शैडोइंग अभ्यास: The Simple Habit for a Happier Social Life | Nicholas Epley | TED - YouTube के साथ अंग्रेजी बोलना सीखें

⏸ रुका हुआ

गति:

259 वाक्य

यदि वाक्य बहुत छोटे या लंबे हों, तो समायोजित करने के लिए Edit पर क्लिक करें।

There's a fundamental paradox right at the core of human life.

On the one hand, decades of research has shown

that we are highly social creatures who are made happier

and healthier by reaching out and connecting with other people in the moments,

the days, the weeks, the months and the years of our lives.

And yet, on the other hand,

just look around a little bit.

It's not clear that all of us have gotten this memo.

Every day, there are opportunities,

big and small, to reach out and connect with other people that we choose not to take.

We avoid talking to strangers.

We lean back and type to each other rather than leaning in and talking to each other.

Once talking, we stick to shallow talk,

to small talk, rather than going deeper.

We feel grateful but don't express it,

want to reach out to offer support to someone in need but hold back.

We'd like to be open and honest in our relationships but all too often keep our true selves to ourselves.

If being socially connected is so darn good for us,

then why do we so often seem to be so darn unsocial?

This paradox hit me like a freight train one morning while I was on an actual train,

commuting into my office at the University of Chicago where I work as a professor of behavioral science.

That morning on the train began like every other I'd been on for years beforehand,

all filing onto the train,

everybody in a desperate search for their own little acreage of solitude right along the window.

I think we'd have sat outside the train if that was possible.

Heaven forbid you'd sit next to somebody and start to chit-chat.

Of course, you creep, or worse yet,

somebody would come and sit down next to you,

surely some kind of weirdo.

But then there we all were,

highly social creatures, made happier and healthier by connecting with other people,

now sitting hip-to-hip with another perfectly reasonable human being.

And what did we do for the next 30 to 45 minutes with each other?

We chose to ignore each other.

You could have heard a pin drop that morning. That morning,

a woman who was about 15 to 20 years older than I was at the time sat down next to me,

dressed professionally for work, and wearing just this fabulous, killer, stylish red hat.

I'm never going to forget this red hat.

I put other people in experiments for a living,

but this morning I decided to put myself in an experiment and pay close attention to what happened.

Instead of keeping to myself and doom scrolling on my phone or checking my email,

I'd try to have a conversation with her,

try to help us get to know each other a little bit,

turn this 30-minute dull ride into something a little more interesting,

turn a stranger into a momentary acquaintance.

The second, though, I had that thought about that experiment,

my brain started screaming at me all the reasons why this was a really, really bad idea.

Clearly, she doesn't want to talk to you,

otherwise she'd already be talking to you.

She's going to think you're some kind of creep.

You probably don't even have anything in common with her,

and you've got nothing to even start with, smarty pants.

Nevertheless, I decided the experiment must continue,

so I ignored that part of my brain.

I turned to her, and I said, Hi, my name's Nick.

I love your hat.

I have one just like it.

Yeah, huh?

Now look, I know that's not going to make its way into the conversation starter hall of fame,

but it didn't seem to matter.

She turned to me, a big smile,

her face all lit up,

almost like she looked like a different person.

And from there, the conversation just flowed really easily.

Found things that we had in common.

We talked about our families,

our work, our hope for the future.

30-minute train ride just went like that.

I was done.

I got up to leave,

and she stopped me and she said,

thank you so much for taking the time to talk with me this morning.

I've forgotten a lot of details about how that conversation actually went,

but I've never forgotten how that conversation made me feel.

Not just good, but surprisingly good.

The contrast between my beliefs about how that would go and how it actually went was pretty sizable.

And there then also in that gap was a potential resolution to this paradox.

Social connection, after all, isn't something that just happens to us.

It's a choice we make.

It's a choice we make at times to reach out and approach other people to engage with them,

or to hold back and avoid them.

It might in fact arguably be the choice we make,

the most important choice we make,

because how we make that choice over and over

and over again in our lives so routinely determines so much about our happiness,

our health, and our success in life.

But highly social creatures like us might avoid reaching out

and engaging with other people mistakenly if we underestimate just how positively our attempts to connect might turn out.

That morning changed both my career and my character.

In my career, my collaborators,

my wonderful collaborators

and I have now conducted well over 100 experiments with over 30,000 people of all ages

and nationalities and found that my tendency to be overly pessimistic is not unique to me.

It's something we see over and over again in varying shades

and magnitudes across different contexts that vary a little bit across people,

but that consistent signal is there.

In one of our very first experiments,

we went back to a train station on the line that I ride into work every day,

100

and we recruited a group of commuters,

101

and we asked them to predict how they would feel on the train

102

that morning if they kept to themselves in solitude

103

or if they turned to the person who sat next to them that morning and tried to have a conversation,

104

tried to connect.

