Innovation will definitely encounter rejection from the world. Because we humans don’t like new things by nature, this is a self-protection mechanism that emerged during the evolution process. We humans are still social animals, so once heresy appears, we will have an inexplicable disgust and fear. In this case, we must realize that we can neither avoid being criticized by others nor allow innovation to be destroyed by everyone's criticism. The best way is to be your own harshest critic. Before making your innovation public, you should repeatedly evaluate, refine, and continuously improve it, and try not to give your critics as many opportunities as possible.

1. Innovation will be rejected by people

It is said that the famous American philosopher Emerson once said a famous saying: "If you build a better mousetrap than others, If it's good, people from all over the world will come to visit you." The meaning of this sentence is the same as what we Chinese say: "The fragrance of wine is not afraid of the depth of the alley." However, these words are not Emerson's original words. In Emerson's time, the mousetrap had not yet been invented. Moreover, even if you build a better mousetrap than others, it may not be popular. Likewise, even if you create a more fragrant wine, it may not sell well. The most painful thing that an innovator encounters is not just failure, but experiencing countless failures and finally succeeding, only to be rejected by the world.

In the mid-19th century, many mothers would suffer from puerperal fever during childbirth. In the end, neither the mother nor the child might be able to survive. At the Vienna General Hospital, a doctor named Ignaz Semmelweis discovered that doctors often delivered babies after dissecting corpses. This observation made him wonder whether puerperal fever was derived from corpses. Somehow brought to the mother? So he convinced doctors to wash their hands before delivering babies. The effect of this is immediate. Before doctors washed their hands, 18% of mothers died of puerperal fever at the Vienna General Hospital. Immediately after the doctors washed their hands, the proportion dropped to 2%.

If the effect is so good, will Semmelweis’s method spread immediately? No. His approach angered colleagues in the medical community. Everyone thought Semmelweis was a madman. Ignorant people are not the most stubborn force in blocking new knowledge. On the contrary, knowledgeable people are more deeply prejudiced. In Semmelweis's time, bacteria were not known to cause disease, and doctors have believed since ancient times that disease is caused by imbalances in the body. Since disease can only come from within the body, Semmelweis's suspicion that disease could be transmitted from one place to another seemed particularly unorthodox. So colleagues criticized Semmelweis. He was a rising star in the medical field, but in the end he lost his job. Semmelweis was depressed and his colleagues took the opportunity to coax him into a mental hospital. They put him in tight clothes and beat him. He died two weeks later, and no one attended his funeral.

2. This exclusion is not necessarily a bad thing

This is a paradox. We welcome new ideas in principle but reject them in practice. The teacher keeps saying that he encourages students to innovate, but if the students really have their own opinions and the opinions are different from the teacher's, the teacher will go crazy. The government encourages innovation every day, but all those policies that encourage innovation have actually failed to find the secret to stimulating innovation. Real innovators do not need policy encouragement.

In the 1950s, two psychologists, one named Jacob Gazels and the other Philip Jackson, studied a group of middle school students. These middle school students were all smart, but Gazels and Jackson found that often the most creative students were not the ones with the highest IQs, and the students with the highest IQs were not the most creative. If you compare students with high IQs and students with high creativity, you will find that students with high creative skills are more naughty, more unruly, and more likely to cause trouble. Teachers usually don't like these children. They like children who are more well-behaved, well-behaved, and more in line with expectations. We can call this rejection of innovation the "Gezles-Jackson effect."

The "Gaitsels-Jackson effect" reflects an instinct among people. We have a natural tendency to reject new things. In our brains, the hippocampus, which is responsible for memory, is connected to two globules of neurons called the amygdala. If something familiar appears, the hippocampus is quickly activated. But if it is something new, it is difficult for the hippocampus to find a matching memory. It will identify the thing as unfamiliar and then send a signal to the amygdala, and we will feel resistance and disgust.

In addition to our own internal physiological mechanisms that reject innovation, within a group, people will be even more resistant to innovation. Innovation will destroy the order and unity within a group. A seemingly insignificant innovation may bring about a series of unpredictable chain reactions. We are all social animals, and people would rather starve to death than be alone. Therefore, we feel very hesitant and painful to put forward opinions that are different from others, because we are afraid that if we are different from others, we will be ridiculed and excluded.

Let’s look at another example. Some people go hiking in the wild and get lost accidentally. Some people are lucky enough to come back after getting lost, and some people unfortunately never come back.

If we look back, we will find that the biggest mistake made by those who did not come back was not to take the easiest way, which was to turn around and go back. We knew we were on the wrong track, but we just didn't want to admit failure. Once we have a goal, we are unwilling to make any adjustments. Self-esteem drives us forward, and shame prevents us from saving ourselves.

You remember when we were talking about language, we had a hard time processing an emotion without a word to name it. This is called low awareness. For example, the residents of Tahiti don't know what grief is, so they can't deal with this emotion better. A similar low awareness exists in our society. When we talk about racism and sexism, we know what we're talking about, but our prejudices and fears about new things don't have a corresponding word in the dictionary. We obviously reject innovation, but we don’t even realize it.

3. Be your own critic

What should you do if you encounter this situation?

First of all, you can't help others criticize you. New things created must be criticized by others. As the famous biologist Stephen Jay Gould said, "A man cannot reach Galileo's status simply by being persecuted; he must also be right." With the benefit of hindsight, we see the innovators eventually being vindicated, making them look like heroes, and those who rejected them the villains. That may be true, but in most cases, opponents of new things are also sincere.

Secondly, you have to be your own critic. To be an innovator, you must be highly skeptical of yourself, criticize your own innovations more harshly than others, scrutinize your own work, and test your hypotheses against more stringent standards. Ashton told us: "The world is inherently inclined to reject you, so don't give them more unnecessary reasons. Those failures that can be suffered in private should never be allowed to appear in public. Because Failure in private is less costly and less painful.

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