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双语《如何享受人生,享受工作》 第二章 告别不良情绪,重返好心情

所属教程:译林版·如何享受人生,享受工作

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2022年06月16日

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Chapter 2 How to Banish the Boredom That Produces Fatigue, Worry, and Resentment

One of the chief causes of fatigue is boredom. To illustrate, let's take the case of Alice, a stenographer who lives on your street. Alice came home one night utterly exhausted. She acted fatigued. She was fatigued. She had a headache. She had a backache. She was so exhausted she wanted to go to bed without waiting for dinner. Her mother pleaded. ... She sat down at the table. The telephone rang. The boy friend! An invitation to a dance! Her eyes sparkled. Her spirits soared. She rushed upstairs, put on her Alice-blue gown, and danced until three o'clock in the morning; and when she finally did get home, she was not the slightest bit exhausted. She was, in fact, so exhilarated she couldn't fall asleep.

Was Alice really and honestly tired eight hours earlier, when she looked and acted exhausted? Sure she was. She was exhausted because she was bored with her work, perhaps bored with life. There are millions of Alices. You may be one of them.

It is a well-known fact that your emotional attitude usually has far more to do with producing fatigue than has physical exertion. A few years ago, Joseph E. Barmack, Ph.D., published in the Archives of Psychology a report of some of his experiments showing how boredom produces fatigue. Dr. Barmack put a group of students through a series of tests in which, he knew, they could have little interest. The result? The students felt tired and sleepy, complained of headaches and eyestrain, felt irritable. In some cases, even their stomachs were upset. Was it all“imagination”? No. Metabolism tests were taken of these students. These tests showed that the blood pressure of the body and the consumption of oxygen actually decrease when a person is bored, and that the whole metabolism picks up immediately as soon as he begins to feel interest and pleasure in his work!

We rarely get tired when we are doing something interesting and exciting. For example, I recently took a vacation in the Canadian Rockies up around Lake Louise. I spent several days trout fishing along Corral Creek, fighting my way through brush higher than my head, stumbling over logs, struggling through fallen timber—yet after eight hours of this, I was not exhausted. Why? Because I was excited, exhilarated. I had a sense of high achievement: six cut-throat trout. But suppose I had been bored by fishing, then how do you think I would have felt? I would have been worn out by such strenuous work at an altitude of seven thousand feet.

Even in such exhausting activities as mountain climbing, boredom may tire you far more than the strenuous work involved. For example, Mr. S. H. Kingman, president of the Farmers and Mechanics Savings Bank of Minneapolis, told me of an incident that is a perfect illustration of that statement. In July, 1943, the Canadian government asked the Canadian Alpine Club to furnish guides to train the members of the Prince of Wales Rangers in mountain climbing. Mr. Kingman was one of the guides chosen to train these soldiers. He told me how he and the other guides-men ranging from forty-two to fifty-nine years of age—took these young army men on long hikes across glaciers and snow fields and up a sheer cliff of forty feet, where they had to climb with ropes and tiny foot-holds and precarious hand-holds. They climbed Michael's Peak, the Vice-President Peak, and other unnamed peaks in the Little Yoho Valley in the Canadian Rockies. After fifteen hours of mountain climbing, these young men, who were in the pink of condition (they had just finished a six-week course in tough Commando training), were utterly exhausted.

Was their fatigue caused by using muscles that had not been hardened by Commando training? Any man who had ever been through Commando training would hoot at such a ridiculous question! No, they were utterly exhausted because they were bored by mountain climbing. They were so tarred, that many of them fell asleep without waiting to eat. But the guidesmen who were two and three times as old as the soldiers—were they tired? Yes, but not exhausted. The guides ate dinner and stayed up for hours, talking about the day's experiences. They were not exhausted because they were interested.

When Dr. Edward Thorndike of Columbia was conducting experiments in fatigue, he kept young men awake for almost a week by keeping them constantly interested. After much investigation, Dr. Thorndike is reported to have said:“Boredom is the only real cause of diminution of work.”

