TED英語演講：福流，幸福的秘密
TED是Technology, Entertainment, Design(科技、娛樂、設計)的縮寫，這個會議的宗旨是"用思想的力量來改變世界"。TED演講的特點是毫無繁雜冗長的專業(yè)講座，觀點響亮，開門見山，種類繁多，看法新穎。而且還是非常好的英語口語聽力練習材料，建議堅持學習。下面是小編為大家收集關于TED英語演講：福流，幸福的秘密，歡迎借鑒參考。
Flow, The Secret to Happiness
演講稿
I grew up in Europe, and World War II caught me when I was between seven and 10 years old. And I realized how few of the grown-ups that I knew were able to withstand the tragedies that the war visited on them -- how few of them could even resemble a normal, contented, satisfied, happy life once their job, their home, their security was destroyed by the war. So I became interested in understanding what contributed to a life that was worth living. And I tried, as a child, as a teenager, to read philosophy and to get involved in art and religion and many other ways that I could see as a possible answer to that question. And finally I ended up encountering psychology by chance.
我在歐洲長大，那時正好是二戰(zhàn)時期，我是7歲到10歲的光景。我體會到，身邊的大人沒有幾個能夠經(jīng)受得起戰(zhàn)爭帶給他們的創(chuàng)傷，很少可以重建起一種正常的、舒心的、滿意的、快樂的生活，因為他們的工作、家庭以及安全都因為戰(zhàn)爭而失去了。于是我開始對“什么讓人生有價值”這一話題發(fā)生興趣。那時我還是十幾歲的孩子，不過已經(jīng)開始讀哲學書，并且嘗試過藝術、宗教等各種我認為可以為我解開謎團的途徑，最終，我意外地與心理學結了緣。
I was at a ski resort in Switzerland without any money to actually enjoy myself, because the snow had melted and I didn't have money to go to a movie. But I found that on the -- I read in the newspapers that there was to be a presentation by someone in a place that I'd seen in the center of Zurich, and it was about flying saucers [that] he was going to talk. And I thought, well, since I can't go to the movies, at least I will go for free to listen to flying saucers. And the man who talked at that evening lecture was very interesting. Instead of talking about little green men, he talked about how the psyche of the Europeans had been traumatized by the war, and now they're projecting flying saucers into the sky. He talked about how the mandalas of ancient Hindu religion were kind of projected into the sky as an attempt to regain some sense of order after the chaos of war. And this seemed very interesting to me.And I started reading his books after that lecture. And that was Carl Jung, whose name or work I had no idea about.
有一次，我去到了瑞士的一個滑雪勝地，身上分文都沒有，也沒地方可玩。那時雪已消融，我也沒錢去看電影，但是我從報紙上看到說將會有一場演講，地點是蘇黎世市中心一個我去過的地方。他要講的是飛碟。我就想，既然不能去看電影，但至少可以去聽一下這個免費的講飛碟的演講吧。那晚上的演講非常有趣，那個演講者沒有講綠皮膚的外星人，而是講到歐洲人的心靈如何因二戰(zhàn)而受到了創(chuàng)傷，因而就以放飛碟來自娛。他還講到古印度的曼荼羅，也是在戰(zhàn)后被放到空中，以此來重建一種秩序感。我對此很感興趣，于是就開始讀那個演講者的書。那人的名字是卡爾·榮格，當時我還不知道這個名字。
Then I came to this country to study psychology and I started trying to understand the roots of happiness. This is a typical result that many people have presented, and there are many variations on it.But this, for instance, shows that about 30 percent of the people surveyed in the United States since 1956 say that their life is very happy. And that hasn't changed at all. Whereas the personal income, on a scale that has been held constant to accommodate for inflation, has more than doubled, almost tripled, in that period. But you find essentially the same results, namely, that after a certain basic point -- which corresponds more or less to just a few 1,000 dollars above the minimum poverty level --increases in material well-being don't seem to affect how happy people are. In fact, you can find that the lack of basic resources, material resources, contributes to unhappiness, but the increase in material resources does not increase happiness.
