when i was seven years old and my sister was just five years old, we were playing on top of a bunk bed. i was two years older than my sister at the time -- i mean, i'm two years older than her now -- but at the time it meant she had to do everything that i wanted to do, and i wanted to play war. so we were up on top of our bunk beds. and on one side of the bunk bed, i had put out all of my g.i. joe soldiers and weaponry. and on the other side were all my sister's my little ponies ready for a cavalry charge.
there are differing accounts of what actually happened that afternoon, but since my sister is not here with us today, let me tell you the true story -- (laughter) -- which is my sister's a little bit on the clumsy side. somehow, without any help or push from her older brother at all, suddenly amy disappeared off of the top of the bunk bed and landed with this crash on the floor. now i nervously peered over the side of the bed to see what had befallen my fallen sister and saw that she had landed painfully on her hands and knees on all fours on the ground.
i was nervous because my parents had charged me with making sure that my sister and i played as safely and as quietly as possible. and seeing as how i had accidentally broken amy's arm just one week before ... (laughter) ... heroically pushing her out of the way of an oncoming imaginary sniper bullet, (laughter) for which i have yet to be thanked, i was trying as hard as i could -- she didn't even see it coming -- i was trying as hard as i could to be on my best behavior.
and i saw my sister's face, this wail of pain and suffering and surprise threatening to erupt from her mouth and threatening to wake my parents from the long winter's nap for which they had settled. so i did the only thing my little frantic seven year-old brain could think to do to avert this tragedy. and if you have children, you've seen this hundreds of times before. i said, "amy, amy, wait. don't cry. don't cry. did you see how you landed? no human lands on all fours like that. amy, i think this means you're a unicorn."
(laughter)
now that was cheating, because there was nothing in the world my sister would want more than not to be amy the hurt five year-old little sister, but amy the special unicorn. of course, this was an option that was open to her brain at no point in the past. and you could see how my poor, manipulated sister faced conflict, as her little brain attempted to devote resources to feeling the pain and suffering and surprise she just experienced, or contemplating her new-found identity as a unicorn. and the latter won out. instead of crying, instead of ceasing our play, instead of waking my parents, with all the negative consequences that would have ensued for me, instead a smile spread across her face and she scrambled right back up onto the bunk bed with all the grace of a baby unicorn ... (laughter) ... with one broken leg.
what we stumbled across at this tender age of just five and seven -- we had no idea at the time -- was something that was going be at the vanguard of a scientific revolution occurring two decades later in the way that we look at the human brain. what we had stumbled across is something called positive psychology, which is the reason that i'm here today and the reason that i wake up every morning.
when i first started talking about this research outside of academia, out with companies and schools, the very first thing they said to never do is to start your talk with a graph. the very first thing i want to do is start my talk with a graph. this graph looks boring, but this graph is the reason i get excited and wake up every morning. and this graph doesn't even mean anything; it's fake data. what we found is --
(laughter)
if i got this data back studying you here in the room, i would be thrilled, because there's very clearly a trend that's going on there, and that means that i can get published, which is all that really matters. the fact that there's one weird red dot that's up above the curve, there's one weirdo in the room -- i know who you are, i saw you earlier -- that's no problem. that's no problem, as most of you know, because i can just delete that dot. i can delete that dot because that's clearly a measurement error. and we know that's a measurement error because it's messing up my data.
so one of the very first things we teach people in economics and statistics and business and psychology courses is how, in a statistically valid way, do we eliminate the weirdos. how do we eliminate the outliers so we can find the line of best fit? which is fantastic if i'm trying to find out how many advil the average person should be taking -- two. but if i'm interested in potential, if i'm interested in your potential, or for happiness or productivity or energy or creativity, what we're doing is we're creating the cult of the average with science.
if i asked a question like, "how fast can a child learn how to read in a classroom?" scientists change the answer to "how fast does the average child learn how to read in that classroom?" and then we tailor the class right towards the average. now if you fall below the average on this curve, then psychologists get thrilled, because that means you're either depressed or you have a disorder, or hopefully both. we're hoping for both because our business model is, if you come into a therapy session with one problem, we want to make sure you leave knowing you have 10, so you keep coming back over and over again. we'll go back into your childhood if necessary, but eventually what we want to do is make you normal again. but normal is merely average.
and what i posit and what positive psychology posits is that if we study what is merely average, we will remain merely average. then instead of deleting those positive outliers, what i intentionally do is come into a population like this one and say, why? why is it that some of you are so high above the curve in terms of your intellectual ability, athletic ability, musical ability, creativity, energy levels, your resiliency in the face of challenge, your sense of humor? whatever it is, instead of deleting you, what i want to do is study you. because maybe we can glean information -- not just how to move people up to the average, but how we can move the entire average up in our companies and schools worldwide.
the reason this graph is important to me is, when i turn on the news, it seems like the majority of the information is not positive, in fact it's negative. most of it's about murder, corruption, diseases, natural disasters. and very quickly, my brain starts to think that's the accurate ratio of negative to positive in the world. what that's doing is creating something called the medical school syndrome -- which, if you know people who've been to medical school, during the first year of medical training, as you read through a list of all the symptoms and diseases that could happen, suddenly you realize you have all of them.
i have a brother in-law named bobo -- which is a whole other story. bobo married amy the unicorn. bobo called me on the phone from yale medical school, and bobo said, "shawn, i have leprosy." (laughter) which, even at yale, is extraordinarily rare. but i had no idea how to console poor bobo because he had just gotten over an entire week of menopause.
(laughter)
see what we're finding is it's not necessarily the reality that shapes us, but the lens through which your brain views the world that shapes your reality. and if we can change the lens, not only can we change your happiness, we can change every single educational and business outcome at the same time.
when i applied to harvard, i applied on a dare. i didn't expect to get in, and my family had no money for college. when i got a military scholarship two weeks later, they allowed me to go. suddenly, something that wasn't even a possibility became a reality. when i went there, i assumed everyone else would see it as a privilege as well, that they'd be excited to be there. even if you're in a classroom full of people smarter than you, you'd be happy just to be in that classroom, which is what i felt. but what i found there is, while some people experience that, when i graduated after my four years and then spent the next eight years living in the dorms with the students -- harvard asked me to; i wasn't that guy. (laughter) i was an officer of harvard to counsel students through the difficult four years. and what i found in my research and my teaching is that these students, no matter how happy they were with their original success of getting into the school, two weeks later their brains were focused, not on the privilege of being there, nor on their philosophy or their physics. their brain was focused on the competition, the workload, the hassles, the stresses, the complaints.
