TED英语演讲：福流，幸福的秘密
TED是Technology, Entertainment, Design(科技、娱乐、设计)的缩写，这个会议的宗旨是"用思想的力量来改变世界"。TED演讲的特点是毫无繁杂冗长的专业讲座，观点响亮，开门见山，种类繁多，看法新颖。而且还是非常好的英语口语听力练习材料，建议坚持学习。下面是小编为大家收集关于TED英语演讲：福流，幸福的秘密，欢迎借鉴参考。
Flow, The Secret to Happiness
演讲稿
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.
我在欧洲长大，那时正好是二战时期，我是7岁到10岁的光景。我体会到，身边的大人没有几个能够经受得起战争带给他们的创伤，很少可以重建起一种正常的、舒心的、满意的、快乐的生活，因为他们的工作、家庭以及安全都因为战争而失去了。于是我开始对“什么让人生有价值”这一话题发生兴趣。那时我还是十几岁的孩子，不过已经开始读哲学书，并且尝试过艺术、宗教等各种我认为可以为我解开谜团的途径，最终，我意外地与心理学结了缘。
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，我去到了瑞士的一个滑雪胜地，身上分文都没有，也没地方可玩。那时雪已消融，我也没钱去看电影，但是我从报纸上看到说将会有一场演讲，地点是苏黎世市中心一个我去过的地方。他要讲的是飞碟。我就想，既然不能去看电影，但至少可以去听一下这个免费的讲飞碟的演讲吧。那晚上的演讲非常有趣，那个演讲者没有讲绿皮肤的外星人，而是讲到欧洲人的心灵如何因二战而受到了创伤，因而就以放飞碟来自娱。他还讲到古印度的曼荼罗，也是在战后被放到空中，以此来重建一种秩序感。我对此很感兴趣，于是就开始读那个演讲者的书。那人的名字是卡尔·荣格，当时我还不知道这个名字。
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.
后来就到了美国学习心理学。我开始探寻幸福之本源。这是很多人都展示过的一个研究结果(如图1)，有很多个版本。比如，这个版本显示，自1956年有调查记录以来，有30%的美国受访公民说他们的生活非常快乐，这个比例一点都没有变。但是同一时期的人均收入则翻了两倍以上，接近三倍。这一统计已经是把通货膨胀算进去了，可是结果基本是一致的。就是说，到了温饱线1000美元以上之后的某个点，物质生活水平的增加似乎不再会影响人们的幸福感。事实上你会发现，基本生活物资之匮乏会导致不幸福，但持续的物质财富之增长并不会带来更大的幸福。
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，当我发现这些东西与我自身的经历不谋而合时，我就在研究里就开始询问：在正常的日常生活体验中，我们如何才会感到真正幸福?大概40年前，我开始了这些研究，我开始寻找那些有创造力的人士。首先是艺术家、科学家，然后是其他人，我试图去理解，是什么让他们感觉自己一生从事的事业是值得的，他们中的许多人终其一生所做的事情都不能带来荣誉或财富，但那样的事情使得他们的人生充满意义和价值。
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.
这是1970年代美国最出色的一位作曲家，我对他的采访记录长达40页，而这一段话对他在采访中所讲的内容做了一个很好的总结。它描述了作曲家在作曲顺利时的感受，他将这种感受描述为一种狂喜的状态。
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)一词在希腊语里的意思是，站在某个事物的边上，后来就成为一种心理状态的代名词，用来形容你做的不是普通的日常事务。换言之，狂喜就是一种超越现实的感觉。有趣的是，当我们想起那些被公认为人类成就之巅峰的文明时，不管是中国、希腊、印度文明，还是玛雅或埃及文明，我们所听说的都是关于他们的狂喜的故事，而不是他们日常生活的琐事。我们知道他们建了大型的殿堂，人们可以去到那样的地方感受不一样的现实。还有环形广场、竞技场、戏院，这些都是文明之遗迹，也是当时的人们经常光顾的地方。他们去到那里去体验一种更加专注、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.
这个人(作曲家)不需要去到这样的地方。我们今天这个演讲现场也像是一个古希腊的圆形竞技场，这也是一个能带来狂喜的地方。我们正在参与的现实，也与日常生活完全不一样。但这个人(作曲家)任何地方都不用去，他只需一张纸，在上面写下小小的音符，在这样做的同时，他能在脑海里想象出从未有过的独特声音组合。只要他开始真正要创作，就像刚才珍妮弗的即兴演奏一样，他就进入了一种新的现实，进入狂喜。那是不一样的现实。他说，那是一种非常强烈的体验，他似乎感觉不到自己的存在。这听起来也许有点夸张的浪漫主义色彩，但事实上，我们的神经系统无法在一秒的时间里处理超过约110比特的信息。你在听我说话，并且尝试去理解其中的意思，这就相当于每秒处理约60比特的信息。所以说，同时听懂两个以上的人说话是不可能的。你不可能同时做到这一点。
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间，像这位作曲家那样去创造一种新的东西，就不可能再有精力去感知身体的感觉，或是家里的问题。他不知饥饿与劳累，似乎整个躯体都消失了。在他的意识里不再有自己的存在，他没有那么多精力。事实上我们任何人都不可能做得到，因为做那样的事情确实需要全副身心的投入，他就不可能感知自己的存在了，他的存在被暂时遗忘了。他自己也说，他的手似乎能够自动行事。我也许对着自己的手看两个星期，也不能看出有什么伟大或神奇的地方，因为我不是作曲家。(笑声)
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.
