英語美文朗讀 第440期 Hard choices，easy life

So, this happy pic of me was taken in 1999. I was a senior in college, and it was right after a dance practice.I was really, really happy. And I remember exactly where I was about a week and a half later. I was sitting in the back of my used minivan in a campus parking lot, when I decided I was going to commit suicide. I went from deciding to full-blown planning very quickly. And I came this close to the edge of the precipice. It's the closest I've ever come. And the only reason I took my finger off the trigger was thanks to a few lucky coincidences. And after the fact, that's what scared me the most: the element of chance.

 

我這張快樂的照片拍攝于1999年。當年我大四，拍攝于舞蹈練習之后。我當時非常開心。我清楚地記得在一周半之后，我坐在我舊的小貨車后座，在校園停車場，當時我決定我要自殺。我很快下定決心并有了周全的計劃,然而我懸崖勒馬,死亡近在咫尺。我未扣動扳機的唯一原因是一些幸運的巧合。在此之后我意識到真正讓我恐懼的是機會。

 

So I became very methodical about testing different ways that I could manage my ups and downs, which has proven to be a good investment. (Laughs) Many normal people might have, say, six to 10 major depressive episodes in their lives. I have bipolar depression. It runs in my family. I've had 50-plus at this point, and I've learned a lot. I've had a lot of at-bats, many rounds in the ring with darkness, taking good notes. So I thought rather than get up and give any type of recipe for success or highlight reel, I would share my recipe for avoiding self-destruction, and certainly self-paralysis.

因此我開始井然有序地嘗試不同方式來控制我生活的跌宕起伏，現(xiàn)在看來這是個不錯的投資。大部分普通人一生中會有6-10 次較為嚴重的抑郁階段。我有兩極型憂郁癥，是我家的遺傳病。我大概已經(jīng)有過50多次。我學到了很多。我內心有很多蝙蝠，它們在黑暗中輪回著飛行，尋找著出口。因此我認為與其給大家任何成功心靈雞湯或者經(jīng)典語錄，我會分享如何避免自我毀滅的秘訣，與避免自我麻痹的秘方。

 

And the tool I've found which has proven to be the most reliable safety net for emotional free fall is actually the same tool that has helped me to make my best business decisions. But that is secondary. And it is ... stoicism. That sounds boring.

我所找到的并被證實為最可靠安全的情緒安全網(wǎng)，也正是我用來做出最佳商業(yè)決定的工具。但是這是次要的。它就是斯多葛學派，聽起來很無聊。

 

You might think of Spock, or it might conjure and image like this --a cow standing in the rain. It's not sad. It's not particularly happy. It's just an impassive creature taking whatever life sends its way.

你也許會想到斯波克，或者會幻想到這樣的畫面：一頭站在雨中的牛。它不悲傷，也并非快樂它不過是一個逆來順受的無動于衷的生物。

 

You might not think of the ultimate competitor, say, Bill Belichick, head coach of the New England Patriots,who has the all-time NFL record for Super Bowl titles. And stoicism has spread like wildfire in the top of the NFL ranks as a means of mental toughness training in the last few years. You might not think of the Founding Fathers -- Thomas Jefferson, John Adams, George Washington to name but three students of stoicism. George Washington actually had a play about a Stoic -- this was "Cato, a Tragedy" -- performed for his troops at Valley Forge to keep them motivated.

你也許不會想到與其相反的人，比如比爾·貝利奇克，新英格蘭愛國者隊主教練，他有 NFL 歷史上最多的超級碗冠軍。斯多葛學派在 NFL 排行榜榜首中像野火一樣蔓延，作為近幾年來訓練心智的手段。你也許想不到我們國家的奠基人，托馬斯·杰斐遜、約翰·亞當斯、喬治·華盛頓 他們都是斯多葛學派的信奉者。事實上，喬治·華盛頓有一部有關于斯多葛學派的戲劇，這就《卡托，一個悲劇》曾鼓勵他部隊在福吉谷時的軍心。

 

So why would people of action focus so much on an ancient philosophy? This seems very academic. I would encourage you to think about stoicism a little bit differently, as an operating system for thriving in high-stress environments, for making better decisions. And it all started here, kind of, on a porch.