If you are a mental worker, it is seldom the amount of work you do that makes you tired. You may be tired by the amount of work you do not do. For example, remember the day last week when you were constantly interrupted. No letters answered. Appointments broken. Trouble here and there. Everything went wrong that day. You accomplished nothing whatever, yet you went home exhausted—and with a splitting head.

The next day everything clicked at the office. You accomplished forty times more than you did the previous day. Yet you went home fresh as a snowy-white gardenia. You have had that experience. So have I.

The lesson to be learned? Just this: our fatigue is often caused not by work, but by worry, frustration, and resentment.

While writing this chapter, I went to see a revival of Jerome Kern's delightful musical comedy, Show Boat. Captain Andy, captain of the Cotton Blossom, says, in one of his philosophical interludes:“The lucky folks are the ones that get to do the things they enjoy doing.”Such folks are lucky because they have more energy, more happiness, less worry, and less fatigue. Where your interests are, there is your energy also. Walking ten blocks with a nagging wife can be more fatiguing than walking ten miles with an adoring sweetheart.

And so what? What can you do about it? Well, here is what one stenographer did about it—a stenographer working for an oil company in Tulsa, Oklahoma. For several days each month, she had one of the dullest jobs imaginable: filling out printed forms for oil leases, inserting figures and statistics. This task was so boring that she resolved, in self-defence, to make it interesting. How? She had a daily contest with herself She counted the number of forms she filled out each morning, and then tried to excel that record in the afternoon. She counted each day's total and tried to better it the next day. Result? She was soon able to fill out more of these dull printed forms than any other stenographer in her division. And what did all this get her? Praise? No. ... Thanks? No. ... Promotion? No. ... Increased pay? No. ... But it did help to prevent the fatigue that is spawned by boredom. It did give her a mental stimulant. Because she had done her best to make a dull job interesting, she had more energy, more zest, and got far more happiness out of her leisure hours. I happen to know this story is true, because I married that girl.

Here is the story of another stenographer who found it paid to act as if her work were interesting. She used to fight her work. But no more. Her name is Miss Vallie G. Golden, and she lives at 473 South Kenilworth Avenue, Elmhurst, Illinois. Here is her story, as she wrote it to me:

“There are four stenographers in my office and each of us is assigned to take letters from several men. Once in a while we get jammed up in these assignments; and one day, when an assistant department head insisted that I do a long letter over, I started to rebel. I tried to point out to him that the letter could be corrected without being retyped—and he retorted that if I didn't do it over, he would find someone else who would! I was absolutely fuming! But as I started to retype this letter, it suddenly occurred to me that there were a lot of other people who would jump at the chance to do the work I was doing. Also, that I was being paid a salary to do just that work. I began to feel better. I suddenly made up my mind to do my work as if I actually enjoyed it—even though I despised it. Then I made this important discovery: if I do my work as if I really enjoy it, then I do enjoy it to some extent I also found I can work faster when I enjoy my work. So there is seldom any need now for me to work overtime. This new attitude of mine gained me the reputation of being a good worker. And when one of the department superintendents needed a private secretary, he asked for me for the job—because, he said, I was willing to do extra work without being sulky! This matter of the power of a changed mental attitude,”wrote Miss Golden,“has been a tremendously important discovery to me. It has worked wonders!”

Without perhaps being conscious of it. Miss Vallie Golden was using the famous“as if”philosophy. William James counseled us to act“as if”we were brave, and we would be brave; and to act“as if”we were happy, and we would be happy, and so on.

Act“as if”you were interested in your job, and that bit of acting will tend to make your interest real. It will also tend to decrease your fatigue, your tensions, and your worries.

