如何转变思维方式，选择未来

How to shift your mindset and choose your future

演讲者：Tom Rivett-Carnac

 

 

 

I never thought that I would be giving my TED Talk somewhere like this. But, like half of humanity, I've spent the last four weeks under lockdown due to the global pandemic created by COVID-19. I am extremely fortunate that during this time I've been able to come here to these woods near my home in southern England. These woods have always inspired me, and as humanity now tries to think about how we can find the inspiration to retake control of our actions so that terrible things don't come down the road without us taking action to avert them, I thought this is a good place for us to talk. And I'd like to begin that story six years ago, when I had first joined the United Nations.

我从没想过我会付出 我的TED演讲在这样的地方。 但是，就像一半的人类一样，我度过了最后的时光。 由于全球大流行而封锁四周 由 COVID-19 创建。 我非常幸运 在这段时间里，我已经能够来到这些树林 在我位于英格兰南部的家附近。 这些树林一直激励着我，正如人类现在试图思考的那样 我们如何找到灵感来重新控制我们的行为，以便可怕的事情 在我们没有采取行动避免他们的情况下，不要走这条路，我认为这是一个好地方 让我们谈谈。 我想开始 六年前的那个故事，当我第一次加入时 联合国。

 

Now, I firmly believe that the UN is of unparalleled importance in the world right now to promote collaboration and cooperation. But what they don't tell you when you join is that this essential work is delivered mainly in the form of extremely boring meetings -- extremely long, boring meetings. Now, you may feel that you have attended some long, boring meetings in your life, and I'm sure you have. But these UN meetings are next-level, and everyone who works there approaches them with a level of calm normally only achieved by Zen masters. But myself, I wasn't ready for that. I joined expecting drama and tension and breakthrough. What I wasn't ready for was a process that seemed to move at the speed of a glacier, at the speed that a glacier used to move at.

现在，我坚信 联合国在促进协作与合作方面在当今世界上具有无与伦比的重要性。 但是当你加入时，他们没有告诉你的是，这项重要的工作主要是以形式交付的。 极其无聊的会议——极其漫长、无聊的会议。 现在，你可能会觉得你已经参加了 你生活中一些漫长而无聊的会议，我相信你有。 但这些联合国会议是下一个层次，每个在那里工作的人 以通常只有禅师才能达到的平静程度接近他们。 但是我自己，我还没有准备好。 我加入了期待的戏剧 以及紧张和突破。 我没有准备好的是一个似乎在移动的过程 以冰川的速度，以冰川的速度 曾经移动过。

 

Now, in the middle of one of these long meetings, I was handed a note. And it was handed to me by my friend and colleague and coauthor, Christiana Figueres. Christiana was the Executive Secretary of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, and as such, had overall responsibility for the UN reaching what would become the Paris Agreement. I was running political strategy for her. So when she handed me this note, I assumed that it would contain detailed political instructions about how we were going to get out of this nightmare quagmire that we seemed to be trapped in. I took the note and looked at it. It said, "Painful. But let's approach with love!" Now, I love this note for lots of reasons. I love the way the little tendrils are coming out from the word "painful." It was a really good visual depiction of how I felt at that moment. But I particularly love it because as I looked at it, I realized that it was a political instruction, and that if we were going to be successful, this was how we were going to do it. So let me explain that.

现在，在中间 在其中一次漫长的会议中，我收到了一张纸条。 它被递给了我 由我的朋友、同事和合著者克里斯蒂安娜·菲格雷斯（Christiana Figueres）撰写。 克里斯蒂安娜曾任《联合国框架公约》执行秘书 因此，对联合国实现将成为的目标负有全面责任 《巴黎协定》。 我正在为她制定政治策略。 所以当她递给我这张纸条时，我以为它会包含 关于我们将如何摆脱的详细政治指示 我们似乎被困在这个噩梦般的泥潭里。 我接过纸条看了看。 它说：“痛苦。 但让我们用爱来接近！ 现在，我喜欢这个笔记有很多原因。 我喜欢小卷须的方式 是从“痛苦”这个词出来的。 这是一个非常好的视觉描绘 那一刻的感受。 但我特别喜欢它 因为当我看着它时，我意识到它是 一个政治指示，如果我们要去 为了成功，这就是我们要做的事情。 所以让我解释一下。

