【中英双语】当代年轻人，为什么格外害怕落后于同龄人？
Feel Like You’re Falling Behind Your Peers?
落后于相似的同辈，这绝不是一件令人愉快的事。我们常说，"不要与人比较，只与自己比"，但说易行难。随着社交媒体的兴起，如果要与他人保持联系，就难免会看到一些同辈取得的成就。事实上，这些动态也有好处，最近的一项研究表明，它可以成为工作和生活中的灵感源泉。 It’s never pleasant to lag behind others that we consider similar. The conventional wisdom says to “stop competing with others, only with yourself.” But that’s easier said than done. With the rise of social media, it’s hard to avoid evidence of your colleagues’ accomplishments if you want to stay connected. And in fact that evidence can have benefits. A recent study shows that it can become a source of inspiration in both work and life. 那么，你要如何利用它积极的一面，而不用承受它可能导致的不安感呢？以下五种策略可以帮到你。 So how can you harness the positive benefits of competition without suffering from the insecurity it may breed? By employing these five strategies.
找到触发压力的因素
Track your triggers.
感觉自己落后于同龄人的这种压力，会以多种形式出现。它可能是短暂的，比如听到老板夸奖另一位同事；也可能是持续的，比如看着同事们告别朝九晚五的工作，去开创他们自己的事业。 The stress of feeling behind your peers can emerge in many forms throughout the day. It might be something transient, such as hearing your boss compliment another colleague, or it might be something constant, such as watching your colleagues leave the 9-5 to build businesses of their own. 回想一下，到底是什么因素触发了你的自我比较。老板对同事的支持，是否会让你感到自卑？某个朋友的成就，是否会对你造成打击？你是否经常浏览领英（LinkedIn）、Facebook 或者Instagram，同时不可避免地感受到强烈的不安感和孤独感？如果是，那么你并不孤单。研究表明，社交媒体的使用加剧了我们内在的消极偏见，我们会将更多注意力放在消极经历而不是积极经历上。 Reflect on what triggers self-comparison for you. Does your boss’s support of others make you feel inferior? Do specific friends’ accomplishments bring you down? Do you find yourself regularly scrolling through LinkedIn, Facebook, or Instagram, inevitably feeling a higher level of insecurity and isolation as you do? If so, you’re not alone. Research shows that using social media exacerbates our inherent negativity bias, where we put more weight on negative experiences than positive ones.
注意那些促使你觉得不如他人的事情，这一点很重要，因为一旦你意识到这些事情是触发因素，你就可以将它们转化为机会，以获取更有成效的结果。
It’s vital to pay attention to the things that provoke self-comparison for you, because once you’re aware that these are triggers, you can transform them into opportunities for a more productive response.
从被动的反省转变为有意识的改变
Shift from reactive rumination to purposeful reframing.
一旦感觉到落后于人，你也许会放弃所有引起不安感的活动。但一般情况下这个办法既不合理，也不实用。 Once you track the situations that provoke feeling behind, you may decide to quit all activities that prompt insecurity. But that’s rarely a reasonable or pragmatic solution. 比如，你可能无法避免听到老板对你或同事的看法。还有，就算你可以离开朋友，或者不再使用社交媒体，你也会因为孤独而感觉自己越来越不如他人。更好的办法是有意识地让那些感受对你有利。 For instance, you probably can’t avoid hearing what your boss says about you or your colleagues. And while you can cut off your friends or stop using social media, your feelings of inadequacy may increase with isolation. A better approach is to be intentional: deliberately engage those feelings to your benefit. 比如，当你下次浏览社交媒体的时候，问问自己为什么在这个时候做这件事。是因为觉得无聊吗？如果是，那就有意地进行娱乐，而不是评判自己。或者，下次当你听到同事事业成功的消息，感觉自己不如他人时，退后一步，不加评判地观察自己的感受。然后主动承诺去客观地看待同辈的进步，就好像你是一个调查他们故事的记者，而不是与他们直接竞争的人。 Take, for example, the next time you are scrolling through your social media accounts. Ask yourself why you are doing it at this moment. Are you bored? Then intentionally decide to engage for entertainment, not to judge yourself. Or the next time you come across news of a peer’s career success and find yourself feeling inadequate, step back and observe your feelings without judgment. Then make a proactive commitment to view your peer’s progress objectively, as if you were a journalist researching their story rather than someone in direct competition with them.
如果这些活动让你感到不安，一定要暂时远离。
但是记住，你可以带着学习的意图去接近他们。不要对自己说，“我希望我能做到(或拥有)”，而要问问自己，“为什么我不能做到(或拥有)?”然后花点时间去听听你脑海中浮现的想法。
If these activities become disturbing for you, by all means, take a break from them.
But remember that you can always approach them with an intention to learn. Instead of saying to yourself, “I wish I did [or had] that,” ask yourself, “Why can’t I do [or have] that?” Then take some time to listen to what ideas emerge in your mind.
展示个人长处，重获认可与动力
Exhibit a personal strength to regain validation and momentum.
