our focus inward, assessing(评估) our every move, and having bad effect on our relationships.

Unlike a conscience(良心), this inner critic doesn't motivate positive behavior. It encourages us to hold back, feeding us thoughts like, "Don't stick your neck out"; "No one wants to hear from you"; and "You're going to make a fool of yourself."

One wonderful way to fight against our critical inner voice is through acts of being kind to others. We must also try to see ourselves through the eyes of the people we affect. The degree to which we're able to do that will help determine our own happiness along with the happiness we light up in others.

A. However, the work doesn't stop there.

B. People may lower the value of their own kind comments(评价).

C. We all carry around a "critical inner voice" that tends to put us down.

D. Instead of seeing what we have to offer, we may think of ourselves as a burden(负担).

E. This misunderstanding suggests that people devalue their own actions in relation to others.

F. Instead, it turns us against ourselves, making us underestimate our beneficial effect on others.

G. Yet, people may not truly know the influence that even the smallest of kind acts can have on another person.

Over millions of years, humans have responded(做出反应) to certain situations without thinking too hard. If our ancestors spotted movement in the nearby forest, they would run first and question later. At the same time, the ability to analyze and to plan is part of what separates us from other animals. The question of when to trust your instinct(直觉) and when to think slow matters in the office as much as in the savannah(草原). 

Slow thinking is the feature of a well-managed workplace. Yet instinct also has its place. Some decisions are more connected to emotional responses and less to analysis. In demanding customer-service or public-facing situations, instinct is often a better guide to how to behave. 

Instinct can also be improved. Plenty of research has shown that instinct becomes more unerring with experience. In one well-known experiment, volunteers were asked to assess whether a selection of designer handbags were real or not. Some were instructed to operate on instinct and others to deliberate(深思熟虑) over their decision. Instinct worked better for those who owned at least three designer handbags; indeed, it outperformed analysis. The more expert you become, the better your instinct tends to be.

However, the real reason to embrace fast thinking is that it is, well, fast. It is often the only way to get through the day. To take one example, when your inbox floods with new emails at the start of a new day, there is absolutely no way to read them all carefully. Instinct is what helps you decide which ones to answer and which to delete or leave unopened. Fast thinking can also help the entire organization. The value of many managerial decisions lies in the simple fact that they have been made at all. Yet as data explodes(数据爆炸), the temptation(诱惑) to ask for one more bit of analysis has become much harder to resist. Managers often suffer from overthinking, turning a simple problem into a complex one.

When to use instinct in the workplace rests on its own form of pattern recognition. Does the decision­maker have real expertise in this area? Is this a field in which emotion matters more than reasoning? Above all, is it worth delaying the decision? Slow thinking is needed to get the big calls right. But fast thinking is the way to stop deliberation turning to a waste of time. 

We depend on our memory not only for sharing stories with friends or learning from our past experiences, but we also use it for important things like creating a sense of personal identity(身份). Yet evidence shows that our memory isn't as consistent(一致的) as we'd like to believe.

There are countless reasons why small mistakes might happen each time we recall past events, ranging from what we believe is true or wish were true, to what someone else told us about the past event, or what we want that person to think. And whenever these mistakes happen, they can have long-term effects on how we'll recall that memory in the future.

Take storytelling for example. When we describe our memories to other people, we might ask ourselves whether it's vital(重要的) to get the facts straight, or whether we only want to make the listener laugh. And we might change the story's details depending on the listener's attitudes. It isn't only the message that changes, but sometimes it's also the memory itself. This is known as the "audience-tuning effect", showing us how our memories can change automatically over time, as a product of how, when, and why we access them.

In fact, sometimes simply the act of rehearsing(复述) a memory can be exactly what makes it susceptible(易受影响的) to change. This is known as "retrieval-enhanced suggestibility". In a typical study of this effect, participants watched a short film, then took a memory test a few days later. But during the days between watching the film and taking the final test, two other things happened. First, half of the participants took a practice memory test. Second, all of the participants were given a description of the film to read, which contained some false details. Participants who took a practice memory test shortly before reading the false information were more likely to reproduce this false information in the final memory test.

Why might this be? One theory is that rehearsing our memories of past events can temporarily make those memories malleable. In other words, retrieving(找回) a memory might be a bit like taking ice-cream out of the freezer and leaving it in direct sunlight for a while. By the time our memory goes back into the freezer, it might have naturally become a little misshapen, especially if someone has influenced it purposely in the meantime. 

These findings lead us to wonder how much our most treasured memories have changed since the very first time we remembered them. Remembering is an act of storytelling, after all. And our memories are only ever as reliable as the most recent story we told ourselves. 

It was a week after my mom had passed away, and I didn't know how to go on with life. So when I received an email from a friend about a race benefiting cancer research, I ignored it. It seemed too close to the heart, as cancer was the disease that had taken my mother away from me.

But something about my friend's words—"I can help organize the whole thing"—stuck with me. I felt obliged(有义务的) to agree. In the weeks to come, I managed to re-enter the world of the living. I checked our team's website daily, feeling proud each time a donation ticked up our total. I knew my mom would have wanted it that way. She was the type who never got defeated. It was this very spirit that helped me get by.

When the race ended, I noticed the runners all had one thing in common: There were big smiles on their faces. They made it look so rewarding and effortless. I wanted in.

So I enrolled(报名) in another race two months later. Considering I could barely run a mile, it was ambitious. But my friend and I made a training plan so I wouldn't come in last. I followed it religiously and didn't let anything get in my way.

Running up and down the city's hills, I was flooded with memories. I had lived there after college and my mother had visited often. I passed Bloomingdale's, recalling the time she and I had gotten into a screaming argument there.

I was about to beat myself up when I remembered what Mom had said after her diagnosis(诊断) of cancer. "I don't want you to feel guilty about anything." Her paper-thin hands had held me tightly. A weight lifted from my shoulders.

When the race day arrived, I gave it my all for my mom and for all she had taught me and continued to teach me. As I ran, whenever I felt like slowing down, I pictured her cheering me on.

Crossing the finish line, I was filled with her love and a sense of peace.