后來就到了美國學習心理學。我開始探尋幸福之本源。這是很多人都展示過的一個研究結果(如圖1)，有很多個版本。比如，這個版本顯示，自1956年有調(diào)查記錄以來，有30%的美國受訪公民說他們的生活非常快樂，這個比例一點都沒有變。但是同一時期的人均收入則翻了兩倍以上，接近三倍。這一統(tǒng)計已經(jīng)是把通貨膨脹算進去了，可是結果基本是一致的。就是說，到了溫飽線1000美元以上之后的某個點，物質(zhì)生活水平的增加似乎不再會影響人們的幸福感。事實上你會發(fā)現(xiàn)，基本生活物資之匱乏會導致不幸福，但持續(xù)的物質(zhì)財富之增長并不會帶來更大的幸福。
So my research has been focused more on -- after finding out these things that actually corresponded to my own experience, I tried to understand: where -- in everyday life, in our normal experience -- do we feel really happy? And to start those studies about 40 years ago, I began to look at creative people -- first artists and scientists, and so forth -- trying to understand what made them feel that it was worth essentially spending their life doing things for which many of them didn't expect either fame or fortune,but which made their life meaningful and worth doing.
所以，當我發(fā)現(xiàn)這些東西與我自身的經(jīng)歷不謀而合時，我就在研究里就開始詢問：在正常的日常生活體驗中，我們?nèi)绾尾艜械秸嬲腋?大概40年前，我開始了這些研究，我開始尋找那些有創(chuàng)造力的人士。首先是藝術家、科學家，然后是其他人，我試圖去理解，是什么讓他們感覺自己一生從事的事業(yè)是值得的，他們中的許多人終其一生所做的事情都不能帶來榮譽或財富，但那樣的事情使得他們的人生充滿意義和價值。
This was one of the leading composers of American music back in the '70s. And the interview was 40 pages long. But this little excerpt is a very good summary of what he was saying during the interview.And it describes how he feels when composing is going well. And he says by describing it as an ecstatic state.
這是1970年代美國最出色的一位作曲家，我對他的采訪記錄長達40頁，而這一段話對他在采訪中所講的內(nèi)容做了一個很好的總結。它描述了作曲家在作曲順利時的感受，他將這種感受描述為一種狂喜的狀態(tài)。
Now, "ecstasy" in Greek meant simply to stand to the side of something. And then it became essentially an analogy for a mental state where you feel that you are not doing your ordinary everyday routines. So ecstasy is essentially a stepping into an alternative reality. And it's interesting, if you think about it, how, when we think about the civilizations that we look up to as having been pinnacles of human achievement -- whether it's China, Greece, the Hindu civilization, or the Mayas, or Egyptians -- what we know about them is really about their ecstasies, not about their everyday life. We know the temples they built, where people could come to experience a different reality. We know about the circuses, the arenas, the theaters. These are the remains of civilizations and they are the places that people went to experience life in a more concentrated, more ordered form.
“狂喜”(ecstasy，有狂喜、出神、忘形的意思)一詞在希臘語里的意思是，站在某個事物的邊上，后來就成為一種心理狀態(tài)的代名詞，用來形容你做的不是普通的日常事務。換言之，狂喜就是一種超越現(xiàn)實的感覺。有趣的是，當我們想起那些被公認為人類成就之巔峰的文明時，不管是中國、希臘、印度文明，還是瑪雅或埃及文明，我們所聽說的都是關于他們的狂喜的故事，而不是他們?nèi)粘Ｉ畹默嵤隆Ｎ覀冎浪麄兘舜笮偷牡钐?，人們可以去到那樣的地方感受不一樣的現(xiàn)實。還有環(huán)形廣場、競技場、戲院，這些都是文明之遺跡，也是當時的人們經(jīng)常光顧的地方。他們?nèi)サ侥抢锶ンw驗一種更加專注、更具秩序的生活。
Now, this man doesn't need to go to a place like this, which is also -- this place, this arena, which is built like a Greek amphitheatre, is a place for ecstasy also. We are participating in a reality that is different from that of the everyday life that we're used to. But this man doesn't need to go there. He needs just a piece of paper where he can put down little marks, and as he does that, he can imagine sounds that had not existed before in that particular combination. So once he gets to that point of beginning to create, like Jennifer did in her improvisation, a new reality -- that is, a moment of ecstasy --he enters that different reality. Now he says also that this is so intense an experience that it feels almost as if he didn't exist. And that sounds like a kind of a romantic exaggeration. But actually, our nervous system is incapable of processing more than about 110 bits of information per second. And in order to hear me and understand what I'm saying, you need to process about 60 bits per second. That's why you can't hear more than two people. You can't understand more than two people talking to you.
