ted演讲【实用8篇】
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ted演讲稿【第一篇】
少年pi的全名叫:派西尼。莫利托。帕特尔,方便起见,就叫他派好了。
派是一个从小生活在动物园的孩子,一次,为了搬去加拿大,派一家与动物们登上了开往大洋彼岸的货船“齐姆楚姆号”。
天有不测风云,在一个风雨交加的早晨,船沉了。睡梦中的人们还不知道发生了什么,就沉入了这蔚蓝色的海洋。只有派与一只斑马,一只红猩猩,一只鬣狗,还有一只名叫理查德。帕克的成年孟加拉虎乘上了救生艇,
弱肉强食的生存法则毫不意外地在这里被印证。
一艘小小的救生艇自然无法满足他们的生存需求,所以自然而然的,鬣狗吃掉了斑马与红猩猩,有被老虎吃掉。只剩下派与理查德。帕克了。
我本以为派也会被老虎吃掉,之后老虎死于缺水,在之后全剧终。可看着剩下200多页纸的厚度,我便打消了这可笑的念头。
不出所料,奇迹发生了。
派与这只孟加拉虎,在这条长仅26英尺的小艇上和谐共存了几个月,直至获救。
看到这里,我不得不对派肃然起敬。他是如此的勇敢,坚强。换做是我,或许早就因老虎的利爪或缺水而死了,但他却能用自己仅有的一切,与一只老虎在一望无边的太平洋上共存,这需要多么强烈的求生意志,多么强大的自信心啊!
在对比一下自己,整日无所事事,得过且过,无抱负无追求,为什么派可以超越自己的极限?我想,是压力的缘故吧。
派的压力来自于死亡,为了生存下来,他可以发挥出自己的全部潜质,是死亡的压力拯救了他。
而我的压力主要来自父母和老师。只要成绩有些进步,就可以说失去了压力,一个失去压力的人一定不会有什么大成就,因为压力就像燃油,是我们前进时不可缺少的动力。没有了动力,我们只能停下,倒退,最终被淘汰。
有压力是好事,但也要适度。就像汽车超速了会被罚款,压力过大了,也会使我们不负重担。只有适当的压力加上灿烂的微笑,美好的未来才会向我们挥手。
所以,朋友们,让我们用双手去拥抱这可爱的压力吧。
无压力,不动力!
ted演讲稿【第二篇】
when i was nine years old i went off to summer camp for the first time. andmy mother packed me a suitcase full of books, which to me seemed like aperfectly natural thing to do. because in my family, reading was the primarygroup activity. and this might sound antisocial to you, but for us it was reallyjust a different way of being social. you have the animal warmth of your familysitting right ne_t to you, but you are also free to go roaming around theadventureland inside your own mind. and i had this idea that camp was going tobe just like this, but better. (laughter) i had a vision of 10 girls sitting ina cabin cozily reading books in their matching nightgowns.
(laughter)
camp was more like a keg party without any alcohol. and on the very firstday our counselor gathered us all together and she taught us a cheer that shesaid we would be doing every day for the rest of the summer to instill campspirit. and it went like this: "r-o-w-d-i-e, that's the way we spell , rowdie, let's get rowdie." yeah. so i couldn't figure out for the lifeof me why we were supposed to be so rowdy, or why we had to spell this wordincorrectly. (laughter) but i recited a cheer. i recited a cheer along witheverybody else. i did my best. and i just waited for the time that i could gooff and read my books.
but the first time that i took my book out of my suitcase, the coolest girlin the bunk came up to me and she asked me, "why are you being so mellow?" --mellow, of course, being the e_act opposite of r-o-w-d-i-e. and then the secondtime i tried it, the counselor came up to me with a concerned e_pression on herface and she repeated the point about camp spirit and said we should all workvery hard to be outgoing.
and so i put my books away, back in their suitcase, and i put them under mybed, and there they stayed for the rest of the summer. and i felt kind of guiltyabout this. i felt as if the books needed me somehow, and they were calling outto me and i was forsaking them. but i did forsake them and i didn't open thatsuitcase again until i was back home with my family at the end of thesummer.
now, i tell you this story about summer camp. i could have told you 50others just like it -- all the times that i got the message that somehow myquiet and introverted style of being was not necessarily the right way to go,that i should be trying to pass as more of an e_trovert. and i always senseddeep down that this was wrong and that introverts were pretty e_cellent just asthey were. but for years i denied this intuition, and so i became a wall streetlawyer, 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 assertivetoo. and i was always going off to crowded bars when i really would havepreferred to just have a nice dinner with friends. and i made theseself-negating choices so refle_ively, that i wasn't even aware that i was makingthem.
now this is what many introverts do, and it's our loss for sure, but it isalso our colleagues' loss and our communities' loss. and at the risk of soundinggrandiose, it is the world's loss. because when it comes to creativity and toleadership, we need introverts doing what they do best. a third to a half of thepopulation are introverts -- a third to a half. so that's one out of every twoor three people you know. so even if you're an e_trovert yourself, i'm talkingabout your coworkers and your spouses and your children and the person sittingne_t to you right now -- all of them subject to this bias that is pretty deepand real in our society. we all internalize it from a very early age withouteven having a language for what we're doing.
now to see the bias clearly you need to understand what introversion 's different from being shy. shyness is about fear of social is more about, how do you respond to stimulation, including socialstimulation. so e_troverts really crave large amounts of stimulation, whereasintroverts feel at their most alive and their most switched-on and their mostcapable 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 toma_imizing our talents is for us all to put ourselves in the zone of stimulationthat 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 e_troverts and fore_troverts' need for lots of stimulation. and also we have this belief systemright now that i call the new groupthink, which holds that all creativity andall productivity comes from a very oddly gregarious place.
so if you picture the typical classroom nowadays: when i was going toschool, we sat in rows. we sat in rows of desks like this, and we did most ofour work pretty autonomously. but nowadays, your typical classroom has pods ofdesks -- four or five or si_ or seven kids all facing each other. and kids areworking in countless group assignments. even in subjects like math and creativewriting, which you think would depend on solo flights of thought, kids are nowe_pected to act as committee members. and for the kids who prefer to go off bythemselves or just to work alone, those kids are seen as outliers often or,worse, as problem cases. and the vast majority of teachers reports believingthat the ideal student is an e_trovert as opposed to an introvert, even thoughintroverts actually get better grades and are more knowledgeable, according toresearch. (laughter)
okay, same thing is true in our workplaces. now, most of us work in openplan offices, without walls, where we are subject to the constant noise and gazeof our coworkers. and when it comes to leadership, introverts are routinelypassed over for leadership positions, even though introverts tend to be verycareful, much less likely to take outsize risks -- which is something we mightall favor nowadays. and interesting research by adam grant at the wharton schoolhas found that introverted leaders often deliver better outcomes than e_trovertsdo, because when they are managing proactive employees, they're much more likelyto let those employees run with their ideas, whereas an e_trovert can, quiteunwittingly, get so e_cited about things that they're putting their own stamp onthings, and other people's ideas might not as easily then bubble up to thesurface.
