七个步骤帮你走出失败经历(中英文)
失败很讨厌。但如果你想要做成什么重要的事,你必须要习惯失败。难堪、沮丧甚至你无法控制糟糕情形会成为你生活的一部分。除了拥有“积极的态度”,还有什么是你能够做的呢?
我不曾抵达人类智慧的巅峰,所以我不会自吹自擂,说自己从未犯过偶然的错误或者从未有过糟糕的经历。但我可以分享几点我如何面对它们的经验。 1) 寻找意义
问问你自己,该如何利用这些糟糕的经历。在《活出生命的意义》一书中,维克多·弗兰克尔写到他找到自己在纳粹集中营所承受的痛苦的意义。下面是几种能够帮助你找到意义从而面对痛苦的方法: · 它教给你什么?
· 它让你更坚强/更善良/更有智慧了吗?
· 即使短短一瞬的糟糕体验也会让你快乐的时刻更美好。 2)记一份失败日志
记录你的失败、难堪或错误,失败日志可以成为你奋斗目标的清单。这一点似乎是在奖励失败,看起来很奇怪,但这样做有两个主要目标:
1. 它让你在自尊心为唯一赌注时更愿意冒着风险争取机会。 2. 它帮助你更关注自己的学习和成长而不是别人的看法。
我甚至听有的人说,如果没有一年经历几次失败,他们就会认为自己没有足够努力地去尝试。 3) 寻找新目标
不要沉溺在过去当中。摆脱习惯的最好方式是重新找到新的动力,寻找一个新的目标或追求。新的挑战能让你停止去回想过去的失败,并开始关注一些积极的东西。同时新的目标还带来未来成功的机会,而不是让你深陷在错误当中止步不前。 4) 远离慢性压力源
你面对巨大压力的能力取决于你能否很好的处理那些轻微的压力。如果你的生活一直让你处于崩溃边缘,那么你需要好好整理一下以便更好的面对压力。已经有很多关于如何应对压力的信息,这里给出几个方便操作的小提示:
1. 通过保持体形来维持充足的能量供应。 2. 请那些总是消极的人离开你的生活。
3. 寻找适合你的发泄压力的方式,能帮你更快的复原而不是加剧你的沮丧。 5) 建立支持系统
与同事、良师益友建立相互鼓励的支持系统,能够帮你度过艰难的时光,这一点需要你提前做好准备。即使你现在并没有处于这样的状况当中,你未来也会有需要他们援助的时刻。
寻找那些能够鼓励你面对自己错误的同伴和良师益友,下面几点能够帮助你吸引这样的人走进你的生活:
· 你的付出的所得总是相当的。 重视你朋友的需求,他们也会用同样的方式回应你。
· 参加Toastmasters(一个讲演俱乐部,译者注)。 我参加了Toastmasters俱乐部,在那里我遇到了很多优秀的人。没有一个庞大团体所有的成员都是同样优秀的,所以你可以尝试加入一到两个俱乐部。但总体来说,我认为Toastmasters是一个能够帮助你建立积极联系的好地方。
· 少跟消极的人共处。 如果你不能让他们在你的生活中完全消失,那就尽量减少与他们相处的时间,这样你就有更多的时间去经营那些更积极的关系。 6)保持谦逊
谦逊和幽默的态度能在时运艰难助你前行。我并不赞同绝对自信就是成功之道,对你的能力保持谦逊,但对你成长的潜力充满自信能让你摆脱失败。如果不是内心那个谦卑的声音告诉我,写博客是一件多么辛苦的事情,那我也许永远都不能坚持下来。
谦逊并不代表着低自尊,它仅仅意味着你能更关注行动,且并不期待即时的成功。
很多东方的哲学家强调没有目标的行动,他们不是说你不应该争取任何东西,而是你应该超脱于结果之外。如果你成功了,当然好。如果你失败了,你也离目标更近了一步。 7) 停止反思,开始做一些新的事情
你能从经历中学到的总是有限的,一个独立的事件能教给你的东西其实很少。如果你没能成功的进行一场演讲,你大概能从中学到一两点,关于在未来如何提升自己。这就够了。在这个限度之外,你所“学到”的东西大多只是不正确的猜想。
我见过那些刚刚经历过失败的感情、目标没能实现或是遭遇承诺破碎的人,试图从这一次失败中学到一切。不幸的是,你只有通过很多次失败才能实现这个目标。试图从一次失败经历中搜集太多的信息,只会让你错以为自己收获了什么有用东西,却仍感到悲惨。
你总结出几点学习经验之后,就该适时停止了。开始做点新的事情,给自己一个新的目标,往前看。毕竟,这才是失败的意义不是吗?给你一些启示,指引你朝着更大更好的目标勇往直前。
7 Practical Steps to Turn Around a Bad Experience
重点词 ?
chronic ['kr?nik]
adj. 慢性的;长期的;习惯性的 ?
