跟读练习: The Simple Habit for a Happier Social Life | Nicholas Epley | TED - 通过YouTube学习英语口语
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There's a fundamental paradox right at the core of human life.
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On the one hand, decades of research has shown
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that we are highly social creatures who are made happier
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and healthier by reaching out and connecting with other people in the moments,
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the days, the weeks, the months and the years of our lives.
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And yet, on the other hand,
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just look around a little bit.
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It's not clear that all of us have gotten this memo.
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Every day, there are opportunities,
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big and small, to reach out and connect with other people that we choose not to take.
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We avoid talking to strangers.
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We lean back and type to each other rather than leaning in and talking to each other.
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Once talking, we stick to shallow talk,
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to small talk, rather than going deeper.
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We feel grateful but don't express it,
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want to reach out to offer support to someone in need but hold back.
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We'd like to be open and honest in our relationships but all too often keep our true selves to ourselves.
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If being socially connected is so darn good for us,
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then why do we so often seem to be so darn unsocial?
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This paradox hit me like a freight train one morning while I was on an actual train,
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commuting into my office at the University of Chicago where I work as a professor of behavioral science.
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That morning on the train began like every other I'd been on for years beforehand,
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all filing onto the train,
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everybody in a desperate search for their own little acreage of solitude right along the window.
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I think we'd have sat outside the train if that was possible.
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Heaven forbid you'd sit next to somebody and start to chit-chat.
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Of course, you creep, or worse yet,
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somebody would come and sit down next to you,
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surely some kind of weirdo.
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But then there we all were,
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highly social creatures, made happier and healthier by connecting with other people,
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now sitting hip-to-hip with another perfectly reasonable human being.
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And what did we do for the next 30 to 45 minutes with each other?
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We chose to ignore each other.
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You could have heard a pin drop that morning. That morning,
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a woman who was about 15 to 20 years older than I was at the time sat down next to me,
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dressed professionally for work, and wearing just this fabulous, killer, stylish red hat.
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I'm never going to forget this red hat.
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I put other people in experiments for a living,
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but this morning I decided to put myself in an experiment and pay close attention to what happened.
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Instead of keeping to myself and doom scrolling on my phone or checking my email,
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I'd try to have a conversation with her,
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try to help us get to know each other a little bit,
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turn this 30-minute dull ride into something a little more interesting,
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turn a stranger into a momentary acquaintance.
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The second, though, I had that thought about that experiment,
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my brain started screaming at me all the reasons why this was a really, really bad idea.
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Clearly, she doesn't want to talk to you,
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otherwise she'd already be talking to you.
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She's going to think you're some kind of creep.
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You probably don't even have anything in common with her,
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and you've got nothing to even start with, smarty pants.
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Nevertheless, I decided the experiment must continue,
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so I ignored that part of my brain.
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I turned to her, and I said, Hi, my name's Nick.
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I love your hat.
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I have one just like it.
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Yeah, huh?
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Now look, I know that's not going to make its way into the conversation starter hall of fame,
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but it didn't seem to matter.
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She turned to me, a big smile,
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her face all lit up,
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almost like she looked like a different person.
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And from there, the conversation just flowed really easily.
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Found things that we had in common.
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We talked about our families,
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our work, our hope for the future.
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30-minute train ride just went like that.
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I was done.
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I got up to leave,
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and she stopped me and she said,
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thank you so much for taking the time to talk with me this morning.
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I've forgotten a lot of details about how that conversation actually went,
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but I've never forgotten how that conversation made me feel.
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Not just good, but surprisingly good.
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The contrast between my beliefs about how that would go and how it actually went was pretty sizable.
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And there then also in that gap was a potential resolution to this paradox.
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Social connection, after all, isn't something that just happens to us.
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It's a choice we make.
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It's a choice we make at times to reach out and approach other people to engage with them,
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or to hold back and avoid them.
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It might in fact arguably be the choice we make,
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the most important choice we make,
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because how we make that choice over and over
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and over again in our lives so routinely determines so much about our happiness,
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our health, and our success in life.
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But highly social creatures like us might avoid reaching out
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and engaging with other people mistakenly if we underestimate just how positively our attempts to connect might turn out.
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That morning changed both my career and my character.
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In my career, my collaborators,
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my wonderful collaborators
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and I have now conducted well over 100 experiments with over 30,000 people of all ages
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and nationalities and found that my tendency to be overly pessimistic is not unique to me.
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It's something we see over and over again in varying shades
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and magnitudes across different contexts that vary a little bit across people,
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but that consistent signal is there.
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In one of our very first experiments,
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we went back to a train station on the line that I ride into work every day,
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and we recruited a group of commuters,
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and we asked them to predict how they would feel on the train
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that morning if they kept to themselves in solitude
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or if they turned to the person who sat next to them that morning and tried to have a conversation,
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tried to connect.