 

What I'd been feeling in those meetings was actually about control. I had moved my life from Brooklyn in New York to Bonn in Germany with the extremely reluctant support of my wife. My children were now in a school where they couldn't speak the language, and I thought the deal for all this disruption to my world was that I would have some degree of control over what was going to happen. I felt for years that the climate crisis is the defining challenge of our generation, and here I was, ready to play my part and do something for humanity. But I put my hands on the levers of control that I'd been given and pulled them, and nothing happened. I realized the things I could control were menial day-to-day things. "Do I ride my bike to work?" and "Where do I have lunch?", whereas the things that were going to determine whether we were going to be successful were issues like, "Will Russia wreck the negotiations?" "Will China take responsibility for their emissions?" "Will the US help poorer countries deal with their burden of climate change?" The differential felt so huge, I could see no way I could bridge the two. It felt futile. I began to feel that I'd made a mistake. I began to get depressed.

我在那些会议上的感受 实际上是关于控制的。 我从布鲁克林搬走了我的生活 在纽约到德国的波恩，极度不情愿 我妻子的支持。 我的孩子现在在学校 他们不会说语言的地方，我想这笔交易 因为所有这些对我的世界的破坏是我会有某种程度 控制将要发生的事情。 多年来，我一直觉得气候危机 是我们这一代的决定性挑战，我在这里，准备发挥我的作用 并为人类做点什么。 但我把手放在杠杆上 我被赋予了控制权并拉动了他们，什么也没发生。 我意识到我可以控制的事情 是琐碎的日常事情。 “我骑自行车上班吗？” 和“我在哪里吃午饭？”，而事情 决定我们是否会成功的问题是，“俄罗斯会不会 破坏谈判？ “中国会承担责任吗 因为他们的排放？ “美国会帮助较贫穷的国家吗 处理他们的气候变化负担？ 差异感觉如此之大，我看不出有什么办法可以弥合两者。 感觉是徒劳的。 我开始觉得我犯了一个错误。 我开始变得沮丧。

 

But even in that moment, I realized that what I was feeling had a lot of similarities to what I'd felt when I first found out about the climate crisis years before. I'd spent many of my most formative years as a Buddhist monk in my early 20s, but I left the monastic life, because even then, 20 years ago, I felt that the climate crisis was already a quickly unfolding emergency and I wanted to do my part. But once I'd left and I rejoined the world, I looked at what I could control. It was the few tons of my own emissions and that of my immediate family, which political party I voted for every few years, whether I went on a march or two. And then I looked at the issues that would determine the outcome, and they were big geopolitical negotiations, massive infrastructure spending plans, what everybody else did. The differential again felt so huge that I couldn't see any way that I could bridge it. I kept trying to take action, but it didn't really stick. It felt futile.

但即使在那一刻，我也意识到我的感受 与我第一次发现时的感觉有很多相似之处 关于多年前的气候危机。 我花了很多我最 在我20岁出头的时候，我成为了一名佛教僧侣，但我离开了寺院生活， 因为即使在 20 年前的那个时候，我也觉得气候危机已经来了 一个迅速展开的紧急情况，我想尽自己的一份力量。 但一旦我离开了 我重新回到了这个世界，我看着我能控制的东西。 这是我自己的几吨排放 和我的直系亲属，哪个政党 我每隔几年就投票一次，无论我去游行还是两次游行。 然后我看了问题 这将决定结果，而且他们很大 地缘政治谈判，大规模的基础设施支出计划，以及其他人所做的。 差异再次感觉如此之大，以至于我看不到任何方法 我可以弥合它。 我一直试图采取行动，但它并没有真正坚持下去。 感觉是徒劳的。

 

Now, we know that this can be a common experience for many people, and maybe you have had this experience. When faced with an enormous challenge that we don't feel we have any agency or control over, our mind can do a little trick to protect us. We don't like to feel like we're out of control facing big forces, so our mind will tell us, "Maybe it's not that important. Maybe it's not happening in the way that people say, anyway." Or, it plays down our own role. "There's nothing that you individually can do, so why try?"