A few years ago, Harlan A. Howard made a decision that completely altered his life. He resolved to make a dull job interesting—and he certainly had a dull one: washing plates, scrubbing counters, and dishing out ice-cream in the high-school lunch-room while the other boys were playing ball or kidding the girls. Harlan Howard despised his job—but since he had to stick to it, he resolved to study ice-cream how it was made, what ingredients were used, why some ice-creams were better than others. He studied the chemistry of ice-cream, and became a whiz in the high-school chemistry course. He was so interested now in food chemistry that he entered the Massachusetts State College and majored in the field of“food technology”. When the New York Cocoa Exchange offered a hundred-dollar prize for the best paper on uses of cocoa and chocolate—a prize open to all college students—who do you suppose won it? ... That's right. Harlan Howard.

When he found it difficult to get a job, he opened a private laboratory in the basement of his home at 750 North Pleasant Street, Amherst, Massachusetts. Shortly after that, a new law was passed. The bacteria in milk had to be counted. Harlan A. Howard was soon counting bacteria for the fourteen milk companies in Amherst—and he had to hire two assistants.

Where will he be twenty-five years from now? Well, the men who are now running the business of food chemistry will be retired then, or dead; and their places will be taken by young lads who are now radiating initiative and enthusiasm. Twenty-five years from now, Harlan A. Howard will probably be one of the leaders in his profession, while some of his classmates to whom he used to sell ice-cream over the counter will be sour, unemployed, cursing the government, and complaining that they never had a chance. Harlan A. Howard might never have had a chance, either, if he hadn't resolved to make a dull job interesting.

Years ago, there was another young man who was bored with his dull job of standing at a lathe, turning out bolts in a factory. His first name was Sam. Sam wanted to quit, but he was afraid he couldn't find another job. Since he had to do this dull work, Sam decided he would make it interesting. So he ran a race with the mechanic operating a machine beside him. One of them was to trim off the rough surfaces on his machine, and the other was to trim the bolts down to the proper diameter. They would switch machines occasionally and see who could turn out the most bolts. The foreman, impressed with Sam's speed and accuracy, soon gave him a better job. That was the start of a whole series of promotions. Thirty years later, Sam —Samuel Vauclain—was president of the Baldwin Locomotive Works. But he might have remained a mechanic all his life if he had not resolved to make a dull job interesting.

H. V. Kaltenborn—the famous radio news analyst—once told me how he made a dull job interesting. When he was twenty-two years old, he worked his way across the Atlantic on a cattle boat, feeding and watering the steers. After making a bicycle tour of England, he arrived in Paris, hungry and broke. Pawning his camera for five dollars, he put an ad. in the Paris edition of The New York Herald and got a job selling stereopticon machines. If you are forty years old, you may remember those old-fashioned stereoscopes that we used to hold up before our eyes to look at two pictures exactly alike. As we looked, a miracle happened. The two lenses in the stereoscope transformed the two pictures into a single scene with the effect of a third dimension. We saw distance. We got an astounding sense of perspective.

Well, as I was saying, Kaltenborn started out selling these machines from door to door in Paris—and he couldn't speak French. But he earned five thousand dollars in commissions the first year, and made himself one of the highest-paid salesmen in France that year. H.V. Kaltenborn told me that this experience did as much to develop within him the qualities that make for success as did any single year of study at Harvard. Confidence? He told me himself that after that experience, he felt he could have sold The Congressional Record to French housewives.

That experience gave him an intimate understanding of French life that later proved invaluable in interpreting, on the radio, European events.

How did he manage to become an expert salesman when he couldn't speak French? Well, he had his employer write out his sales talk in perfect French, and he memorised it. He would ring a door-bell, a housewife would answer, and Kaltenborn would begin repeating his memorised sales talk with an accent so terrible it was funny. He would show the housewife his pictures, and when she asked a question, he would shrug his shoulders and say:“An American... an American.”He would then take off his hat and point to a copy of the sales talk in perfect French that he had pasted in the top of his hat. The housewife would laugh, he would laugh—and show her more pictures. When H. V. Kaltenborn told me about this, he confessed that the job had been far from easy. He told me that there was only one quality that pulled him through: his determination to make the job interesting. Every morning before he started out, he looked into the mirror and gave himself a pep talk:“Kaltenborn, you have to do this if you want to eat. Since you have to do it—why not have a good time doing it? Why not imagine every time you ring a door-bell that you are an actor before the footlights and that there's an audience out there looking at you. After all, what you are doing is just as funny as something on the stage. So why not put a lot of zest and enthusiasm into it?”

