TED的英文演讲稿
演讲稿是在一定的场合,面对一定的听众,演讲人围绕着主题讲话的文稿。在日新月异的现代社会中,演讲稿对我们的作用越来越大,那么,怎么去写演讲稿呢?下面是小编精心整理的TED的英文演讲稿,欢迎大家分享。
TED的英文演讲稿1
I want to discuss with you this afternoon why you're going to fail to have a great career. (Laughter)
今天下午我想和你们讨论一下你为什么不会成就伟业。(笑声)
I'm an economist. I do dismal. End of the day, it's ready for dismal remarks. I only want to talk to those of you who want a great career. I know some of you have already decided you want a good career. You're going to fail, too — (Laughter) — because — Goodness, you're all cheery about failing. (Laughter) Canadian group, undoubtedly. (Laughter) Those trying to have good careers are going to fail, because, really, good jobs are now disappearing. There are great jobs and great careers, and then there are the high-workload, high-stress, bloodsucking, soul-destroying kinds of jobs, and practically nothing in between.
我是个经济学家。我让人心情低落。一天过完了,准备好听听让人心情低落的评论。我只想和你们想要成就伟业的那些人谈。我知道你们有些人已经决定了你们想要一个成功的事业。你们也会失败的-(笑声)-因为-天呐,你们听到失败都这么高兴。(笑声)无疑是加拿大人。(笑声)想事业有成的人会失败,因为,真的,现在好工作都在消失。有好工作,和好事业,也有工作量大,压力大,吸食血液,侵蚀灵魂的那种工作,而且几乎没有工作能好点的。
So the people looking for good jobs are going to fail. I'm going to talk about those looking for great jobs, great careers, and why you're going to, why you're going to fail. First reason is that no matter how many times people tell you, "If you want a great career, you have to pursue your passion, you have to pursue your dreams, you have to pursue, the greatest fascination in your life," you hear it again and again and then you decide not to do it. It doesn't matter how many times you download Steven J.'s Stanford commencement address, you still look at it and decide not to do it.
所以想找好工作的人会失败。我谈谈那些寻找伟业的人,你们为什么要寻找,为什么会失败。第一个原因是不管多少次别人告诉你,“如果你想成就伟业,你就必须追随你的热忱,你必须追随你的梦想,你必须追随你人生中最大的吸引,“你听过这句话一遍又一遍,然后你决定不去这样做。不管你下载多少次Steven J在斯坦福大学的开学演讲,你还是看看然后决定不去做。
I'm not quite sure why you decide not to do it. You're too lazy to do it. It's too hard. You're afraid if you look for your passion and don't find it, you'll feel like you're an idiot, so then you make excuses about why you're not going to look for your passion. And they are excuses, ladies and gentlemen. We're going to go through a whole long list, your creativity, and thinking of excuses not to do what you really need to do if you want to have a great career.
我不太确定你为什么决定不去做。你太懒了。这事太难。你害怕如果你去寻找梦想然后找不到,你会觉得你像个白痴,所以你给自己找借口,为什么你不去追寻你的梦想。这些都是借口,女士们先生们。我们要列一个长单子,你的创造力,想想你不去做成就伟业该做的事情的借口。
So, for example, one of your great excuses is, "Well, great careers are really and truly, for most people, just a matter of luck, so I'm going to stand around, I'm going to try to be lucky, and if I'm lucky, I'll have a great career. If not, I'll have a good career." But a good career is an impossibility, so that's not going to work.
所以,举例来说,你众多借口之一是,“嗯,伟业实际上对于大多数人来说只是运气问题,所以我就在这待着,我就试试做那个幸运的人,然后如果我真幸运的话,我就能成就伟业。如果不能,我就找个还不错的事业。”但是没有还不错的事业,所以这个行不通。
Then, your other excuse is, "Yes, there are special people who pursue their passions, but they are geniuses. They are Steven J. I'm not a genius. When I was five, I thought I was a genius, but my professors have beaten that idea out of my head long since." (Laughter) Mm? "And now I know I am completely competent." Now, you see, if this was , being completely competent, that would have given you a great career. But guess what? This is almost , and saying to the world, "I am totally, completely competent," is damning yourself with the faintest of praise.
然后,你还有其他借口:“是的,有那些与众不同的人追寻自己的梦想,但是他们是天才。他们是Steven J.我不是天才。我五岁的时候以为自己是天才,但是我的教授们早就把这个念头打消了。“(笑声)嗯? ”然后现在我知道自己完全有能力。“现在你看,如果这是在年,完全有能力,就能让你成就伟业。但是你知道么?现在几乎是年了,对世界说”我完全,绝对,有能力,“就是用最无力的称赞谴责你自己。
And then, of course, another excuse: "Well, I would do this, I would do this, but, but, well, after all, I'm not weird. Everybody knows that people who pursue their passions are somewhat obsessive. A little strange? Mm? Mm? Okay? You know, a fine line between madness and genius. I'm not weird. I've read Steven J.'s biography. Oh my goodness. I am not that person. I am nice. I am normal. I'm a nice, normal person, and nice, normal people don't have passion. Ah. But I still want a great career. I'm not prepared to pursue my passion, so I know what I'm going to do, because I have, I have a solution, I have a strategy. It's the one Mommy and Daddy told me about. Mommy and Daddy told me that if I worked hard, I'd have a good career. So, if you work hard and have a good career, if you work really, really, really hard, you'll have a great career. Doesn't that, like, mathematically make sense?" Hmm. Not. (Laughter) But you've managed to talk yourself into that.
然后,当然,另外一个借口:”嗯,我会做这个,我会做这个,但是,但是,嗯,毕竟,我不是个怪人。每个人都知道那些追寻自己梦想的人都多少有点强迫症。有点奇怪?嗯?嗯?好吧?你知道的,疯子和天才一线之隔。我不是个怪人。我读过Steven J的传记。我的天呐。我不是那种人。我是好人。我是正常人。我是正常的好人,而且正常的好人没有梦想。啊。但是我还是想要成就伟业。我还没准备好去追寻梦想,所以我知道我要做什么,因为我有办法,我有策略。就是爸爸妈妈告诉过我的那个。爸爸妈妈告诉我说如果我努力工作,我会有个不错的事业。所以,如果你努力工作,而且有个不错的事业,如果你工作特别特别特别努力,你就能成就伟业。这在数学上不是也成立么?“嗯…不是的。(笑声)但是你还是让自己信了这话。
You know what? Here's a little secret. You want to work? You want to work really, really, really hard? You know what? You'll succeed. The world will give you the opportunity to work really, really, really, really hard, but are you so sure that that's going to give you a great career when all the evidence is to the contrary?
你知道么?这有一个小秘密。你想工作?你想工作特别特别特别努力?你知道么?你会成功的。这个世界会给你机会去工作得特别特别特别努力,但是你就那么确信这能让你成就伟业即使所有的证据都指向另一边?
So let's assume, let's deal with those of you who are trying to find your passion. You actually understand that you really had better do it, never mind the excuses. You're trying to find your passion, and you're so happy. You found something you're interested in.
所以咱们假设,咱们来处理一下你们当中想追寻梦想的人。你实际上明白你最好这么做,抛开借口。你试图找到你的梦想,而且你这么快乐。你找到了你感兴趣的事。
I have an interest! I have an interest! You tell me. You say, "I have an interest!" I say, "That's wonderful! And what, what are you trying to tell me? That you — " "Well, I have an interest." I say, "Do you have passion?" "I have an interest," you say. Your interest is compared to what? "Well, I'm interested in this." And what about the rest of humanity's activities? "I'm not interested in them." You've looked at them all, have you? "No. Not exactly."
我有个兴趣!我有个兴趣!你告诉我。你说,“我有个兴趣!“我说,”太好了!“你想告诉我什么呢? ”嗯,我有个兴趣。“我说,“你有热忱么?” “我有兴趣,”你说。你的兴趣和什么比较? “嗯,我对这个感兴趣。”那其他一切的人类活动呢? “我对那些没兴趣。”你把那些都看过一遍了? “没有。不完全是。”
Passion is your greatest love. Passion is the thing that will help you create the highest expression of your talent. Passion, interest — it's not the same thing. Are you really going to go to your sweetie and say, "Marry me! You're interesting." (Laughter) Won't happen. Won't happen, and you will die alone. (Laughter)
热忱是你最高程度的热爱。热忱是能帮助你最好地成就自己才华的事情。热忱,兴趣-不是一回事。你真的会去找你的甜心然后说,“嫁给我吧!你很有意思。“(笑声)不会发生的。不会发生,然后你会孤独终老。(笑声)
What you want, what you want, what you want, is passion. It is beyond interest. You need interests, and then one of them, one of them might grab you, one of them might engage you more than anything else, and then you may have found your greatest love in comparison to all the other things that interest you, and that's what passion is.
你想要的,你想要的,你想要的,是热忱。它超越兴趣。你需要个兴趣,然后它们其中一个,其中一个会抓住你,让你燃起激情。然后你就找到了与其他事情相比之下你最大的热爱,那就是你的热忱。
I have a friend, proposed to his sweetie. He was an economically rational person. He said to his sweetie, "Let us marry. Let us merge our interests."
我有个朋友,向他女友求婚。他是个会过日子的人。他对他女友说,“咱们结婚吧。让咱们融合利益。”
(Laughter)
(笑声)
Yes he did. "I love you truly," he said. "I love you deeply. I love you more than any other woman I've ever encountered. I love you more than Mary, Jane, Susie, Penelope, Ingrid, Gertrude, Gretel — I was on a German exchange program then." (Laughter) "I love you more than — " All right! She left the room halfway through his enumeration of his love for her. After he got over his surprise at being, you know, turned down, he concluded he'd had a narrow escape from marrying an irrational person, although he did make a note to himself that the next time he proposed, it was perhaps not necessary to enumerate all of the women he had auditioned for the part. (Laughter)
是的,他这么说的。 “我真心爱你,”他说,“我深深爱着你。我爱你胜过其他任何女人。我爱你胜过Mary, Jane, Susie, Penelope, Ingrid, Gertrude, Gretel-我那时候在一个德国的交换项目里。“(笑声) “我爱你胜过-”好的!她在他列举到一半的时候离开了房间。在他从被拒绝的惊讶中缓过来之后,他总结了他刚刚成功逃离和一个不理性的人结婚的厄运。虽然他也对自己说,下次求婚的时候,不必要列举所有过往的女朋友。(笑声)
But the point stands. You must look for alternatives so that you find your destiny, or are you afraid of the word "destiny"? Does the word "destiny" scare you? That's what we're talking about, and if you don't find the highest expression of your talent, if you settle for "interesting," what the hell ever that means, do you know what will happen at the end of your long life? Your friends and family will be gathered in the cemetery, and there, beside your gravesite will be a tombstone, and inscribed on that tombstone, it will say, "Here lies a distinguished engineer who invented Velcro." But what that tombstone should have said, in an alternative lifetime, what it should have said if it was your highest expression of talent, was, "Here lies the last Nobel Laureate in Physics, who formulated the Grand Unified Field Theory and demonstrated the practicality of warp drive."