now in fact, some of our transformative leaders in history have beenintroverts. i'll give you some e_amples. eleanor roosevelt, rosa parks, gandhi-- all these peopled described themselves as quiet and soft-spoken and even they all took the spotlight, even though every bone in their bodies wastelling 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 theyenjoyed directing others and not out of the pleasure of being looked at; theywere there because they had no choice, because they were driven to do what theythought was right.
now i think at this point it's important for me to say that i actually lovee_troverts. i always like to say some of my best friends are e_troverts,including my beloved husband. and we all fall at different points, of course,along the introvert/e_trovert spectrum. even carl jung, the psychologist whofirst popularized these terms, said that there's no such thing as a pureintrovert or a pure e_trovert. he said that such a man would be in a lunaticasylum, if he e_isted at all. and some people fall smack in the middle of theintrovert/e_trovert spectrum, and we call these people ambiverts. and i oftenthink that they have the best of all worlds. but many of us do recognizeourselves as one type or the other.
and what i'm saying is that culturally we need a much better balance. weneed more of a yin and yang between these two types. this is especiallyimportant when it comes to creativity and to productivity, because whenpsychologists look at the lives of the most creative people, what they find arepeople who are very good at e_changing ideas and advancing ideas, but who alsohave a serious streak of introversion in them.
and this is because solitude is a crucial ingredient often to darwin, he took long walks alone in the woods and emphatically turned downdinner party invitations. theodor geisel, better known as dr. seuss, he dreamedup many of his amazing creations in a lonely bell tower office that he had inthe back of his house in la jolla, california. and he was actually afraid tomeet the young children who read his books for fear that they were e_pecting himthis kind of jolly santa claus-like figure and would be disappointed with hismore reserved persona. steve wozniak invented the first apple computer sittingalone in his cubical in hewlett-packard where he was working at the time. and hesays that he never would have become such an e_pert in the first place had henot 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 tostart apple computer -- but it does mean that solitude matters and that for somepeople it is the air that they breathe. and in fact, we have known for centuriesabout the transcendent power of solitude. it's only recently that we'vestrangely begun to forget it. if you look at most of the world's majorreligions, you will find seekers -- moses, jesus, buddha, muhammad -- seekerswho are going off by themselves alone to the wilderness where they then haveprofound epiphanies and revelations that they then bring back to the rest of thecommunity. so no wilderness, no revelations.
this is no surprise though if you look at the insights of contemporarypsychology. it turns out that we can't even be in a group of people withoutinstinctively mirroring, mimicking their opinions. even about seemingly personaland visceral things like who you're attracted to, you will start aping thebeliefs of the people around you without even realizing that that's what you'redoing.
and groups famously follow the opinions of the most dominant or charismaticperson in the room, even though there's zero correlation between being the besttalker and having the best ideas -- i mean zero. so ... (laughter) you might befollowing the person with the best ideas, but you might not. and do you reallywant to leave it up to chance? much better for everybody to go off bythemselves, generate their own ideas freed from the distortions of groupdynamics, and then come together as a team to talk them through in awell-managed environment and take it from there.
now if all this is true, then why are we getting it so wrong? why are wesetting up our schools this way and our workplaces? and why are we making theseintroverts feel so guilty about wanting to just go off by themselves some of thetime? one answer lies deep in our cultural history. western societies, and inparticular the , have always favored the man of action over the man ofcontemplation and "man" of contemplation. but in america's early days, we livedin 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 lookat 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 likeabraham lincoln who was praised for being modest and unassuming. ralph waldoemerson called him "a man who does not offend by superiority."
but then we hit the 20th century and we entered a new culture thathistorians call the culture of personality. what happened is we had evolved anagricultural economy to a world of big business. and so suddenly people aremoving from small towns to the cities. and instead of working alongside peoplethey've known all their lives, now they are having to prove themselves in acrowd of strangers. so, quite understandably, qualities like magnetism andcharisma suddenly come to seem really important. and sure enough, the self-helpbooks change to meet these new needs and they start to have names like "how towin friends and influence people." and they feature as their role models reallygreat salesmen. so that's the world we're living in today. that's our culturalinheritance.
now none of this is to say that social skills are unimportant, and i'm alsonot calling for the abolishing of teamwork at all. the same religions who sendtheir sages off to lonely mountain tops also teach us love and trust. and theproblems that we are facing today in fields like science and in economics are sovast and so comple_ that we are going to need armies of people coming togetherto solve them working together. but i am saying that the more freedom that wegive introverts to be themselves, the more likely that they are to come up withtheir 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 perple_ed" bymaimonides. but these are not e_actly my books. i brought these books with mebecause they were written by my grandfather's favorite authors.
my grandfather was a rabbi and he was a widower who lived alone in a smallapartment in brooklyn that was my favorite place in the world when i was growingup, partly because it was filled with his very gentle, very courtly presence andpartly because it was filled with books. i mean literally every table, everychair in this apartment had yielded its original function to now serve as asurface for swaying stacks of books. just like the rest of my family, mygrandfather'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 thesermons that he gave every week for the 62 years that he was a rabbi. he wouldtakes the fruits of each week's reading and he would weave these intricatetapestries of ancient and humanist thought. and people would come from all overto 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 deliveredthese sermons, he had trouble making eye contact with the very same congregationthat he had been speaking to for 62 years. and even away from the podium, whenyou called him to say hello, he would often end the conversation prematurely forfear that he was taking up too much of your time. but when he died at the age of94, the police had to close down the streets of his neighborhood to accommodatethe crowd of people who came out to mourn him. and so these days i try to learnfrom my grandfather's e_ample in my own way.
so i just published a book about introversion, and it took me about sevenyears to write. and for me, that seven years was like total bliss, because i wasreading, i was writing, i was thinking, i was researching. it was my version ofmy grandfather's hours of the day alone in his library. but now all of a suddenmy job is very different, and my job is to be out here talking about it, talkingabout introversion. (laughter) and that's a lot harder for me, because ashonored as i am to be here with all of you right now, this is not my naturalmilieu.
so i prepared for moments like these as best i could. i spent the last yearpracticing public speaking every chance i could get. and i call this my "year ofspeaking dangerously." (laughter) and that actually helped a lot. but i'll tellyou, what helps even more is my sense, my belief, my hope that when it comes toour attitudes to introversion and to quiet and to solitude, we truly are poisedon the brink on dramatic change. i mean, we are. and so i am going to leave younow 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, chattycafe-style types of interactions -- you know, the kind where people cometogether and serendipitously have an e_change of ideas. that is great. it'sgreat for introverts and it's great for e_troverts. but we need much moreprivacy and much more freedom and much more autonomy at work. school, samething. we need to be teaching kids to work together, for sure, but we also needto be teaching them how to work on their own. this is especially important fore_troverted children too. they need to work on their own because that is wheredeep thought comes from in part.
okay, number two: go to the wilderness. be like buddha, have your ownrevelations. i'm not saying that we all have to now go off and build our owncabins in the woods and never talk to each other again, but i am saying that wecould 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 whyyou put it there. so e_troverts, maybe your suitcases are also full of books. ormaybe 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 yourenergy and your joy. but introverts, you being you, you probably have theimpulse to guard very carefully what's inside your own suitcase. and that'sokay. but occasionally, just occasionally, i hope you will open up yoursuitcases for other people to see, because the world needs you and it needs thethings you carry.
so i wish you the best of all possible journeys and the courage to speaksoftly.
thank you very much.