Mr. Kaltenborn told me that these daily pep talks helped him transform a task that he had once hated and dreaded into an adventure that he liked and made highly profitable.When I asked Mr. Kaltenborn if he had any advice to give to the young men of America who are eager to succeed, he said:“Yes, go to bat with yourself every morning. We talk a lot about the importance of physical exercise to wake us up out of the half-sleep in which so many of us walk around. But we need, even more, some spiritual and mental exercises every morning to stir us into action. Give yourself a pep talk every day.”

Is giving yourself a pep talk every day silly, superficial, childish? No, on the contrary, it is the very essence of sound psychology.“Our life is what our thoughts make it.”Those words are just as true today as they were eighteen centuries ago when Marcus Aurelius first wrote them in his book of Meditations:“Our life is what our thoughts make it.”

By talking to yourself every hour of the day, you can direct yourself to think thoughts of courage and happiness, thoughts of power and peace. By talking to yourself about the things you have to be grateful for, you can fill your mind with thoughts that soar and sing.

By thinking the right thoughts, you can make any job less distasteful. Your boss wants you to be interested in your job so that he will make more money. But let's forget about what the boss wants. Think only of what getting interested in your job will do for you. Remind yourself that it may double the amount of happiness you get out of life, for you spend about one half of your waking hours at your work, and if you don't find happiness in your work, you may never find it anywhere. Keep reminding yourself that getting interested in your job will take your mind off your worries, and, in the long run, will probably bring promotion and increased pay. Even if it doesn't do that, it will reduce fatigue toa minimum and help you enjoy your hours of leisure.

第二章 告别不良情绪,重返好心情

疲惫的首要原因便是厌烦。让我们用爱丽丝的故事来举例说明。爱丽丝是住在某一条街上的一个企业小职员。有一天她精疲力竭地回到家,她的一举一动中都显露出她很疲惫。她头痛,后背也痛,连晚饭都不想吃,只想直接去睡觉。她的母亲苦苦劝说她才坐到了饭桌边。这时电话铃响了,是男友打来的,邀请她去跳舞。她的眼睛里忽然有了光芒,精神也振奋了。她跑到楼上,换上了最适合她的蓝色长裙就跑去跳舞了,直到凌晨三点才回来。回来后她一点都不累。实际上她兴奋得一夜睡不着觉。

八小时前的爱丽丝看似十分疲惫,但她真的是累了吗?也许当时是真的。她很累,因为工作令她厌烦,或许生活也使她厌烦。世界上有无数个爱丽丝,你或许就是其中之一。

众所周知,情绪因素比生理因素更会使人疲惫。几年前,约瑟夫·E.巴尔马克博士在《心理学档案》中发表了一篇实验报告,报告中论述了厌烦的情绪是如何导致疲劳的。巴尔马克博士让一组学生完成一系列他们不感兴趣的测试。结果,学生们不仅感到又疲劳又困乏,还抱怨感到头痛、眼睛不适、心情不好等症状。有些人甚至连胃都不舒服了。这些都是学生们幻想出来的吗?当然不是。他们还对这些学生做了新陈代谢的测试,结果显示当他们感觉厌烦时,体内血压和耗氧量都会降低。而一旦他们产生了兴趣和喜悦,整个新陈代谢的速度都会立刻加快!

