好英语网积极的心态可能令你懒惰，难以达成目标
About fifteen years ago, when entrepreneur Michael Stausholm started a business with a friend, his partner painted a rosy picture of the future of the business and promised him a lot of success.
大约15年前，创业者迈克尔·斯托斯霍尔姆（Michael Stausholm）跟朋友一起创办了一家公司。合伙人当时给他描绘了企业未来发展的美好蓝图，并向他承诺一定能大获成功。
Stausholm believed him and felt uplifted, as if saying it would will it to be so. Thinking positive, after all, is a common step to success, right?
斯托斯霍尔姆相信了他，因此感觉信心满满。在他看来，心想必然事成。毕竟，积极的心态是通向成功的常见步骤，不是吗？
“Positive thinking is something in the DNA of most entrepreneurs,” says Stausholm, who is based in Copenhagen and who previously worked for shipping company Maersk and then went on to consult for large companies on sustainability issues. “If you don’t think positively, you would never start a business.”
“积极的心态是多数创业者的共同基因。”斯托斯霍尔姆说。他居住在哥本哈根，之前曾经任职于船运公司马士基，后来为大公司提供可持续发展方面的咨询。“如果心态不够积极，就永远不会创业。”
But when the business fell apart, he learned an important lesson. There’s a downside to the power of positivity. “Just being positive and happy go lucky is not going to work — it has to be mixed with realism,” he says.
但当那家企业失败后，他吸取了一个重要的教训：积极的心态也有弊端。“单纯保持积极而无忧无虑的心态根本不起作用——必须要与现实主义融为一体。”他说。
迈克尔·斯托斯霍尔姆通过惨痛的教训了解到积极心态的弊端。
The power of positive thinking has been a guiding principle for business leaders at least since 1936 when Napoleon Hill published Think and Grow Rich. Two decades later Norman Vincent Peale wrote The Power of Positive Thinking, which has sold more than 21 million copies worldwide, and more recently Rhonda Byrne’s The Secret has gripped business leaders and others with its promises of success based on positive thinking.
自从拿破仑·希尔（Napoleon Hill）1936年出版了《思考致富》（Think and Grow Rich）一书后，积极的心态便成为了商业领袖的重要信条。20年后，诺曼·文森特·皮尔（Norman Vincent Peale）又写了《积极思考的力量》（The Power of Positive Thinking），全球销量超过2100万。最近，朗达·拜恩（Rhonda Byrne）的《秘密》（The Secret）也承诺积极的心态可以使人成功，并因此再次俘获了商业领袖和芸芸众生的心。
According to these positive-thinking tomes, negative thoughts or doubts stand in the way of success. But, in fact, a new crop of research finds that positive thinking has its limits — and even brings its own pitfalls. Positivity could be limiting your success.
这些与积极心态有关的书都认为，消极心态或犹豫不决的心态会阻碍人的成功。但实际上，一些最新的研究却发现，积极的心态也有局限性——甚至存在弊端。积极的心态也可能限制你的成功。
The seductive power of fantasy
幻想的魔力
Gabriele Oettingen, a professor of psychology at New York University who wrote Rethinking Positive Thinking: Inside the New Science of Motivation, says that when she started studying positive thinking, she discovered that energy, measured by blood pressure, drops when people generate happy fantasies about the future like landing a job or earning money.
纽约大学心理学教授加布里尔·奥丁根（Gabriele Oettingen）写了一本名为《重新思考积极心态：透视新的激励科学》（Rethinking Positive Thinking: Inside the New Science of Motivation）的书。当她开始研究积极心态后发现，当人们幻想找到工作或赚到钱等幸福的事情时，以血压为衡量标准的能量值却有所下降。
“The problem is people don’t get up their energy to fulfil their wishes,” says Oettingen.
“问题在于，人们并没有调动自身的能量来实现自己的愿望。”奥丁根说。
Often when people fantasise about achieving their goals they may not exert enough effort to actually achieve them, she says. Oettingen found, for example, that two years after university graduates fantasised about getting a job, they ended up earning less and receiving fewer job offers than those graduates who were more filled with doubt and worry. It turns out they also sent out fewer job applications.
她表示，通常而言，当人们幻想自己实现了目标时，他们或许不会付出足够的努力来真正实现目标。例如，奥丁根发现，那些幻想着自己找到工作的大学毕业生两年后获得的收入和录取通知都比战战兢兢的毕业生更少。不仅如此，他们发出的求职申请也更少。
“They fantasise about it and then feel already accomplished and relax,” and lose the motivation it takes to make things happen, she says.
她表示，“他们幻想这些情景之后，就会感觉自己已经达成目标，于是便放松下来。”这就会导致其丧失成功的动力。
Nimita Shah, the director of the London-based group The Career Psychologist, says people often come in feeling frustrated about not being able to manifest their wishes and then they feel guilty about having negative thoughts, worried that their downbeat thinking is part of the problem.
伦敦团体The Career Psychologist的负责人尼米塔·沙阿（Nimita Sha）表示，人们往往会因为无法实现自己的愿望而感觉沮丧，然后因为这种负面心态而产生负罪感，担心他们的悲观想法是造成这一问题的原因之一。
“It’s similar to having an immediate diet quick fix,” says Shah. Fantasising about the future may help create a short-term boost, but “in the long term it adds to people feeling worse”.
“这相当于通过快餐来填饱肚子。”沙阿说。幻想美好的未来或许可以带来短期的亢奋，但“从长期来看，却会令人们感觉更加糟糕”。
Naturally hardwired
天性使然
So, should we be worried and thinking the worst is around the corner more of the time? That could be tough. Optimism is embedded in the human psyche, says Tali Sharot, author of The Optimism Bias and director of the Affective Brain Lab, a London-based group that studies how emotions affect the brain. She had been trying to study the impact of negative events on emotion when she stumbled across the idea that people are naturally hardwired to think positively. In her initial experiments she asked people to imagine future negative scenarios such as relationship breakups or losing a job.
