(单词翻译:单击)
There is a kind of person who seems - at first glance - to benefit from an admirable degree of self-motivation, thoroughness and drive.
乍一看，有一种人似乎受益于令人钦佩的自我激励、投入和干劲。
They are up at dawn, they rarely take holidays, they are always sneaking in an extra hour or two of work.
他们黎明就起床，他们很少休假，他们总是偷偷地加班一两个小时。
Their bosses are highly impressed, they are constantly promoted, their grades have been excellent since primary school, they never miss an appointment or turn in a piece of work that is less than stellar.
他们的老板对他们印象深刻，他们不断升职，从小学开始成绩就一直很优秀，一件不太优秀的作品，他们从来没有错过过一次约会，也从来没有上交过一件不太优秀的作品。
We like to say that such a person has high standards; we might even anoint them with the term ‘perfectionist.’
我们喜欢说这样的人有很高的标准，我们甚至可以用“完美主义者”这个词来形容他们。
It might seem churlish to locate any problems here.
他说，在这里找出任何问题可能看起来很无礼。
Why complain about a somewhat overzealous devotion to perfection in a troubled and lackadaisical world?
为什么要抱怨在一个混乱和懒散的世界里对完美的过分热衷呢？
There could surely be nothing too awful about high exactitude?
高标准一定没有什么太可怕的吗？
What could be so imperfect about perfectionism?
完美主义有什么不完美的地方?
The concern is not so much with the work of the perfectionist (its recipients are in a privileged position) as with the state of their soul.
人们关心的不是完美主义者的工作(完美主义者处于一种特权地位)，而是他们的心灵状态。
Perfectionism does not - tragically - spring first and foremost from any kind of love of perfection in and of itself.
可悲的是，完美主义并不是首先从对完美本身的任何一种热爱中产生的。
It has its origins in a far more regrettable feeling of never being good enough.
它起源于一种更令人懊悔的感觉，那就是永远不够好。
It is rooted in self-hatred - sparked by memories of being disapproved of or neglected by those who should more fairly have esteemed us warmly in childhood.
它根植于自我憎恨——由那些在童年时本应更加公平地尊重我们的人不赞成或忽视我们的记忆所激发。
We become perfectionists from a primary sense of being unworthy; uninteresting, flawed, a disappointment, a letdown, a nuisance.
我们从最初的不值得的感觉：乏味、有缺陷、失望、令人失望、令人讨厌，变成完美主义者。
So powerful is this sense, so appalling is it in its pressure on our psyches, we are prepared to do more or less anything to expunge it:
这种感觉是如此强大，它对我们精神造成的压力是如此可怕，我们或多或少准备做任何事情来去除它：
working at all hours, currying favour with authority, doing twice as much as the next person, these are the tools with which we seek to cleanse our apparently shamefully undeserving selves.
全天候工作，讨好权威，做的事情比别人多一倍，这些都是我们试图用来净化我们显然不配得到的可耻自我的工具。
One part of the mind promises the other that the completion of the next challenge will finally usher in peace.
大脑的一部分向另一部分承诺，完成下一个挑战将最终迎来和平。
We can be very good at pretending that our ambitions are sane.
我们可以很擅长假装我们的雄心是理智的。
But our work has a sisyphean dimension.
但是我们的工作是一个西绪福斯式的维度。
No sooner have we rolled our working boulder up the hill than it will tumble back down again.
我们刚把工作用的巨石滚上山，它就会再次滚落下来。
There is never going to be a point of rest or a lasting feeling of completion.
永远不会有一个休息点，也不会有一种持久的完满感。
We are - in truth - ill rather than driven.
事实上，我们是病态的，而不是被驱动的。
We aren’t interested in perfect work at all: we are trying to escape from a feeling of being awful people - and work simply happens to be the medium through which we are striving to grow tolerable in our own eyes.
我们对完美的工作一点都不感兴趣：我们试图摆脱一种糟糕的的感觉-而工作恰好是我们努力让自己变得可以忍受的媒介。
But because our problem didn’t begin with work, nor can work ever prove the solution.
但是因为我们的问题不是源于工作，工作也不能证明是解决方案。
Our real goal is not, as we think, to be an ideal employee or professional, it is to feel acceptable.
我们真正的目标不是像我们想的那样，成为一名理想的员工或专业人士，而是感觉可以接受。
But responsibility for a sense of acceptance cannot be handed over to our bosses or customers or a ceaselessly demanding capitalist system;
但是接受感的责任不能交给我们的老板、客户，不能交给要求不断的资本主义制度，
these will never let us rest easy because it is in their nature, without any evil intent, always to demand more.
这些永远不会让我们安心，因为这是他们的本性，没有任何邪恶的意图，总是要求更多。
We need to shift our sense of where our drive is coming from.
我们需要改变我们对驱动力来源的感觉。
We are not unnaturally interested in working perfectly, we are labouring under an unusually intense impression that we are dreadful people - a problem for which working harder cannot be the answer.
我们对完美工作的兴趣并非不自然，我们在一种异常强烈的印象下努力工作，认为我们是令人厌恶的人——这个问题的答案不可能是更努力的工作。
We need to allow ourselves to imagine that we deserved to be accepted from the start and that it cannot forever be our fault in our minds that we were not.
我们需要允许自己想象，我们从一开始就应该被接受，我们不能永远认为我们没有被接受是我们的错。
It is not up to us to try to prove that we have a right to exist.
我们不能试图证明我们有生存的权利。
It is asking too much of ourselves to have to experience a referendum on our legitimacy every time we hand in a report, every exam we have to pass, every customer we have to serve.
每次我们提交报告，每一个我们要通过考试，每一个我们要服务的客户，都要经历一次关于我们合法性的公投，这对我们自己要求太高了。
Working well is - naturally-an admirable goal.
当然，做好工作是一个令人钦佩的目标。
But it becomes a symptom of a mental perturbation when it becomes the cover for a secret aspiration to correct a deficit of early love.
但当它成为一种秘密渴望纠正早期爱的缺失的幌子时，它就成了一种精神紊乱的症状。
We should welcome an ability to tolerate periods of laziness, not because we are congenitally idle
我们应该欢迎一种容忍懒惰时期的能力，这不是因为我们天生懒惰，
- but because it is a sign that we have learnt to speak more kindly to ourselves and to be appropriately angry with those who could not at the outset accept us for who we were without a surfeit of trophies and prizes.
而是因为这是一个迹象，表明我们已经学会了更亲切地自言自语，并适当地对那些在没有过多奖杯和奖品的情况下无法接受我们是谁的人感到愤怒。