现在，我们知道这可能是 许多人的共同经历，也许你有过这种经历。 当面临我们觉得自己没有的巨大挑战时 任何代理或控制，我们的思想都可以做到 保护我们的小把戏。 我们不喜欢感觉 就像我们在面对强大的力量时失控了，所以我们的头脑会告诉我们， “也许这并不那么重要。 也许它没有发生 无论如何，以人们所说的方式。 或者，它淡化了我们自己的角色。 “你什么都没有 个人都可以，那为什么要尝试呢？

 

But there's something odd going on here. Is it really true that humans will only take sustained and dedicated action on an issue of paramount importance when they feel they have a high degree of control? Look at these pictures. These people are caregivers and nurses who have been helping humanity face the coronavirus COVID-19 as it has swept around the world as a pandemic in the last few months. Are these people able to prevent the spread of the disease? No. Are they able to prevent their patients from dying? Some, they will have been able to prevent, but others, it will have been beyond their control. Does that make their contribution futile and meaningless? Actually, it's offensive even to suggest that. What they are doing is caring for their fellow human beings at their moment of greatest vulnerability. And that work has huge meaning, to the point where I only have to show you those pictures for it to become evident that the courage and humanity those people are demonstrating makes their work some of the most meaningful things that can be done as human beings, even though they can't control the outcome.

但是这里发生了一些奇怪的事情。 人类真的只会 在他们认为有 高度控制？ 看看这些图片。 这些人是一直在帮助人类的护理人员和护士 面对席卷全球的冠状病毒COVID-19 作为过去几个月的大流行。 这些人能够预防吗 疾病的传播？ 不。 他们是否能够预防 他们的病人不会死？ 有些人，他们将能够预防，但另一些人，它将是 超出他们的控制范围。 这是否使他们有所贡献 徒劳无益？ 实际上，这是令人反感的 甚至建议这一点。 他们正在做的是关怀 为了在他们最脆弱的时刻的人类同胞。 这项工作具有巨大的意义，以至于我只 必须向你展示那些照片，才能清楚地看到勇气和人性 那些人正在展示他们的工作 作为人类可以做的一些最有意义的事情，即使他们不能 控制结果。

 

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Now, that's interesting, because it shows us that humans are capable of taking dedicated and sustained action, even when they can't control the outcome. But it leaves us with another challenge. With the climate crisis, the action that we take is separated from the impact of it, whereas what is happening with these images is these nurses are being sustained not by the lofty goal of changing the world but by the day-to-day satisfaction of caring for another human being through their moments of weakness. With the climate crisis, we have this huge separation. It used to be that we were separated by time. The impacts of the climate crisis were supposed to be way off in the future. But right now, the future has come to meet us. Continents are on fire. Cities are going underwater. Countries are going underwater. Hundreds of thousands of people are on the move as a result of climate change. But even if those impacts are no longer separated from us by time, they're still separated from us in a way that makes it difficult to feel that direct connection. They happen somewhere else to somebody else or to us in a different way than we're used to experiencing it. So even though that story of the nurse demonstrates something to us about human nature, we're going to have find a different way of dealing with the climate crisis in a sustained manner.

现在，这很有趣，因为它向我们展示了 人类有能力采取专注和持续的行动，即使他们无法控制结果。 但它给我们留下了另一个挑战。 随着气候危机，我们采取的行动 与它的影响分离，而正在发生的事情 有了这些图像，这些护士正在被维持 不是 通过改变世界的崇高目标，但通过日常的满足 在另一个人的软弱时刻照顾他们。 随着气候危机， 我们有这种巨大的分离。 过去我们是 被时间隔开。 气候危机的影响 应该在未来很远。 但是现在，未来 来迎接我们了。 大陆着火了。 城市正在被淹没。 各国正在被淹没。 数十万人是 由于气候变化而移动。 但即使这些影响不再存在 被时间与我们分开，他们仍然以某种方式与我们分离 这使得很难感受到这种直接联系。 它们发生在其他地方 以不同的方式对别人或我们 比我们习惯于体验它。 所以即使护士的故事 向我们展示了一些关于人性的东西，我们将找到一种不同的方法来应对气候危机 以持续的方式。

 

There is a way that we can do this, a powerful combination of a deep and supporting attitude that when combined with consistent action can enable whole societies to take dedicated action in a sustained way towards a shared goal. It's been used to great effect throughout history. So let me give you a historical story to explain it.