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The results here were crystal clear.
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People thought talking to a stranger was a really bad idea.
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They thought they would have a more pleasant experience that left them feeling happier if they kept to themselves in solitude
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than if they turned to the stranger to connect with them on the train.
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But when we recruited another sample of people
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and actually randomly assigned them in an experiment to either keep to themselves in solitude
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or to try to connect with a person sitting next to them rather than just imagine it to actually do it,
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we found exactly the opposite results.
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The people we had instructed randomly to keep to themselves that morning
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reported having a less pleasant and happy commute than those we asked to connect to the person sitting next to them.
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People's beliefs about social interaction here weren't just wrong, they were precisely backwards.
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But notice that if you believed that talking with a stranger would suck,
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you wouldn't try it, and then you'd never find out that you might be wrong about that.
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Pessimistic beliefs in that way are self-fulfilling.
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This little experiment was just the tip of a very large iceberg that came into view for us in many ensuing years.
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We've now seen this tendency to be overly pessimistic over and over and over again.
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We've now had, for instance,
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more than 4,500 people, not just to have conversations with a stranger,
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but to have deep conversations with a stranger,
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talking about things like, can you tell me what you're most grateful for in your life?
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Or can you tell me about one of the last times you cried in front of another person?
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So when I show people these questions in these experiments,
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I can feel just a sense of dread spreading over the room when I put these questions up on the board.
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Like people start eyeing the exits,
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wishing they hadn't come to this session today.
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But then when I actually put them into the experiments,
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the trouble that I have in the conversation,
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the trouble I have is getting them to come back.
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These conversations go much better than people expect that they will.
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This is also true when we have people who disagree about the most divisive political issues
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that divide us today talk about those political agreements.
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Even those political disagreements, those conversations about political disagreement,
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go better than people expect them to.
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We find in our research that we have tremendous power to create meaningful social connection every day of our lives,
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but if we underestimate how positively our efforts to reach out and connect with someone will go,
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we won't use that power that we have.
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We see this tendency for misplaced pessimism also showing up beyond conversation.
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When we ask people to think of a compliment they could give to their friend
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and then actually deliver that compliment to their friend,
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they leave their friend feeling more uplifted than the complimenters imagine they will.
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When we ask people to express their gratitude to someone they love,
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they leave their recipients feeling even better than the expressors predict that they will.
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Performing random acts of kindness,
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reaching out and asking for help,
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expressing support to someone in need,
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being open and honest in our relationships,
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all tend to be received on average more favorably,
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more positively by the people we're reaching out to than the people who are reaching out expected to.
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How much more time would you spend reaching out to lift somebody up
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if you knew just how much good in that moment you could actually do?
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No research I've ever been involved with has changed the way I live my life more than this.
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My train rides are almost never silent anymore.
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I met amazing people on planes and in cabs,
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Even just walking around town is more pleasant for me,
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whether I'm on campus or work or in a grocery store,
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because I made a habit of walking around with my head up,
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smiling and saying hello to other people,
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and I get in return a lot more smiles and hellos when I'm walking around.
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When I feel grateful, I write a note and send it off.
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When I need help, I'm less reluctant to ask for it.
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When I know someone needs some support,
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I'm not as embarrassed to reach out and offer it,
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even if there's nothing I can do in that moment.
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It's made me a more open,
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friendlier person, and as a result,
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changed pretty much all of my relationships.
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I've turned countless strangers into friends,
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or into acquaintances at least,
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even if just for a moment.
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My friendships are better.
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I think my marriage is stronger.
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I think I'm a better father.
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These changes didn't happen to me overnight.
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They happen, of course, slowly over time,
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just like you move a mountain,
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not by pushing it all at once,
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but one shovelful at a time.
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The way you change how you approach other people happens slowly over time,
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one choice after another,
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one small choice as you learn where your mistaken beliefs about other people might be holding you back needlessly.
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And then you develop habits that then just become part of your character and part of who you are.
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Overcoming my misplaced pessimism, though,
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has also affected how I've made some big choices that I have been a part of in my life,
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including when pain struck my family.
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So 10 years ago, my wife Jen was three months into her pregnancy.
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when we learned that our daughter,
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who we had already named Sophie,
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had Down syndrome, and three months after that,
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we learned that our daughter had died before she could be born.
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Losing our daughter was horrible.
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It was absolutely horrible.
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And we mourned that loss for many months.
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Until one morning, Jen and I were talking
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and she asked whether we could whether we should whether we might consider adopting a child with down syndrome
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and there it was the choice do you reach out
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and connect with someone do you engage with them do you approach
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or do you hold back and avoid it jen
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and i had already adopted two children into our family and and so we had some sense of how this might go.
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But nevertheless, this choice caught me off guard.