在做有趣、刺激的事时,我们很少会感到疲惫。比如说,最近我在加拿大洛基山脉的路易斯湖附近度假。我一连几天都在珊瑚溪边钓鳟鱼,试图越过比我还高的树丛、木桩、倒塌的树木,然而这样的八个小时过后我一点也不累。为什么?因为我很兴奋、激动不已。钓到六条凶猛的鳟鱼,让我很有成就感。但如果我在钓鱼的时候感到无聊,你觉得我又会有怎样的感受呢?我肯定会因在海拔七千尺的高度做着如此费劲的工作而感到精疲力竭。

即便是在爬山这样令人劳累的活动中,厌烦的情绪依然比体力消耗本身更令人感到疲惫。明尼阿波利斯农业与机械储蓄银行总裁S.H.金曼先生曾跟我说起过一件事,这件事完美地证实了上述观点。1953年7月,加拿大政府要求加拿大登山俱乐部为威尔士亲王的皇家园林卫队提供登山培训,金曼先生就是被选中的培训者之一。他告诉我,他和其他指导员——几个四十二到五十九岁的男人,是如何带领这支年轻团队徒步穿过冰天雪地,以及依靠绳子越过了四十尺高的、几乎没有落手落脚之处的悬崖的。他们登上了迈克尔峰、副总统峰,以及加拿大洛基山脉小约赫山谷里的其他不知名山峰。经过十五个小时的攀岩后,这些身体素质处于顶峰的年轻人个个都已经精疲力竭了(在此之前,他们刚刚完成了六周艰苦的突击训练)。

是攀岩用到了突击训练时未练结实的肌肉而导致了疲惫吗?任何经历过突击训练的人都会鄙视这个可笑的问题!不,他们之所以感到极度劳累是因为他们认为爬山非常无聊,他们疲惫到连饭都没吃就睡着了。但是那些指导员,年龄是年轻士兵两到三倍的人,他们难道就不感觉累吗?不,他们当然也很累,但还没到精疲力竭的程度。他们吃了晚饭,还继续聊了好几个小时的天,聊这一天的经历。他们并没有精疲力竭,因为他们对攀岩这件事感兴趣。

哥伦比亚的爱德华·桑代克博士曾经进行过一项关于疲劳的实验,他调动年轻人的兴趣而使他们连续一周不睡觉。经过大量调查及实验后,桑代克博士得出结论:“厌倦是工作效率降低的唯一原因。”

如果你是脑力工作者,使你疲劳的原因很少会是劳动本身,你或许是因为还剩多少没有做的工作而感觉疲劳的。比如上周某天你工作时总是受到干扰,该回的信一封都没有回;提前制定的日程都打乱了……你觉得处处都是麻烦。那天一切都不顺,你什么都没做成,却感觉疲惫不堪,头都快裂开了。

第二天却完全不一样,一切都进展得很顺利,你完成的工作是前一天的四十倍,然而一天下来你却神清气爽,到家时感觉就像一朵白色栀子花一样。你我肯定都有过那样的经历。

因此我们要学到的是:疲劳往往不是工作造成的,而是担心、焦虑和愤恨造成的。

撰写此章时,我去看了一部重排的音乐戏剧,杰罗姆·科尔恩的《演艺船》。剧中的棉花号上的安迪船长说了一句充满哲理的台词:“幸运的人能做自己所爱的事。”这些人是幸运的,因为他们有更多的精力和欢乐,而极少有焦虑与疲劳。兴趣在哪儿,精力就在哪儿。和满腹怨言的妻子或丈夫走一个路口要比和甜蜜爱人走十个路口累多了。

所以呢?你能做些什么?一位速记员是这样做的:她在俄克拉何马州塔尔萨市的一家石油公司上班。每个月中总有几天她都要重复一项再无趣不过的工作——往石油租约表格里录入数据。这项任务太单调枯燥了,以至于她下定决心为了自己的身心健康也要把它变得有趣起来。她是怎样做到呢?她决定每天都和自己竞赛,每天上午都要数清填好的表格数量,下午试图超越上午的工作量。她每天都算出填表总数,争取下一天填得更多。结果,这样做以后,她填的表格总数是部门中最多的。这一切能带给她什么?赞美?没有。感谢?也没有。升职、提薪?更没有。但是这帮助她避免了厌倦所导致的疲惫,给了她精神上的刺激。由于她尽力使无聊的工作变得有趣,她拥有了更多精力和热情,在闲暇时也获得了更多快乐。