有一种方法可以做到这一点，一个强大的组合 一种深刻和支持的态度，当结合起来时 通过一致的行动可以使整个社会采取 以持续的方式采取专门行动，以实现共同目标。 它已被使用，效果很好 纵观历史。 所以让我给你 一个历史故事来解释它。

 

Right now, I am standing in the woods near my home in southern England. And these particular woods are not far from London. Eighty years ago, that city was under attack. In the late 1930s, the people of Britain would do anything to avoid facing the reality that Hitler would stop at nothing to conquer Europe. Fresh with memories from the First World War, they were terrified of Nazi aggression and would do anything to avoid facing that reality. In the end, the reality broke through. Churchill is remembered for many things, and not all of them positive, but what he did in those early days of the war was he changed the story the people of Britain told themselves about what they were doing and what was to come. Where previously there had been trepidation and nervousness and fear, there came a calm resolve, an island alone, a greatest hour, a greatest generation, a country that would fight them on the beaches and in the hills and in the streets, a country that would never surrender.

此刻，我站在树林里 在我位于英格兰南部的家附近。 而这些特殊的树林 离伦敦不远。 八十年前， 那个城市受到攻击。 在1930年代后期，英国人民会做任何事情 以避免面对希特勒将不择手段的现实 征服欧洲。 记忆犹新 从第一次世界大战开始，他们就害怕纳粹的侵略，会做任何事情来避免 面对这一现实。 最终，现实突破了。 丘吉尔因许多事情而被人们铭记， 并非所有人都是积极的，但他做了什么 在战争初期，他改变了故事。 英国人民告诉自己他们在做什么 以及即将发生的事情。 以前有的地方 惶恐、紧张和恐惧，有一种平静的决心，一个孤岛，一个最伟大的时刻，一个最伟大的一代，一个与他们作战的国家 在海滩上，在山上，在街上，一个永远不会投降的国家。

 

That change from fear and trepidation to facing the reality, whatever it was and however dark it was, had nothing to do with the likelihood of winning the war. There was no news from the front that battles were going better or even at that point that a powerful new ally had joined the fight and changed the odds in their favor. It was simply a choice. A deep, determined, stubborn form of optimism emerged, not avoiding or denying the darkness that was pressing in but refusing to be cowed by it. That stubborn optimism is powerful. It is not dependent on assuming that the outcome is going to be good or having a form of wishful thinking about the future. However, what it does is it animates action and infuses it with meaning. We know that from that time, despite the risk and despite the challenge, it was a meaningful time full of purpose, and multiple accounts have confirmed that actions that ranged from pilots in the Battle of Britain to the simple act of pulling potatoes from the soil became infused with meaning. They were animated towards a shared purpose and a shared outcome.

从恐惧和惶恐到面对现实，无论什么 它曾经是，无论它多么黑暗，都与可能性无关 赢得战争。 前线没有消息 战斗进展得更好，甚至在那个时候 一个强大的新盟友加入了战斗，并改变了对他们有利的赔率。 这只是一个选择。 一个深沉、坚定、倔强 乐观的形式出现了，不回避或否认黑暗 这是压着的，但拒绝被它吓倒。 这种顽固的乐观是强大的。 它不依赖于假设 结果会很好或有一厢情愿的想法 关于未来。 但是，它的作用是 它使行动充满活力，并赋予其意义。 我们知道，从那时起，尽管存在风险 尽管面临挑战，但这是一个有意义的充满目的的时期，多个账户已经证实，行动范围很广 从不列颠之战中的飞行员到简单的拉动行为 来自土壤的土豆被注入了意义。 他们被动画化了 共同的目标和共同的结果。

 

We have seen that throughout history. This coupling of a deep and determined stubborn optimism with action, when the optimism leads to a determined action, then they can become self-sustaining: without the stubborn optimism, the action doesn't sustain itself; without the action, the stubborn optimism is just an attitude. The two together can transform an entire issue and change the world.

