演讲文本

And the thing about a successful life is that a lot of the time,
常常，我们对一个成功人生的想象，
our ideas of what it would mean to live successfully are not our own.
不是来自我们自己，而是来自他人。
They're sucked in from other people; chiefly, if you're a man, your father, and if you're a woman, your mother.
如果你是个男人，你会以父亲做榜样，如果你是个女人，你会以母亲做榜样。
Psychoanalysis has been drumming home this message for about 80 years.
精神分析已经重复说了80年。
No one's quite listening hard enough, but I very much believe it's true.
但很少有人真正听进去，但我的确相信这件事。
And we also suck in messages from everything from the television, to advertising, to marketing, etc.
我们也会从电视、广告、各样的市场宣传中得到我们对成功的想象。
These are hugely powerful forces that define what we want and how we view ourselves.
这些东西影响了我们对我们自己的看法、我们想要什么。
When we're told that banking is a very respectable profession, a lot of us want to go into banking.
当我们听说银行业是个受人尊敬的行业，许多人便加入银行业。
When banking is no longer so respectable, we lose interest in banking. We are highly open to suggestion.
当银行业不再受人尊敬，我们便对银行业失去兴趣。我们很能接受建议。

So what I want to argue for is not that we should give up on our ideas of success,
我想说的是，我们不该放弃我们对成功的想象，
but we should make sure that they are our own.
但必须确定那些都是我们自己想要的。
We should focus in on our ideas, and make sure that we own them; that we are truly the authors of our own ambitions.
我们应该专注于我们自己的目标，确定这目标是我们真正想要的，确定这个梦想蓝图出自自己笔下。
Because it's bad enough not getting what you want,
因为得不到自己想要的已经够糟糕了，
but it's even worse to have an idea of what it is you want, and find out, at the end of the journey,
更糟糕的是，在人生旅程的终点发觉你所追求的，
that it isn't, in fact, what you wanted all along.
从来就不是你真正想要的。
So, I'm going to end it there. But what I really want to stress is: by all means, success, yes.
我必须在这里做个总结。但我真正想说的是成功是必要的。
But let's accept the strangeness of some of our ideas.
但请接受自己怪异的想法。
Let's probe away at our notions of success.
让我们朝着自己对成功的定义出发。
Let's make sure our ideas of success are truly our own. Thank you very much.
确定我们对成功的定义都是出于自己的真心。非常谢谢各位。

视频及简介

演讲简介：

阿兰·德波顿检视我们对成功和失败的看法，质疑它们所代表的意义。成功都是配得的吗？失败呢？听他机智地解答我们对成功的迷思，帮助我们摆脱势利，重新寻回对工作的热情。