(applause)
thank you. thank you.
经典TED英语演讲稿【第三篇】
When Dorothy was a little girl, she wasfascinated by her goldfish. Her father explained to her that fish swim byquickly wagging their tails to propel themselves through the water. Withouthesitation, little Dorothy responded, "Yes, Daddy, and fish swim backwardsby wagging their heads."
当多萝西还是一个小女孩的时候,她被她的金鱼迷住了。她的父亲向她解释,鱼是通过快速摇尾推动自己在水中前进。毫无犹豫地,小多萝西回答道,“是的,爸爸,而且鱼会通过摇头来后退。”
In her mind, it was a fact as true as anyother. Fish swim backwards by wagging their heads. She believed it.
在她的心里,这是一个确切的事实。鱼通过摇头来后退。她坚信如此。
Our lives are full of fish swimmingbackwards. We make assumptions and faulty leaps of logic. We harbor bias. Weknow that we are right, and they are wrong. We fear the worst. We strive forunattainable perfection. We tell ourselves what we can and cannot do. In ourminds, fish swim by in reverse frantically wagging their heads and we don'teven notice them.
我们的生活中充满着倒游的鱼。我们制造假设和错误跳跃的逻辑。我们心怀偏见。我们知道我们是对的,而他们是错的。我们害怕最糟糕的。我们力求无法获得的完美。我们告诉自己什么是我们能做的和不能做的。在我们心里,鱼是通过往相反方向疯狂摇头来游泳的,而我们甚至不曾察觉过它们。
I'm going to tell you five facts aboutmyself. One fact is not true. One: I graduated from Harvard at 19 with anhonors degree in mathematics. Two: I currently run a construction company inOrlando. Three: I starred on a television sitcom. Four: I lost my sight to arare genetic eye disease. Five: I served as a law clerk to two US Supreme Courtjustices. Which fact is not true? Actually, they're all true. Yeah. They're alltrue.
我想告诉你们五件关于我的事实。其中有一件不是真的。第一:我19岁的时候以数学荣誉学士学位毕业于哈佛大学。第二:我现在在奥兰多经营着一家建筑公司。第三:我主演过一部电视情景剧。第四:我因为患上一种罕有的遗传性眼疾而失去了视力。第五:我曾经给两位美国最高法院的法官当过法律助手。哪一个不是真的呢?事实上,它们都是真的。是的,它们都是真的。
At this point, most people really only careabout the television show.
这时候,大部分人其实都只关心那部电视剧。
I know this from experience. OK, so theshow was NBC's "Saved by the Bell: The New Class." And I playedWeasel Wyzell, who was the sort of dorky, nerdy character on the show, whichmade it a very major acting challenge for me as a 13-year-old boy.
这是经验告诉我的。好吧,那部电视剧是NBC的“SavedbytheBell:TheNewClass."而我饰演了WeaselWyzell,一个在剧中带点笨拙书呆子性格的角色,对于13岁的我来说,这是一个很重大的演出挑战。
Now, did you struggle with number four, myblindness? Why is that? We make assumptions about so-called disabilities. As ablind man, I confront others' incorrect assumptions about my abilities everyday. My point today is not about my blindness, however. It's about my blind taught me to live my life eyes wide open. It taught me to spotthose backwards-swimming fish that our minds create. Going blind cast them intofocus.
现在,你是否纠结于第四个事实,我的失明?为什么会这样呢?我们对所谓的残疾做出一些假设。作为盲人,我每天都面对别人对我能力的错误假设。然而,我今天的重点不在于我的失明。而是在于我的视野。失明教会我用开阔的眼界去生活。它教会我去发现那些倒游的鱼,我们内心创造出来的鱼。失明使它们变成了焦点。
What does it feel like to see? It'simmediate and passive. You open your eyes and there's the world. Seeing isbelieving. Sight is truth. Right? Well, that's what I thought.
看得见是怎么样的一种感觉?是即时并且被动的。你睁开双眼,世界就在你眼前。看见什么相信什么。眼见为实。对吧?好吧,我当初是这么想的。
Then, from age 12 to 25, my retinasprogressively deteriorated. My sight became an increasingly bizarre carnivalfunhouse hall of mirrors and illusions. The salesperson I was relieved to spotin a store was really a mannequin. Reaching down to wash my hands, I suddenlysaw it was a urinal I was touching, not a sink, when my fingers felt its trueshape.
接着,从12岁到15岁,我的视网膜逐渐衰弱。我的视像变成了愈加奇异的嘉年华游乐场里的哈哈镜。我在商店里好不容易发现的销售员实际上是一个人体模型。俯下身去洗手,当我的手指感受到它的真实形状,我意识到我去触摸的是小便池,而不是洗手池。
A friend described the photograph in my hand, and only then I could seethe image depicted. Objects appeared, morphed and disappeared in my reality. Itwas difficult and exhausting to see. I pieced together fragmented, transitoryimages, consciously analyzed the clues, searched for some logic in my crumblingkaleidoscope, until I saw nothing at all.
一位朋友向我描述我手中的照片,只有在那时候我才能明白图像描画了些什么。物体在我的现实中出现、变形和消失。看见成为了一件困难的使我筋疲力尽的事情。我把支离破碎的、片刻的图像拼接起来,凭感觉分析线索,在我破碎的万花筒中寻找符合逻辑的对应,直到我什么都看不见。
I learned that what we see is not universaltruth. It is not objective reality. What we see is a unique, personal, virtualreality that is masterfully constructed by our brain.
我认识到我们所看到的并不即是普遍真理。并不是客观现实。我们所看到的是独一无二的虚拟现实,它是由我们的大脑巧妙地构造出来的。
Let me explain with a bit of amateurneuroscience. Your visual cortex takes up about 30 percent of your 's compared to approximately eight percent for touch and two to threepercent for hearing. Every second, your eyes can send your visual cortex as manyas two billion pieces of information. The rest of your body can send your brainonly an additional billion. So sight is one third of your brain by volume andcan claim about two thirds of your brain's processing resources. It's nosurprise then that the illusion of sight is so compelling. But make no mistakeabout it: sight is an illusion.
请让我以外行的身份解释一遍神经系统学。你的视觉皮层占据了你脑部的大概30%。相比于触觉的8%以及听觉的2-3%。每一秒钟,你的双眼能够向你的视觉皮层传达多达二十亿的信息片段。其余的身体部分加起来也仅能够传达另外的十亿。所以视觉占据了你脑部容量的三分之一并且占用了你脑部中三分之二的信息处理资源。因此意想得到的是视觉幻象是多么的令人信服。但是别误会了:我们所看到的只是一种幻象。
Here's where it gets interesting. To createthe experience of sight, your brain references your conceptual understanding ofthe world, other knowledge, your memories, opinions, emotions, mentalattention. All of these things and far more are linked in your brain to yoursight. These linkages work both ways, and usually occur subconsciously. So for example, what you see impacts how you feel, and the way you feel can literally change what you see.