但是这个论点是成立的。你必须寻找各种选择才能找到命中注定的那个,或者你害怕”命中注定“这个词么? ”命中注定“这个词吓着你么?这就是我们要谈的,而且如果你找不到你才能的最高表达,如果你在”有意思“这里止步不前,不管这他 妈的是什么意思,你知道在你漫长的一生即将结束的时候会发生什么吗?你的亲友们聚集在墓地里,在这,你的坟边上有个墓碑,这个墓碑上刻着字,说,”此地长眠着一位发明了Velcro的杰出工程师。“但是这个墓碑上也应该刻着,在一个平行时空里,如果这是你才能的最高表达它就应该刻着,”此地长眠着一位诺贝尔物理学奖得主,他规范了”大统一场论“并且示范了曲速引擎的实用性。”
(Laughter) Velcro, indeed. (Laughter)
(笑声) Velcro,确实。(笑声)
One was a great career. One was a missed opportunity. But then, there are some of you, in spite of all these excuses, you will find, you will find your passion, and you'll still fail.
一个是伟业。一个是失掉的机会。但是,你们当中有些人,抛开这些借口,你们会找到,你们会找到自己的'热忱,然后你们还是失败了。
You're going to fail, because, because you're not going to do it, because you will have invented a new excuse, any excuse to fail to take action, and this excuse I've heard so many times. "Yes, I would pursue a great career, but I value human relationships more than accomplishment. I want to be a great friend. I want to be a great spouse. I want to be a great parent, and I will not sacrifice them on the altar of great accomplishment."
你会失败,因为,因为你不会着手去做,因为你会想出新的借口,任何让你只说不做的借口,而且这个借口我已经听过很多次了。 “是的,我会追求一番伟业,但是相比成就,我更看重人与人之间的关系。我想做一个好朋友。我想做一个好伴侣。我想做一个好父母,而且我不会为了伟大的成就而牺牲这些。”
(Laughter)
(笑声)
What do you want me to say? Now, do you really want me to say now, tell you, "Really, I swear I don't kick children." (Laughter) Hmm? Look at the worldview you've given yourself. You're a hero no matter what, and I, by suggesting, ever so delicately, that you might want a great career, must hate children. I don't hate children. I don't kick them. Yes, there was a little kid wandering through this building when I came here, and no, I didn't kick him. (Laughter)
你们想让我说什么?现在,你们真的想让我说,告诉你们,“真的,我发誓我不踢小孩。”(笑声)嗯?看看你给自己定的世界观。无论如何你都是个英雄,然而我,通过暗示,这么小心翼翼地,说你可能想要成就伟业,一定痛恨小孩。我不恨小孩。我不踢他们。是的,刚才我来的时候有个小孩走过来,我没踢他。(笑声)
Course, I had to tell him that the building was for adults only and to get out. He mumbled something about his mother, and I told him she'd probably find him outside anyway. Last time I saw him, he was on the stairs crying. (Laughter) What a wimp. (Laughter)
当然,我不得不告诉他这个楼是给大人的,他得出去。他含糊地说他妈妈什么的,然后我跟他说他妈估计在外面找他呢。我上次看到他的时候他正在台阶上哭呢。(笑声)真是个懦夫。(笑声)
But what do you mean? That's what you expect me to say. You really think, you really think it's appropriate that you should actually take children and use them as a shield? You know what will happen someday, you, you ideal parent, you? The kid will come to you someday and say, "I know what I want to be. I know what I'm going to do with my life." You are so happy. It's the conversation a parent wants to hear, because your kid's good in math, and you know you're going to like what comes next. Says your kid, "I have decided I want to be a magician. I want to perform magic tricks on the stage." (Laughter)
但是你是什么意思?这就是你们期待我说的。你真的认为,你真的认为拿小孩当挡箭牌合适吗?你知道有一天会发生什么,你,完美的父母,对吗?你的孩子有一天会跟你说,“我知道我想做什么。我知道我想怎么度过一生。”你特别高兴。这种对话父母最爱听了,因为你的孩子数学好,而且你知道你会爱听你孩子接下来的话。你孩子说,“我决定了我想做个魔术师。我想在舞台上表演魔术。” (笑声)
And what do you say? You say, you say, "Umm … that's risky, kid. Might fail, kid. Don't make a lot of money at that, kid. You know, I don't know, kid, you should think about that again, kid, you're so good at math, why don't you — "
然后你说什么?你说,你说,“嗯…那样比较不保险,孩子。有可能会失败,孩子。挣不了大钱,孩子。你知道的,我不知道,孩子,你应该再想想,孩子,你数学这么好,为什么不-“
And the kid interrupts you, and says, "But it is my dream. It is my dream to do this." And what are you going to say? You know what you're going to say? "Look kid. I had a dream once, too, but — but." So how are you going to finish the sentence with your "but"? "… But. I had a dream too, once, kid, but I was afraid to pursue it." Or, are you going to tell him this? "I had a dream once, kid. But then you were born." (Laughter)
然后你孩子打断你,说,”但是那是我的梦想。我梦想就是成为魔术师。“然后你要说什么?你知道你要说什么吗? ”你看,孩子,我过去也有过梦想。但是-但是。“所以你想怎么用”但是“结束你的句子? ”…但是,我过去也有过梦想,孩子,但是我没敢去追随。“还是,你想告诉他这个? ”我过去有梦想,孩子。但是之后你出生了。“(笑声)
(Laughter) (Applause)
(笑声)(掌声)
Do you, do you really want to use your family, do you really ever want to look at your spouse and your kid and see your jailers? There was something you could have said to your kid when he or she said, "I have a dream." You could have said, looked the kid in the face, and said, "Go for it, kid, just like I did." But you won't be able to say that because you didn't. So you can't. (Laughter)
你真的,真的想利用你的家庭,你真的想把你的伴侣,和你的孩子当成狱卒吗?你其实可以这么跟你孩子讲。当他/她说”我有个梦想“的时候,你可以说,面对你的孩子,说,”去追随它吧,孩子,就像我那样。“但是你没法那么说,因为你没去追随梦想。所以你不能那么说。(笑声)
And so the sins of the parents are visited on the poor children. Why will you seek refuge in human relationships as your excuse not to find and pursue your passion? You know why. In your heart of hearts, you know why, and I'm being deadly serious. You know why you would get all warm and fuzzy and wrap yourself up in human relationships. It is because you are — You know what you are.
然后父母的罪恶就在可怜的孩子们身上应验了。你为什么把人际关系当成你不去追随你的热忱的借口?你自己知道为什么。在你内心的内心,你知道为什么,而且我现在非常严肃。你知道你为什么会在人际关系中层层包裹自己。这是因为你是-你知道你是什么。
You're afraid to pursue your passion. You're afraid to look ridiculous. You're afraid to try. You're afraid you may fail. Great friend, great spouse, great parent, great career. Is that not a package? Is that not who you are? How can you be one without the other? But you're afraid.
你不敢去追求梦想。你害怕自己看起来像个疯子。你不敢去尝试。你害怕失败。好朋友,好伴侣,好父母,伟业。不是打包在一起的吗?这难道不是你?你怎么能符合其中一个却不符合另一个?但是你害怕。
And that's why you're not going to have a great career, unless — unless, that most evocative of all English words — unless. But the unless word is also attached to that other, most terrifying phrase, "If only I had … " "If only I had … " If you ever have that thought ricocheting in your brain, it will hurt a lot.
这就是为什么你不会成就伟业,除非-除非,最引人回忆的词-除非。但是除非这个词和另外一个最可怕的短语是连着的,”如果我当初…“ ”如果我当初…“如果你曾经有过这个想法在你脑海里回旋,它会特别伤人。
So, those are the many reasons why you are going to fail to have a great career, unless …
所以,这些就是你为什么不能成就伟业的众多原因。除非…
Unless.
除非。
Thank you. (Applause)
谢谢。(掌声)
TED的英文演讲稿2
岸上的人根本就还没意识到出了什么问题。没有任何人来搜寻他们。我们当中大部分人没有经历过这些船员所处的`可怕情景,但我们都知道害怕是什么感觉。 We know how fear feels, but I'm not sure we spend enough time thinking about what our fears mean. 我们知道恐惧的感觉,但是我不能肯定我们会花很多时间想过我们的恐惧到底意味着什么。
As we grow up, we're often encouraged to think of fear as a weakness, just another childish thing to discard like baby teeth or roller skates. 我们长大以后,我们总是会被鼓励把恐惧视为软弱,需要像乳牙或轮滑鞋一样扔掉的幼稚的东西。 And I think it's no accident that we think this way. Neuroscientists have actually shown that human beings are hard-wired to be optimists. 我想意外事故并非我们所想的那样。神经系统科学家已经知道人类生来就是乐观主义者。
So maybe that's why we think of fear, sometimes, as a danger in and of itself. "Don't worry," we like to say to one
TED的英文演讲稿3
每个人都会避免犯错,但或许避免犯错本身就是一种错误?请看以下这篇“犯错家“凯瑟琳舒尔茨告诉我们,或许我们不只该承认错误,更应该大力拥抱人性中“我错故我在“的本质。
So it's 1995, I'm in college, and a friend and I go on a road trip from Providence, Rhode Island to Portland, Oregon.