這個人(作曲家)不需要去到這樣的地方。我們今天這個演講現(xiàn)場也像是一個古希臘的圓形競技場，這也是一個能帶來狂喜的地方。我們正在參與的現(xiàn)實，也與日常生活完全不一樣。但這個人(作曲家)任何地方都不用去，他只需一張紙，在上面寫下小小的音符，在這樣做的同時，他能在腦海里想象出從未有過的獨特聲音組合。只要他開始真正要創(chuàng)作，就像剛才珍妮弗的即興演奏一樣，他就進入了一種新的現(xiàn)實，進入狂喜。那是不一樣的現(xiàn)實。他說，那是一種非常強烈的體驗，他似乎感覺不到自己的存在。這聽起來也許有點夸張的浪漫主義色彩，但事實上，我們的神經(jīng)系統(tǒng)無法在一秒的時間里處理超過約110比特的信息。你在聽我說話，并且嘗試去理解其中的意思，這就相當于每秒處理約60比特的信息。所以說，同時聽懂兩個以上的人說話是不可能的。你不可能同時做到這一點。
Well, when you are really involved in this completely engaging process of creating something new, as this man is, he doesn't have enough attention left over to monitor how his body feels, or his problems at home. He can't feel even that he's hungry or tired. His body disappears, his identity disappears from his consciousness, because he doesn't have enough attention, like none of us do, to really do well something that requires a lot of concentration, and at the same time to feel that he exists. So existence is temporarily suspended. And he says that his hand seems to be moving by itself. Now, I could look at my hand for two weeks, and I wouldn't feel any awe or wonder, because I can't compose. (Laughter)
假如你真的是全身心的投入此間，像這位作曲家那樣去創(chuàng)造一種新的東西，就不可能再有精力去感知身體的感覺，或是家里的問題。他不知饑餓與勞累，似乎整個軀體都消失了。在他的意識里不再有自己的存在，他沒有那么多精力。事實上我們?nèi)魏稳硕疾豢赡茏龅玫?，因為做那樣的事情確實需要全副身心的投入，他就不可能感知自己的存在了，他的存在被暫時遺忘了。他自己也說，他的手似乎能夠自動行事。我也許對著自己的手看兩個星期，也不能看出有什么偉大或神奇的地方，因為我不是作曲家。(笑聲)
So what it's telling you here is that obviously this automatic, spontaneous process that he's describing can only happen to someone who is very well trained and who has developed technique. And it has become a kind of a truism in the study of creativity that you can't be creating anything with less than 10 years of technical-knowledge immersion in a particular field. Whether it's mathematics or music, it takes that long to be able to begin to change something in a way that it's better than what was there before. Now, when that happens, he says the music just flows out. And because all of these people I started interviewing -- this was an interview which is over 30 years old -- so many of the people described this as a spontaneous flow that I called this type of experience the "flow experience." And it happens in different realms.
這說明了什么?很顯然，他所描述的這種自動的、自發(fā)的過程只有可能發(fā)生在一個受過嚴格訓練以及培養(yǎng)了良好技藝的人身上。在創(chuàng)造力研究這一領域，有一個接近真理的說法是，沒有10年時間在某個特定領域的技術知識積累，是不可能創(chuàng)造出什么奇跡的。不管是數(shù)學或音樂，都需要這樣漫長的時間來達到一種全新的升華。他對此深有體會，他說，音樂仿佛是自己流淌了出來了。30年來，在我采訪的眾多人中，有許多都將這種體驗描述為一種自發(fā)的流動，于是我把這種體驗稱為“福流體驗”，它發(fā)生在許多不同的領域。
For instance, a poet describes it in this form. This is by a student of mine who interviewed some of the leading writers and poets in the United States. And it describes the same effortless, spontaneous feeling that you get when you enter into this ecstatic state. This poet describes it as opening a door that floats in the sky -- a very similar description to what Albert Einstein gave as to how he imagined the forces of relativity, when he was struggling with trying to understand how it worked. But it happens in other activities. For instance, this is another student of mine, Susan Jackson from Australia, who did work with some of the leading athletes in the world. And you see here in this description of an Olympic skater, the same essential description of the phenomenology of the inner state of the person. You don't think; it goes automatically, if you merge yourself with the music, and so forth.