这是事情变得有趣的地方。为了制造视觉经验,你的大脑参考了你对这个世界的概念性理解,其它知识、你的记忆、看法、情绪和心理关注。所有的这些东西和以及其它的都连结于你的大脑和视觉景象之间。这些连结是双向作用的,并且常常在潜意识中发生。举例子来说,你所看到的会影响到你的感觉,而你的感觉又能够直接改变你所看到的。
Numerous studies demonstrate this. If you are asked toestimate the walking speed of a man in a video, for example, your answer willbe different if you're told to think about cheetahs or turtles. A hill appearssteeper if you've just exercised, and a landmark appears farther away if you'rewearing a heavy backpack. We have arrived at a fundamental contradiction.
许多的研究证明了这一点。如果你被要求去估计视频中人物的行走速度,举例来说,在被告知去想着猎豹或者乌龟的情况下,你的答案将会不一样。如果你刚刚运动完,你会感觉山变陡峭了,如果你背着一个很重的背包,眼前的目的地看起来距离更远。我们在这里遇到了一种基本的矛盾。
What you see is a complex mental construction of your own making, but you experienceit passively as a direct representation of the world around you. You createyour own reality, and you believe it. I believed mine until it broke apart. Thedeterioration of my eyes shattered the illusion.
你肉眼所看到的东西是你自己创造的一种复杂的心智建造,但是你被动地经历着它让它作为你周遭世界的一种直接呈现。你创造了属于你自己的现实并且深信着它。我深信于我的现实直到它瓦解了。我双眼的衰退粉碎了这种幻象。
You see, sight is just one way we shape ourreality. We create our own realities in many other ways. Let's take fear asjust one example. Your fears distort your reality. Under the warped logic offear, anything is better than the uncertain. Fear fills the void at all costs,passing off what you dread for what you know, offering up the worst in place ofthe ambiguous, substituting assumption for reason. Psychologists have a greatterm for it: awfulizing.
你看,视觉只是我们认识世界的一种途径。我们可以通过许多其它的方式去创造属于我们自己的现实。让我们来举恐惧作为一个例子。你的恐惧扭曲了你的现实。在扭曲的恐惧逻辑影响下,任何事情都比未知要好。恐惧不惜一切代价填补空白,把你所惧怕的冒充成你所知道的,让最糟糕取代了不明确,使假设代替了原因。心理学家对此有一个很好的术语:往坏处想。
Right? Fear replaces the unknown with theawful. Now, fear is self-realizing. When you face the greatest need to lookoutside yourself and think critically, fear beats a retreat deep inside yourmind, shrinking and distorting your view, drowning your capacity for criticalthought with a flood of disruptive emotions. When you face a compellingopportunity to take action, fear lulls you into inaction, enticing you topassively watch its prophecies fulfill themselves.
对吧?恐惧把未知的替换成了可怕的。现在,恐惧在自我实现着。当你非常迫切的需要去客观看待自己并进行批判性思考的时候,恐惧在你的内心深处打起了退堂鼓,收缩并扭曲你的观点,以洪水般涌现的破坏性情绪淹没你批判思考的能力。当你面对一个极具吸引力的机会去采取行动时,恐惧误导你去无所作为,诱使你被动地看着它的预言一个个实现成真。
When I was diagnosed with my blindingdisease, I knew blindness would ruin my life. Blindness was a death sentencefor my independence. It was the end of achievement for me. Blindness meant Iwould live an unremarkable life, small and sad, and likely alone. I knew was a fiction born of my fears, but I believed it. It was a lie, but itwas my reality, just like those backwards-swimming fish in little Dorothy'smind. If I had not confronted the reality of my fear, I would have lived it. Iam certain of that.
当我被诊出患有致盲眼疾时,我料到失明将会毁了我的生活。失明对我的独立能力判了死刑。它是我一生成就的终点。失明意味着我将度过平凡的一生,渺小且凄惨,极有可能孤独终老。我就知道会这样。这是我因为恐惧带来的胡编乱造,但我相信了。它是一个谎言,但它曾是我的现实。就像小多萝西内心那些倒游的鱼一样。如若我不曾面对过我内心恐惧创造出来的现实,我会就那样活着。我很确定。
So how do you live your life eyes wideopen? It is a learned discipline. It can be taught. It can be practiced. I willsummarize very briefly.
所以你们如何去以开阔的眼界生活呢?这是一个需要学习的学科。它能被传授。它能被练习。我简单地总结一下。
Hold yourself accountable for every moment,every thought, every detail. See beyond your fears. Recognize your your internal strength. Silence your internal critic. Correct yourmisconceptions about luck and about success. Accept your strengths and yourweaknesses, and understand the difference. Open your hearts to your bountifulblessings.
让自己学会负责,对每一时刻,每个想法,每个细节。超越你内心的恐惧。识别出你所作的假设。展现你内在的能力。消除你内心的批判。修正你对于运气和成功的错误概念。接受自己的长处和短处,并清楚认识它们之间的区别。打开你的心扉去迎接对你满满的祝福。
Your fears, your critics, your heroes, yourvillains -- they are your excuses, rationalizations, shortcuts, justifications,your surrender. They are fictions you perceive as reality. Choose to seethrough them. Choose to let them go. You are the creator of your reality. Withthat empowerment comes complete responsibility.
你的恐惧,你的批判,你的英雄,你的敌人——他们都是你的借口、合理化作用、捷径、辩护、屈服。它们是你错认为现实的小说。尝试选择看穿它们。尝试让它们远离自己。你是自我现实的创造者。伴随这种权利而来的是你需要负起全部的责任。
I chose to step out of fear's tunnel intoterrain uncharted and undefined. I chose to build there a blessed life. Farfrom alone, I share my beautiful life with Dorothy, my beautiful wife, with ourtriplets, whom we call the Tripskys, and with the latest addition to thefamily, sweet baby Clementine.
我选择走出恐惧的隧道,步入了未知的领域。我选择在那里构建幸福的人生。远离孤单,我分享我的美好生活,与多萝西,我美丽的妻子,与我们的三胞胎,我们称之为“Tripskys”,还有新添的家庭成员,可爱的宝贝克莱蒙蒂。
What do you fear? What lies do you tellyourself? How do you embellish your truth and write your own fictions? Whatreality are you creating for yourself?
你在害怕什么?你在欺骗自己什么?你是如何修饰自己的真相,编写自己的小说?你在为自己创造着怎么样的现实?
In your career and personal life, in yourrelationships, and in your heart and soul, your backwards-swimming fish do yougreat harm. They exact a toll in missed opportunities and unrealized potential,and they engender insecurity and distrust where you seek fulfillment andconnection. I urge you to search them out.