当时是95年 我在上大学 我和一个朋友开车去玩 从罗得岛的普罗旺斯区出发 到奥勒冈州的波特兰市
And you know, we're young and unemployed, so we do the whole thing on back roads through state parks and national forests -- basically the longest route we can possibly take.
我们年轻、无业 ,于是整个旅程都在乡间小道 经过州立公园 和国家保护森林 我们尽可能绕着最长的路径
And somewhere in the middle of South Dakota, I turn to my friend and I ask her a question that's been bothering me for 2,000 miles.
在南达科塔州之中某处 我转向我的朋友 问她一个 两千英里路途上 一直烦恼我的问题
"What's up with the Chinese character I keep seeing by the side of the road?"
"路边那个一直出现的中文字到底是什么?"
My friend looks at me totally blankly.
我的朋友露出疑惑的神情
There's actually a gentleman in the front row who's doing a perfect imitation of her look.
正如现在坐在第一排的这三位男士 所露出的神情一样
(Laughter) And I'm like, "You know, all the signs we keep seeing with the Chinese character on them."
(笑声) 我说"你知道的 我们一直看到的那个路牌 写着中文的那个啊"
She just stares at me for a few moments, and then she cracks up, because she figures out what I'm talking about.
她瞪着我的脸一阵子 突然笑开了 因为她总算知道我所指为何
And what I'm talking about is this.
我说的是这个
(Laughter) Right, the famous Chinese character for picnic area.
(笑声) 没错,这就是代表野餐区的那个中文字
(Laughter) I've spent the last five years of my life thinking about situations exactly like this -- why we sometimes misunderstand the signs around us,
(笑声) 过去的.五年 我一直在思考 刚刚我所描述的状况 为什么我们会对身边的征兆 产生误解
and how we behave when that happens, and what all of this can tell us about human nature.
当误解发生时我们作何反应 以及这一切所告诉我们的人性
In other words, as you heard Chris say, I've spent the last five years thinking about being wrong.
换句话说,就像 Chris 刚才说的 过去五年的时间 我都在思考错误的价值
This might strike you as a strange career move, but it actually has one great advantage: no job competition.
你可能觉得这是个奇异的专业 但有一项好处是不容置疑的: 没有竞争者。
(Laughter) In fact, most of us do everything we can to avoid thinking about being wrong, or at least to avoid thinking about the possibility that we ourselves are wrong.
(笑声) 事实上,我们大部分的人 都尽力不思考错误的价值 或至少避免想到我们有可能犯错。
We get it in the abstract.
我们都知道这个模糊的概念。
We all know everybody in this room makes mistakes.
我们都知道这里的每个人都曾经犯错
The human species, in general, is fallible -- okay fine.
人类本来就会犯错 - 没问题
But when it comes down to me right now, to all the beliefs I hold, here in the present tense, suddenly all of this abstract appreciation of fallibility goes out the window -- and I can't actually think of anything I'm wrong about.
一旦这个想法临到我们自身 我们现在所有的 所有的信念 对人类可能犯错的抽象概念随即被我们抛弃 我无法想到我有哪里出错
TED的英文演讲稿4
When I was a child, I lived in California, which is, you know, mostly a very nice place to live, but for me as a child, California could also be a little scary. 我小时候住在加利福尼亚,你们都知道,是非常适合居住的位置,但是对一个小孩来说,加利福尼亚也会有点吓人。
I remember how frightening it was to see the chandelier that hung above our dining table swing back and forth during every minor earthquake, and I sometimes couldn't sleep at night, terrified that the Big One might strike while we were sleeping. 我记得每次小地震的时候当我看到我们餐桌上的.吊灯晃来晃去的时候是多么的吓人,我经常会彻夜难眠,担心大地震会在我们睡觉的时候突然袭来。
And what we say about kids who have fears like that is that they have a vivid imagination. But at a certain point, most of us learn to leave these kinds of visions behind and grow up. 我们说小孩子感受到这种恐惧是因为他们有生动的想象力。但是在某个时候,我们大多数学会了抛弃这种想法而变得成熟。
TED的英文演讲稿5
When I was nine years old I went off to summer camp for the first time. And my mother packed me a suitcase full of books, which to me seemed like a perfectly natural thing to do. Because in my family, reading was the primary group activity. And this might sound antisocial to you, but for us it was really just a different way of being social. You have the animal warmth of your family sitting right next to you, but you are also free to go roaming around the adventureland inside your own mind. And I had this idea that camp was going to be just like this, but better. (Laughter) I had a vision of 10 girls sitting in a cabin cozily reading books in their matching nightgowns.
(Laughter)
Camp was more like a keg party without any alcohol. And on the very first day our counselor gathered us all together and she taught us a cheer that she said we would be doing every day for the rest of the summer to instill camp spirit. And it went like this: "R-O-W-D-I-E, that's the way we spell rowdie. Rowdie, rowdie, let's get rowdie." Yeah. So I couldn't figure out for the life of me why we were supposed to be so rowdy, or why we had to spell this word incorrectly. (Laughter) But I recited a cheer. I recited a cheer along with everybody else. I did my best. And I just waited for the time that I could go off and read my books.
But the first time that I took my book out of my suitcase, the coolest girl in the bunk came up to me and she asked me, "Why are you being so mellow?" -- mellow, of course, being the exact opposite of R-O-W-D-I-E. And then the second time I tried it, the counselor came up to me with a concerned expression on her face and she repeated the point about camp spirit and said we should all work very hard to be outgoing.
And so I put my books away, back in their suitcase, and I put them under my bed, and there they stayed for the rest of the summer. And I felt kind of guilty about this. I felt as if the books needed me somehow, and they were calling out to me and I was forsaking them. But I did forsake them and I didn't open that suitcase again until I was back home with my family at the end of the summer.
Now, I tell you this story about summer camp. I could have told you 50 others just like it -- all the times that I got the message that somehow my quiet and introverted style of being was not necessarily the right way to go, that I should be trying to pass as more of an extrovert. And I always sensed deep down that this was wrong and that introverts were pretty excellent just as they were. But for years I denied this intuition, and so I became a Wall Street lawyer, of all things, instead of the writer that I had always longed to be -- partly because I needed to prove to myself that I could be bold and assertive too. And I was always going off to crowded bars when I really would have preferred to just have a nice dinner with friends. And I made these self-negating choices so reflexively, that I wasn't even aware that I was making them.
Now this is what many introverts do, and it's our loss for sure, but it is also our colleagues' loss and our communities' loss. And at the risk of sounding grandiose, it is the world's loss. Because when it comes to creativity and to leadership, we need introverts doing what they do best. A third to a half of the population are introverts -- a third to a half. So that's one out of every two or three people you know. So even if you're an extrovert yourself, I'm talking about your coworkers and your spouses and your children and the person sitting next to you right now -- all of them subject to this bias that is pretty deep and real in our society. We all internalize it from a very early age without even having a language for what we're doing.
Now to see the bias clearly you need to understand what introversion is. It's different from being shy. Shyness is about fear of social judgment. Introversion is more about, how do you respond to stimulation, including social stimulation. So extroverts really crave large amounts of stimulation, whereas introverts feel at their most alive and their most switched-on and their most capable when they're in quieter, more low-key environments. Not all the time -- these things aren't absolute -- but a lot of the time. So the key then to maximizing our talents is for us all to put ourselves in the zone of stimulation that is right for us.
But now here's where the bias comes in. Our most important institutions, our schools and our workplaces, they are designed mostly for extroverts and for extroverts' need for lots of stimulation. And also we have this belief system right now that I call the new groupthink, which holds that all creativity and all productivity comes from a very oddly gregarious place.
So if you picture the typical classroom nowadays: When I was going to school, we sat in rows. We sat in rows of desks like this, and we did most of our work pretty autonomously. But nowadays, your typical classroom has pods of desks -- four or five or six or seven kids all facing each other. And kids are working in countless group assignments. Even in subjects like math and creative writing, which you think would depend on solo flights of thought, kids are now expected to act as committee members. And for the kids who prefer to go off by themselves or just to work alone, those kids are seen as outliers often or, worse, as problem cases. And the vast majority of teachers reports believing that the ideal student is an extrovert as opposed to an introvert, even though introverts actually get better grades and are more knowledgeable, according to research. (Laughter)
Okay, same thing is true in our workplaces. Now, most of us work in open plan offices, without walls, where we are subject to the constant noise and gaze of our coworkers. And when it comes to leadership, introverts are routinely passed over for leadership positions, even though introverts tend to be very careful, much less likely to take outsize risks -- which is something we might all favor nowadays. And interesting research by Adam Grant at the Wharton School has found that introverted leaders often deliver better outcomes than extroverts do, because when they are managing proactive employees, they're much more likely to let those employees run with their ideas, whereas an extrovert can, quite unwittingly, get so excited about things that they're putting their own stamp on things, and other people's ideas might not as easily then bubble up to the surface.
Now in fact, some of our transformative leaders in history have been introverts. I'll give you some examples. Eleanor Roosevelt, Rosa Parks, Gandhi -- all these peopled described themselves as quiet and soft-spoken and even shy. And they all took the spotlight, even though every bone in their bodies was telling them not to. And this turns out to have a special power all its own, because people could feel that these leaders were at the helm, not because they enjoyed directing others and not out of the pleasure of being looked at; they were there because they had no choice, because they were driven to do what they thought was right.
Now I think at this point it's important for me to say that I actually love extroverts. I always like to say some of my best friends are extroverts, including my beloved husband. And we all fall at different points, of course, along the introvert/extrovert spectrum. Even Carl Jung, the psychologist who first popularized these terms, said that there's no such thing as a pure introvert or a pure extrovert. He said that such a man would be in a lunatic asylum, if he existed at all. And some people fall smack in the middle of the introvert/extrovert spectrum, and we call these people ambiverts. And I often think that they have the best of all worlds. But many of us do recognize ourselves as one type or the other.
And what I'm saying is that culturally we need a much better balance. We need more of a yin and yang between these two types. This is especially important when it comes to creativity and to productivity, because when psychologists look at the lives of the most creative people, what they find are people who are very good at exchanging ideas and advancing ideas, but who also have a serious streak of introversion in them.