我保证这个故事是真的,因为我娶了这个女孩为妻。

下面是另外一个速记女孩试图以工作为乐趣从而得到回报的故事。她曾经极度反感自己的工作,但现在不同了。她就是伊利诺伊州埃尔姆赫斯特市的瓦莉·G.格尔登小姐。她在信中讲到了自己的故事:

“我们办公室里一共有四个速记员,每个人都要处理来自不同主管的信件,有时我们会忙得不可开交。有一天,当某一位部门副总坚持让我重写一封信时,我一开始很抗议。我试图指出不必全部重写也能在信件上做出改动。然而他坚决地说:如果你不重写,我可以找别人做这份工作!我气得直冒烟。不过当我开始重新打字时,我忽然意识到,的确有很多人会争先恐后地做我这份工作,而且在做这件事时,我不是也拿到了薪水吗?这样一想,我感觉好多了。所以我决定尝试着去爱这份工作,或假装很爱——尽管事实并非如此。后来我有了一个重要的发现,如果我在做事时假装很爱这个差事,我就真的有可能在某种程度上喜欢上它。我还发现,当我喜欢做一件事时,速度也会提高,因此我现在很少需要加班了。这种新态度帮我赢得了好员工的名声。因此,当一个部门的主管需要私人秘书时,他就想到了我,想请我做这份工作,他说我总是超额完成任务还毫无怨言。观念转变所带来的力量对我来说是难以想象的。它简直有创造奇迹的能量!”

格尔登小姐的故事有力地印证了汉斯·费英格教授的“假设”哲学。他让我们在行动时假设自己是幸福的。

如果你假装喜欢自己的工作,那份“佯装”真的会提升你的兴趣,也就会减少你疲劳、紧张和焦虑的感受。

几年前,哈伦·A.霍华德做了一个改变他一生的决定,他发誓要把枯燥的工作变得有趣。他的工作也的确很枯燥,在高中午餐室刷盘子、擦台子、盛冰淇淋,而其他男孩不是在玩球就是在逗女孩。哈伦·霍华德讨厌他的工作,但为了生存不得不做,所以他决心研究冰淇淋。他想了解冰淇淋该如何制作、需要哪些配料以及为何有些冰淇淋更好吃。他认真地学习了冰淇淋的化学组成,也慢慢成了高中化学课上的奇才。他对食物化学产生了浓厚的兴趣,后来考上了马萨诸塞州立学院的食品技术系。纽约可可交易所举办了一个关于可可和巧克力的使用的有奖征集论文活动,猜猜是谁获胜并得到了一百美金的奖励?没错,正是哈伦·霍华德。

后来在找工作未果期间,霍华德把麻省阿默斯特市家中的地下室变成了他的私人实验室。不久后阿默斯特市通过了一项新的法律,要求牛奶上市前必须经过细菌量计算。霍华德很快便开始为十四家阿默斯特的牛奶公司计算细菌量,还雇了两名助手。

二十五年后他又会在做什么?这位经营食品化学技术公司的老板将退休或死去;那些积极、热情的年轻人会取代他的位置。二十五年后,哈伦·霍华德或许成了业界中的领袖,而与他一同卖冰淇淋的同学或许会失业,还会骂政府、抱怨自己从未得到过机会。霍华德若不是立志要使无聊的工作有趣起来,或许也不会得到任何机会。

几年前还有另外一个年轻人也在做着同样很枯燥的工作——在车床场生产螺丝钉,他叫山姆。山姆一直想辞职,但担心找不到其他工作。山姆告诉自己,既然他必须做这份工作,那么他要使工作变得有趣。所以他决定和旁边的技工比赛。一个人要把粗糙的一面抛光,而另一个人要把螺丝钉磨到合适的长度。他们偶尔交换机器,看谁能制造出最多的螺丝钉。组长对山姆工作的速度和精确度印象深刻,很快便给了他一份更好的工作。这仅仅是一系列晋升的开始。三十年后,山姆成了鲍尔温机车厂的厂长。但假如当初山姆没有立志把无聊的工作变得有趣,那或许他一辈子都将是一个普普通通的小技工。