when i first went in there, i walked into the freshmen dining hall, which is where my friends from waco, texas, which is where i grew up -- i know some of you have heard of it. when they'd come to visit me, they'd look around, they'd say, "this freshman dining hall looks like something out of hogwart's from the movie "harry potter," which it does. this is hogwart's from the movie "harry potter" and that's harvard. and when they see this, they say, "shawn, why do you waste your time studying happiness at harvard? seriously, what does a harvard student possibly have to be unhappy about?"
embedded within that question is the key to understanding the science of happiness. because what that question assumes is that our external world is predictive of our happiness levels, when in reality, if i know everything about your external world, i can only predict 10 percent of your long-term happiness. 90 percent of your long-term happiness is predicted not by the external world, but by the way your brain processes the world. and if we change it, if we change our formula for happiness and success, what we can do is change the way that we can then affect reality. what we found is that only 25 percent of job successes are predicted by i.q. 75 percent of job successes are predicted by your optimism levels, your social support and your ability to see stress as a challenge instead of as a threat.
i talked to a boarding school up in new england, probably the most prestigious boarding school, and they said, "we already know that. so every year, instead of just teaching our students, we also have a wellness week. and we're so excited. monday night we have the world's leading expert coming in to speak about adolescent depression. tuesday night it's school violence and bullying. wednesday night is eating disorders. thursday night is elicit drug use. and friday night we're trying to decide between risky sex or happiness." (laughter) i said, "that's most people's friday nights." (laughter) (applause) which i'm glad you liked, but they did not like that at all. silence on the phone. and into the silence, i said, "i'd be happy to speak at your school, but just so you know, that's not a wellness week, that's a sickness week. what you've done is you've outlined all the negative things that can happen, but not talked about the positive."
the absence of disease is not health. here's how we get to health: we need to reverse the formula for happiness and success. in the last three years, i've traveled to 45 different countries, working with schools and companies in the midst of an economic downturn. and what i found is that most companies and schools follow a formula for success, which is this: if i work harder, i'll be more successful. and if i'm more successful, then i'll be happier. that undergirds most of our parenting styles, our managing styles, the way that we motivate our behavior.
and the problem is it's scientifically broken and backwards for two reasons. first, every time your brain has a success, you just changed the goalpost of what success looked like. you got good grades, now you have to get better grades, you got into a good school and after you get into a better school, you got a good job, now you have to get a better job, you hit your sales target, we're going to change your sales target. and if happiness is on the opposite side of success, your brain never gets there. what we've done is we've pushed happiness over the cognitive horizon as a society. and that's because we think we have to be successful, then we'll be happier.
but the real problem is our brains work in the opposite order. if you can raise somebody's level of positivity in the present, then their brain experiences what we now call a happiness advantage, which is your brain at positive performs significantly better than it does at negative, neutral or stressed. your intelligence rises, your creativity rises, your energy levels rise. in fact, what we've found is that every single business outcome improves. your brain at positive is 31 percent more productive than your brain at negative, neutral or stressed. you're 37 percent better at sales. doctors are 19 percent faster, more accurate at coming up with the correct diagnosis when positive instead of negative, neutral or stressed. which means we can reverse the formula. if we can find a way of becoming positive in the present, then our brains work even more successfully as we're able to work harder, faster and more intelligently.
what we need to be able to do is to reverse this formula so we can start to see what our brains are actually capable of. because dopamine, which floods into your system when you're positive, has two functions. not only does it make you happier, it turns on all of the learning centers in your brain allowing you to adapt to the world in a different way.
we've found that there are ways that you can train your brain to be able to become more positive. in just a two-minute span of time done for 21 days in a row, we can actually rewire your brain, allowing your brain to actually work more optimistically and more successfully. we've done these things in research now in every single company that i've worked with, getting them to write down three new things that they're grateful for for 21 days in a row, three new things each day. and at the end of that, their brain starts to retain a pattern of scanning the world, not for the negative, but for the positive first.
journaling about one positive experience you've had over the past 24 hours allows your brain to relive it. exercise teaches your brain that your behavior matters. we find that meditation allows your brain to get over the cultural adhd that we've been creating by trying to do multiple tasks at once and allows our brains to focus on the task at hand. and finally, random acts of kindness are conscious acts of kindness. we get people, when they open up their inbox, to write one positive email praising or thanking somebody in their social support network.
and by doing these activities and by training your brain just like we train our bodies, what we've found is we can reverse the formula for happiness and success, and in doing so, not only create ripples of positivity, but create a real revolution.
thank you very much.
(applause)
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."
but then we hit the 20th century and we entered a new culture that historians call the culture of personality. what happened is we had evolved an agricultural economy to a world of big business. and so suddenly people are moving from small towns to the cities. and instead of working alongside people they've known all their lives, now they are having to prove themselves in a crowd of strangers. so, quite understandably, qualities like magnetism and charisma suddenly come to seem really important. and sure enough, the self-help books change to meet these new needs and they start to have names like "how to win friends and influence people." and they feature as their role models really great salesmen. so that's the world we're living in today. that's our cultural inheritance.
now none of this is to say that social skills are unimportant, and i'm also not calling for the abolishing of teamwork at all. the same religions who send their sages off to lonely mountain tops also teach us love and trust. and the problems that we are facing today in fields like science and in economics are so vast and so complex that we are going to need armies of people coming together to solve them working together. but i am saying that the more freedom that we give introverts to be themselves, the more likely that they are to come up with their own unique solutions to these problems.
so now i'd like to share with you what's in my suitcase today. guess what? books. i have a suitcase full of books. here's margaret atwood, "cat's eye." here's a novel by milan kundera. and here's "the guide for the perplexed" by maimonides. but these are not exactly my books. i brought these books with me because they were written by my grandfather's favorite authors.
my grandfather was a rabbi and he was a widower who lived alone in a small apartment in brooklyn that was my favorite place in the world when i was growing up, partly because it was filled with his very gentle, very courtly presence and partly because it was filled with books. i mean literally every table, every chair in this apartment had yielded its original function to now serve as a surface for swaying stacks of books. just like the rest of my family, my grandfather's favorite thing to do in the whole world was to read.
but he also loved his congregation, and you could feel this love in the sermons that he gave every week for the 62 years that he was a rabbi. he would takes the fruits of each week's reading and he would weave these intricate tapestries of ancient and humanist thought. and people would come from all over to hear him speak.
but here's the thing about my grandfather. underneath this ceremonial role, he was really modest and really introverted -- so much so that when he delivered these sermons, he had trouble making eye contact with the very same congregation that he had been speaking to for 62 years. and even away from the podium, when you called him to say hello, he would often end the conversation prematurely for fear that he was taking up too much of your time. but when he died at the age of 94, the police had to close down the streets of his neighborhood to accommodate the crowd of people who came out to mourn him. and so these days i try to learn from my grandfather's example in my own way.