And this is because solitude is a crucial ingredient often to creativity. So Darwin, he took long walks alone in the woods and emphatically turned down dinner party invitations. Theodor Geisel, better known as Dr. Seuss, he dreamed up many of his amazing creations in a lonely bell tower office that he had in the back of his house in La Jolla, California. And he was actually afraid to meet the young children who read his books for fear that they were expecting him this kind of jolly Santa Claus-like figure and would be disappointed with his more reserved persona. Steve Wozniak invented the first Apple computer sitting alone in his cubical in Hewlett-Packard where he was working at the time. And he says that he never would have become such an expert in the first place had he not been too introverted to leave the house when he was growing up.
Now of course, this does not mean that we should all stop collaborating -- and case in point, is Steve Wozniak famously coming together with Steve Jobs to start Apple Computer -- but it does mean that solitude matters and that for some people it is the air that they breathe. And in fact, we have known for centuries about the transcendent power of solitude. It's only recently that we've strangely begun to forget it. If you look at most of the world's major religions, you will find seekers -- Moses, Jesus, Buddha, Muhammad -- seekers who are going off by themselves alone to the wilderness where they then have profound epiphanies and revelations that they then bring back to the rest of the community. So no wilderness, no revelations.
This is no surprise though if you look at the insights of contemporary psychology. It turns out that we can't even be in a group of people without instinctively mirroring, mimicking their opinions. Even about seemingly personal and visceral things like who you're attracted to, you will start aping the beliefs of the people around you without even realizing that that's what you're doing.
And groups famously follow the opinions of the most dominant or charismatic person in the room, even though there's zero correlation between being the best talker and having the best ideas -- I mean zero. So ... (Laughter) You might be following the person with the best ideas, but you might not. And do you really want to leave it up to chance? Much better for everybody to go off by themselves, generate their own ideas freed from the distortions of group dynamics, and then come together as a team to talk them through in a well-managed environment and take it from there.
Now if all this is true, then why are we getting it so wrong? Why are we setting up our schools this way and our workplaces? And why are we making these introverts feel so guilty about wanting to just go off by themselves some of the time? One answer lies deep in our cultural history. Western societies, and in particular the U.S., have always favored the man of action over the man of contemplation and "man" of contemplation. But in America's early days, we lived in what historians call a culture of character, where we still, at that point, valued people for their inner selves and their moral rectitude. And if you look at the self-help books from this era, they all had titles with things like "Character, the Grandest Thing in the World." And they featured role models like Abraham Lincoln who was praised for being modest and unassuming. Ralph Waldo Emerson called him "A man who does not offend by superiority."
TED的英文演讲稿6
At every stage of our lives we make decisions that will profoundly influence the lives of the people we're going to become, and then when we become those
people, we're not always thrilled with the decisions we made. So young people pay good money to get tattoos removed that teenagers paid good money to get.
Middle-aged people rushed to divorce people who young adults rushed to marry. Older adults work hard to lose what middle-aged adults worked hard to gain. On and on and on. The question is, as a psychologist, that fascinates me is, why do we make decisions that our future selves so often regret?
在我们生命的每个阶段,我们都会做出一些决定,这些决定会深刻影响未来我们自己的生活,当我们成为未来的自己时,我们并不总是对过去做过的决定感到高兴。所以年轻人花很多钱洗去当还是青少年时花了很多钱做上的纹身。中年人急着跟年轻时迫不及待想结婚的人离婚。老年人很努力的挥霍着作为中年人时不停工作所赚的钱。如此没完没了。作为一个心理学家,让我感兴趣的问题是,为什么我们会做出让自己将来常常后悔的决定?
Now, I think one of the reasons -- I'll try to convince you today — is that we have a fundamental misconception about the power of time. Every one of you knows that the rate of change slows over the human lifespan, that your children seem to
change by the minute but your parents seem to change by the year. But what is the name of this magical point in life where change suddenly goes from a gallop to a crawl? Is it teenage years? Is it middle age? Is it old age? The answer, it turns out, for most people, is now, wherever now happens to be. What I want to convince you today is that all of us are walking around with an illusion, an illusion that history,
our personal history, has just come to an end, that we have just recently become the people that we were always meant to be and will be for the rest of our lives. 我认为其中一个原因——而我今天想说服你们的——就是我们对时间的力量有个基本的错误概念。你们每个人都知道变化的速度随着人的年龄增长不断放慢,孩子们好像每分钟都有变化,而父母们的变化则要慢得多。那么生命中这个让变化突然间从飞速变得缓慢的神奇转折点应该叫什么呢?是青少年时期吗?是中年时期吗?是老年阶段吗?其实对大多数人来说,答案是,现在,无论现在发生在什么。今天我想让大家明白的是,我们所有人都在围绕着一种错觉生活,这种错觉就是,我们每个人的过去,都已经结束了,我们已经成为了我们应该成为的那种人,在余下的生命中也都会如此。
Let me give you some data to back up that claim. So here's a study of change in people's personal values over time. Here's three values. Everybody here holds all of them, but you probably know that as you grow, as you age, the balance of these values shifts. So how does it do so? Well, we asked thousands of people. We asked half of them to predict for us how much their values would change in the next 10 years, and the others to tell us how much their values had changed in the last 10 years. And this enabled us to do a really interesting kind of analysis, because it allowed us to compare the predictions of people, say, 18 years old, to the reports of people who were 28, and to do that kind of analysis throughout the lifespan.
我想给你们展示一些数据来支持这个观点。这是一项关于人们的个人价值观随时间变化的研究。这里有3种价值观。每个人的生活都与这三个价值观相关,但是你们可能知道,随着你们慢慢长大,变老,这三个价值观的平衡点会不断变化。到底是怎么回事呢?我们询问了
数千人。我们让他们当中一半的人预测了一下在未来10年中,他们的价值观会发生多大的改变,让另一半人告诉我们在过去的10年中,他们的价值观发生了多大的变化。这项调查可以让我们做一个很有趣的分析,因为它可以让我们将大约18岁左右的人的预测同大约28岁左右的人的答案相比较,这项分析可以贯穿人的一生。
Here's what we found. First of all, you are right, change does slow down as we age, but second, you're wrong, because it doesn't slow nearly as much as we think. At every age, from 18 to 68 in our data set, people vastly underestimated how much change they would experience over the next 10 years. We call this the "end of history" illusion. To give you an idea of the magnitude of this effect, you can connect these two lines, and what you see here is that 18-year-olds anticipate changing only as much as 50-year-olds actually do.
这是我们的发现。首先,你们是对的,随着我们年龄的增长,变化会减缓。第二,你们错了,因为这种变化并不像我们想象的那么慢。在我们的数据库从18岁到68岁的每一个年龄段中,人们大大的低估了在未来的10年他们会经历多少变化。我们把这叫做“历史终止”错觉。为了让你们了解这种影响有多大, 你们可以把这两条线连接起来,你们现在看到的是18岁的人群预期的改变仅仅和50岁的人群实际经历的一样。
Now it's not just values. It's all sorts of other things. For example, personality. Many of you know that psychologists now claim that there are five fundamental
dimensions of personality: neuroticism, openness to experience, agreeableness, extraversion, and conscientiousness. Again, we asked people how much they
expected to change over the next 10 years, and also how much they had changed
over the last 10 years, and what we found, well, you're going to get used to seeing this diagram over and over, because once again the rate of change does slow as we age, but at every age, people underestimate how much their personalities will change in the next decade.
现在不仅仅是价值观了。其他的方面都也有变化。比如说,人格。你们当中的很多人知道现在心理学家们认为人格可以分为五个基本维度:神经质性,经验汲取度,协调性,外向性和道德感。回到原来的话题,我们问人们他们期待未来的10年中自己会有多大的变化,以及他们在过去的10年中发生了多少变化,我们发现了,你们会习惯不断地看到这个图表,因为又一次,变化速率随着我们的年龄增长减慢了。但是在每一个年龄阶段,人们都低估了在未来的十年中他们的.人格会发生多大的改变。
And it isn't just ephemeral things like values and personality. You can ask people about their likes and dislikes, their basic preferences. For example, name your best friend, your favorite kind of vacation, what's your favorite hobby, what's your
favorite kind of music. People can name these things. We ask half of them to tell us, "Do you think that that will change over the next 10 years?" and half of them to tell us, "Did that change over the last 10 years?" And what we find, well, you've seen it twice now, and here it is again: people predict that the friend they have now is the friend they'll have in 10 years, the vacation they most enjoy now is the one they'll enjoy in 10 years, and yet, people who are 10 years older all say, "Eh, you know, that's really changed."
而且不光是像价值观和人格这样的临时性的特质。你们可以问问人们关于他们喜好和厌恶的事,他们基本的偏好。比如说,说出你最好朋友的名字,你最喜欢什么样的假期,你最大的爱好是什么,你最喜欢什么样的音乐。人们可以说出这些事情。我们让他们当中的一半人告诉我们,“你认为这在未来10年内会改变吗?”让另一半告诉我们,“这个在过去十年内变化了吗?”我们的发现是,嗯,这个图你们已经看过2次了,再展示一次:人们推测他们现在的朋友在未来10年中还会是他们的朋友,他们喜欢的度假之地在未来10年内还会是他们喜欢的地方,然而,年长10岁的人都会说:“嗯,你知道,这确实不一样了。” Does any of this matter? Is this just a form of mis-prediction that doesn't have consequences? No, it matters quite a bit, and I'll give you an example of why. It bedevils our decision-making in important ways. Bring to mind right now for
yourself your favorite musician today and your favorite musician 10 years ago. I put mine up on the screen to help you along. Now we asked people to predict for us, to tell us how much money they would pay right now to see their current favorite musician perform in concert 10 years from now, and on average, people said they would pay 129 dollars for that ticket. And yet, when we asked them how much they would pay to see the person who was their favorite 10 years ago perform today, they say only 80 dollars. Now, in a perfectly rational world, these should be the same number, but we overpay for the opportunity to indulge our current preferences because we overestimate their stability.