在你的职业生涯和个人生活中,在你的人际关系中,在你的内心和灵魂中,倒游的鱼给你带来巨大的伤害。它们使你为错失的机会以及尚未实现的潜能付出代价。它们在你寻求满足与联系时引起你的不安以及不信任。我呼吁大家把它们找出来。
Helen Keller said that the only thing worsethan being blind is having sight but no vision. For me, going blind was aprofound blessing, because blindness gave me vision. I hope you can see what Isee.
海伦·凯勒曾说过,唯一比失明更糟糕的是拥有视力,却没有远见。失明对我来说是一种深深的祝福,因为失明给予了我远见。我衷心希望你们也能看见我所看见的。
Thank you.(Applause)
谢谢。(掌声)
Bruno Giussani: Isaac, before you leave thestage, just a question. This is an audience of entrepreneurs, of doers, ofinnovators. You are a CEO of a company down in Florida, and many are probablywondering, how is it to be a blind CEO? What kind of specific challenges do youhave, and how do you overcome them?
布鲁诺·朱萨尼:艾萨克,在你离开之前,我想问一个问题。在座的各位都是创业者、实干家、创新者。你是佛罗里达一家公司的执行总裁,很多人大概都会好奇,身为一名失明的执行总裁究竟是怎么样的呢?这使你面临哪些具体的挑战,而你又是怎么克服它们的呢?
Isaac Lidsky: Well, the biggest challengebecame a blessing. I don't get visual feedback from people.
艾萨克·利德斯基:好吧,最大的挑战成了一种祝福。我看不到别人的反应。
BG: What's that noise there? IL: Yeah. So,for example, in my leadership team meetings, I don't see facial expressions orgestures. I've learned to solicit a lot more verbal feedback. I basically forcepeople to tell me what they think. And in this respect, it's become, like Isaid, a real blessing for me personally and for my company, because wecommunicate at a far deeper level, we avoid ambiguities, and most important, myteam knows that what they think truly matters.
布:有什么声音在哪里吗?艾:是的。比如说在我的领导团队的会议中,我无法看到别人的表情或者手势。我学会去征求更多的言语反馈。我基本都要求人们把他们的想法告诉我。正因如此,它成为了,如我所说,对我个人还有我公司的一种真正的祝福。因为我们获得了更深层次的沟通。我们避免了歧义,还有更重要的,我的团队清楚知道他们的想法是真的要紧的。
BG: Isaac, thank you for coming to TED. IL:Thank you, Bruno.
布:艾萨克,感谢你来到了TED。艾:谢谢你,布鲁诺。
经典TED英语演讲稿【第四篇】
When people find out I write about time management, they assume two things. One is that I'm always on time, and I'm not. I have four small children, and I would like to blame them for my occasional tardiness, but sometimes it's just not their fault. I was once late to my own speech on time management.
当人们发现我写关于时间管理的文章时,他们都会假设两件事:第一,我永远都准时,但我并不是。我有四个小孩,我偶尔将迟到归咎于他们,不过有时候真的不是因为他们。我有一次在去我的一个关于时间管理的演讲时迟到了。
We all had to just take a moment together and savor that irony.
我们都需要一点时间去好好地体味一下这有多么讽刺。
The second thing they assume is that I have lots of tips and tricks for saving bits of time here and I'll hear from magazines that are doing a story along these lines, generally on how to help their readers find an extra hour in the day. And the idea is that we'll shave bits of time off everyday activities, add it up, and we'll have time for the good stuff.
第二,人们总是假设我有很多关于如何节省时间的贴士和技巧。有时候我听说一些杂志 在写这方面的故事,通常都是关于教读者如何在一天中获得额外一个小时。基本思路就是从日常的每个活动中挤出一点时间,加起来,然后我们就有时间去做更有意思的事情了。
I question the entire premise of this piece, but I'm always interested in hearing what they've come up with before they call me. Some of my favorites:doing errands where you only have to make right-hand turns.
我对这个说法持保留意见,不过我还是愿意听听他们在找我之前有什么想法。我最喜欢的几个是:只完成那些只需要右转的事;
Being extremely judicious in microwave usage: it says three to three-and-a-half minutes on the package, we're totally getting in on the bottom side of that. And my personal favorite, which makes sense on some level, is to DVR your favorite shows so you can fast-forward through the commercials.
在用微波炉时,要极度审慎:当食物包装上面写了3到分钟时,我们要挑时间最短的那个。我个人最喜欢的是,录下你最喜欢看的电视剧,然后你就可以跳过广告了。其实在某个程度上,还是挺有道理的。
That way, you save eight minutes every half hour, so in the course of two hours of watching TV, you find 32 minutes to exercise.
这样,你每半个小时就可以挤出八分钟。那么你葱用来看电视的两个小时中,可以挤出32分钟锻炼的时间。
Which is true. You know another way to find 32 minutes to exercise? Don't watch two hours of TV a day, right?
倒的确是这么回事儿。你还知道其他可以找到32分钟锻炼时间的方法吗?不要每天都看两个小时电视就行了,对吧? (笑声)
Anyway, the idea is we'll save bits of time here and there, add it up, we will finally get to everything we want to do. But after studying how successful people spend their time and looking at their schedules hour by hour, I think this idea has it completely backward.
总之,就是要在各处都省点时间,加起来就有时间做我们想做的事了。但在我了解成功的人如何分配时间,并看过了他们的时间表后,我觉得这个想法是完全本末倒置的。
We don't build the lives we want by saving time. We build the lives we want, and then time saves itself.
我们不是通过节省时间来打造我们想过的生活。我们应该先建立我们想要的生活,时间就会自然而然节省出来。
Here's what I mean. I recently did a time diary project looking at 1,001 days in the lives of extremely busy women. They had demanding jobs, sometimes their own businesses, kids to care for, maybe parents to care for, community commitments -- busy, busy people.
我来解释一下。我最近有个时间日记项目,观察最忙碌的女士生命中的1001天。她们工作繁忙,有时候是自己的生意,有时候要照顾自己的孩子,或者是照顾父母,还有服务社区等等——都是一些很忙的人。
I had them keep track of their time for a week so I could add up how much they worked and slept, and I interviewed them about their strategies, for my book.
我让她们记录了一星期的行程,计算她们工作和睡觉的时间,为了我的书,我还采访 了解了她们的常用策略。
One of the women whose time log I studied goes out on a Wednesday night for something. She comes home to find that her water heater has broken, and there is now water all over her basement. If you've ever had anything like this happen to you, you know it is a hugely damaging, frightening, sopping mess.
其中一个被我研究过时间表的女士,在一个周三晚上出去了一趟,回家发现她的热水器坏了,地下室都被水淹了。如果你也遇到过这种事儿的话,你会知道眼前的景象多么令人崩溃和沮丧。
So she's dealing with the immediate aftermath that night, next day she's got plumbers coming in, day after that, professional cleaning crew dealing with the ruined carpet. All this is being recorded on her time log. Winds up taking seven hours of her week. Seven hours. That's like finding an extra hour in the day.