為什么人們會如此在乎一個古老的哲學？這似乎非常學術。我建議從另一個角度看待斯多葛學派，這是一個在高壓環(huán)境中成功的機制，做出更好的選擇。所有的一切，似乎都源于一個門廊。

 

So around 300 BC in Athens, someone named Zeno of Citium taught many lectures walking around a painted porch, a "stoa." That later became "stoicism." And in the Greco-Roman world, people used stoicism as a comprehensive system for doing many, many things. But for our purposes, chief among them was training yourself to separate what you can control from what you cannot control, and then doing exercises to focus exclusively on the former. This decreases emotional reactivity, which can be a superpower.

在公元前300年左右的雅典，一位叫“季蒂昂的芝諾”的導師教授很多課程，經(jīng)常游走在涂滿繪畫的門廊，即“拱柱”。 這之后就成為“斯多葛學派”。而在希臘羅馬世界，人們把斯多葛學派作為一個全面的系統(tǒng)，能解決很多事情。于我們而言，最主要的目的是訓練我們自己。將可控和不可控的事情分開，然后訓練如何專注于于前者。這將降低情緒的反應力， 這將成為一種超能力。

 

Conversely, let's say you're a quarterback. You miss a pass. You get furious with yourself. That could cost you a game. If you're a CEO, and you fly off the handle at a very valued employee because of a minor infraction, that could cost you the employee. If you're a college student who, say, is in a downward spiral,and you feel helpless and hopeless, unabated, that could cost you your life. So the stakes are very, very high.

相反，假設你是四分衛(wèi)，你沒有接到一個傳球，對自己生氣。這會讓你輸?shù)舯荣悺Ｈ绻闶且粋€ CEO，對一位極有價值的員工大發(fā)雷霆僅因為一個小錯誤，你可能會失去一個員工。如果你是一個大學生，你處在低潮期，你覺得無助和無望，這可能讓你失去生命。所以賭注還是非常高的。

 

And there are many tools in the toolkit to get you there. I'm going to focus on one that completely changed my life in 2004. It found me then because of two things: a very close friend, young guy, my age, died of pancreatic cancer unexpectedly, and then my girlfriend, who I thought I was going to marry, walked out.She'd had enough, and she didn't give me a Dear John letter, but she did give me this, a Dear John plaque.

工具箱里有很多工具能幫到你。我會著重分享一個在2004年完全改變我人生的工具。兩件事情讓我深受觸動：一個與我年齡相仿的男性摯友意外死于胰腺癌，之后是我以為是真命天女的女朋友離我而去。她受夠了，她沒有給我一封分手信，但她卻送我了一個分手板牌。

 

I'm not making this up. I've kept it. "Business hours are over at five o'clock." She gave this to me to put on my desk for personal health, because at the time, I was working on my first real business. I had no idea what I was doing. I was working 14-plus hour days, seven days a week. I was using stimulants to get going. I was using depressants to wind down and go to sleep. It was a disaster. I felt completely trapped. I bought a book on simplicity to try to find answers.

這不是我編的，我還留著它。“工作時間在5點結束。”出于對我健康的關心，她把這個放在我的桌上，因為當時我正投入于我的第一個事業(yè)。我不明白當時我在干嘛，只知道每天工作14個小時以上，每周7天。我用興奮劑來刺激自己工作，用鎮(zhèn)抑劑來放松和助眠。這是一場災難。我徹底淪陷了。我買了關于簡樸生活的書來尋找答案。

 

And I did find a quote that made a big difference in my life, which was, "We suffer more often in imagination than in reality," by Seneca the Younger, who was a famous Stoic writer. That took me to his letters, which took me to the exercise, "premeditatio malorum," which means the pre-meditation of evils. In simple terms,this is visualizing the worst-case scenarios, in detail, that you fear, preventing you from taking action, so that you can take action to overcome that paralysis. My problem was monkey mind -- super loud, very incessant.Just thinking my way through problems doesn't work. I needed to capture my thoughts on paper. So I created a written exercise that I called "fear-setting," like goal-setting, for myself. It consists of three pages. Super simple.