这有什么关系吗?这只是一种并不会有什么后果的错误的预测吗?不,这有很大的关系,我会举例告诉你们为什么。它在很多重要的方面困扰着我们做决定。现在想想你们此时此刻最
TED的英文演讲稿7
Yang Lan: The generation that's remaking China
The night before I was heading for Scotland, I was invited to host the final of "China's Got Talent" show in Shanghai with the 80,000 live audience in the stadium. Guess who was the performing guest?Susan Boyle. And I told her, "I'm going to Scotland the next day." She sang beautifully, and she even managed to say a few words in Chinese. [Chinese]So it's not like "hello" or "thank you," that ordinary stuff. It means "green onion for free." Why did she say that? Because it was a line from our Chinese parallel Susan Boyle -- a 50-some year-old woman, a vegetable vendor in Shanghai, who loves singing Western opera, but she didn't understand any English or French or Italian, so she managed to fill in the lyrics with vegetable names in Chinese. (Laughter) And the last sentence of Nessun Dorma that she was singing in the stadium was "green onion for free." So
[as] Susan Boyle was saying that, 80,000 live audience sang together. That was hilarious.
So I guess both Susan Boyle and this vegetable vendor in Shanghai belonged to otherness. They were the least expected to be successful in the business called entertainment, yet their courage and talent brought them through. And a show and a platform gave them the stage to realize their dreams. Well, being different is not that difficult. We are all different from different perspectives. But I think being different is good, because you present a different point of view. You may have the chance to make a difference.
My generation has been very fortunate to witness and participate in the historic transformation of China that has made so many changes in the past 20, 30 years. I remember that in the year of 1990,when I was graduating from college, I was applying for a job in the sales department of the first five-star hotel in Beijing, Great Wall Sheraton -- it's still there. So after being interrogated by this Japanese manager for a half an hour, he finally said, "So, Miss Yang, do you have any questions to ask me?"I summoned my courage and poise and said,"Yes, but could you let me know, what actually do you sell?" I didn't have a clue what a sales department was about in a five-star hotel. That was the first day I set my foot in a five-star hotel.
Around the same time, I was going through an audition -- the first ever open audition by national television in China -- with another thousand college girls. The producer told us they were looking for some sweet, innocent and beautiful fresh face. So when it was my turn, I stood up and said, "Why [do] women's personalities on television always have to be beautiful, sweet, innocent and, you know, supportive? Why can't they have their own ideas and their own voice?" I thought I kind of offended them. But actually, they were impressed by my words. And so I was in the second round of competition, and then the third and the fourth. After seven rounds of competition, I was the last one to survive it. So I was on a national television prime-time show. And believe it or not, that was the first show on Chinese television that allowed its hosts to speak out of their own minds without reading an approved script. (Applause) And my weekly audience at that time was between 200 to 300 million people.
Well after a few years, I decided to go to the U.S. and Columbia University to pursue my postgraduate studies, and then started my own media company, which was unthought of during the years that I started my career. So we do a lot of things. I've interviewed more than a thousand people in the past. And sometimes I have young people approaching me say, "Lan, you changed
my life," and I feel proud of that. But then we are also so fortunate to witness the transformation of the whole country. I was in Beijing's bidding for the Olympic Games. I was representing the Shanghai Expo. I saw China embracing the world and vice versa. But then sometimes I'm thinking, what are today's young generation up to? How are they different, and what are the differences they are going to make to shape the future of China, or at large, the world?
So today I want to talk about young people through the platform of social media. First of all, who are they? [What] do they look like? Well this is a girl called Guo Meimei -- 20 years old, beautiful. She showed off her expensive bags, clothes and car on her microblog, which is the Chinese version of Twitter. And she claimed to be the general manager of Red Cross at the Chamber of Commerce. She didn't realize that she stepped on a sensitive nerve and aroused national questioning, almost a turmoil, against the credibility of Red Cross. The controversy was so heated that the Red Cross had to open a press conference to clarify it, and the investigation is going on.
So far, as of today, we know that she herself made up that title -- probably because she feels proud to be associated with charity. All those expensive items were given to her as gifts by her boyfriend,who used to be a board member in a subdivision of Red Cross at Chamber of Commerce. It's very complicated to explain. But anyway, the public still doesn't buy it. It is still boiling. It shows us a general mistrust of government or government-backed institutions, which lacked transparency in the past. And also it showed us the power and the impact of social media as microblog.
Microblog boomed in the year of 20xx, with visitors doubled and time spent on it tripled. Sina.com, a major news portal, alone has more than 140 million microbloggers. On Tencent, 200 million.The most popular blogger -- it's not me -- it's a movie star, and she has more than 9.5 million followers, or fans. About 80 percent of those microbloggers are young people, under 30 years old. And because, as you know, the traditional media is still heavily controlled by the government,social media offers an opening to let the steam out a little bit. But because you don't have many other openings, the heat coming out of this opening is sometimes very strong, active and even violent.
So through microblogging, we are able to understand Chinese youth even better. So how are they different? First of all, most of them were bornin the 80s and 90s, under the one-child policy. And because of selected abortion by families who favored boys to girls, now we have ended up with 30 million more young men than women. That could pose a potential danger to the society, but who knows; we're in a globalized world, so they can look for girlfriends from other countries. Most of them have fairly good education. The illiteracy rate in China among this generation is under one percent. In cities, 80 percent of kids go to college.But they are facing an aging China with a population above 65 years old coming up with seven-point-some percent this year, and about to be 15 percent by the year of 20xx. And you know we have the tradition that younger generations support the elders financially, and taking care of them when they're sick. So it means young coupleswill have to support four parents who have a life expectancy of 73 years old.
So making a living is not that easy for young people. College graduates are not in short supply.In
urban areas, college graduates find the starting salary is about 400 U.S. dollars a month, while the average rent is above $500. So what do they do? They have to share space -- squeezed in very limited space to save money -- and they call themselves "tribe of ants." And for those who are ready to get married and buy their apartment, they figured out they have to work for 30 to 40 years to afford their first apartment. That ratio in Americawould only cost a couple five years to earn, but in China it's 30 to 40 years with the skyrocketing real estate price.
Among the 200 million migrant workers, 60 percent of them are young people. They find themselves sort of sandwiched between the urban areas and the rural areas. Most of them don't want to go back to the countryside, but they don't have the sense of belonging. They work for longer hours with less income, less social welfare. And they're more vulnerable to job losses, subject to inflation,tightening loans from banks, appreciation of the renminbi, or decline of demand from Europe or America for the products they produce. Last year, though, an appalling incident in a southern OEM manufacturing compound in China: 13 young workers in their late teens and early 20s committed , just one by one like causing a contagious disease. But they died because of all different personal reasons. But this whole incident aroused a huge outcry from society about the isolation, both physical and mental, of these migrant workers.
For those who do return back to the countryside,they find themselves very welcome locally,because with the knowledge, skills and networksthey have learned in the cities, with the assistance of the Internet, they're able to create more jobs,upgrade local agriculture and create new businessin the less developed market. So for the past few years, the coastal areas, they found themselves in a shortage of labor.
These diagrams show a more general social background. The first one is the Engels coefficient,which explains that the cost of daily necessitieshas dropped its percentage all through the past decade, in terms of family income, to about 37-some percent. But then in the last two years, it goes up again to 39 percent, indicating a rising living cost. The Gini coefficient has already passed the dangerous line of 0.4. Now it's 0.5 -- even worse than that in America -- showing us the income inequality. And so you see this whole society getting frustrated about losing some of its mobility. And also, the bitterness and even resentment towards the rich and the powerful is quite widespread. So any accusations of corruptionor backdoor dealings between authorities or business would arouse a social outcry or even uest.
So through some of the hottest topics on microblogging, we can see what young people care most about. Social justice and government accountability runs the first in what they demand.For the past decade or so, a massive urbanization and development have let us witness a lot of reports on the forced demolition of private property.And it has aroused huge anger and frustrationamong our young generation. Sometimes people get killed, and sometimes people set themselves on fire to protest. So when these incidents are reported more and more frequently on the Internet,people cry for the government to take actions to stop this.
So the good news is that earlier this year, the state council passed a new regulation on house requisition and demolition and passed the right to order forced demolition from local governments
to the court. Similarly, many other issues concerning public safety is a hot topic on the Internet. We heard about polluted air, polluted water, poisoned food. And guess what, we have faked beef. They have sorts of ingredients that you brush on a piece of chicken or fish, and it turns it to look like beef.And then lately, people are very concerned about cooking oil, because thousands of people have been found [refining] cooking oil from restaurant slop. So all these things have aroused a huge outcry from the Internet. And fortunately, we have seen the government responding more timely and also more frequently to the public concerns.
While young people seem to be very sure about their participation in public policy-making, but sometimes they're a little bit lost in terms of what they want for their personal life. China is soon to pass the U.S. as the number one market for luxury brands -- that's not including the Chinese expenditures in Europe and elsewhere. But you know what, half of those consumers are earning a salary below 2,000 U.S. dollars. They're not rich at all. They're taking those bags and clothes as a sense of identity and social status. And this is a girl explicitly saying on a TV dating show that she would rather cry in a BMW than smile on a bicycle.But of course, we do have young people who would still prefer to smile, whether in a BMW or [on] a bicycle.
So in the next picture, you see a very popular phenomenon called "naked" wedding, or "naked" marriage. It does not mean they will wear nothing in the wedding, but it shows that these young couples are ready to get married without a house, without a car, without a diamond ring and without a wedding banquet, to show their commitment to true love. And also, people are doing good through social media. And the first picture showed us that a truck caging 500 homeless and kidnapped dogsfor food processing was spotted and stopped on the highway with the whole country watchingthrough microblogging. People were donating money, dog food and offering volunteer work to stop that truck. And after hours of negotiation, 500 dogs were rescued. And here also people are helping to find missing children. A father posted his son's picture onto the Internet. After thousands of [unclear], the child was found, and we witnessed the reunion of the family through microblogging.
So happiness is the most popular word we have heard through the past two years. Happiness is not only related to personal experiences and personal values, but also, it's about the environment. People are thinking about the following questions: Are we going to sacrifice our environment further to produce higher GDP? How are we going to perform our social and political reform to keep pace with economic growth, to keep sustainability and stability? And also, how capable is the systemof self-correctness to keep more people contentwith all sorts of friction going on at the same time?I guess these are the questions people are going to answer. And our younger generation are going to transform this country while at the same time being transformed themselves.