于是那个晚上她立刻着手处理,第二天她找了一个水管工,第三天找了专业的清理人员 来处理损坏的地毯。所有这些都算在了她的时间表内。总共花了她一周中的七个小时。七个小时。这就等于一周七天每天都要挤出一个小时。
But I'm sure if you had asked her at the start of the week, "Could you find seven hours to train for a triathlon?" "Could you find seven hours to mentor seven worthy people?" I'm sure she would've said what most of us would've said, which is, "No -- can't you see how busy I am?" Yet when she had to find seven hours because there is water all over her basement, she found seven hours.
但是假如你在这一周刚开始时就问她,“你能在这周抽出七个小时来参加铁人三项吗?”,“你能在这周抽出七个小时指导七个有潜力的人吗?“ 我确定她会像大多数人一样, 说,”怎么可能,你看不出我有多忙吗?“ 但是她最后不得不抽出七个小时,因为她的地下室都被水淹了, 她挤出了这七个小时。
And what this shows us is that time is highly elastic. We cannot make more time, but time will stretch to accommodate what we choose to put into it.
这件事告诉我们:时间是有弹性的。我们不能创造更多时间,但是时间会自己调整去适应我们选择去做的事情。
And so the key to time management is treating our priorities as the equivalent of that broken water heater. To get at this, I like to use language from one of the busiest people I ever interviewed. By busy, I mean she was running a small business with 12 people on the payroll, she had six children in her spare time.
所以时间管理的关键,就是对待最重要的事情应该像对待那个坏了的热水器一样。要做到这一点,我要借用我采访过最忙的人的话。她经营着一个小企业,请了十二名员工,空余时间她还要照顾六个孩子。
I was getting in touch with her to set up an interview on how she "had it all" -- that phrase. I remember it was a Thursday morning, and she was not available to speak with me. Of course, right?
我联系上了她,想要采访她关于她是怎么做到“无所不能”的。我记得那是一个星期四的早晨,她没时间和我说话。当然了,她很忙。
But the reason she was unavailable to speak with me is that she was out for a hike, because it was a beautiful spring morning, and she wanted to go for a hike. So of course this makes me even more intrigued, and when I finally do catch up with her, she explains it like this. She says, "Listen Laura, everything I do, every minute I spend, is my choice."
但是她没时间和我说话的原因是,她去远足了。因为那是春季一个美丽的清晨,所以她去远足了。这样的她让我变得更感兴趣了,当我最终联系上她时,她说:“听我说,劳拉,我做的所有的事情,我花的每分每秒,都是我的选择。
And rather than say, "I don't have time to do x, y or z," she'd say, "I don't do x, y or z because it's not a priority." "I don't have time," often means "It's not a priority."
”所以与其说, ”我没有时间做这个,这个,或者那个。” 她会说:”我不做这些事情因为这些不是我的首要任务。““我没有时间”的意思通常是 ”那不是我的首要任务”。
If you think about it, that's really more accurate language. I could tell you I don't have time to dust my blinds, but that's not true. If you offered to pay me $100,000 to dust my blinds, I would get to it pretty quickly.
其实你想想, 那的确是更准确的说法。我可能会告诉你我没有时间清理百叶窗,但那不是真的。假如你愿意付我10万美金让我给百叶窗除尘,我会马上就去做。 (笑声)
Since that is not going to happen, I can acknowledge this is not a matter of lacking time; it's that I don't want to do it. Using this language reminds us that time is a choice. And granted, there may be horrible consequences for making different choices, I will give you that.
既然那不可能发生,我可以说不是因为时间不够,而是我不想做。这么说提醒了我们, 时间是一种选择。我会告诉你,当然,不同的选择有时候会带来可怕的后果。
But we are smart people, and certainly over the long run, we have the power to fill our lives with the things that deserve to be there.
但是我们都是聪明人,从长远来看,我们有能力去选择一些值得做的事,来填补我们生命中的时间。那么我们应该怎么做呢?
So how do we do that? How do we treat our priorities as the equivalent of that broken water heater?
我们要如何像对待那个坏了的热水器一样对待我们的首要任务?首先,我们需要找出哪些事最重要。
Well, first we need to figure out what they are. I want to give you two strategies for thinking about first, on the professional side: I'm sure many people coming up to the end of the year are giving or getting annual performance reviews. You look back over your successes over the year, your "opportunities for growth." And this serves its purpose, but I find it's more effective to do this looking forward.
我想给你们分享两个技巧。第一个,从职业的角度来说:我相信许多人在年底的时候,会发出或者收到年度绩效审查。你回头看看这一年的成功和 “成长的机会”。这的确起到了它的作用,但是我发现往前看会更有效。
So I want you to pretend it's the end of next year. You're giving yourself a performance review,and it has been an absolutely amazing year for you professionally. What three to five things did you do that made it so amazing? So you can write next year's performance review now.
我想让你们把这当做下一年的年底。你在给自己做年度绩效审查,在专业方面,这一年的表现非常出众。是哪三到五件事使这一年变得如此出众?你现在就可以写明年的绩效审查。
And you can do this for your personal life, too. I'm sure many of you, like me, come December, get cards that contain these folded up sheets of colored paper, on which is written what is known as the family holiday letter.
你也可以在个人生活方面这么做。我相信你们许多人,包括我,在十二月,都会收到这种夹着彩色纸的卡片。上面写着“家庭假日信件”。
Bit of a wretched genre of literature, really, going on about how amazing everyone in the household is,or even more scintillating, how busy everyone in the household is. But these letters serve a purpose,which is that they tell your friends and family what you did in your personal life that mattered to you over the year.
听起来像是一个挺悲惨的文学题材,谈论家里每个人有多了不起,或者更精彩点,家里每个人有多忙。但是这些信有它们的用处,它们告诉你的朋友和家人你这一年里做了什么对个人生活有意义的事。
So this year's kind of done, but I want you to pretend it's the end of next year, and it has been an absolutely amazing year for you and the people you care about. What three to five things did you do that made it so amazing? So you can write next year's family holiday letter now. Don't send it.
那么今年快要结束了,我想让你假装这是明年的年底,对你和你在乎的人来说,这都是无与伦比的一年。哪三到五件事让你这一年表现如此出色?其实你现在就可以写明年的家庭假日信件了。先不要发出去。
Please, don't send it. But you can write it. And now, between the performance review and the family holiday letter, we have a list of six to ten goals we can work on in the next year.
真的,不要发出去。但是你可以写。现在,有了绩效评估和写给家人的信,我们就有了六到十个明年可以努力的目标。我们需要先把他们分成可行的阶段性任务。
And now we need to break these down into doable steps. So maybe you want to write a family , you can read some other family histories, get a sense for the style. Then maybe think about the questions you want to ask your relatives, set up appointments to interview them. Or maybe you want to run a 5K. So you need to find a race and sign up, figure out a training plan, and dig those shoes out of the back of the closet.