比如，有位詩人是這樣描述它的(指幻燈片上的內(nèi)容)。這段內(nèi)容來自我的一位學生，他采訪了美國最杰出的作家、詩人。這段話同樣描述了當你進入狂喜的狀態(tài)時感到的駕輕就熟，行云流水。這位詩人說，那就有如打開了通往天際之窗。這個跟愛因斯坦所說的關于如何想象到相對論的過程非常相像。那時的愛因斯坦也是在苦苦的思考為何那樣的事情會發(fā)生。在其他的活動中也會發(fā)生這樣的事情。這是我的另一位學生的研究發(fā)現(xiàn)，她叫蘇珊·杰克遜，來自澳洲。她采訪了世界上頂尖的運動健將，這是一位奧林匹克滑冰運動員的描述，也是同樣的一段關于內(nèi)在狀態(tài)的現(xiàn)象學描述：你什么也不想，他就自然而然地發(fā)生，你只需要與音樂融為一體……
It happens also, actually, in the most recent book I wrote, called "Good Business," where I interviewed some of the CEOs who had been nominated by their peers as being both very successful and very ethical, very socially responsible. You see that these people define success as something that helps others and at the same time makes you feel happy as you are working at it. And like all of these successful and responsible CEOs say, you can't have just one of these things be successful if you want a meaningful and successful job. Anita Roddick is another one of these CEOs we interviewed. She is the founder of Body Shop, the natural cosmetics king. It's kind of a passion that comes from doing the best and having flow while you're working.
我最近寫了一本書，里面也提到這樣的例子，書名是《優(yōu)良商業(yè)》(Good Business)。書中介紹了我采訪的一些公司的總裁，同行們都認為那些人是非常成功的，并且他們做企業(yè)非常講道德、有社會責任。他們關于成功的定義是這樣的：既幫助他人，同時又使自己樂在其中。這些成功并且富有社會責任的總裁也說到，單單有其中一樣是不足以令你成功的，假如你要的是有意義的、成功的工作。安妮塔·羅迪克是其中一位受訪的總裁，她創(chuàng)建了Body Shop，一個天然化妝品領導企業(yè)。這正是一種熱情，它源自一個人對最高表現(xiàn)的追求，并且在工作中體會到一種福流。
This is an interesting little quote from Masaru Ibuka, who was at that time starting out Sony without any money, without a product -- they didn't have a product, they didn't have anything, but they had an idea.And the idea he had was to establish a place of work where engineers can feel the joy of technological innovation, be aware of their mission to society and work to their heart's content. I couldn't improve on this as a good example of how flow enters the workplace.
這是日本索尼創(chuàng)辦人之一井深大說過的一句話，很有趣。他那時白手起家，創(chuàng)建了索尼。他們那時甚至連產(chǎn)品也拿不出來，可謂一無所有。但是他們有一個理念，即要創(chuàng)建一個工作環(huán)境，使得工程師可以體驗到技術創(chuàng)新帶來的快樂，同時也意識到自身對于社會的使命，以最大的熱情工作，直到自己內(nèi)心滿意為止。再也沒有比這個更好的例子了，福流就是這樣走進公司的。
Now, when we do studies -- we have, with other colleagues around the world, done over 8,000 interviews of people -- from Dominican monks, to blind nuns, to Himalayan climbers, to Navajo shepherds -- who enjoy their work. And regardless of the culture, regardless of education or whatever, there are these seven conditions that seem to be there when a person is in flow. There's this focus that, once it becomes intense, leads to a sense of ecstasy, a sense of clarity: you know exactly what you want to do from one moment to the other; you get immediate feedback. You know that what you need to do is possible to do, even though difficult, and sense of time disappears, you forget yourself, you feel part of something larger. And once the conditions are present, what you are doing becomes worth doing for its own sake.
而我們在做研究的時候，我們與世界其他地區(qū)的研究員一起訪問了8000多人，他們有的是多米尼加的和尚、失明的尼姑、喜馬拉雅登山者、納瓦霍牧羊人。他們都喜歡自己的工作，不管他們身處什么文化，不管他們的教育背景如何，只要存在以下七個條件，我們就能感受到福流的存在：首先是注意力集中，集中到一定程度，就會感到狂喜、清醒，可以很清楚的知道自己下一刻該做什么，因為你能夠得到即時的反饋。盡管會遇到不少困難，但你知道自己將要做的事情是可以做的，時間感也消失了，你甚至忘卻了自我，似乎能感到自己屬于某個更大的整體。而一旦有了這些條件，你做的事情本身就會變得很值得，別無他求。
In our studies, we represent the everyday life of people in this simple scheme. And we can measure this very precisely, actually, because we give people electronic pagers that go off 10 times a day, and whenever they go off you say what you're doing, how you feel, where you are, what you're thinking about. And two things that we measure is the amount of challenge people experience at that moment and the amount of skill that they feel they have at that moment. So for each person we can establish an average, which is the center of the diagram. That would be your mean level of challenge and skill,which will be different from that of anybody else. But you have a kind of a set point there, which would be in the middle.