Thank you very much.
TED的英文演讲稿8
What fear can teach us
恐惧可以教会我们什么
One day in 1819, 3,000 miles off the coast of Chile, in one of the most remote regions of the Pacific Ocean, 20 American sailors watched their ship flood with seawater.
1820xx年的某一天, 在距离智利海岸3000英里的地方, 有一个太平洋上的最偏远的水域, 20名美国船员目睹了他们的船只进水的场面。
They'd been struck by a sperm whale, which had ripped a catastrophic hole in the ship's hull. As their ship began to sink beneath the swells, the men huddled together in three small whaleboats.
他们和一头抹香鲸相撞,给船体撞了 一个毁灭性的大洞。 当船在巨浪中开始沉没时, 人们在三条救生小艇中抱作一团。
These men were 10,000 miles from home, more than 1,000 miles from the nearest scrap of land. In their small boats, they carried only rudimentary navigational equipment and limited supplies of food and water.
这些人在离家10000万英里的地方, 离最近的陆地也超过1000英里。 在他们的小艇中,他们只带了 落后的导航设备 和有限的食物和饮水。
These were the men of the whaleship Essex, whose story would later inspire parts of "Moby Dick."
他们就是捕鲸船ESSEX上的人们, 后来的他们的故事成为《白鲸记》的一部分。
Even in today's world, their situation would be really dire, but think about how much worse it would have been then.
即使在当今的世界,碰上这种情况也够杯具的,更不用说在当时的情况有多糟糕。
No one on land had any idea that anything had gone wrong. No search party was coming to look for these men. So most of us have never experienced a situation as frightening as the one in which these sailors found themselves, but we all know what it's like to be afraid.
岸上的人根本就还没意识到出了什么问题。 没有任何人来搜寻他们。 我们当中大部分人没有经历过 这些船员所处的可怕情景, 但我们都知道害怕是什么感觉。
We know how fear feels, but I'm not sure we spend enough time thinking about what our fears mean.
我们知道恐惧的感觉, 但是我不能肯定我们会花很多时间想过 我们的恐惧到底意味着什么。
As we grow up, we're often encouraged to think of fear as a weakness, just another childish thing to discard like baby teeth or roller skates.
我们长大以后,我们总是会被鼓励把恐惧 视为软弱,需要像乳牙或轮滑鞋一样 扔掉的幼稚的东西。
And I think it's no accident that we think this way. Neuroscientists have actually shown that human beings are hard-wired to be optimists.
我想意外事故并非我们所想的那样。 神经系统科学家已经知道人类 生来就是乐观主义者。
So maybe that's why we think of fear, sometimes, as a danger in and of itself. "Don't worry," we like to say to one another. "Don't panic." In English, fear is something we conquer. It's something we fight.
这也许就是为什么我们认为有时候恐惧, 本身就是一种危险或带来危险。 “不要愁。”我们总是对别人说。“不要慌”。 英语中,恐惧是我们需要征服的东西。 是我们必须对抗的东西,是我们必须克服的东西。
It's something we overcome. But what if we looked at fear in a fresh way? What if we thought of fear as an amazing act of the imagination, something that can be as profound and insightful as storytelling itself?
但是我们如果换个视角看恐惧会如何呢? 如果我们把恐惧当做是想象力的一个惊人成果, 是和我们讲故事一样 精妙而有见地的东西,又会如何呢?
It's easiest to see this link between fear and the imagination in young children, whose fears are often extraordinarily vivid.
在小孩子当中,我们最容易看到恐惧与想象之间的联系, 他们的恐惧经常是超级生动的。
When I was a child, I lived in California, which is, you know, mostly a very nice place to live, but for me as a child, California could also be a little scary.
我小时候住在加利福尼亚, 你们都知道,是非常适合居住的位置, 但是对一个小孩来说,加利福尼亚也会有点吓人。
I remember how frightening it was to see the chandelier that hung above our dining table swing back and forth during every minor earthquake, and I sometimes couldn't sleep at night, terrified that the Big One might strike while we were sleeping.
我记得每次小地震的时候 当我看到我们餐桌上的吊灯 晃来晃去的时候是多么的吓人, 我经常会彻夜难眠,担心大地震 会在我们睡觉的时候突然袭来。
And what we say about kids who have fears like that is that they have a vivid imagination. But at a certain point, most of us learn to leave these kinds of visions behind and grow up.
我们说小孩子感受到这种恐惧 是因为他们有生动的想象力。 但是在某个时候,我们大多数学会了 抛弃这种想法而变得成熟。
We learn that there are no monsters hiding under the bed, and not every earthquake brings buildings down. But maybe it's no coincidence that some of our most creative minds fail to leave these kinds of fears behind as adults.
我们都知道床下没有魔鬼, 也不是每个地震都会震垮房子。但是我们当中最有想象力的人们 并没有因为成年而抛弃这种恐惧,这也许并不是巧合。
The same incredible imaginations that produced "The Origin of Species," "Jane Eyre" and "The Remembrance of Things Past," also generated intense worries that haunted the adult lives of Charles Darwin, Charlotte Bront and Marcel Proust. So the question is, what can the rest of us learn about fear from visionaries and young children?
同样不可思议的想象力创造了《物种起源》, 《简·爱》和《追忆似水年华》, 也就是这种与生俱来的深深的担忧一直缠绕着成年的 查尔斯·达尔文, 夏洛特·勃朗特和马塞尔·普罗斯特。 问题就来了, 我们其他人如何能从这些 梦想家和小孩子身上学会恐惧?
Well let's return to the year 1819 for a moment, to the situation facing the crew of the whaleship Essex. Let's take a look at the fears that their imaginations were generating as they drifted in the middle of the Pacific.
让我们暂时回到1820xx年, 回到ESSEX捕鲸船的水手们面对的情况。 让我们看看他们漂流在太平洋中央时 他们的想象力给他们带来的恐惧感觉。
Twenty-four hours had now passed since the capsizing of the ship. The time had come for the men to make a plan, but they had very few options.
船倾覆后已经过了24个小时。 这时人们制定了一个计划, 但是其实他们没什么太多的选择。
In his fascinating account of the disaster, Nathaniel Philbrick wrote that these men were just about as far from land as it was possible to be anywhere on Earth.
在纳撒尼尔·菲尔布里克(Nathaniel Philbrick)描述这场灾难的 动人文章中,他写到“这些人离陆地如此之远, 似乎永远都不可能到达地球上的任何一块陆地。”
The men knew that the nearest islands they could reach were the Marquesas Islands, 1,200 miles away. But they'd heard some frightening rumors.
这些人知道离他们最近的岛 是1200英里以外的马克萨斯群岛(Marquesas Islands)。 但是他们听到了让人恐怖的谣言。
They'd been told that these islands, and several others nearby, were populated by cannibals. So the men https://p.9136.com/0bing ashore only to be murdered and eaten for dinner. Another possible destination was Hawaii, but given the season, the captain was afraid they'd be struck by severe storms.
他们听说这些群岛, 以及附近的一些岛屿上都住着食人族。 所以他们脑中都是上岸以后就会被杀掉 被人当做盘中餐的画面。 另一个可行的目的地是夏威夷, 但是船长担心 他们会被困在风暴当中。
Now the last option was the longest, and the most difficult: to sail 1,500 miles due south in hopes of reaching a certain band of winds that could eventually push them toward the coast of South America.
所以最后的选择是到最远,也是最艰险的地方: 往南走1500英里希望某股风 能最终把他们 吹到南美洲的海岸。
But they knew that the sheer length of this journey would stretch their supplies of food and water. To be eaten by cannibals, to be battered by storms, to starve to death before reaching land.
但是他们知道这个行程中一旦偏航 将会耗尽他们食物和饮水的供给。 被食人族吃掉,被风暴掀翻, 在登陆前饿死。
These were the fears that danced in the imaginations of these poor men, and as it turned out, the fear they chose to listen to would govern whether they lived or died.
这就是萦绕在这群可怜的人想象中的恐惧, 事实证明,他们选择听从的恐惧 将决定他们的生死。
Now we might just as easily call these fears by a different name. What if instead of calling them fears, we called them stories?
也许我们可以很容易的用别的名称来称呼这些恐惧。 我们不称之为恐惧, 而是称它们为故事如何?
Because that's really what fear is, if you think about it. It's a kind of unintentional storytelling that we are all born knowing how to do. And fears and storytelling have the same components.
如果你仔细想想,这是恐惧真正的意义。 这是一种与生俱来的`, 无意识的讲故事的能力。 恐惧和讲故事有着同样的构成。
They have the same architecture. Like all stories, fears have characters. In our fears, the characters are us. Fears also have plots. They have beginnings and middles and ends. You board the plane.
他们有同样的结构。 如同所有的故事,恐惧中有角色。 在恐惧中,角色就是我们自己。 恐惧也有情节。他们有开头,有中间,有结尾。 你登上飞机。
The plane takes off. The engine fails. Our fears also tend to contain imagery that can be every bit as vivid as what you might find in the pages of a novel. Picture a cannibal, human teeth sinking into human skin, human flesh roasting over a fire.
飞机起飞。结果引擎故障。 我们的恐惧会包括各种生动的想象, 不比你看到的任何一个小说逊色。 想象食人族,人类牙齿 咬在人类皮肤上, 人肉在火上烤。
Fears also have suspense. If I've done my job as a storyteller today, you should be wondering what happened to the men of the whaleship Essex. Our fears provoke in us a very similar form of suspense.
恐惧中也有悬念。 如果我今天像讲故事一样,留个悬念不说了, 你们也许会很想知道 ESSEX捕鲸船上,人们到底怎么样了。 我们的恐惧用悬念一样的方式刺激我们。
Just like all great stories, our fears focus our attention on a question that is as important in life as it is in literature: What will happen next?
就像一个很好的故事,我们的恐惧也如同一部好的文学作品一样, 将我们的注意力集中在对我们生命至关重要的问题上: 后来发生了什么?
In other words, our fears make us think about the future. And humans, by the way, are the only creatures capable of thinking about the future in this way, of projecting ourselves forward in time, and this mental time travel is just one more thing that fears have in common with storytelling.