或许你要写一个家族传记。首先吗,你可以读读别人的家族历史,了解一下大概的风格 然后可以想象你要问亲戚的问题,约定和他们见面谈话的时间。或者你想要参加一个五千米的短程马拉松。你需要先找一个竞赛报名,再做一个培训计划,从衣柜底下翻出你的运动鞋。
And then -- this is key -- we treat our priorities as the equivalent of that broken water heater, by putting them into our schedules first. We do this by thinking through our weeks before we are in them.
然后——这是关键——我们将我们的首要事件视为那个坏掉的热水器,将它们优先放入我们的日程表里。我们要在事情发生的几周前就先想好。
I find a really good time to do this is Friday afternoons. Friday afternoon is what an economist might calla "low opportunity cost" time. Most of us are not sitting there on Friday afternoons saying, "I am excited to make progress toward my personal and professional priorities right now."
我发现周五的下午最适合处理这事儿。周五的下午是被经济学家称为“低机会成本”时间。我们大部分人不会在周五下午想着,“我要朝我的个人和职业生涯的首要事件迈进了, 所以很兴奋。“
But we are willing to think about what those should be. So take a little bit of time Friday afternoon, make yourself a three-category priority list: career, relationships, self. Making a three-category list reminds usthat there should be something in all three categories.
但是我们愿意去想那些事是什么。所以在周五下午花一点时间,为自己做一个分成三类的首要事件的列表:事业、人际关系、个人。这样的三项分类列表提醒了我们每一个类别都应该有一些事。
Career, we think about; relationships, self -- not so much. But anyway, just a short list, two to three items in each. Then look out over the whole of the next week, and see where you can plan them in.
事业,我们经常考虑;人际关系,个人——很少会想。无论如何,只要一个短短的列表,每个都包含两到三件事。它们会帮助我们看清下周,如何在下周计划这些事情。你可以决定如何计划。
Where you plan them in is up to you. I know this is going to be more complicated for some people than others. I mean, some people's lives are just harder than others. It is not going to be easy to find time to take that poetry class if you are caring for multiple children on your own. I get that. And I don't want to minimize anyone's struggle. But I do think that the numbers I am about to tell you are empowering.
这可能对一些人来说会比较困难一点。我的意思是,有些人的人生就是比较复杂。如果你自己有好几个要照顾的小孩,想要找时间去参加诗歌班一定不容易。我懂。我不想轻视任何人的困难。但是我觉得我接下来要说的数字,是会改变你的想法的。
There are 168 hours in a week. Twenty-four times seven is 168 hours. That is a lot of time. If you are working a full-time job, so 40 hours a week, sleeping eight hours a night, so 56 hours a week -- that leaves 72 hours for other things. That is a lot of time.
我们每周都有168个小时,24乘以7是168个小时。这是一段很长时间。假如你有一个全职的工作,一周是40个小时,每晚睡八个小时,一周是56个小时,我们有剩下72个小时来做其他事情。这是一段很长的时间。
You say you're working 50 hours a week, maybe a main job and a side hustle. Well, that leaves 62 hours for other things. You say you're working 60 hours. Well, that leaves 52 hours for other things. You say you're working more than 60 hours. Well, are you sure?
假如你说你每周工作50个小时,比如一份全职和一份兼职。这样你还是有60小时去做其他的事情。假如你说你每周工作60个小时,你还是有52个小时去做其他的事情。你说你每周工作超过60个小时,你确定吗?
There was once a study comparing people's estimated work weeks with time diaries. They found that people claiming 75-plus-hour work weeks were off by about 25 hours.
曾经有一个研究对比了人们估计的工作时间,和实际的工作日记。他们发现那些表示工作超过75小时的人,有25小时的误差。
You can guess in which direction, right? Anyway, in 168 hours a week, I think we can find time for what matters to you.
你可以猜到这个误差是多了还是少了吧?无论如何,在一周的168个小时里,我觉得我们总可以找到时间做我们想做的事。
If you want to spend more time with your kids, you want to study more for a test you're taking, you want to exercise for three hours and volunteer for two, you can. And that's even if you're working way more than full-time hours.
如果你想花时间陪陪你的孩子,或者准备你即将到来的考试,你想锻炼两三个小时或者 做两个小时志愿者,你都可以的。即便你的工作时间远超过法定时间。
So we have plenty of time, which is great, because guess what? We don't even need that much time to do amazing things. But when most of us have bits of time, what do we do? Pull out the phone, right?Start deleting emails. Otherwise, we're puttering around the house or watching TV.
所以我们有很多时间,这很好。但是你知道吗?我们根本不需要那么多时间去完成一个大目标。但当我们有一点空闲时间的时候,我们会做什么?拿出手机,是吧?开始删除邮件。或者在家里闲逛,看电视。
But small moments can have great power. You can use your bits of time for bits of joy. Maybe it's choosing to read something wonderful on the bus on the way to work.
但是每个不起眼的时刻都潜力无限。你可以用零星的时间,来获得零星的快乐。比如说在去上班的公车上读一些精彩的东西。
I know when I had a job that required two bus rides and a subway ride every morning, I used to go to the library on weekends to get stuff to read. It made the whole experience almost, almost, enjoyable. Breaks at work can be used for meditating or praying. If family dinner is out because of your crazy work schedule, maybe family breakfast could be a good substitute.
当我以前的工作需要我每天早上乘两趟公车和一趟地铁的时候,我周末会去图书馆找东西来读。这几乎,几乎让我的生活更丰富了。工作间隙的休息时间可以用来冥想或者祷告。如果你因为工作忙而不能吃家庭晚餐,试一下家庭早餐。
It's about looking at the whole of one's time and seeing where the good stuff can go. I truly believe is time. Even if we are busy, we have time for what matters. And when we focus on what matters, we can build the lives we want in the time we've got.
这就是看着一个人所有的时间,然后找到什么时候可以做想做的事。我真的相信,我们都有充分的时间。就算我们很忙,我们仍然有时间去做重要的事。当我们关注在重要的事上时,我们可以用所拥有的时间创造我们想要的生活。
Thank you.
谢谢。
经典TED英语演讲稿【第五篇】
When you are a kid, you get asked this one particular question a lot, it really gets kind of annoying. What do you want to be when you grow up? Now, adults are hoping for answers like, I want to be an astronaut or I want to be a neurosurgeon, you’re adults in your imaginations.
Kids, they’re most likely to answer with pro-skateboarder, surfer or minecraft player. I asked my little brother, and he said, seriously dude, I’m 10, I have no idea, probably a pro-skier, let’s go get some ice cream.
See, us kids are going to answer something we’re stoked on, what we think is cool, what we have experience with, and that’s typically the opposite of what adults want to hear.
But if you ask a little kid, sometimes you’ll get the best answer, something so simple, so obvious and really profound. When I grow up, I want to be happy.
For me, when I grow up, I want to continue to be happy like I am now. I’m stoked to be here at TedEx, I mean, I’ve been watching Ted videos for as long as I can remember, but I never thought I’d make it on the stage here so soon. I mean, I just became a teenager, and like most teenage boys, I spend most of my time wondering, how did my room get so messy all on its own.