so i just published a book about introversion, and it took me about seven years to write. and for me, that seven years was like total bliss, because i was reading, i was writing, i was thinking, i was researching. it was my version of my grandfather's hours of the day alone in his library. but now all of a sudden my job is very different, and my job is to be out here talking about it, talking about introversion. (laughter) and that's a lot harder for me, because as honored as i am to be here with all of you right now, this is not my natural milieu.
so i prepared for moments like these as best i could. i spent the last year practicing public speaking every chance i could get. and i call this my "year of speaking dangerously." (laughter) and that actually helped a lot. but i'll tell you, what helps even more is my sense, my belief, my hope that when it comes to our attitudes to introversion and to quiet and to solitude, we truly are poised on the brink on dramatic change. i mean, we are. and so i am going to leave you now with three calls for action for those who share this vision.
number one: stop the madness for constant group work. just stop it. (laughter) thank you. (applause) and i want to be clear about what i'm saying, because i deeply believe our offices should be encouraging casual, chatty cafe-style types of interactions -- you know, the kind where people come together and serendipitously have an exchange of ideas. that is great. it's great for introverts and it's great for extroverts. but we need much more privacy and much more freedom and much more autonomy at work. school, same thing. we need to be teaching kids to work together, for sure, but we also need to be teaching them how to work on their own. this is especially important for extroverted children too. they need to work on their own because that is where deep thought comes from in part.
okay, number two: go to the wilderness. be like buddha, have your own revelations. i'm not saying that we all have to now go off and build our own cabins in the woods and never talk to each other again, but i am saying that we could all stand to unplug and get inside our own heads a little more often.
number three: take a good look at what's inside your own suitcase and why you put it there. so extroverts, maybe your suitcases are also full of books. or maybe they're full of champagne glasses or skydiving equipment. whatever it is, i hope you take these things out every chance you get and grace us with your energy and your joy. but introverts, you being you, you probably have the impulse to guard very carefully what's inside your own suitcase. and that's okay. but occasionally, just occasionally, i hope you will open up your suitcases for other people to see, because the world needs you and it needs the things you carry.
so i wish you the best of all possible journeys and the courage to speak softly.
thank you very much.
(applause)
thank you. thank you.
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.
當我九歲的時候 我第一次去參加夏令營 我媽媽幫我整理好了我的行李箱 裡面塞滿了書 這對於我來說是一件極為自然的事情 因為在我的家庭里 閱讀是主要的家庭活動 聽上去你們可能覺得我們是不愛交際的 但是對於我的家庭來說這真的只是接觸社會的另一種途徑 你們有自己家庭接觸時的溫暖親情 家人靜坐在你身邊 但是你也可以自由地漫遊 在你思維深處的冒險樂園裡我有一個想法 野營會變得像這樣子，當然要更好些 (笑聲) 我想像到十個女孩坐在一個小屋裡 都穿著合身的女式睡衣愜意地享受著讀書的過程
(laughter)
(笑聲)
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.
野營這時更像是一個不提供酒水的派對聚會 在第一天的時候呢 我們的顧問把我們都集合在一起 並且她教會了我們一種今後要用到的慶祝方式 在餘下夏令營的每一天中 讓“露營精神”浸潤我們 之後它就像這樣繼續著 r-o-w-d-i-e 這是我們拼寫“吵鬧"的口號 我們唱著“噪音，喧鬧，我們要變得吵一點” 對，就是這樣 可我就是弄不明白我的生活會是什麼樣的 為什麼我們變得這么吵鬧粗暴 或者為什麼我們非要把這個單詞錯誤地拼寫 (笑聲) 但是我可沒有忘記慶祝。我與每個人都互相歡呼慶祝了 我盡了我最大的努力 我只是想等待那一刻 我可以離開吵鬧的聚會去捧起我摯愛的書
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.
但是當我第一次把書從行李箱中拿出來的時候 床鋪中最酷的那個女孩向我走了過來 並且她問我：“為什麼你要這么安靜?” 安靜，當然，是r-o-w-d-i-e的反義詞 “喧鬧”的反義詞 而當我第二次拿書的時候 我們的顧問滿臉憂慮的向我走了過來 接著她重複了關於“露營精神”的要點並且說我們都應當努力 去變得外向些
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.
於是我放好我的書 放回了屬於它們的行李箱中 並且我把它們放到了床底下 在那裡它們度過了暑假餘下的每一天 我對這樣做感到很愧疚 不知為什麼我感覺這些書是需要我的 它們在呼喚我，但是我卻放棄了它們 我確實放下了它們，並且我再也沒有打開那個箱子 直到我和我的家人一起回到家中 在夏末的時候
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 beingwas 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.
現在，我向你們講述這個夏令營的故事 我完全可以給你們講出其他50種版本就像這個一樣的故事-- 每當我感覺到這樣的時候 它告訴我出於某種原因，我的寧靜和內向的風格 並不是正確道路上的必需品 我應該更多地嘗試一個外向者的角色 而在我內心深處感覺得到，這是錯誤的內向的人們都是非常優秀的，確實是這樣 但是許多年來我都否認了這種直覺 於是我首先成為了華爾街的一名律師 而不是我長久以來想要成為的一名作家 一部分原因是因為我想要證明自己 也可以變得勇敢而堅定 並且我總是去那些擁擠的酒吧 當我只是想要和朋友們吃一頓愉快的晚餐時 我做出了這些自我否認的抉擇 如條件反射一般 甚至我都不清楚我做出了這些決定
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 childrenand 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.
這就是很多內向的人正在做的事情 這當然是我們的損失 但這同樣也是同事們的損失 我們所在團隊集體的損失 當然，冒著被指為誇大其詞的風險我想說，更是世界的損失 因為當涉及創造和領導的時候 我們需要內向的人做到最好 三分之一到二分之一的人都是內向的-- 三分之一到二分之一 你要知道這可意味著每兩到三個人中就有一個內向的 所以即使你自己是一個外向的人 我正在說你的同事 和你的配偶和你的孩子 還有現在正坐在你旁邊的那個傢伙-- 他們都要屈從於這樣的偏見 一種在我們的社會中已經紮根的現實偏見 我們從很小的時候就把它藏在內心最深處 甚至都不說幾句話，關於我們正在做的事情。
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.