换而言之,我们的恐惧让我们想到未来。 另外,人来是唯一有能力 通过这种方式想到未来的生物, 就是预测时间推移后我们的状况, 这种精神上的时间旅行是恐惧 与讲故事的另一个共同点。
As a writer, I can tell you that a big part of writing fiction is learning to predict how one event in a story will affect all the other events, and fear works in that same way.
我是一个作家,我要告诉你们写小说一个很重要的部分 就是学会预测故事中一件 事情如何影响另一件事情, 恐惧也是同样这么做的。
In fear, just like in fiction, one thing always leads to another. When I was writing my first novel, "The Age Of Miracles," I spent months trying to figure out what would happen if the rotation of the Earth suddenly began to slow down. What would happen to our days?
恐惧中,如同小说一样,一件事情总是导致另一件事情。 我写我的第一部小说《奇迹时代》的时候, 我花了数月的时间想象如果地球旋转突然变慢了之后 会发生什么。 我们的一天变得如何?
What would happen to our crops? What would happen to our minds? And then it was only later that I realized how very similar these questions were to the ones I used to ask myself as a child frightened in the night.
我们身体会怎样? 我们的思想会有什么变化? 也就是在那之后,我意识到 我过去总是问自己的那些些问题 和孩子们在夜里害怕是多么的相像。
If an earthquake strikes tonight, I used to worry, what will happen to our house? What will happen to my family? And the answer to those questions always took the form of a story.
要是在过去,如果今晚发生地震,我会很担心, 我的房子会怎么样啊?家里人会怎样啊? 这类问题的答案通常都会和故事一样。
TED的英文演讲稿9
Ihave spent the last years, trying to resolve two enigmas: why is productivity so disappointing in all the companies where I work? I have worked with more than 500 companies. Despite all the technological advance – computers, IT, communications, telecommunications, the internet.
Enigma number two: why is there so little engagement at work? Why do people feel so miserable, even actively disengaged? Disengaged their colleagues. Acting against the interest of their company. Despite all the affiliation events, the celebration, the people initiatives, the leadership development programs to train managers on how to better motivate their teams.
At the beginning, I thought there was a chicken and egg issue: because people are less engaged, they are less productive. Or vice versa, because they are less productive, we put more pressure and they are less engaged. But as we were doing our analysis we realized that there was a common root cause to these two issues that relates, in fact, to the basic pillars of management. The way we organize is based on two pillars.
The hard—structure, processes, systems.
The soft—feeling, sentiments, interpersonal relationship, traits, personality.
And whenever a company reorganizes, restructures, reengineers, goes through a cultural transformation program, it chooses these two pillars. Now we try to refine them, we try to combine them. The real issue is – and this is the answer to the two enigmas – these pillar are obsolete.
Everything you read in business books is based either two of the other or their combine. They are obsolete. How do they work when you try to use these approaches in front of the new complexity of business? The hard approach, basically is that you start from strategy, requirement, structure, processes, systems, KPIs, scorecards, committees, headquarters, hubs, clusters, you name it. I forgot all the metrics, incentives, committees, middle offices and interfaces. What happens basically on the left, you have more complexity, the new complexity of business. We need quality, cost, reliability, speed. And every time there is a new requirement, we use the same approach. We create dedicated structure processed systems, basically to deal with the new complexity of business. The hard approach creates just complicatedness in the organization.
Let’s take an example. An automotive company, the engineering division is a five-dimensional matrix. If you open any cell of the matrix, you find another 20-dimensional matrix. You have Mr. Noise, Mr. Petrol Consumption, Mr. Anti-Collision Propertise. For any new requirement,
you have a dedicated function in charge of aligning engineers against the new requirement. What happens when the new requirement emerges?
Some years ago, a new requirement appeared on the marketplace: the length of the warranty period. So therefore the requirement is repairability, making cars easy to repair. Otherwise when you bring the car to the garage to fix the light, if you have to remove the engine to access the lights, the car will have to stay one week in the garage instead of two hours, and the warranty budget will explode. So, what was the solution using the hard approach? If repairability is the rew requirement, the solution is to create a new function, Mr. Repairability. And Mr. Repairability creates the repairability process. With a repairability scorecard, with a repairability metric and eventually repairability incentive.That came on top of 25 other KPIs. What percentage of these people is variable compensation? Twenty percent at most, divided by 26 KPIs, repairability makes a difference of 0.8 percent. What difference did it make in their action, their choices to simplify? Zero. But what occurs for zero impact? Mr. Repairability, process, scorecard, evaluation, coordination with the 25 other coordinators to have zero impact. Now, in front of the new complexity of business, the only solution is not drawing box es with reporting lines. It is basically the interplay. How the parts work together. The connection, the interaction, the synapse. It is not skeleton of boxes, it is the nervous system of adaptiveness and
intelligence. You know, you could call it cooperation, basically. Whenever people cooperate, they use less resources. In everything. You know, the repairability issue is a cooperation problem.
When you design cars, please take into account the need of those who will repair the cars in the after sales garage. When we don’t cooperate we need more time, more equipment, more system, more teams. We need – when procurement, supply chain, manufacturing don’t cooperate we need more stock, more investories, more working capital.
Who will pay for that? Shareholder? Customers? No, they will refuse. So who is left? The employees, who have tocompensate through their super individual efforts for the lack of cooperation. Stress, burnout, they are overwhelmed, accidents. No wonder they disengage.
How do the hard and the soft try to foster cooperation?
The hard: in banks, when there is problem between the back office and the front office, they don’t cooperate. What is the solution? They create a middle office.
What happens one years later? Instead of one problem between the back and front, now have to problems. Between the back and the middle and between the middle and the front. Plus I have to pay for the middle office. The hard approach is unable to foster cooperation. It can only add new boxes, new bones in the skeleton.
The soft approach: to make people cooperate, we need to make then like each other. Improve interpersonal feelings, the more people laike each other, the more they will cooperate. It is totally worng. It even counterproductive.
Look, at home I have two TVs. Why? Precisely not to have to cooperate with my wife. Not to have to impose tradeoffs to my wife. And why I try not to impose tradeoffs to my wife is precisely because I love my wife. If I didn’t love my wife, one TV would be enough: you will watch my favorite football game, if you are not happy, how is the book or the door?
The more we like each other, the more we avoid the real cooperation that would strain our relationships by imposing tough tradeoffs. And we go for a second TV or we escalate the decision above for arbitration.
Definitely, these approaches are obsolete. To deal with complexity, to enhance nervous system, we have created what we call the smart simplicity approach based on simple rules. Simple rule number one: understand what others do. What is their real work? We need go beyond the boxes, the job description, beyond the surface of the container, to understand the real content. Me, designer, if I put a wire here, I know that it will mean that we will have to remove the engine to access the lights. Second, you need to reinforce integrators.
TED的英文演讲稿10
Every kid needs a champion
每个孩子都需要一个冠军演讲稿中英对照:
I have spent my entire life either at the schoolhouse, on the way to the schoolhouse, or talking about what happens in the schoolhouse. Both my parents were educators, my maternal grandparents were educators, and for the past 40 years I've done the same thing. And so, needless to say, over those years I've had a chance to look at education reform from a lot of
perspectives. Some of those reforms have been good. Some of them have been not so good. And we know why kids drop out. We know why kids don't learn. It's either poverty, low attendance, negative peer influences. We know why. But one of the things that we never discuss or we rarely discuss is the value and importance of human connection, relationships.
我这辈子,要么是在学校,要么在去学校的路上,要么是在讨论学校里发生了什么事。我的父母都是教育家,我的外祖父母也都是搞教育的,过去40年我也在从事同样的事业。所以,很显然,过去的这些年里,我有机会从各个角度审视教育改革。一些改革是有成效的。而另一些却收效甚微。我们知道孩子们为什么掉队辍学。我们知道孩子们为什么学不下去。原因无非是贫穷,低出席率,同龄人的坏影响。我们知道为什么。但是我们从未讨论或者极少讨论的是人和人之间的那种联系的价值和重要性,这就是“关系”。
James Comer says that no significant learning can occur without a significant relationship. George Washington Carver says all learning is understanding relationships. Everyone in this room has been affected by a teacher or an adult.
For years, I have watched people teach. I have looked at the best and I've look at some of the worst.
James Comer (美国著名儿童精神科医师)说过,没有强有力的联系,学习就不会有显著的进步。 George Washington Carver(美国著名教育学家)说过,学习就是理解各种关系。在座的各位都曾经被一位老师或者一个成年人影响过。这么多年,我都在看人们怎么教学。我看过最好的也看过最差的。
A colleague said to me one time, "They don't pay me to like the kids. They pay me to teach a lesson. The kids should learn it. I should teach it. They should learn it. Case closed."
一次有个同事跟我说, “我的职责不是喜欢那些孩子们。我的职责是教书。孩子们就该去学。我管教课,他们管学习。就是这么个理儿。”
Well, I said to her, "You know, kids don't learn from people they don't like." 然后,我就跟她说, “你知道,孩子们可不跟他们讨厌的人学习。”
(Laughter) (Applause)
(笑声)(掌声)
She said, "That's just a bunch of hooey."
她接着说,“一派胡言。”
And I said to her, "Well, your year is going to be long and arduous, dear." 然后我对她说,“那么,亲爱的,你这一年会变得十分漫长和痛苦。”
Needless to say it was. Some people think that you can either have it in you to build a relationship or you don't. I think Stephen Covey had the right idea. He
said you ought to just throw in a few simple things, like seeking first to
understand as opposed to being understood, simple things like apologizing. You ever thought about thatTell a kid you're sorry, they're in shock.
事实也果真如此。有些人认为一个人或者天生可以建立一种关系或者不具有这种能力。我认为Stephen Covey(美国教育家)是对的。他说你只需要做一些简单的事情,比如试着首先理解他人,而不是想要被理解,比如道歉。你想过吗?跟一个孩子说你很对不起,他们都惊呆了。
I taught a lesson once on ratios. I'm not real good with math, but I was working on it. And I got back and looked at that teacher edition. I'd taught the whole lesson wrong. (Laughter)
我有一次讲比例。我数学不是很好,但是我当时在教数学。然后我下了课,翻看了教师用书。我完全教错了。(笑声)
So I came back to class the next day, and I said, "Look, guys, I need to apologize. I taught the whole lesson wrong. I'm so sorry."