我的確找到一個改變我人生的警句，“折磨我們的往往是想像，而不是事實” 出自塞內卡，他是著名的斯多葛學派作家。 這引領我讀他的書信，讓我開始練習，"premeditatio malorum," 意思是在最壞情況來臨前提前預想。簡而言之， 預想最壞的情景及你所恐懼的細節(jié)，防止你采取任何行動，因此你可以采取行動，來擺脫恐懼。我當時頭腦一片混亂， 充滿著連續(xù)不斷嘈雜的聲音。通過思考我的問題沒有什么用處。我需要把想法都寫在紙上。因此我設計了一個寫作練習 我稱之為“恐懼設置”，就像目標設置一樣。它由3頁紙組成。非常簡單。

 

The first page is right here. "What if I ...?" This is whatever you fear, whatever is causing you anxiety,whatever you're putting off. It could be asking someone out, ending a relationship, asking for a promotion, quitting a job, starting a company. It could be anything. For me, it was taking my first vacation in four yearsand stepping away from my business for a month to go to London, where I could stay in a friend's room for free, to either remove myself as a bottleneck in the business or shut it down.

第一頁是這樣的。“如果我...?”這是你所恐懼的東西，讓你焦慮的東西，被拖延的東西。 它可能是邀約某人， 結束一段關系， 提出升職，辭職或者創(chuàng)業(yè)。 它可以是任何事情。 與我而言，它是在工作 4年后第一次休假 我離開公司去倫敦休息一個月， 我可以免費住在倫敦朋友的房間里， 讓我從生意的瓶頸中解放自己 或者結束它。

 

In the first column, "Define," you're writing down all of the worst things you can imagine happening if you take that step. You want 10 to 20. I won't go through all of them, but I'll give you two examples. One was, I'll go to London, it'll be rainy, I'll get depressed, the whole thing will be a huge waste of time. Number two, I'll miss a letter from the IRS, and I'll get audited or raided or shut down or some such.

 

在第一欄“定義”中，你寫下所有你預想中會發(fā)生的最壞的事情如果你采取這一步行動。你需要寫下10到20個。我不會每一個都詳述，但我舉兩個例子。一個是如果我去倫敦，倫敦在下雨的話，我會很沮喪。整個旅程就是浪費時間。第二個是我錯過了美國國稅局的信，我將被查稅 或者被抨擊或者關閉等。

And then you go to the "Prevent" column. In that column, you write down the answer to: What could I do to prevent each of these bullets from happening, or, at the very least, decrease the likelihood even a little bit?So for getting depressed in London, I could take a portable blue light with me and use it for 15 minutes in the morning. I knew that helped stave off depressive episodes. For the IRS bit, I could change the mailing address on file with the IRS so the paperwork would go to my accountant instead of to my UPS address.Easy-peasy.

 

這時可以使用“預防”一欄。在這一欄中，你寫下答案：我能做什么來預防這些事情發(fā)生，或者至少降低發(fā)生的可能性？因此當我在倫敦覺得沮喪時，我可以隨身攜帶便攜式藍光在早上使用15分鐘。我知道這會幫助我擺脫抑郁。對于國稅局， 我可以修改在國稅局的郵寄地址， 因此文件到我的會計手上 而不是我的UPS地址。 超級簡單。

Then we go to "Repair." So if the worst-case scenarios happen, what could you do to repair the damage even a little bit, or who could you ask for help? So in the first case, London, well, I could fork over some money, fly to Spain, get some sun -- undo the damage, if I got into a funk. In the case of missing a letter from the IRS, I could call a friend who is a lawyer or ask, say, a professor of law what they would recommend, who I should talk to, how had people handled this in the past. So one question to keep in mind as you're doing this first page is: Has anyone else in the history of time less intelligent or less driven figured this out?Chances are, the answer is "Yes."