在研究中，我們用一種簡單的方式來追蹤人們的日常生活。我們可以非常準確的去測量。事實上，我們給參與測試的人發(fā)了尋呼機，每天會隨機呼叫他們10次，每當被呼叫，你就要馬上在問卷中記錄下自己正在做什么，感覺怎么樣，在哪里，正在想什么。我們會測量兩個指標，一是人們在那一刻所面臨的挑戰(zhàn)難度，另一個是人們在那一刻的技能熟練程度。那么對于每一位參與者，我們都能計算出一個平均值，即圖表中的中線，那是這個人的平均挑戰(zhàn)難度以及平均技能熟練程度，會與其他人的都不一樣。那是你個人的設定值。
If we know what that set point is, we can predict fairly accurately when you will be in flow, and it will be when your challenges are higher than average and skills are higher than average. And you may be doing things very differently from other people, but for everyone that flow channel, that area there, will be when you are doing what you really like to do -- play the piano, be with your best friend, perhaps work, if work is what provides flow for you. And then the other areas become less and less positive.
假如我們能夠知道這個設定值是多少，我們就能大致預測出你何時會走進福流狀態(tài)，那就是當你的挑戰(zhàn)大于平均值且技能熟練程度也大于平均值的時候。你做的事情也許和其他人做的很不一樣，但是，對于每一個人，福流的出現(xiàn)通常都是在你做自己真正熱愛的事情的時候。比如彈鋼琴、跟好友在一起、甚或是工作，工作也可能帶給你福流。而在福流通道以外其他區(qū)域，體驗則變得相對更加消極。
Arousal is still good because you are over-challenged there. Your skills are not quite as high as they should be, but you can move into flow fairly easily by just developing a little more skill. So, arousal is the area where most people learn from, because that's where they're pushed beyond their comfort zone and to enter that -- going back to flow -- then they develop higher skills. Control is also a good place to be, because there you feel comfortable, but not very excited. It's not very challenging any more. And if you want to enter flow from control, you have to increase the challenges. So those two are ideal and complementary areas from which flow is easy to go into.
“興奮”(Arousal)也還不錯，因為你還是有較大挑戰(zhàn)的。盡管你的技能熟悉程度還不夠高，但是你只要再把技能提升一點，就可以很容易地進入福流。因此，“興奮”是大多數(shù)人學習的地方。他們在“興奮”中被迫走出舒適區(qū)域去嘗試，然后當技能提升之后，就能回到福流區(qū)域。“控制”(Control)也是一個不錯的狀態(tài)，雖然不是很激動，挑戰(zhàn)也不是很強烈，但是你能感到舒服。假如要從那里走進福流，你就要增強挑戰(zhàn)的程度。所以，這兩個區(qū)域是最理想的、相互補充的狀態(tài)，可以很容易地進入福流。
The other combinations of challenge and skill become progressively less optimal. Relaxation is fine -- you still feel OK. Boredom begins to be very aversive and apathy becomes very negative: you don't feel that you're doing anything, you don't use your skills, there's no challenge. Unfortunately, a lot of people's experience is in apathy. The largest single contributor to that experience is watching television; the next one is being in the bathroom, sitting. Even though sometimes watching television about seven to eight percent of the time is in flow, but that's when you choose a program you really want to watch and you get feedback from it.
而挑戰(zhàn)與技能的其他搭配則會顯得越來越不理想了。“放松”(Relaxatioin)是好的，因為你還能感到舒適，但“厭倦”(Boredom)就會產(chǎn)生反作用了，而“冷漠”(Apathy)則會帶來非常消極的后果，因為你覺得自己根本就沒有干出什么實際的事情——你沒有在使用你的技能，也沒有什么挑戰(zhàn)。遺憾的是，很多人所經(jīng)歷的大多是冷漠，而導致這種情緒的元兇就是看電視，其次則是上廁所，坐著。雖然有時候看電視也有7%-8%的時間是處于福流中的，但那是在你挑選了一個你真正喜歡的節(jié)目的時候，并且你能夠得到即時的反饋。
So the question we are trying to address -- and I'm way over time -- is how to put more and more of everyday life in that flow channel. And that is the kind of challenge that we're trying to understand. And some of you obviously know how to do that spontaneously without any advice, but unfortunately a lot of people don't. And that's what our mandate is, in a way, to do.
因此，我們要問的問題是，如何使得我們的生活更多的處于福流狀態(tài)。我們正在慢慢的解開其中的秘密。你們當中有人懂得如何去做，哪怕我不給任何建議。可惜大多數(shù)人都不會，而我們的任務之一，就是幫助那些人尋找到獲得福流的方法。
Thank you.
謝謝大家!
(Applause)
(掌聲)
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