我们在整个历史中都看到了这一点。 这种耦合的深刻而坚定 固执的乐观与行动，当乐观引领 坚定的行动，然后他们可以自我维持：没有顽固的乐观主义， 行动不会自我维持; 没有行动，倔强的乐观 只是一种态度。 两者一起可以转变 整个问题并改变世界。

 

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We saw this at multiple other times. We saw it when Rosa Parks refused to get up from the bus. We saw it in Gandhi's long salt marches to the beach. We saw it when the suffragettes said that "Courage calls to courage everywhere." And we saw it when Kennedy said that within 10 years, he would put a man on the moon. That electrified a generation and focused them on a shared goal against a dark and frightening adversary, even though they didn't know how they would achieve it. In each of these cases, a realistic and gritty but determined, stubborn optimism was not the result of success. It was the cause of it.

我们在其他多个时间看到了这一点。 当罗莎·帕克斯（Rosa Parks）看到它时 拒绝下车。 我们在甘地的 长长的盐行军到海滩。 当妇女参政论者说 “勇气呼唤各地的勇气。” 当肯尼迪说 在10年内，他会把一个人送上月球。 这让一代人感到电气化 并将他们集中在一个共同的目标上，对抗一个黑暗而可怕的对手，即使他们不知道 他们将如何实现它。 在每一种情况下，现实而坚韧不拔 但坚定、固执的乐观并不是成功的结果。 这是它的原因。

 

That is also how the transformation happened on the road to the Paris Agreement. Those challenging, difficult, pessimistic meetings transformed as more and more people decided that this was our moment to dig in and determine that we would not drop the ball on our watch, and we would deliver the outcome that we knew was possible. More and more people transformed themselves to that perspective and began to work, and in the end, that worked its way up into a wave of momentum that crashed over us and delivered many of those challenging issues with a better outcome than we could possibly have imagined. And even now, years later and with a climate denier in the White House, much that was put in motion in those days is still unfolding, and we have everything to play for in the coming months and years on dealing with the climate crisis.

这也是如何 转变发生在通往《巴黎协定》的道路上。 那些具有挑战性的，困难的， 随着越来越多的人决定，悲观的会议发生了变化 这是我们深入研究并确定我们不会的时刻 把球放在我们的手表上，我们将交付结果 我们知道这是可能的。 越来越多的人转型 他们自己从这个角度开始工作，最后，它奏效了 一股势头冲向我们，并带来了许多 那些具有更好结果的挑战性问题 比我们想象的要多。 即使是现在，多年后和 白宫的气候否认者，其中大部分都被付诸行动 在那些日子里仍在展开，我们有一切可以玩 在未来几个月和几年内应对气候危机。

 

So right now, we are coming through one of the most challenging periods in the lives of most of us. The global pandemic has been frightening, whether personal tragedy has been involved or not. But it has also shaken our belief that we are powerless in the face of great change. In the space of a few weeks, we mobilized to the point where half of humanity took drastic action to protect the most vulnerable. If we're capable of that, maybe we have not yet tested the limits of what humanity can do when it rises to meet a shared challenge.

所以现在，我们正在经历 这是我们大多数人生活中最具挑战性的时期之一。 全球疫情一直令人恐惧，无论是个人悲剧 是否参与其中。 但它也动摇了我们的信念 面对巨大的变化，我们无能为力。 在几周的时间里，我们动员到了 人类的一半采取了严厉行动来保护最弱势群体。 如果我们有能力做到这一点，也许我们还没有测试过 当人类崛起以应对共同挑战时，它所能做的极限。

 