 

接下來我們到“修復”一欄。如果最壞的情況發(fā)生，你能做什么來減輕損失，或者你能向誰尋求幫助？因此第一個倫敦的例子，我會多花點錢，去西班牙享受陽光，來彌補損失，如果我陷入恐慌中。如果我錯過美國國稅局的來件，我可以給當律師的朋友打電話或者咨詢法學教授他們的意見， 我將向他們請教 過去類似的情況是如何處理的。 在填寫第一頁時請謹記一個問題： 過去是否有人 不夠聰明或者缺乏主動性 來弄清楚這些問題嗎？ 答案是“是的”。

 

The second page is simple: What might be the benefits of an attempt or a partial success? You can see we're playing up the fears and really taking a conservative look at the upside. So if you attempted whatever you're considering, might you build confidence, develop skills, emotionally, financially, otherwise? What might be the benefits of, say, a base hit? Spend 10 to 15 minutes on this.

第二頁很簡單：一次嘗試或部分成功會帶來哪些好處？你可以看到我們直面恐懼同時保持謹慎。 因此當你嘗試你想做的事情的時候， 也許你可以建立自信， 提高情緒、經(jīng)濟等方面的技能。 一個安打能帶來哪些好處？ 花10到15分鐘時間思考下。

 

Page three. This might be the most important, so don't skip it: "The Cost of Inaction." Humans are very good at considering what might go wrong if we try something new, say, ask for a raise. What we don't often consider is the atrocious cost of the status quo -- not changing anything. So you should ask yourself, if I avoid this action or decision and actions and decisions like it, what might my life look like in, say, six months, 12 months, three years? Any further out, it starts to seem intangible. And really get detailed -- again, emotionally, financially, physically, whatever.

第三頁。這很可能是最重要的，不要跳過。“不行動的代價”。人類非常善于設想可能出錯的事情如果我們嘗試新的事情，例如加薪。我們通常忽視維持現(xiàn)狀所付出的代價什么都不改變。 因此你要捫心自問， 如果我錯過這次行動或決定 以及類似的行動和決定， 6個月，12個月，3年后我的 生活會是什么樣子？ 剛開始，這些變化非常細微。 但從情感、經(jīng)濟、身體等方面 再次仔細地思考。

 

And when I did this, it painted a terrifying picture. I was self-medicating, my business was going to implode at any moment at all times, if I didn't step away. My relationships were fraying or failing. And I realized that inaction was no longer an option for me.

當我這樣做的時候，它展示一幅可怕的畫面。我當時是自我療愈，我的生意隨時都將結束如果我不離開。 我的人際關系也在日益遞減。 我意識到不采取行動 不再是我的一個選擇。

 

Those are the three pages. That's it. That's fear-setting. And after this, I realized that on a scale of one to 10,one being minimal impact, 10 being maximal impact, if I took the trip, I was risking a one to three of temporary and reversible pain for an eight to 10 of positive, life-changing impact that could be a semi-permanent. So I took the trip. None of the disasters came to pass. There were some hiccups, sure. I was able to extricate myself from the business. I ended up extending that trip for a year and a half around the world,and that became the basis for my first book, that leads me here today.

這就是恐懼設置的三頁紙。之后，我意識到用1到10來評測， 1是最小的影響，10最大的影響，如果我踏上旅途，我將面對 1到3個短暫的可解決的苦惱，還有8到10個能深刻改變我生活的積極影響。 因此我選擇了旅程。 然而我預想的災難一個也沒發(fā)生。 當然會有一些小問題。 我能將自己從生意中抽離出來。 最后我延長了那個環(huán)球旅行， 花了一年半的時間， 這也是我第一本書的素材來源， 最后讓我今天站在了這里。

 

And I can trace all of my biggest wins and all of my biggest disasters averted back to doing fear-setting at least once a quarter. It's not a panacea. You'll find that some of your fears are very well-founded.

回顧我取得贏得的最大成就和避免的巨大災難都是因為至少每一季度我都做一次恐懼設置。它并非靈丹妙藥。你會發(fā)現(xiàn)有些恐懼貨真價實。

 

But you shouldn't conclude that without first putting them under a microscope. And it doesn't make all the hard times, the hard choices, easy, but it can make a lot of them easier.