105

The results here were crystal clear.

106

People thought talking to a stranger was a really bad idea.

107

They thought they would have a more pleasant experience that left them feeling happier if they kept to themselves in solitude

108

than if they turned to the stranger to connect with them on the train.

109

But when we recruited another sample of people

110

and actually randomly assigned them in an experiment to either keep to themselves in solitude

111

or to try to connect with a person sitting next to them rather than just imagine it to actually do it,

112

we found exactly the opposite results.

113

The people we had instructed randomly to keep to themselves that morning

114

reported having a less pleasant and happy commute than those we asked to connect to the person sitting next to them.

115

People's beliefs about social interaction here weren't just wrong, they were precisely backwards.

116

But notice that if you believed that talking with a stranger would suck,

117

you wouldn't try it, and then you'd never find out that you might be wrong about that.

118

Pessimistic beliefs in that way are self-fulfilling.

119

This little experiment was just the tip of a very large iceberg that came into view for us in many ensuing years.

120

We've now seen this tendency to be overly pessimistic over and over and over again.

121

We've now had, for instance,

122

more than 4,500 people, not just to have conversations with a stranger,

123

but to have deep conversations with a stranger,

124

talking about things like, can you tell me what you're most grateful for in your life?

125

Or can you tell me about one of the last times you cried in front of another person?

126

So when I show people these questions in these experiments,

127

I can feel just a sense of dread spreading over the room when I put these questions up on the board.

128

Like people start eyeing the exits,

129

wishing they hadn't come to this session today.

130

But then when I actually put them into the experiments,

131

the trouble that I have in the conversation,

132

the trouble I have is getting them to come back.

133

These conversations go much better than people expect that they will.

134

This is also true when we have people who disagree about the most divisive political issues

135

that divide us today talk about those political agreements.

136

Even those political disagreements, those conversations about political disagreement,

137

go better than people expect them to.

138

We find in our research that we have tremendous power to create meaningful social connection every day of our lives,

139

but if we underestimate how positively our efforts to reach out and connect with someone will go,

140

we won't use that power that we have.

141

We see this tendency for misplaced pessimism also showing up beyond conversation.

142

When we ask people to think of a compliment they could give to their friend

143

and then actually deliver that compliment to their friend,

144

they leave their friend feeling more uplifted than the complimenters imagine they will.

145

When we ask people to express their gratitude to someone they love,

146

they leave their recipients feeling even better than the expressors predict that they will.

147

Performing random acts of kindness,

148

reaching out and asking for help,

149

expressing support to someone in need,

150

being open and honest in our relationships,

151

all tend to be received on average more favorably,

152

more positively by the people we're reaching out to than the people who are reaching out expected to.

153

How much more time would you spend reaching out to lift somebody up

154

if you knew just how much good in that moment you could actually do?

155

No research I've ever been involved with has changed the way I live my life more than this.

156

My train rides are almost never silent anymore.

157

I met amazing people on planes and in cabs,

158

Even just walking around town is more pleasant for me,

159

whether I'm on campus or work or in a grocery store,

160

because I made a habit of walking around with my head up,

161

smiling and saying hello to other people,

162

and I get in return a lot more smiles and hellos when I'm walking around.

163

When I feel grateful, I write a note and send it off.

164

When I need help, I'm less reluctant to ask for it.

165

When I know someone needs some support,

166

I'm not as embarrassed to reach out and offer it,

167

even if there's nothing I can do in that moment.

168

It's made me a more open,

169

friendlier person, and as a result,

170

changed pretty much all of my relationships.

171

I've turned countless strangers into friends,

172

or into acquaintances at least,

173

even if just for a moment.

174

My friendships are better.

175

I think my marriage is stronger.

176

I think I'm a better father.

177

These changes didn't happen to me overnight.

178

They happen, of course, slowly over time,

179

just like you move a mountain,

180

not by pushing it all at once,

181

but one shovelful at a time.

182

The way you change how you approach other people happens slowly over time,

183

one choice after another,

184

one small choice as you learn where your mistaken beliefs about other people might be holding you back needlessly.

185

And then you develop habits that then just become part of your character and part of who you are.

186

Overcoming my misplaced pessimism, though,

187

has also affected how I've made some big choices that I have been a part of in my life,

188

including when pain struck my family.

189

So 10 years ago, my wife Jen was three months into her pregnancy.

190

when we learned that our daughter,

191

who we had already named Sophie,

192

had Down syndrome, and three months after that,

193

we learned that our daughter had died before she could be born.

194

Losing our daughter was horrible.

195

It was absolutely horrible.

196

And we mourned that loss for many months.