所以我第二天回到班上说, “同学们,我要道歉。我昨天的课都教错了。我非常抱歉。”
They said, "That's okay, Ms. Pierson. You were so excited, we just let you go." (Laughter) (Applause)
他们说,“没关系,Pierson老师。你当时教得非常投入,我们就让你继续了。” (笑声)(掌声)
I have had classes that were so low, so academically deficient that I cried. I wondered, how am I going to take this group in nine months from where they
are to where they need to beAnd it was difficult. It was awfully hard. How do I raise the self-esteem of a child and his academic achievement at the same time
我曾经教过程度非常低的班级,学术素养差到我都哭了。我当时就想,我怎么能在9个月之内把这些孩子提升到他们必须具备的水平?这真的很难,太艰难了。我怎么能让一个孩子重拾自信的同时他在学术上也有进步?
One year I came up with a bright idea. I told all my students, "You were chosen to be in my class because I am the best teacher and you are the best students, they put us all together so we could show everybody else how to do it."
有一年我有了一个非常好的主意。我告诉我的学生们, “你们进了我的班级,因为我是最好的老师,而你们是最好的学生,他们把我们放在一起来给其他人做个好榜样。”
One of the students said, "Really" (Laughter)
一个学生说,“真的吗?” (笑声)
I said, "Really. We have to show the other classes how to do it, so when we walk down the hall, people will notice us, so you can't make noise. You just have to strut." And I gave them a saying to say: "I am somebody. I was
somebody when I came. I'll be a better somebody when I leave. I am powerful, and I am strong. I deserve the education that I get here. I have things to do, people to impress, and places to go."
我说,“当然是真的.。我们要给其他班级做个榜样,当我们走在楼道里,因为大家都会注意到我们,我们不能吵闹。大家要昂首阔步。” 我还给了他们一个口号:“我是个人物。我来的时候是个人物。我毕业的时候会变成一个更好的人物。我
很有力,很强大。我值得在这里受教育。我有很多事情要做,我要让人们记住我,我要去很多地方。”
And they said, "Yeah!"
然后他们说:“是啊!”
You say it long enough, it starts to be a part of you.
如果你长时间的这么说,它就会开始变成事实。
And so — (Applause) I gave a quiz, 20 questions. A student missed 18. I put a "+2" on his paper and a big smiley face.
所以-(掌声)我做了一个小测验,20道题。一个孩子错了18道。我在他了卷子上写了个“+2”和一个大的笑脸。
He said, "Ms. Pierson, is this an F"
他说,“Pierson老师,这是不及格吗?”
I said, "Yes."
我说,“是的。”
He said, "Then why'd you put a smiley face"
他接着说,“那你为什么给我一个笑脸?”
I said, "Because you're on a roll. You got two right. You didn't miss them all." I said, "And when we review this, won't you do better"
我说,“因为你正渐入佳境。你没有全错,还对了两个。” 我说,“我们复习这些题的时候,难道你不会做得更好吗?”
TED的英文演讲稿11
00:11
What keeps us healthy and happy as we go through life? If you were going to invest now in your future best self, where would you put your time and your energy? There was a recent survey of millennials asking them what their most important life goals were, and over 80 percent said that a major life goal for them was to get rich. And another 50 percent of those same young adults said that another major life goal was to become famous.
00:49
(Laughter)
00:51
And we're constantly told to lean in to work, to push harder and achieve more. We're given the impression that these are the things that we need to go after in order to have a good life. Pictures of entire lives, of the choices that people make and how those choices work out for them, those pictures are almost impossible to get. Most of what we know about human life we know from asking people to remember the past, and as we know, hindsight is anything but 20/20. We forget vast amounts of what happens to us in life, and sometimes memory is downright creative.
01:35
But what if we could watch entire lives as they unfold through time? What if we could study people from the time that they were teenagers all the way into old age to see what really keeps people happy and healthy?
01:54
We did that. The Harvard Study of Adult Development may be the longest study of adult life that's ever been done. For 75 years, we've tracked the lives of 724 men, year after year, asking about their work, their home lives, their health, and of course asking all along the way without knowing how their life stories were going to turn out.
02:24
Studies like this are exceedingly rare. Almost all projects of this kind fall apart within a decade because too many people drop out of the study, or funding for the research dries up, or the researchers get distracted, or they die, and nobody moves the ball further down the field. But through a combination of luck and the persistence of several generations of researchers, this study has survived. About 60 of our original 724 men are still alive, still participating in the study, most of them in their 90s. And we are now beginning to study the more than 2,000 children of these men. And I'm the fourth director of the study.
03:14
Since 1938, we've tracked the lives of two groups of men. The first group started in the study when they were sophomores at Harvard College. They all finished college during World War II, and then most went off to serve in the war. And the second group that we've followed was a group of boys from Boston's poorest neighborhoods, boys who were chosen for the study specifically because they were from some of the most troubled and disadvantaged families in the Boston of the 1930s. Most lived in tenements, many without hot and cold running water.
03:53
When they entered the study, all of these teenagers were interviewed. They were given medical exams. We went to their homes and we interviewed their parents. And then these teenagers grew up into adults who entered all walks of life. They became factory workers and lawyers and bricklayers and doctors, one President of the United States. Some developed alcoholism. A few developed schizophrenia. Some climbed the social ladder from the bottom all the way to the very top, and some made that journey in the opposite direction.
04:34
The founders of this study would never in their wildest dreams have imagined that I would be standing here today, 75 years later, telling you that the study still continues. Every two years, our patient and dedicated research staff calls up our men and asks them if we can send them yet one more set of questions about their lives.
04:59
Many of the inner city Boston men ask us, "Why do you keep wanting to study me? My life just isn't that interesting." The Harvard men never ask that question.
05:10
(Laughter)
05:19
To get the clearest picture of these lives, we don't just send them questionnaires. We interview them in their living rooms. We get their medical records from their doctors. We draw their blood, we scan their brains, we talk to their children. We videotape them talking with their wives about their deepest concerns. And when, about a decade ago, we finally asked the wives if they would join us as members of the study, many of the women said, "You know, it's about time."
05:49
(Laughter)
05:50
So what have we learned? What are the lessons that come from the tens of thousands of pages of information that we've generated on these lives? Well, the lessons aren't about wealth or fame or working harder and harder. The clearest message that we get from this 75-year study is this: Good relationships keep us happier and healthier. Period.
06:22
We've learned three big lessons about relationships. The first is that social connections are really good for us, and that loneliness kills. It turns out that people who are more socially connected to family, to friends, to community, are happier, they're physically healthier, and they live longer than people who are less well connected. And the experience of loneliness turns out to be toxic. People who are more isolated than they want to be from others find that they are less happy, their health declines earlier in midlife, their brain functioning declines sooner and they live shorter lives than people who are not lonely. And the sad fact is that at any given time, more than one in five Americans will report that they're lonely.
07:18
And we know that you can be lonely in a crowd and you can be lonely in a marriage, so the second big lesson that we learned is that it's not just the number of friends you have, and it's not whether or not you're in a committed relationship, but it's the quality of your close relationships that matters. It turns out that living in the midst of conflict is really bad for our health. High-conflict marriages, for example, without much affection, turn out to be very bad for our health, perhaps worse than getting divorced. And living in the midst of good, warm relationships is protective.
07:56
Once we had followed our men all the way into their 80s, we wanted to look back at them at midlife and to see if we could predict who was going to grow into a happy, healthy octogenarian and who wasn't. And when we gathered together everything we knew about them at age 50, it wasn't their middle age cholesterol levels that predicted how they were going to grow old. It was how satisfied they were in their relationships. The people who were the most satisfied in their relationships at age 50 were the healthiest at age 80. And good, close relationships seem to buffer us from some of the slings and arrows of getting old. Our most happily partnered men and women reported, in their 80s, that on the days when they had more physical pain, their mood stayed just as happy. But the people who were in unhappy relationships, on the days when they reported more physical pain, it was magnified by more emotional pain.
09:03
And the third big lesson that we learned about relationships and our health is that good relationships don't just protect our bodies, they protect our brains. It turns out that being in a securely attached relationship to another person in your 80s is protective, that the people who are in relationships where they really feel they can count on the other person in times of need, those people's memories stay sharper longer. And the people in relationships where they feel they really can't count on the other one, those are the people who experience earlier memory decline. And those good relationships, they don't have to be smooth all the time. Some of our octogenarian couples could bicker with each other day in and day out, but as long as they felt that they could really count on the other when the going got tough, those arguments didn't take a toll on their memories.
10:00
So this message, that good, close relationships are good for our health and well-being, this is wisdom that's as old as the hills. Why is this so hard to get and so easy to ignore? Well, we're human. What we'd really like is a quick fix, something we can get that'll make our lives good and keep them that way. Relationships are messy and they're complicated and the hard work of tending to family and friends, it's not sexy or glamorous. It's also lifelong. It never ends. The people in our 75-year study who were the happiest in retirement were the people who had actively worked to replace workmates with new playmates. Just like the millennials in that recent survey, many of our men when they were starting out as young adults really believed that fame and wealth and high achievement were what they needed to go after to have a good life. But over and over, over these 75 years, our study has shown that the people who fared the best were the people who leaned in to relationships, with family, with friends, with community.
11:20
So what about you? Let's say you're 25, or you're 40, or you're 60. What might leaning in to relationships even look like?
11:30
Well, the possibilities are practically endless. It might be something as simple as replacing screen time with people time or livening up a stale relationship by doing something new together, long walks or date nights, or reaching out to that family member who you haven't spoken to in years, because those all-too-common family feuds take a terrible toll on the people who hold the grudges.
12:03
I'd like to close with a quote from Mark Twain. More than a century ago, he was looking back on his life, and he wrote this: "There isn't time, so brief is life, for bickerings, apologies, heartburnings, callings to account. There is only time for loving, and but an instant, so to speak, for that."
12:33
The good life is built with good relationships.
12:38
Thank you.
12:39
(Applause)