那么，我们是否应该多花些时间担心和思考可能发生的坏事呢？这可能很困难。《乐观偏见》（The Optimism Bias）的作者塔里·沙洛特（Tali Sharot）表示，乐观主义已经植根于人类的灵魂之中。沙洛特还是Affective Brain Lab的主任，这家位于伦敦的机构专门研究情感如何影响人类大脑。她之前一直在研究负面事件对人类情绪的影响，后来偶然发现，人类天生具备积极的心态。她在最初的实验中要求志愿者设想未来的消极场景，例如失恋或者失业。
She found that people would automatically change the negative experience to a positive one — they would say, for example, that they broke up with their partner and found an even better one.
她发现人们会自然而然地将消极体验转化成积极体验——例如，他们会说，失恋之后还可以找到更好的伴侣。
“It ruined my experiment,” says Sharot, but she realised that people have an inherent bias towards optimism. “They imagine the future to be better than the past,” she says.
“这破坏了我的实验。”沙洛特说，她因此意识到，人们天生就倾向于乐观。“他们设想未来会比过去更好。”她说。
That sort of optimism bias, which Sharot calculates exists in 80% of the population regardless of culture or country, helps people get motivated in the first place. Studies also show that optimists live longer and are more likely to be healthier. Positive thoughts, she says, can also become a self-fulfilling prophecy. People who believe they are going to live longer may end up eating healthier and exercising. And ingrained optimism bias also helps people prevail in the face of dire circumstances.
根据沙洛特的计算，无论身处何种文化，身在哪个国家，大约80%的人都存在这种乐观主义偏见。她表示，这有助于人们从一开始就调动积极性。研究还显示，乐观主义者的寿命更长，健康状况往往也更好。她表示，积极的心态还可以形成一种自我强化。相信自己可以长寿的人最终可能会食用更健康的食物，并进行更多的锻炼。而根深蒂固的乐观主义偏见还能帮助人们战胜不利环境。
But the optimism bias also tends to cause people to underestimate risk. That means for all its upside, we also, say, underestimate the amount of time and money a project will take or how a new pair of shoes will make us happy. In the end, too much optimism is dangerous and can get in your way.
但乐观主义偏见也往往会导致人们低估风险。换句话说，虽然存在种种好处，但乐观主义偏见也有一些弊端，例如低估了一个项目所花费的时间和金钱，或者一双鞋所能给我们带来的愉悦感。总之，过分乐观可能有害，甚至阻碍你的发展。
Embracing your inner negative Nelly
拥抱内心的负面情绪
But if our natural inclination is to be sunny in our thinking, it will take practice to take on board just enough negative to help offset those optimism blinders.
但如果人们真的天性乐观，那就需要通过一些练习来纳入足够的消极感受，从而抵消这些盲目乐观的情绪。
Using her two decades of research, Oettingen developed a tool called WOOP, which stands for wish, outcome, obstacle and plan. The tool, also available as a website and smartphone app, walks people through a series of exercises designed to help them come up with concrete strategies to achieve their short- or long-term goals, mixing positive thinking with attention to any downsides and barriers.
凭借自己长达20年的研究经验，奥丁根开发了一种名为WOOP的工具，这是希望（wish）、结果（outcome）、障碍（obstacle）和规划（plan）四个单词的首字母缩写。这款工具可以通过网站和智能手机应用两种渠道提供给用户使用：借助一系列的锻炼，便可帮助用户利用具体的战略实现短期和长期目标，在积极的心态中融入对各种缺点和障碍的关注。
For example, you might want to start a company but then realise you hate to ask people for money or don’t want to work long hours. You can then either figure out a way around those obstacles, like teaming up with a sales person or sticking to predefined work hours. Or you might decide that the obstacle is too big and isn’t worth it after all — before you’ve performed poorly.
例如，你或许很想创业，但却发现自己很讨厌向别人要钱，也不喜欢长时间工作。于是，你可能会找到一种方式来绕过这些障碍，例如与销售人员合作，或者坚持按照预先设定的时间工作。你也有可能在自己的表现还没有那么糟糕之前就认为困难太大，不值得为此付出。
“Then at least you can put the goal aside without a bad conscience and you can say ‘no, no I’ve looked it and at the moment it does not fit into my life’,” Oettingen says.
“你至少可以把目标放到一边，而不必感到内疚。你可以说，‘不，不，我已经了解过了，目前这不太适合我的生活。’”奥丁根说。
When Stausholm started the sustainable pencil company Sprout a few years ago he took lessons from his earlier business failures. He put all agreements down on paper and made contingency plans for the worst-case scenario.
当斯托斯霍尔姆几年前创办环保铅笔公司Sprout时，他从之前的失败中吸取了教训。他把所有的协议都落实到纸面上，并针对最糟糕的情形制定了应急计划。
Now the company sells more than 450,000 pencils a month in 60 countries, results which have surprised even Stausholm.
现在，他的公司每月向60个国家出售45万支铅笔。甚至连斯托斯霍尔姆自己都对这种业绩感到惊讶。
“There is a lot of talk about being positive when being a business owner,” says Stausholm. “But the opposite of positive is not negative — it’s having a sense of being realistic about what you can achieve and accomplish.”
“说起企业老板，人们总会提到要保持积极的心态。”他说，“但积极的反面并不是消极——关键是要对你所能达成的结果保持务实的心态。”