197

Until one morning, Jen and I were talking

198

and she asked whether we could whether we should whether we might consider adopting a child with down syndrome

199

and there it was the choice do you reach out

200

and connect with someone do you engage with them do you approach

201

or do you hold back and avoid it jen

202

and i had already adopted two children into our family and and so we had some sense of how this might go.

203

But nevertheless, this choice caught me off guard.

204

I wasn't there at that moment.

205

My mind wasn't there yet.

206

And so I had all the pessimistic fears that you might have

207

when you think about connecting with a stranger or having a deep conversation with someone,

208

except multiplied by 100 or 1,000.

209

How well would this go?

210

Would we be able to handle this?

211

Would we be able to connect,

212

to love, to parent

213

the stranger we were bringing into our lives with all of these challenges

214

that seemed to me at the time very hard and difficult?

215

How would this child respond to us?

216

My first thought was, I don't think we can do this.

217

I'm not sure I can do this.

218

But my second thought then started turning to my data,

219

as researchers will tell you can happen.

220

And I started thinking about thousands and thousands of data points

221

of people underestimating the joys they would experience when they reach out to engage with,

222

to connect with, to pull someone else close to them.

223

And it gave me data-driven courage.

224

That, yeah, we can do this together.

225

I happened to marry a superhero, too.

226

We can do this together.

227

And it won't just be good.

228

I bet it'll be surprisingly good.

229

And so about a year after that,

230

Jen and I boarded a flight to China with our four other children where we were going to meet Lindsay,

231

two years old, born to a woman we will never meet.

232

with big, dark eyes and just a relentless smile to spark a really,

233

really hard start in her life.

234

We reached out to Lindsay,

235

and Lindsay reached back to us.

236

She's been bringing love and smiles like that into our lives for years since.

237

Now, I want to be clear,

238

raising a child with an intellectual disability is hard.

239

It's really hard.

240

Lindsay is not just one handful.

241

She has both arms completely full.

242

But she's also enriched and blessed our lives so far beyond what my pessimistic expectations beforehand ever possibly could have imagined.

243

Connecting with other people is one of the most consistently enjoyable,

244

enlightening and enriching experiences we'll ever have,

245

and yet all too often our choice to reach out

246

and connect with somebody is thwarted by overly pessimistic fears about how other people might respond.

247

Being overly pessimistic doesn't mean we should reach out all the time time

248

or that it always turns out well of course not what it means is

249

that we tend to underestimate the likelihood that it will turn out well

250

and as a result we tend to hold ourselves back a little too often i've found in my life

251

and in my research that testing some of those beliefs

252

that hold us back can reveal places where we're making mistakes about other people

253

and show us how to reach out empower us to reach

254

out a little bit more often than we might otherwise to make both our own lives

255

and those we reach out to a little bit better.

256

You want to change your life for the better?

257

I suggest keeping some data-driven courage in mind.

258

And when in doubt, reach out.

259

Thank you so much.

TRENDING

शैडोइंग तकनीक क्या है?

शैडोइंग (Shadowing) एक विज्ञान-समर्थित भाषा सीखने की तकनीक है जो मूल रूप से पेशेवर दुभाषिया प्रशिक्षण के लिए विकसित की गई थी। विधि सरल लेकिन शक्तिशाली है: आप मूल अंग्रेज़ी ऑडियो सुनते हैं और तुरंत इसे ज़ोर से दोहराते हैं — जैसे वक्ता की छाया 1-2 सेकंड की देरी से। शोध से पता चलता है कि यह उच्चारण सटीकता, स्वर, लय, जुड़ी हुई ध्वनियाँ, सुनने की समझ और बोलने की प्रवाहशीलता में काफ़ी सुधार करता है।

☕ हमें एक कॉफी पिलाएं

आपके समर्थन के कारण ShadowingEnglish 100% मुफ्त है। सर्वर और AI की लागत अधिक है — आपकी कॉफी हमें आगे बढ़ने में मदद करती है! 🙏

PayPal के माध्यम से दान करें

ShadowingEnglish.com – अंग्रेज़ी शैडोइंग अभ्यास

शैडोइंग अभ्यास: The Simple Habit for a Happier Social Life | Nicholas Epley | TED - YouTube के साथ अंग्रेजी बोलना सीखें

लोकप्रिय

इस पाठ के बारे में

मुख्य शब्दावली और वाक्यांश

प्रैक्टिस टिप्स

शैडोइंग तकनीक क्या है?

शैडोइंग अभ्यास: The Simple Habit for a Happier Social Life | Nicholas Epley | TED - YouTube के साथ अंग्रेजी बोलना सीखें

ऐप डाउनलोड करें

इस पाठ के बारे में

मुख्य शब्दावली और वाक्यांश

प्रैक्टिस टिप्स

शैडोइंग तकनीक क्या है?