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I wasn't there at that moment.
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My mind wasn't there yet.
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And so I had all the pessimistic fears that you might have
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when you think about connecting with a stranger or having a deep conversation with someone,
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except multiplied by 100 or 1,000.
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How well would this go?
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Would we be able to handle this?
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Would we be able to connect,
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to love, to parent
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the stranger we were bringing into our lives with all of these challenges
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that seemed to me at the time very hard and difficult?
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How would this child respond to us?
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My first thought was, I don't think we can do this.
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I'm not sure I can do this.
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But my second thought then started turning to my data,
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as researchers will tell you can happen.
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And I started thinking about thousands and thousands of data points
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of people underestimating the joys they would experience when they reach out to engage with,
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to connect with, to pull someone else close to them.
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And it gave me data-driven courage.
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That, yeah, we can do this together.
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I happened to marry a superhero, too.
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We can do this together.
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And it won't just be good.
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I bet it'll be surprisingly good.
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And so about a year after that,
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Jen and I boarded a flight to China with our four other children where we were going to meet Lindsay,
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two years old, born to a woman we will never meet.
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with big, dark eyes and just a relentless smile to spark a really,
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really hard start in her life.
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We reached out to Lindsay,
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and Lindsay reached back to us.
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She's been bringing love and smiles like that into our lives for years since.
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Now, I want to be clear,
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raising a child with an intellectual disability is hard.
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It's really hard.
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Lindsay is not just one handful.
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She has both arms completely full.
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But she's also enriched and blessed our lives so far beyond what my pessimistic expectations beforehand ever possibly could have imagined.
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Connecting with other people is one of the most consistently enjoyable,
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enlightening and enriching experiences we'll ever have,
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and yet all too often our choice to reach out
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and connect with somebody is thwarted by overly pessimistic fears about how other people might respond.
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Being overly pessimistic doesn't mean we should reach out all the time time
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or that it always turns out well of course not what it means is
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that we tend to underestimate the likelihood that it will turn out well
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and as a result we tend to hold ourselves back a little too often i've found in my life
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and in my research that testing some of those beliefs
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that hold us back can reveal places where we're making mistakes about other people
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and show us how to reach out empower us to reach
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out a little bit more often than we might otherwise to make both our own lives
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and those we reach out to a little bit better.
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You want to change your life for the better?
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I suggest keeping some data-driven courage in mind.
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And when in doubt, reach out.
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Thank you so much.
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背景与语境
在著名的TED演讲中,心理学教授尼克·埃普利讨论了人类社交生活中的一个基本悖论。他指出,尽管大量研究表明,我们是社交生物,通过与他人建立联系来获得快乐和健康,但许多人日常生活中却往往选择忽视这种社交机会。无论是在通勤过程中,还是日常生活中,我们常常避免与陌生人交流,尽管这种互动可以给我们带来积极的情感体验。
日常交流的五个常用短语
- 你好,我叫… - 表达自我介绍的标准方式。
- 我喜欢你的帽子! - 这是开始对话的一个很好的切入点,尤其是当你注意到他人穿着或配饰时。
- 你在做什么工作? - 询问对方的职业可以引发更深入的讨论。
- 你的家人都好吗? - 通过询问家人,展示关心并促进更深入的交流。
- 谢谢你抽时间和我聊天。 - 在结束对话时表达感激之情,能够留下良好的印象。
逐步影子跟读指南
要提升你的英语口语能力,以及如英语影子跟读或雅思口语练习等技能,建议采取以下步骤:
- 选择视频片段: 从尼克·埃普利的演讲中选择一小段,确保难度适中。
- 反复观看: 初次观看时,了解大意,留意讲者的语速和音调。
- 慢速影子跟读: 逐句暂停,跟随讲者的发音进行shadow speak。试着模仿其语调、重音和节奏。
- 录音对比: 将自己的声音录下来,与原视频进行对比,注意语音的细微差异。
- 持之以恒: 每天进行英语口语练习,逐步积累自信心和流畅度。
通过这种方法,学习者不仅能够提高口语表达,还能在社交场合中更加主动和自信,从而打破社交中的障碍,享受与他人交流的乐趣。
什么是跟读法?
跟读法 (Shadowing) 是一种有科学依据的语言学习技巧,最初开发用于专业口译员的培训,并由多语言者Alexander Arguelles博士普及。这个方法简单而强大:您在听英语母语原声的同时立即大声重复——就像是一个延迟1-2秒紧跟说话者的影子。与被动听力或语法练习不同,跟读法强迫您的大脑和口腔肌肉同时处理并模仿真实的讲话模式。研究表明它能显着提高发音准确性,语调,节奏,连读,听力理解和口语流利度——使其成为雅思口语备考和真实英语交流最有效的方法之一。