著名广播分析家H.V.卡腾伯恩曾告诉我他是如何使无聊的工作变得有趣的。二十二岁时,他在一艘横渡大西洋的牲口船上喂牲口。后来,在骑自行车游览英国后,他饥肠辘辘、身无分文地来到了巴黎。他卖了相机,拿到五块钱,在巴黎版《纽约先锋报》上刊登了一则广告,找到了一份卖立体感幻灯机的工作。我还记得这种老式幻灯机,把它放在眼前看两幅一样的图片,看着看着,奇迹就发生了。幻灯机中的两个镜片把两张图片转换成了一张三维图片,我们看到了深度和惊人的立体感。

书归正传,卡腾伯恩开始在巴黎挨家挨户地推销这种幻灯机,而这个时候的他连法语都不会讲。不过他居然第一年就赚了五千美金的佣金,成了当年全法国薪水最高的销售人员之一。卡腾伯恩告诉我,这段经历给他带来的锻炼以及对成功特质的培养远远胜过在哈佛大学任何一年的教育。他十分自信地告诉我,这次经历后,他觉得自己有能力成功地向法国家庭主妇推销国会议事录。

正因为这段经历让他深入了解了法国的生活,也对他今后在广播中诠释欧洲大事件做出了极大的贡献。

那不会说法语的卡腾伯恩是如何成为销售专家的呢?他先让老板把推销时要说的话用纯正的法语写了下来,然后他全部都背下来。在推销前,他会按响某家的门铃,一位家庭主妇会来开门,然后他就开始背诵那一套推销词,他的发音又糟糕又滑稽。然后,他会给这位家庭主妇看图片。当她问任何问题时,他都回答:“一个美国人……一个……美国人。”然后摘下帽子指给对方看被他粘在帽子顶上的那段推销词。家庭主妇通常会被他逗得捧腹大笑,他也跟着哈哈笑——同时给对方看更多的图片。说到这些时,卡腾伯恩承认这项工作并不简单。他告诉我,让他挺下来的唯一原因只是:他想使工作变得有趣的决心。每天早晨他都要对着镜子给自己打气:“卡腾伯恩,如果你不想饿肚子就要做这份工作,既然你必须做这份工作,为何不享受它的过程呢?为何不在每次按铃时想象着自己是舞台角灯前的演员,面对的是观众?要是你正在做的事正如舞台上的表演一样滑稽,那么为何不投入热情去做好这件事呢?”

卡腾伯恩先生告诉我,正是凭着这每日训话的帮助,他把曾经惧怕的工作转为了给他带来丰厚回报的有趣刺激的活动。

我请他给渴望成功的美国年轻人提供一些建议。他说:“每天早晨激励自己。我们总会说起运动的重要性,运动能唤醒半梦半醒的人。然而我们更需要每天早晨进行精神与心灵的唤醒,让自己快速地投入行动。因此,每天都给自己打打气吧。”

这种每日自我训话的做法是愚蠢、肤浅而幼稚的吗?不,恰恰相反,这是心理健康的核心。“观念塑造生活。”这几个字在当今社会和在一千八百年前马可·奥勒留写下它们时同样是真理。

不断地给自己鼓舞士气,你便引导着自己拥有了勇气与幸福、力量与和平。时常告诉自己要感恩,心灵便会翱翔、会歌唱。

拥有了正确的思维,你便能使任何工作更加如意。你的老板当然希望你能对工作感兴趣,这样他才能赚更多的钱。但是让我们忘记老板们想要什么,只想想对工作感兴趣能带给自己什么。提醒自己,对一切充满兴趣能使生活中的快乐加倍。你醒着的一半时间都是在工作中度过的,如果你无法在工作中找到快乐,便也很难在其他地方找到了。一直提醒自己对工作产生兴趣,真的能让你忘掉焦虑。从长远角度讲,这很可能带来晋升和加薪。即便不能,也能使疲劳感降到最低,让你能更好地享受闲暇时光。

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