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We now need to move beyond this narrative of powerlessness, because make no mistake -- the climate crisis will be orders of magnitude worse than the pandemic if we do not take the action that we can still take to avert the tragedy that we see coming towards us. We can no longer afford the luxury of feeling powerless. The truth is that future generations will look back at this precise moment with awe as we stand at the crossroads between a regenerative future and one where we have thrown it all away. And the truth is that a lot is going pretty well for us in this transition. Costs for clean energy are coming down. Cities are transforming. Land is being regenerated. People are on the streets calling for change with a verve and tenacity we have not seen for a generation. Genuine success is possible in this transition, and genuine failure is possible, too, which makes this the most exciting time to be alive. We can take a decision right now that we will approach this challenge with a stubborn form of gritty, realistic and determined optimism and do everything within our power to ensure that we shape the path as we come out of this pandemic towards a regenerative future. We can all decide that we will be hopeful beacons for humanity even if there are dark days ahead, and we can decide that we will be responsible, we will reduce our own emissions by at least 50 percent in the next 10 years, and we will take action to engage with governments and corporations to ensure they do what is necessary coming out of the pandemic to rebuild the world that we want them to. Right now, all of these things are possible.

我们现在需要超越 这种无能为力的叙述，因为不要搞错——气候危机将是命令 如果我们不采取行动，其规模将比大流行更严重 我们仍然可以采取这些措施来避免我们看到的悲剧 朝我们走来。 我们再也负担不起奢侈了 感到无能为力。 事实是，后代会回顾这一点 当我们站在十字路口时，怀着敬畏的时刻 在再生的未来和我们抛弃一切的未来之间。 事实是，很多事情正在发生 在这个过渡中，对我们来说非常好。 清洁能源的成本正在下降。 城市正在转型。 土地正在再生。 人们在街上 以我们一代人从未见过的神韵和坚韧呼吁变革。 真正的成功是可能的 在这个过渡中，真正的失败也是可能的，这使得这是最 活着的激动人心的时刻。 我们现在可以做出决定 我们将以顽强的毅力应对这一挑战， 现实而坚定的乐观，尽我们所能 确保我们在走出这场大流行时塑造道路 迈向再生未来。 我们都可以决定我们将 即使未来有黑暗的日子，人类的希望灯塔，我们可以决定 我们将负责，我们将减少自己的排放 在未来50年内至少减少10%，我们将采取行动参与 与政府和公司合作，以确保他们做必要的事情 走出大流行，重建我们希望他们去的世界。 现在，所有这些 事情是可能的。

 

footnote

footnote

So let's go back to that boring meeting room where I'm looking at that note from Christiana. And looking at it took me back to some of the most transformative experiences of my life. One of the many things I learned as a monk is that a bright mind and a joyful heart is both the path and the goal in life. This stubborn optimism is a form of applied love. It is both the world we want to create and the way in which we can create that world. And it is a choice for all of us. Choosing to face this moment with stubborn optimism can fill our lives with meaning and purpose, and in doing so, we can put a hand on the arc of history and bend it towards the future that we choose.

所以让我们回去 到那个无聊的会议室，我正在看那张纸条 来自克里斯蒂安娜。 看着它，我回到了一些最具变革性的。 我的生活经历。 作为一名僧侣，我学到的许多事情之一就是聪明的头脑和快乐的心。 既是人生的道路，也是人生的目标。 这种固执的乐观 是应用爱的一种形式。 它既是我们想要创造的世界，也是我们想要创造的世界 我们可以创造那个世界。 这是我们所有人的选择。 选择面对这一刻 固执的乐观可以填满我们的生活 有意义和目的，在这样做的过程中，我们可以伸出援手 在历史的弧线上，向未来弯曲 我们选择。

 

Yes, living now feels out of control. It feels frightening and scary and new. But let's not falter at this most crucial of transitions that is coming at us right now. Let's face it with stubborn and determined optimism.

是的，现在的生活感觉失控了。 感觉很可怕，很可怕，很新奇。 但我们不要动摇 在这个最关键的转变中，现在正在向我们袭来。 让我们固执地面对它 和坚定的乐观。

 

Yes, seeing the changes in the world right now can be painful. But let's approach it with love.

是的，看到变化 现在的世界可能是痛苦的。 但让我们用爱来对待它

 

Thank you.

谢谢。