pinnacle ['pin?kl]
n. 高峰;小尖塔;尖峰;极点; vt. 造小尖... ?
isolate ['ais?leit, -lit]
vt. 使隔离;使孤立;使绝缘; n. [生物]... ?
momentum [m?u'ment?m] n. 势头;[物] 动量;动力;冲力 ?
overwhelm [,?uv?'hwelm] vt. 压倒;淹没;受打击 ?
enlightenment [in'lait?nm?nt] n. 启迪;启蒙运动;教化 ?
frustration [fr?s'trei??n] n. 挫折 ?
commitment [k?'mitm?nt]
n. 承诺,保证;委托;承担义务;献身 ?
criticism ['kriti,siz?m] n. 批评;考证;苛求 ?
threshold ['θre?h?uld]
n. 入口;门槛;开始;极限;临界值
Failure sucks. But if your planning on doing anything important you are going to have to get used to it. Embarrassment, frustration and even bad situations you can’t control are going to be part of life. What can you actually do about them instead of just having a “positive attitude?”
I definitely haven’t reached the pinnacle of human enlightenment. So I can’t boast that harsh criticisms, the accidental blunder or bad experience never get to me. But I’d like to offer the practical steps I take to move past it. 1) Find a Meaning
Ask yourself how you can use the bad experience. Victor Frankl in his book, Man’s Search for Meaning, found meaning in his suffering while in a Nazi concentration camp. Here are some ways you can find a meaning in your situation to move past it:
What has it taught you?
Has it made you stronger/kinder/wiser?
Even simply enduring a bad moment has meaning in making your happy moments better. 2) Keep a Failure Log
Keep track of any failures, embarrassments or blunders. Using a failure log you can give yourself a little checkmark of accomplishment. It may seem odd to reward failures in this way, but rewarding your failures serves two main purposes:
It makes you more willing to take chances when the only risk is to your pride. It causes you to focus more on learning and growth than external recognition.
I’ve even heard from other people that if they don’t have at least a few major failures each year, they don’t believe they were trying hard enough. 3) Find a New Goal
Don’t dwell in the past. The best way to get out of a rut is to start building momentum again. Get a new goal or pursuit. A new challenge will get you to stop thinking about your failure and get you to focus on something positive. A new goal will also give the opportunity for future successes instead of dwelling on a current stumble.
4) Remove Chronic Sources of Stress
You ability to handle big stresses depends on how well you handle the little ones. If your life is constantly driving you crazy, you need to reconstruct it to better handle stress. There are already many resources on handling stress, but here are a few quick tips: Keep your energy high by staying in shape.
Fire people from your life who are a source of chronic negativity.
Find outlets for your stress that help you recover instead of intensifying the frustration. 5) Build a Support Base
Building a support base of colleagues and mentors will help you when times are rough. This is definitely a situation where you need to prepare in advance. Even if you aren’t having to deal with a particularly difficult situation right now, you might need some reinforcement in the future.
Have the right peers and mentors who will encourage you past your mistakes. Here are some tips for attracting the right people into your life:
You give what you get. Be extra attuned to the needs of your friends and they will do the same. Join Toastmasters. I’m a Toastmaster and I can’t say enough about the great people I’ve met there. No large group will be consistently good, so you might need to try one or two clubs. But overwhelmingly, I’ve found Toastmasters to be a great place to make positive connections.
Spend less time on negative people. If you can’t eliminate them entirely, reduce your interactions so you can focus more on better relationships. 6) Be Humble
A sense of humility and humor can keep you moving forward when things are tough. I’m not a follower that says overwhelming confidence is the approach to success. Being humble in your abilities but confident in your chances to grow will let you shrug off failures. I never would have stuck to blogging unless I had cultivated the humility that told me it would be a lot of hard work.
Humility doesn’t necessarily mean you have low self-esteem. It just means you are focused more on doing things without expecting immediate success.
Many Eastern philosophies emphasize goalless action. This doesn’t mean that you should not strive for anything, but that you should detach yourself from the outcome. If you win, great. If you lose, then you are one step closer.
7) Stop Analyzing and Start Doing Something New
There is a maximum limit to how much you can learn from an experience. That limit is actually fairly small with an isolated incident. If you give one speech and it fails, you might be able to learn one or two points of improvement. That’s it. Anything you “learn” after this threshold is just speculation which is often incorrect.
I’ve seen people in failed relationships, goals that went sour or broken commitments, try to learn everything from just one failure. Unfortunately, the only way you can learn isn’t just to fail once but to fail dozens of times. Trying to scoop up too much information on a bad situation just leaves you feeling miserable with the false sensation that you are accomplishing something useful.
After you’ve gathered a couple learning points, stop. Start doing something new. Pick out a new goal and move forward. After all, isn’t that what failures are for? To give you a small learning point and direct you towards bigger and better things?