但是你不能在仔細檢視前，做出結論。 它不會讓每一次困難時期 和艱難的選擇輕而易舉， 但是確實會簡單很多。

 

I'd like to close with a profile of one of my favorite modern-day Stoics. This is Jerzy Gregorek. He is a four-time world champion in Olympic weightlifting, political refugee, published poet, 62 years old. He can still kick my ass and probably most asses in this room. He's an impressive guy.

我想以一位我所鐘愛的當代斯多葛學派人物來結束。他是杰克西·格雷戈里克。他4次榮獲奧林匹克舉重項目冠軍，政治難民， 出版詩人， 62歲。 他能讓我甚至 在座的大部分人都甘拜下風。 他令人折服。

 

I spent a lot of time on his stoa, his porch, asking life and training advice. He was part of the Solidarity in Poland, which was a nonviolent movement for social change that was violently suppressed by the government. He lost his career as a firefighter. Then his mentor, a priest, was kidnapped, tortured, killed and thrown into a river. He was then threatened. He and his wife had to flee Poland, bounce from country to country until they landed in the US with next to nothing, sleeping on floors.

我花了很多時間徘徊在他的拱柱向他請教有關生活和訓練的建議。他曾是波蘭團結工會的一員，這是一個推進社會改革的非暴力運動，遭到了政府的暴力鎮(zhèn)壓。為此他斷送了做為消防員的職業(yè)生涯。他的導師，一個牧師被綁架、折磨并被殺害后 拋尸河中。 他也遭到了威脅。 他和妻子逃離波蘭后， 輾轉于不同國家之間 直到身無分文地到達美國， 睡在地上。

 

He now lives in Woodside, California, in a very nice place, and of the 10,000-plus people I've met in my life, I would put him in the top 10, in terms of success and happiness. And there's a punchline coming, so pay attention. I sent him a text a few weeks ago, asking him: Had he ever read any Stoic philosophy? And he replied with two pages of text. This is very unlike him. He is a terse dude.

他現(xiàn)在住在加州伍德賽德一個很美的地方，在我生命中遇到的10000多個人中，我將他列為前10，就成功和幸福而言。大家注意，重點來了。幾周前我給他發(fā)了一個短信，我問他：“你曾讀過任何有關斯多葛學派思想的書嗎？”他用了2頁的短信回復我。這很不像他。他是個言簡意賅的人。

 

And not only was he familiar with stoicism, but he pointed out, for all of his most important decisions, his inflection points, when he stood up for his principles and ethics, how he had used stoicism and something akin to fear-setting, which blew my mind.

他不僅熟知斯多葛學派，他還指出，他所有重要的決定，他的人生轉折點，當他捍衛(wèi)自己的原則和遵循道德時，他時如何用斯多葛學派以及類似恐懼設定的方法，這令我感到震驚。

 

And he closed with two things. Number one: he couldn't imagine any life more beautiful than that of a Stoic.And the last was his mantra, which he applies to everything, and you can apply to everything:

他總結了兩點。第一：他無法想象生活中會有比擁有斯多葛學派更美好的生活。最后一個是他可以應用于任何事情的格言，你也可以用于任何事物：

 

"Easy choices, hard life. Hard choices, easy life."

“簡單選擇，痛苦生活。痛苦選擇，簡單生活。“

 

The hard choices -- what we most fear doing, asking, saying -- these are very often exactly what we most need to do. And the biggest challenges and problems we face will never be solved with comfortable conversations, whether it's in your own head or with other people.

困難的選擇，我們最害怕去做的、問的、說的，這些有可能正是我們最需要做的。我們面對的最大挑戰(zhàn)和困難是永遠不能通過一個輕松的談話就能解決，不管是你自我思考還是和別人探討。

 

So I encourage you to ask yourselves: Where in your lives right now might defining your fears be more important than defining your goals? Keeping in mind all the while, the words of Seneca: "We suffer more often in imagination than in reality."

因此我鼓勵你問自己：你現(xiàn)在處在你人生中的哪個階段也許會讓你看清恐懼而不是目標？請將塞內卡的話銘記在心：“折磨我們的往往是想像，而不是真實”

 

Thank you very much.

謝謝。