現在讓我們來清楚地看待這種偏見 我們需要真正了解“內向”到底指什麼 它和害羞是不同的 害羞是對於社會評論的恐懼 內向更多的是 你怎樣對於刺激作出回應 包括來自社會的刺激 其實內向的人是很渴求大量的鼓舞和激勵的 反之內向者最感覺到他們的存在 這是他們精力最充足的時候，最具有能力的時候 當他們存在於更安靜的，更低調的環境中 並不是所有時候--這些事情都不是絕對的-- 但是存在於很多時候 所以說，關鍵在於 把我們的天賦發揮到最大化 這對於我們來說就足夠把我們自己 放到對於我們正確又合適的激勵的區域中去
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.
但是現在偏見出現了 我們最重要的那些體系 我們的學校和工作單位 它們都是為性格外向者設計的 並且有適合他們需要的刺激和鼓勵 當然我們現在也有這樣一種信用機制 我稱它為新型的“團隊思考” 這是一種包含所有創造力和生產力的思考方式 從一個社交非常零散的地方產生的
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 preferto 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)
當你描繪今天典型教室的圖案時 當我還上學的時候 我們一排排地坐著 我們靠著桌子一排排坐著就像這樣 並且我們大多數工作都是自覺完成的 但是在現代社會，所謂典型的教室 是些圈起來並排的桌子-- 四個或是五個或是六、七個孩子坐在一起，面對面 孩子們要完成無數個小組任務 甚至像數學和創意寫作這些課程 這些你們認為需要依靠個人閃光想法的課程 孩子們現在卻被期待成為小組會的成員 對於那些喜歡 獨處，或者自己一個人工作的孩子來說 這些孩子常常被視為局外人 或者更糟，被視為問題孩子 並且很大一部分老師的報告中都相信 最理想的學生應該是外向的 相對於內向的學生而言 甚至說外向的學生能夠取得更好的成績 更加博學多識據研究報導 (笑聲)
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.
好了。同樣的事情也發生在我們工作的地方 現在呢，我們中的絕大多數都工作在寬闊沒有隔間的辦公室里 甚至沒有牆 在這裡，我們暴露 在不斷的噪音和我們同事的凝視目光下工作 而當談及領袖氣質的時候 內向的人總是按照慣例從領導的位置被忽視了 儘管內向的人是非常小心仔細的 很少去冒特大的風險-- 這些風險是今天我們可能都喜歡的 賓夕法尼亞大學沃頓商學院的亞當·格蘭特教授做了一項很有意思的研究 這項研究表明內向的領導們 相對於外向領導而言總是會生產更大的效益 因為當他們管理主動積極的雇員的時候 他們更傾向於讓有主見的雇員去自由發揮 反之外向的領導就可能，當然是不經意的 對於事情變得十分激動 他們在事務上有了自己想法的印跡 這使其他人的想法可能就不會很容易地 在舞台上發光了
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.
事實上，歷史上一些有改革能力的領袖都是內向的人 我會舉一些例子給你們 埃莉諾·羅斯福，羅沙·帕克斯，甘地 -- 所有這些人都把自己描述成 內向，說話溫柔甚至是害羞的人 他們仍然站在了聚光燈下 即使他們渾身上下 都感知他們說不要 這證明是一種屬於它自身的特殊的力量因為人們都會感覺這些領導者同時是掌舵者 並不是因為他們喜歡指揮別人 抑或是享客群人目光的聚焦 他們處在那個位置因為他們沒有選擇 因為他們行駛在他們認為正確的道路上
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.
現在我覺得對於這點我有必要說 那就是我真的喜愛外向的人 我總是喜歡說我最好的幾個朋友都是外向的人 包括我親愛的丈夫 當然了我們都會在不同點時偏向 內向者/外向者的範圍 甚至是卡爾·榮格，這個讓這些名詞為大眾所熟知的心理學家，說道 世上絕沒有一個純粹的內向的人 或者一個純粹的外向的人 他說這樣的人會在精神病院裡 如果他存在的話 還有一些人處在中間的跡象 在內向與外向之間 我們稱這些人為“中向性格者” 並且我總是認為他們擁有世界最美好的一切 但是我們中的大多數總是認為自己屬於內向或者外向，其中一類
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.
同時我想說從文化意義上講我們需要一種更好的平衡 我們需要更多的陰陽的平衡 在這兩種類型的人之間 這點是極為重要的 當涉及創造力和生產力的時候 因為當心理學家們看待 最有創造力的人的生命的時候 他們尋找到的 是那些擅長變換思維的人 提出想法的人 但是他們同時也有著極為顯著的偏內向的痕跡
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.
這是因為獨處是非常關鍵的因素 對於創造力來說 所以達爾文 自己一個人漫步在小樹林裡 並且斷然拒絕了晚餐派對的邀約 西奧多·蓋索，更多時候以蘇索博士的名號知名 他夢想過很多的驚人的創作 在他在加利福尼亞州拉霍亞市房子的後面的 一座孤獨的束層的塔形辦公室中 而且其實他很害怕見面 見那些讀過他的書的年輕的孩子們 害怕他們會期待他 這樣一位令人愉快的，聖誕老人形象的人物 同時又會因發現他含蓄緘默的性格而失望 史蒂夫·沃茲尼亞克發明了第一台蘋果電腦 一個人獨自坐在他的機櫃旁 在他當時工作的惠普公司 並且他說他永遠不會在那方面成為一號專家 但他還沒因太內向到要離開那裡 那個他成長起來的地方
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.
當然了 這並不意味著我們都應該停止合作-- 恰當的例子呢，是史蒂夫·沃茲尼亞克和史蒂夫·賈伯斯的著名聯手 創建蘋果電腦公司-- 但是這並不意味著和獨處有重大關係 並且對於一些人來說 這是他們賴以呼吸生存的空氣 事實上，幾個世紀以來我們已經非常明白 獨處的卓越力量只是到了最近，非常奇怪，我們開始遺忘它了 如果你看看世界上主要的宗教 你會發現探尋者-- 摩西，耶穌，佛祖，穆罕默德 -- 那些獨身去探尋的人們 在大自然的曠野中獨處，思索 在那裡，他們有了深刻的頓悟和對於奧義的揭示 之後他們把這些思想帶回到社會的其他地方去沒有曠原，沒有啟示
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.
儘管這並不令人驚訝 如果你注意到現代心理學的思想理論 它反映出來我們甚至不能和一組人待在一起 而不去本能地模仿他們的意見與想法 甚至是看上去私人的，發自內心的事情 像是你被誰所吸引 你會開始模仿你周圍的人的信仰 甚至都覺察不到你自己在做什麼
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.