这说明了什么?很显然，他所描述的这种自动的、自发的过程只有可能发生在一个受过严格训练以及培养了良好技艺的人身上。在创造力研究这一领域，有一个接近真理的说法是，没有10年时间在某个特定领域的技术知识积累，是不可能创造出什么奇迹的。不管是数学或音乐，都需要这样漫长的时间来达到一种全新的升华。他对此深有体会，他说，音乐仿佛是自己流淌了出来了。30年来，在我采访的众多人中，有许多都将这种体验描述为一种自发的流动，于是我把这种体验称为“福流体验”，它发生在许多不同的领域。
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，有位诗人是这样描述它的(指幻灯片上的内容)。这段内容来自我的一位学生，他采访了美国最杰出的作家、诗人。这段话同样描述了当你进入狂喜的状态时感到的驾轻就熟，行云流水。这位诗人说，那就有如打开了通往天际之窗。这个跟爱因斯坦所说的关于如何想象到相对论的过程非常相像。那时的爱因斯坦也是在苦苦的思考为何那样的事情会发生。在其他的活动中也会发生这样的事情。这是我的另一位学生的研究发现，她叫苏珊·杰克逊，来自澳洲。她采访了世界上顶尖的运动健将，这是一位奥林匹克滑冰运动员的描述，也是同样的一段关于内在状态的现象学描述：你什么也不想，他就自然而然地发生，你只需要与音乐融为一体……
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.
我最近写了一本书，里面也提到这样的例子，书名是《优良商业》(Good Business)。书中介绍了我采访的一些公司的总裁，同行们都认为那些人是非常成功的，并且他们做企业非常讲道德、有社会责任。他们关于成功的定义是这样的：既帮助他人，同时又使自己乐在其中。这些成功并且富有社会责任的总裁也说到，单单有其中一样是不足以令你成功的，假如你要的是有意义的、成功的工作。安妮塔·罗迪克是其中一位受访的总裁，她创建了Body Shop，一个天然化妆品领导企业。这正是一种热情，它源自一个人对最高表现的追求，并且在工作中体会到一种福流。
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.
这是日本索尼创办人之一井深大说过的一句话，很有趣。他那时白手起家，创建了索尼。他们那时甚至连产品也拿不出来，可谓一无所有。但是他们有一个理念，即要创建一个工作环境，使得工程师可以体验到技术创新带来的快乐，同时也意识到自身对于社会的使命，以最大的热情工作，直到自己内心满意为止。再也没有比这个更好的例子了，福流就是这样走进公司的。
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.
而我们在做研究的时候，我们与世界其他地区的研究员一起访问了8000多人，他们有的是多米尼加的和尚、失明的尼姑、喜马拉雅登山者、纳瓦霍牧羊人。他们都喜欢自己的工作，不管他们身处什么文化，不管他们的教育背景如何，只要存在以下七个条件，我们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，就会感到狂喜、清醒，可以很清楚的知道自己下一刻该做什么，因为你能够得到即时的反馈。尽管会遇到不少困难，但你知道自己将要做的事情是可以做的，时间感也消失了，你甚至忘却了自我，似乎能感到自己属于某个更大的整体。而一旦有了这些条件，你做的事情本身就会变得很值得，别无他求。
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，我们用一种简单的方式来追踪人们的日常生活。我们可以非常准确的去测量。事实上，我们给参与测试的人发了寻呼机，每天会随机呼叫他们10次，每当被呼叫，你就要马上在问卷中记录下自己正在做什么，感觉怎么样，在哪里，正在想什么。我们会测量两个指标，一是人们在那一刻所面临的挑战难度，另一个是人们在那一刻的技能熟练程度。那么对于每一位参与者，我们都能计算出一个平均值，即图表中的中线，那是这个人的平均挑战难度以及平均技能熟练程度，会与其他人的都不一样。那是你个人的设定值。
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.
假如我们能够知道这个设定值是多少，我们就能大致预测出你何时会走进福流状态，那就是当你的挑战大于平均值且技能熟练程度也大于平均值的时候。你做的事情也许和其他人做的很不一样，但是，对于每一个人，福流的出现通常都是在你做自己真正热爱的事情的时候。比如弹钢琴、跟好友在一起、甚或是工作，工作也可能带给你福流。而在福流通道以外其他区域，体验则变得相对更加消极。
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.
“兴奋”(Arousal)也还不错，因为你还是有较大挑战的。尽管你的技能熟悉程度还不够高，但是你只要再把技能提升一点，就可以很容易地进入福流。因此，“兴奋”是大多数人学习的地方。他们在“兴奋”中被迫走出舒适区域去尝试，然后当技能提升之后，就能回到福流区域。“控制”(Control)也是一个不错的状态，虽然不是很激动，挑战也不是很强烈，但是你能感到舒服。假如要从那里走进福流，你就要增强挑战的程度。所以，这两个区域是最理想的、相互补充的状态，可以很容易地进入福流。
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.
而挑战与技能的其他搭配则会显得越来越不理想了。“放松”(Relaxatioin)是好的，因为你还能感到舒适，但“厌倦”(Boredom)就会产生反作用了，而“冷漠”(Apathy)则会带来非常消极的后果，因为你觉得自己根本就没有干出什么实际的事情——你没有在使用你的技能，也没有什么挑战。遗憾的是，很多人所经历的大多是冷漠，而导致这种情绪的元凶就是看电视，其次则是上厕所，坐着。虽然有时候看电视也有7%-8%的时间是处于福流中的，但那是在你挑选了一个你真正喜欢的节目的时候，并且你能够得到即时的反馈。
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，我们要问的问题是，如何使得我们的生活更多的处于福流状态。我们正在慢慢的解开其中的秘密。你们当中有人懂得如何去做，哪怕我不给任何建议。可惜大多数人都不会，而我们的任务之一，就是帮助那些人寻找到获得福流的方法。
Thank you.
谢谢大家!
(Applause)
(掌声)
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