我的成功我定义

Alain de Botton

What I think Ive been talking about， really， is success and failure. And one of the interesting things about success is that we think we know what it means. If I said to you that theres somebody behind the screen， whos very， very successful， certain ideas would immediately come to mind. You would think that person might have made a lot of money， achieved renown in some field. My own theory of success—and Im somebody whos very interested in success， I really want to be successful. Im always thinking， “How can I be more successful，” but as I get older Im also very 1）nuanced about what that word “success” might mean.

Heres some insight that Ive had about success； you cant be successful at everything. We hear a lot about talk about work-life balance. Nonsense！ You cant have it all. You cant. So any vision of success has to admit what its losing out on， where the element of loss is. And I think any wise life will accept， as I say， that theres gonna be an element where were not succeeding.

And the thing about a successful life is that a lot of the time our ideas of what it would mean to live successfully are not our own. Theyre sucked in from other people， chiefly， if youre a man， your father， and if youre a woman， your mother. 2）Psychoanalysis has been drumming home this message for about 80 years. No ones quite listening hard enough， but I very much believe that thats true. And we also suck in messages from everything from the television to advertising to marketing， etc. This is， these are hugely powerful forces that define what we want and how we view ourselves. When were told that banking is a very respectable profession， a lot of us want to go into banking. When bankings no longer so respectable， we lose interest in banking. We are highly open to suggestion.

So what I want to argue for is not that we should give up on our ideas of success， but we should make sure that they are our own. We should focus in on our ideas and make sure that we own them， that we are truly the authors of our own ambitions， because its bad enough not getting what you want， but its even worse to have an idea of what it is you want and find out at the end of the journey that it isnt， in fact， what you wanted all along.

So Im going to end it there， but what I really want to stress is， by all means success， yes， but lets accept the strangeness of some of our ideas. Lets 3）probe away at our notions of success. Lets make sure our ideas of success are truly our own.

Thank you very much.

我想我一直在谈论的主题其实是成功与失败。关于成功很有趣的一点是，我们都自认为知道成功代表什么。如果我告诉你这个屏幕（译者注：指演讲者身后的屏幕）后面有个成功非凡的人，你马上就会有一些特定的想法。你会认为这个人可能腰缠万贯，在某个领域功成名就。我有自己的成功哲学——我本人对成功非常感兴趣，我也确实渴望成功。我总是在想，“我怎样才能更成功呢”，但随着年岁渐长，我对“成功”这个词的解读也有了微妙的变化。

以下是我对成功的一些看法：你不可能每件事都获得成功。我们听到很多人谈论如何在工作与生活之间取得平衡，这简直就是天方夜谭！你不能样样都得到，不可能。因此每个关于成功的观念都必须承认在成功的同时失去了什么，是在哪个方面失去的。我想每一位智者都会接受我的看法，即肯定有某一方面是我们没有取得成功的。

关于成功的人生，很重要的一点是，很多时候我们对成功人生的概念不是来自自己，而是来自别人，一般而言，男性的成功概念来自父亲，女性的来自母亲。精神分析学80年来反复提及这一点。没有人真正当回事，但我相信这是真的。我们还从别的很多地方吸收信息，电视、广告、市场营销等等。这些都是很强大的力量，它们定义了我们的需求和我们对自身的看法。当我们听说银行业相当体面，很多人就想进银行工作；当银行业不再体面时，我们就对它失去了兴趣。我们极容易被外界意见所影响。

因此我要说的不是我们应该放弃自己对于成功的看法，而是我们应该确定这些看法是属于自己的。我们要仔细审视自己的观念，确保这些观念为自己所有，确保我们的追求是由自己定义的。因为，得不到你想要的已经很糟糕了，更糟糕的是，你以为知道你要追求什么，但是到了生命的尽头你才发现原来这一直都不是自己真正想要的。

我的演讲就到这里，但我真正要强调的是，肯定是成功，这当然，不过我们要承认自己的一些奇怪想法，要深入探究自己对于成功的观念，保证这些观念确实是我们自己的。

感谢各位。