還曾跟隨群體的意見 跟隨著房間裡最具有統治力的，最有領袖氣質的人的思路 雖然這真的沒什麼關係 在成為一個卓越的演講家還是擁有最好的主意之間-- 我的意思是“零相關” 那么...(笑聲) 你們或許會跟隨有最好頭腦的人 但是你們也許不會 可你們真的想把這機會扔掉嗎?如果每個人都自己行動或許好得多 發掘他們自己的想法 沒有群體動力學的曲解 接著來到一起組成一個團隊 在一個良好管理的環境中互相交流 並且在那裡學習別的思想
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."
如果說現在這一切都是真的 那么為什麼我們還得到這樣錯誤的結論? 為什麼我們要這樣創立我們的學校，還有我們的工作單位? 為什麼我們要讓這些內向的人覺得那么愧疚 。對於他們只是想要離開，一個人獨處一段時間的事實? 有一個答案在我們的文化史中埋藏已久 西方社會特別是在美國 總是偏愛有行動的人 而不是有深刻思考的人 有深刻思考的“人” 但是在美國早期的時候 我們生活在一個被歷史學家稱作“性格特徵”的文化 那時我們仍然，在這點上，判斷人們的價值 從人們的內涵和道義正直 而且如果你看一看這個時代關於自立的書籍的話 它們都有這樣一種標題： “性格”，世界上最偉大的事物 並且它們以亞伯拉罕·林肯這樣的為標榜 一個被形容為謙虛低調的男人 拉爾夫·瓦爾多·愛默生稱他是 “一個以‘優越’二形容都不為過的人”
but then we hit the 20th century and we entered a new culture that historians call the culture of personality. what happened is we had evolved an agricultural economy to a world of big business. and so suddenly people are moving from small towns to the cities.and instead of working alongside people they've known all their lives, now they are having to prove themselves in a crowd of strangers. so, quite understandably, qualities like magnetism and charisma suddenly come to seem really important. and sure enough, the self-help books change to meet these new needs and they start to have names like "how to win friends and influence people." and they feature as their role models really great salesmen. so that's the world we're living in today. that's our cultural inheritance.
但是接著我們來到了二十世紀 並且我們融入了一種新的文化 一種被歷史學家稱作“個性”的文化 所發生的改變就是我們從農業經濟發展為 一個大商業經濟的世界 而且人們突然開始搬遷從小的城鎮搬向城市 並且一改他們之前的在生活中和所熟識的人們一起工作的方式 現在他們在一群陌生人中間有必要去證明自己 這樣做是非常可以理解的 像領袖氣質和個人魅力這樣的品質 突然間似乎變得極為重要 那么可以肯定的是，自助自立的書的內容變更了以適應這些新的需求 並且它們開始擁有名稱 像是《如何贏得朋友和影響他人》(戴爾?卡耐基所著《人性的弱點》) 他們的特點是做自己的榜樣 不得不說確實是好的推銷員 所以這就是我們今天生活的世界 這是我們的文化遺產
now none of this is to say that social skills are unimportant, and i'm also not calling for the abolishing of teamwork at all. the same religions who send their sages off to lonely mountain tops also teach us love and trust. and the problems that we are facing today in fields like science and in economics are so vast and so complex that we are going to need armies of people coming together to solve them working together. but i am saying that the more freedom that we give introverts to be themselves, the more likely that they are to come up with their own unique solutions to these problems.
現在沒有誰能夠說 社交技能是不重要的 並且我也不是想呼籲 大家廢除團隊合作模式 但仍是相同的宗教，卻把他們的聖人送到了孤獨的山頂上 仍然教導我們愛與信任 還有我們今天所要面對的問題 像是在科學和經濟領域 是如此的巨大和複雜 以至於我們需要人們強有力地團結起來 共同解決這些問題 但是我想說，越給內向者自由讓他們做自己 他們就做得越好 去想出他們獨特的關於問題的解決辦法
so now i'd like to share with you what's in my suitcase today. guess what? books. i have a suitcase full of books. here's margaret atwood, "cat's eye." here's a novel by milan kundera. and here's "the guide for the perplexed" by maimonides. but these are not exactly my books. i brought these books with me because they were written by my grandfather's favorite authors.
所以現在我很高興同你們分享 我手提箱中的東西 猜猜是什麼? 書 我有一個手提箱裡面裝滿了書 這是瑪格麗特·阿特伍德的《貓的眼睛》 這是一本米蘭·昆德拉的書 這是一本《迷途指津》 是邁蒙尼德寫的 但這些實際上都不是我的書 我還是帶著它們，陪伴著我 因為它們都是我祖父最喜愛的作家所寫
my grandfather was a rabbi and he was a widower who lived alone in a small apartment in brooklyn that was my favorite place in the world when i was growing up, partly because it was filled with his very gentle, very courtly presence and partly because it was filled with books. i mean literally every table, every chair in this apartment had yielded its original function to now serve as a surface for swaying stacks of books. just like the rest of my family, my grandfather's favorite thing to do in the whole world was to read.
我的祖父是一名猶太教祭司 他獨身一人 在布魯克林的一間小公寓中居住 那裡是我從小到大在這個世界上最喜愛的地方 部分原因是他有著非常溫和親切的，溫文爾雅的舉止 部分原因是那裡充滿了書 我的意思是，毫不誇張地說，公寓中的每張桌子，每張椅子 都充分套用著它原有的功能 就是現在作為承載一大堆都在搖曳的書的表面 就像我其他的家庭成員一樣 我祖父在這個世界上最喜歡做的事情就是閱讀
but he also loved his congregation, and you could feel this love in the sermons that he gave every week for the 62 years that he was a rabbi. he would takes the fruits of each week's reading and he would weave these intricate tapestries of ancient and humanist thought. and people would come from all over to hear him speak.
但是他同樣也熱愛他的宗教 並且你們可以從他的講述中感覺到他這種愛 這62年來每周他都作為一名猶太教的祭司 他會從每周的閱讀中汲取養分 並且他會編織這些錯綜複雜的古代和人文主義的思想的掛毯 並且人們會從各個地方前來 聽他的講話
but here's the thing about my grandfather. underneath this ceremonial role, he was really modest and really introverted -- so much so that when he delivered these sermons, he had trouble making eye contact with the very same congregation that he had been speaking to for 62 years. and even away from the podium, when you called him to say hello, he would often end the conversation prematurely for fear that he was taking up too much of your time. but when he died at the age of 94, the police had to close down the streets of his neighborhood to accommodate the crowd of people who came out to mourn him. and so these days i try to learn from my grandfather's example in my own way.