Did I take a shower today? And the most perplexing of all, how do I get girls to like me? Neurosciences say that the teenage brain is pretty weird, our prefrontal cortex is underdeveloped, but we actually have more neurons than adults, which is why we can be so creative, and impulsive and moody and get bummed out.
But what bums me out is to know that, a lot of kids today are just wishing to be happy, to be healthy, to be safe, not bullied, and be loved for who they are. So it seems to me when adults say, what do you want to be when you grow up? They just assume that you’ll automatically be happy and healthy.
Well, maybe that’s not the case, go to school, go to college, get a job, get married, boom, then you’ll be happy, right? You don’t seem to make learning how to be happy and healthy a priority in our schools, it’s separate from schools. And for some kids, it doesn’t exists at all? But what if we didn’t make it separate? What if we based education on the study and practice of being happy and healthy, because that’s what it is, a practice, and a simple practice at that?
Education is important, but why is being happy and healthy not considered education, I just don’t get it. So I’ve been studying the science of being happy and healthy. It really comes down to practicing these eight things. Exercise, diet and nutrition, time in nature, contribution, service to others, relationships, recreation, relaxation and stress management, and religious or spiritual involvement, yes, got that one.
So these eight things come from Dr. Roger Walsh, he calls them Therapeutic Lifestyle Changes or TLCs for short. He is a scientist that studies how to be happy and healthy. In researching this talk, I got a chance to ask him a few questions like; do you think that our schools today are making these eight TLCs a priority? His response was no surprise, it was essentially no. But he did say that many people do try to get this kind of education outside of the traditional arena, through reading and practices such as meditation or yoga.
But what I thought was his best response was that, much of education is oriented for better or worse towards making a living rather than making a life.
In 2006, Sir Ken Robinson gave the most popular Ted talk of all time. Schools kill creativity. His message is that creativity is as important as literacy, and we should treat it with the same status.
A lot of parents watched those videos, some of those parents like mine counted it as one of the reasons they felt confident to pull their kids from traditional school to try something different. I realized I’m part of this small, but growing revolution of kids who are going about their education differently, and you know what? It freaks a lot of people out.
Even though I was only nine, when my parents pulled me out of the school system, I can still remember my mom being in tears when some of her friends told her she was crazy and it was a stupid idea.
Looking back, I’m thankful she didn’t cave to peer pressure, and I think she is too. So, out of the 200 million people that have watched Sir Ken Robinson’s talk, why aren’t there more kids like me out there?
Shane McConkey is my hero. I loved him because he was the world’s best skier. But then, one day I realized what I really loved about Shane, he was a hacker. Not a computer hacker, he hacked skiing. His creativity and inventions made skiing what it is today, and why I love to ski. A lot of people think of hackers as geeky computer nerds who live in their parent’s basement and spread computer viruses, but I don’t see it that way.
Hackers are innovators, hackers are people who challenge and change the systems to make them work differently, to make them work better, it’s just how they think, it’s a mindset.
I’m growing up in a world that needs more people with the hacker mindset, and not just for technology, everything is up for being hacked, even skiing, even education. So whether it’s Steve Jobs, Mark Zuckerberg or Shane McConkey having the hacker mindset can change the world.
Healthy, happy, creativity in the hacker mindset are all a large part of my education. I call it Hackschooling, I don’t use any one particular curriculum, and I’m not dedicated to any one particular approach, I hack my education.
I take advantage of opportunities in my community, and through a network of my friends and family. I take advantage of opportunities to experience what I’m learning, and I’m not afraid to look for shortcuts or hacks to get a better faster result. It’s like a remix or a mash-up of learning. It’s flexible, opportunistic, and it never loses sight of making happy, healthy and creativity a priority.
And here is the cool part, because it’s a mindset, not a system. Hackschooling can be used anyone, even traditional schools. Soo what does my school look like? Well, it looks like Starbucks a lot of the time, but like most kids I study lot of math, science, history and writing. I didn’t used to like to write because my teachers made me write about butterflies and rainbows, and I wanted to write about skiing.
It was a relief for my good friend’s mom, started the Squaw Valley Kids Institute, where I got to write through my experiences and my interests, while, connecting with great speakers from around the nation, and that sparked my love of writing.
I realized that once you’re motivated to learn something, you can get a lot done in a short amount of time, and on your own, Starbucks is pretty great for that. Hacking physics was fun, we learned all about Newton and Galileo, and we experienced some basic physics concepts like kinetic energy through experimenting and making mistakes.
My favorite was the giant Newton’s cradle that we made out of bowling balls, no bocce balls. We experimented with lot of other things like bowling balls and event giant jawbreakers.
Project Discovery’s ropes course is awesome, and slightly stressful. When you’re 60 feet off the ground, you have to learn how to handle your fears, communicate clearly, and most importantly, trust each other.
Community organizations play a big part in my education, High Fives Foundation’s Basics Program being aware and safe in critical situations. We spent a day with the Squaw Valley Ski Patrol to learn more about mountain safety, then the next day we switched to science of snow, weather and avalanches.
But most importantly, we learned that making bad decisions puts you and your friends at risk. Young should talk, well brings history to life. You study a famous character in history, and so that you can stand on stage and perform as that character, and answer any question about their lifetime.
In this photo, you see Al Capone and Bob Marley getting grilled with questions at the historical Piper’s Opera House in Virginia City, the same stage where Harry Houdini got his start.
Time and nature is really important to me, it’s calm, quiet and I get to just log out of reality. I spend one day a week, outside all day. At my Fox Walkers classes, our goal is to be able to survive in the wilderness with just a knife. We learn to listen to nature, we learn to sense our surroundings, and I’ve gained a spiritual connection to nature that, I never knew existed.
But the best part is that we get to make spears, bows and arrows, fires with just a bow drill and survival shelters for the snowy nights when we camp out. Hanging out at the Moment Factory where they hand make skis and design clothes, has really inspired me to one day have my own business. The guys at the factory showed me why I need to be good at math, be creative and get good at selling.
So I got an internship at Big Shark Print to get better at design and selling. Between fetching lunch, scrubbing toilets and breaking their vacuum cleaner, I’m getting to contribute to clothing design, customizing hats and selling them. The people who work there are happy, healthy, creative, and stoked to be doing what they are doing, this is by far my favorite class.
So, this is why I’m really happy, powder days, and it’s a good metaphor for my life, my education, my hackschooling. If everyone ski this mountain, like most people think of education, everyone will be skiing the same line, probably the safest and most of the powder would go untouched.
I look at this, and see a thousand possibilities, dropping the corners, shredding the spine, looking for a churning from cliff-to-cliff. Skiing to me is freedom, and so is my education, it’s about being creative; doing things differently, it’s about community and helping each other. It’s about being happy and healthy among my very best friends.
So I’m starting to think, I know what I might want to do when I grow up, but if you ask me what do I want to be when I grow up? I’ll always know that I want to be happy. Thank you.