但是有這么一件關於我祖父的事情 在這個正式的角色下隱藏著 他是一個非常謙虛的非常內向的人 是那么的謙虛內向以至於當他在向人們講述的時候 他都不敢有視線上的接觸 和同樣的教堂會眾 他已經發言有62年了 甚至都還遠離領獎台 當你們讓他說“你好”的時候 他總會提早結束這對話 擔心他會占用你太多的時間 但是當他94歲去世的時候 警察們需要封鎖他所居住的街道鄰里 來容納擁擠的人們 前來哀悼他的人們 這些天來我都試著從我祖父的事例中學習 以我自己的方式
so i just published a book about introversion, and it took me about seven years to write.and for me, that seven years was like total bliss, because i was reading, i was writing, i was thinking, i was researching. it was my version of my grandfather's hours of the day alone in his library. but now all of a sudden my job is very different, and my job is to be out here talking about it, talking about introversion. (laughter) and that's a lot harder for me,because as honored as i am to be here with all of you right now, this is not my natural milieu.
所以我就出版了一本關於內向性格的書 它花了我7年的時間完成它 而對我來說，這七年像是一種極大的喜悅 因為我在閱讀，我在寫作 我在思考，我在探尋 這是我的版本 對於爺爺一天中幾個小時都要獨自待在圖書館這件事 但是現在突然間我的工作變得很不同了 我的工作變成了站在這裡講述它 講述內向的性格 (笑聲) 而且這對於我來說是有一點困難的 因為我很榮幸 在現在被你們所有人所傾聽 這可不是我自然的文化背景
so i prepared for moments like these as best i could. i spent the last year practicing public speaking every chance i could get. and i call this my "year of speaking dangerously." (laughter) and that actually helped a lot. but i'll tell you, what helps even more is my sense, my belief, my hope that when it comes to our attitudes to introversion and to quiet and to solitude, we truly are poised on the brink on dramatic change. i mean, we are. and so i am going to leave you now with three calls for action for those who share this vision.
所以我準備了一會就像這樣 以我所能做到的最好的方式 我花了最近一年的時間練習在公共場合發言 在我能得到的每一個機會中 我把這一年稱作我的“危險地發言的一年” (笑聲) 而且它的確幫了我很大的忙 但是我要告訴你們一個幫我更大的忙的事情 那就是我的感覺，我的信仰，我的希望 當談及我們態度的時候 對於內向性格的，對於安靜，對於獨處的態度時 我們確實是在急劇變化的邊緣上保持微妙的平衡 我的意思是，我們在保持平衡 現在我將要給你們留下一些東西 三件對於你們的行動有幫助的事情 獻給那些觀看我的演講的人
number one: stop the madness for constant group work. just stop it. (laughter) thank you. (applause) and i want to be clear about what i'm saying, because i deeply believe our offices should be encouraging casual, chatty cafe-style types of interactions -- you know, the kind where people come together and serendipitously have an exchange of ideas.that is great. it's great for introverts and it's great for extroverts. but we need much more privacy and much more freedom and much more autonomy at work. school, same thing.we need to be teaching kids to work together, for sure, but we also need to be teaching them how to work on their own. this is especially important for extroverted children too.they need to work on their own because that is where deep thought comes from in part.
第一： 停止對於經常要團隊協作的執迷與瘋狂 停止它就好了 (笑聲) 謝謝你們 (掌聲) 我想讓我所說的事情變得清晰一些 因為我對於我們的辦公深信不疑 應該鼓勵它們 那種休閒隨意的，聊天似的咖啡廳式的相互作用-- 你們知道的，道不同不相為謀，人們聚到一起 並且互相交換著寶貴的意見 這是很棒的 這對於內向者很好，同樣對於外向者也好 但是我們需要更多的隱私和更多的自由 還有更多對於我們本身工作的自主權 對於學校，也是同樣的。 我們當然需要教會孩子們要一起學習工作 但是我們同樣需要教會孩子們怎么樣獨立完成任務 這對於外向的孩子們來說同樣是極為重要的 他們需要獨立完成工作 因為從某種程度上，這是他們深刻思考的來源
okay, number two: go to the wilderness. be like buddha, have your own revelations. i'm not saying that we all have to now go off and build our own cabins in the woods and never talk to each other again, but i am saying that we could all stand to unplug and get inside our own heads a little more often.
好了，第二個：去到野外(打開思維) 就像佛祖一樣，擁有你們自己對於事物的揭示啟迪 我並不是說 我們都要跑去小樹林裡建造我們自己的小屋 並且之後就永遠不和別人說話了 但是我要說我們都可以堅持去去除一些障礙物 然後深入我們自己的大腦思想 時不時得再深入一點
number three: take a good look at what's inside your own suitcase and why you put it there. so extroverts, maybe your suitcases are also full of books. or maybe they're full of champagne glasses or skydiving equipment. whatever it is, i hope you take these things out every chance you get and grace us with your energy and your joy. but introverts, you being you, you probably have the impulse to guard very carefully what's inside your own suitcase. and that's okay. but occasionally, just occasionally, i hope you will open up your suitcases for other people to see, because the world needs you and it needs the things you carry.
第三點： 好好看一眼你的旅行箱內有什麼東西 還有你為什麼把它放進去 所以外向者們 也許你們的箱子內同樣堆滿了書 或者它們裝滿了香檳的玻璃酒杯 或者是跳傘運動的設備 不管它是什麼，我希望每當你們有機會你們就把它拿出來 用你的能量和你的快樂讓我們感受到美和享受 但是內向者們，你們作為內向者 你們很可能有仔細保護一切的衝動 在你箱子裡的東西 這沒有問題 但是偶爾地，只是說偶爾地 我希望你們可以打開你們的手提箱，讓別人看一看 因為這個世界需要你們，同樣需要你們身上所攜帶的你們特有的事物
so i wish you the best of all possible journeys and the courage to speak softly.
所以對於你們即將走上的所有旅程，我都給予你們我最美好的祝願 還有溫柔地說話的勇氣
thank you. thank you.
非常感謝你們
(掌聲)
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.
1819年的某一天， 在距離智利海岸3000英里的地方， 有一個太平洋上的最偏遠的水域， 20名美國船員目睹了他們的船隻進水的場面。
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.
他們和一頭抹香鯨相撞，給船體撞了 一個毀滅性的大洞。 當船在巨浪中開始沉沒時， 人們在三條救生小艇中抱作一團。
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.
這些人在離家10000萬英里的地方， 離最近的陸地也超過1000英里。 在他們的小艇中，他們只帶了 落後的導航設備 和有限的食物和飲水。
these were the men of the whaleship essex, whose story would later inspire parts of "moby dick."
他們就是捕鯨船essex上的人們， 後來的他們的故事成為《白鯨記》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.
即使在當今的世界，碰上這種情況也夠杯具的，更不用說在當時的情況有多糟糕。
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.
岸上的人根本就還沒意識到出了什麼問題。 沒有任何人來搜尋他們。 我們當中大部分人沒有經歷過 這些船員所處的可怕情景， 但我們都知道害怕是什麼感覺。
we know how fear feels, but i'm not sure we spend enough time thinking about what our fears mean.
我們知道恐懼的感覺， 但是我不能肯定我們會花很多時間想過 我們的恐懼到底意味著什麼。
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.
我們長大以後，我們總是會被鼓勵把恐懼 視為軟弱，需要像乳牙或輪滑鞋一樣 扔掉的幼稚的東西。
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.
我想意外事故並非我們所想的那樣。 神經系統科學家已經知道人類 生來就是樂觀主義者。
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.
這也許就是為什麼我們認為有時候恐懼， 本身就是一種危險或帶來危險。 “不要愁。”我們總是對別人說。“不要慌”。 英語中，恐懼是我們需要征服的東西。 是我們必須對抗的東西，是我們必須克服的東西。
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?
但是我們如果換個視角看恐懼會如何呢? 如果我們把恐懼當做是想像力的一個驚人成果， 是和我們講故事一樣 精妙而有見地的東西，又會如何呢?
it's easiest to see this link between fear and the imagination in young children, whose fears are often extraordinarily vivid.
在小孩子當中，我們最容易看到恐懼與想像之間的聯繫， 他們的恐懼經常是超級生動的。
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.
我小時候住在加利福尼亞， 你們都知道，是非常適合居住的位置， 但是對一個小孩來說，加利福尼亞也會有點嚇人。
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.
我記得每次小地震的時候 當我看到我們餐桌上的吊燈 晃來晃去的時候是多么的嚇人， 我經常會徹夜難眠，擔心大地震 會在我們睡覺的時候突然襲來。
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.
我們說小孩子感受到這種恐懼 是因為他們有生動的想像力。 但是在某個時候，我們大多數學會了 拋棄這種想法而變得成熟。
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.
我們都知道床下沒有魔鬼， 也不是每個地震都會震垮房子。但是我們當中最有想像力的人們 並沒有因為成年而拋棄這種恐懼，這也許並不是巧合。
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 brontĂŤ and marcel proust. so the question is, what can the rest of us learn about fear from visionaries and young children?
同樣不可思議的想像力創造了《物種起源》， 《簡·愛》和《追憶似水年華》， 也就是這種與生俱來的深深的擔憂一直纏繞著成年的 查爾斯·達爾文， 夏洛特·勃朗特和馬塞爾·普羅斯特。 問題就來了， 我們其他人如何能從這些 夢想家和小孩子身上學會恐懼?
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.
讓我們暫時回到1819年， 回到essex捕鯨船的水手們面對的情況。 讓我們看看他們漂流在太平洋中央時 他們的想像力給他們帶來的恐懼感覺。
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.
船傾覆後已經過了24個小時。 這時人們制定了一個計畫， 但是其實他們沒什麼太多的選擇。
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.
在納撒尼爾·菲爾布里克(nathaniel philbrick)描述這場災難的 動人文章中，他寫到“這些人離陸地如此之遠， 似乎永遠都不可能到達地球上的任何一塊陸地。”
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.
這些人知道離他們最近的島 是1200英里以外的馬克薩斯群島(marquesas islands)。 但是他們聽到了讓人恐怖的謠言。
they'd been told that these islands, and several others nearby, were populated by cannibals. so the men pictured coming 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.
他們聽說這些群島， 以及附近的一些島嶼上都住著食人族。 所以他們腦中都是上岸以後就會被殺掉 被人當做盤中餐的畫面。 另一個可行的目的地是夏威夷， 但是船長擔心 他們會被困在風暴當中。
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.
所以最後的選擇是到最遠，也是最艱險的地方： 往南走1500英里希望某股風 能最終把他們 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.
但是他們知道這個行程中一旦偏航 將會耗盡他們食物和飲水的供給。 被食人族吃掉，被風暴掀翻， 在登入前餓死。
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.
這就是縈繞在這群可憐的人想像中的恐懼， 事實證明，他們選擇聽從的恐懼 將決定他們的生死。
now we might just as easily call these fears by a different name. what if instead of calling them fears, we called them stories?
也許我們可以很容易的用別的名稱來稱呼這些恐懼。 我們不稱之為恐懼， 而是稱它們為故事如何?
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.
如果你仔細想想，這是恐懼真正的意義。 這是一種與生俱來的， 無意識的講故事的能力。 恐懼和講故事有著同樣的構成。
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.
他們有同樣的結構。 如同所有的故事，恐懼中有角色。 在恐懼中，角色就是我們自己。 恐懼也有情節。他們有開頭，有中間，有結尾。 你登上飛機。
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.
飛機起飛。結果引擎故障。 我們的恐懼會包括各種生動的想像， 不比你看到的任何一個小說遜色。 想像食人族，人類牙齒 咬在人類皮膚上， 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.
恐懼中也有懸念。 如果我今天像講故事一樣，留個懸念不說了， 你們也許會很想知道 essex捕鯨船上，人們到底怎么樣了。 我們的恐懼用懸念一樣的方式刺激我們。
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?
就像一個很好的故事，我們的恐懼也如同一部好的文學作品一樣， 將我們的注意力集中在對我們生命至關重要的問題上： 後來發生了什麼?
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.
換而言之，我們的恐懼讓我們想到未來。 另外，人來是唯一有能力 通過這種方式想到未來的生物， 就是預測時間推移後我們的狀況， 這種精神上的時間旅行是恐懼 與講故事的另一個共同點。
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.
我是一個作家，我要告訴你們寫小說一個很重要的部分 就是學會預測故事中一件 事情如何影響另一件事情， 恐懼也是同樣這么做的。
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?
恐懼中，如同小說一樣，一件事情總是導致另一件事情。 我寫我的第一部小說《奇蹟時代》的時候， 我花了數月的時間想像如果地球鏇轉突然變慢了之後 會發生什麼。 我們的一天變得如何?
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.
我們身體會怎樣? 我們的思想會有什麼變化? 也就是在那之後，我意識到 我過去總是問自己的那些些問題 和孩子們在夜裡害怕是多么的相像。
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.
要是在過去，如果今晚發生地震，我會很擔心， 我的房子會怎么樣啊?家裡人會怎樣啊? 這類問題的答案通常都會和故事一樣。
so if we think of our fears as more than just fears but as stories, we should think of ourselves as the authors of those stories. but just as importantly, we need to think of ourselves as the readers of our fears, and how we choose to read our fears can have a profound effect on our lives.
所以我們認為我們的恐懼不僅僅是恐懼 還是故事，我們應該把自己當作 這些故事的作者。 但是同樣重要的是，我們需要想像我們自己 是我們恐懼的解讀者，我們選擇如何 去解讀這些恐懼會對我們的生活產生深遠的影響。
now, some of us naturally read our fears more closely than others. i read about a study recently of successful entrepreneurs, and the author found that these people shared a habit that he called "productive paranoia," which meant that these people, instead of dismissing their fears, these people read them closely, they studied them, and then they translated that fear into preparation and action.
現在，我們中有些人比其他人更自然的解讀自己的恐懼。 最近我看過一個關於成功的企業家的研究， 作者發現這些人都有個習慣 叫做“未雨綢繆“， 意思是，這些人，不迴避自己的恐懼， 而是認真解讀並研究恐懼， 然後把恐懼轉換成準備和行動。
so that way, if their worst fears came true, their businesses were ready.
這樣，如果最壞的事情發生了， 他們的企業也有所準備。
and sometimes, of course, our worst fears do come true. that's one of the things that is so extraordinary about fear. once in a while, our fears can predict the future.
當然，很多時候，最壞的事情確實發生了。 這是恐懼非凡的一面。 曾幾何時，我們的恐懼預測將來。
but we can't possibly prepare for all of the fears that our imaginations concoct. so how can we tell the difference between the fears worth listening to and all the others? i think the end of the story of the whaleship essex offers an illuminating, if tragic, example.
但是我們不可能為我們想像力構建的所有 恐懼來做準備。 所以，如何區分值得聽從的恐懼 和不值得的呢? 我想捕鯨船essex的故事結局 提供了一個有啟發性，同時又悲慘的例子。
after much deliberation, the men finally made a decision. terrified of cannibals, they decided to forgo the closest islands and instead embarked on the longer and much more difficult route to south america.
經過數次權衡，他們最終做出了決定。 由於害怕食人族，他們決定放棄最近的群島 而是開始更長 更艱難的南美洲之旅。
after more than two months at sea, the men ran out of food as they knew they might, and they were still quite far from land. when the last of the survivors were finally picked up by two passing ships, less than half of the men were left alive, and some of them had resorted to their own form of cannibalism.
在海上呆了兩個多月後，他們 的食物如預料之中消耗殆盡， 而且他們仍然離陸地那么遠。 當最後的倖存者最終被過往船隻救起時， 只有一小半的人還活著， 實際上他們中的一些人自己變成了食人族。
herman melville, who used this story as research for "moby dick," wrote years later, and from dry land, quote, "all the sufferings of these miserable men of the essex might in all human probability have been avoided had they, immediately after leaving the wreck, steered straight for tahiti.
赫爾曼·梅爾維爾(herman melville)將這個故事作為 《白鯨記》的素材，在數年後寫到： essex船上遇難者的悲慘結局 或許是可以通過人為的努力避免的， 如果他們當機立斷地離開沉船， 直奔塔西提群島。
but," as melville put it, "they dreaded cannibals." so the question is, why did these men dread cannibals so much more than the extreme likelihood of starvation?
“但是”，梅爾維爾說道：“他們害怕食人族” 問題是，為什麼這些人對於食人族的恐懼 超過了更有可能的飢餓威脅呢?
why were they swayed by one story so much more than the other? looked at from this angle, theirs becomes a story about reading. the novelist vladimir nabokov said that the best reader has a combination of two very different temperaments, the artistic and the scientific.
為什麼他們會被一個故事 影響如此之大呢? 從另一個角度來看， 這是一個關於解讀的故事。 小說家弗拉基米爾·納博科夫(vladimir nabokov)說 最好的讀者能把兩種截然不同的性格結合起來， 一個是藝術氣質，一個是科學精神。
a good reader has an artist's passion, a willingness to get caught up in the story, but just as importantly, the readers also needs the coolness of judgment of a scientist, which acts to temper and complicate the reader's intuitive reactions to the story. as we've seen, the men of the essex had no trouble with the artistic part.
好的讀者有藝術家的熱情， 願意融入故事當中， 但是同樣重要的是，這些讀者還要 有科學家的冷靜判斷， 這能幫助他們穩定情緒並分析 其對故事的直覺反應。 我們可以看出來，essex上的人在藝術部分一點問題都沒有。
they dreamed up a variety of horrifying scenarios. the problem was that they listened to the wrong story. of all the narratives their fears wrote, they responded only to the most lurid, the most vivid, the one that was easiest for their imaginations to picture: cannibals.
他們夢想到一系列恐怖的場景。 問題在於他們聽從了一個錯誤的故事。 所有他們恐懼中 他們只對其中最聳人聽聞，最生動的故事， 也是他們想像中最早出現的場景： 食人族。
but perhaps if they'd been able to read their fears more like a scientist, with more coolness of judgment, they would have listened instead to the less violent but the more likely tale, the story of starvation, and headed for tahiti, just as melville's sad commentary suggests.
也許，如果他們能像科學家那樣 稍微冷靜一點解讀這個故事， 如果他們能聽從不太驚悚但是更可能發生的 半路餓死的故事，他們可能就會直奔塔西提群島， 如梅爾維爾充滿惋惜的評論所建議的那樣。
and maybe if we all tried to read our fears, we too would be less often swayed by the most salacious among them.
也許如果我們都試著解讀自己的恐懼， 我們就能少被 其中的一些幻象所迷惑。
maybe then we'd spend less time worrying about serial killers and plane crashes, and more time concerned with the subtler and slower disasters we face: the silent buildup of plaque in our arteries, the gradual changes in our climate.
我們也就能少花一點時間在 為系列殺手或者飛機失事方面的擔憂， 而是更多的關心那些悄然而至 的災難： 動脈血小板的逐漸堆積， 氣候的逐漸變遷。
just as the most nuanced stories in literature are often the richest, so too might our subtlest fears be the truest. read in the right way, our fears are an amazing gift of the imagination, a kind of everyday clairvoyance, a way of glimpsing what might be the future when there's still time to influence how that future will play out.
如同文學中最精妙的故事通常是最豐富的故事， 我們最細微的恐懼才是最真實的恐懼。 用正確的方法的解讀，我們的恐懼就是我們想像力 賜給我們的禮物，藉此一雙慧眼， 讓我們能管窺未來 甚至影響未來。
properly read, our fears can offer us something as precious as our favorite works of literature: a little wisdom, a bit of insight and a version of that most elusive thing -- the truth. thank you.
如果能得到正確的解讀，我們的恐懼能 和我們最喜歡的文學作品一樣給我們珍貴的東西： 一點點智慧，一點點洞悉 以及對最玄妙東西—— 真相的詮釋。 謝謝。
(applause)
(掌聲)
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