在强烈的不安感爆发期间，你可能会开始思考如何才能赶上别人。在这个时候，你可以通过采取小的行动来获得小的成功，重新找回你的自我效能感。在你的核心优势上加倍努力，向世界展现它们，并利用他人的认可来培养韧性。 During an acute bout of insecurity, you may start to brood about how you can catch up to others. At this time, recapture your sense of self-efficacy by taking small actions to achieve small wins. Double down on your core strengths, express them to the world, and use the validation for a shot of resilience. 我培训的一位高管很伤心，因为他本来会在今年晋升为高级副总裁，但由于疫情爆发而被推迟了。他很担心获得这个梦寐以求的职位的机会将慢慢消失；也很羡慕其他公司的同龄人，他们在这次危机之前就已经成功晋升。 An executive coaching client of mine was heartbroken that his planned promotion to SVP this year was postponed due to the pandemic. He worried that his chances of gaining this coveted position in his company would slowly disappear. And he envied his associates in other companies who had already crossed that hurdle before this crisis. 这种消极状态令人不快，可能会不利于他今年的表现。为了打破这种状态，他决定利用过去赖以生存的长处：写作才能。他为公司的博客撰写了一篇有深度的文章，主题为如何度过当前危机，这篇文章成为该公司有史以来发表的文章中点击率最高的一篇。许多新老同事对他诚恳乐观的指导表示感谢。反过来，这种反馈让他对自己的价值充满信心，也增加了他领导能力的可信度，那么在时机成熟时，他自然会得到晋升。 To disrupt his negative state, which was unpleasant and could be detrimental to his performance this year, he decided to leverage a strength he relied upon in the past: his writing talent. He composed a thoughtful article for the company blog on leading through the current crisis—and it became the most viewed post the company had ever published. Countless junior and senior colleagues expressed their gratitude for his honest and optimistic guidance. This feedback, in turn, made him confident about his value and also added to his leadership credibility for promotion when the time was right.
重新定义你的同辈圈子
Redefine your peer set and create a new field of play.
当你把自己和一群固定的同龄人比较时，你就陷入了一场零和游戏，要么领先，要么落后。但是，通过扩大视野，融入新的、多样化的同龄人群体，你在看待成功时将打破二元对立的思维方式，并在新的领域发挥优势。 When you compare yourself to a fixed set of peers, you engage in a zero-sum game where you are either ahead or behind. But by expanding your view to include new and diverse peer groups, you create less of a binary evaluation of your success and enable new domains to dominate. Jackie是一家世界100强企业的经理，三年来一直没有机会晋升至副总裁一职。她开始感到越来越绝望，陷入当前的困境。重新设计工作内容、改变与同事的互动，她希望以此来寻找意义，努力拓宽自己的工作方式，但似乎找不到满足感，因为她知道副总裁的头衔总是与她无缘。 Jackie, a director at a Fortune 100 company, was passed over for a VP role for three years. As she began to feel more hopeless and stuck in her current position, she tried to broaden her approach to work by job crafting and changing her interactions with colleagues to find meaning. But she couldn’t seem to find fulfillment, knowing that the VP title always eluded her. 她意识到，自己总是将观点局限于由副总裁组成的这个小的同辈群体之中，于是她开始与公司外的人建立联系，听他们分享自己的创业价值观。渐渐地，她重塑了自己的观念。尽管落后于那些拥有自己公司的新同辈，但她喜欢向他们学习。通过这样的方式，她不仅消除了在公司里进行自我比较的痛苦，而且带着充沛的精力和动力去重新评估自己的职业抱负。 Recognizing that she always limited her perspective to a small peer group of other VP’s, she began networking with people outside of the company that shared her values around entrepreneurship. After participating in a monthly panel to hear pitches from local startups and mentor them, she found a renewal of spirit. Even though she was behind these new peers who had their own companies, she enjoyed learning from them. And by doing so, she not only neutralized the pain of self-comparison in her company but felt energized and motivated to re-evaluate her career aspirations.
摆脱内化的期望
Shake free of internalized expectations.
你在实际竞争中会感觉落后于同辈，比如看到他们在工作中升职。但还有一种更具破坏性的心态，会导致永久的不安感：认为自己不仅应该比同龄人做得更好，还应该得到他们想要的一切。
这种心态创造了一种永无止境的竞争，在这种竞争中，你永远无法享受已经获得的东西。你对成功的内在期望会随着别人的渴望而不断变化。
It’s one thing to feel behind your peers in an actual competition, such as a promotion at work. But there is an even more damaging mindset that leads to perpetual insecurity: the belief that you should not only outperform your peers but also want all of what they are trying to achieve.
This “tyranny of the should” creates a never-ending race in which you can never enjoy what you have already gained. Your internal expectations of what defines success keep changing depending on what others desire.
我的许多CEO级别以下的客户发现自己正处于这种境地。在内心深处，他们不想要巨大的工作压力，但又一直认为应该这样做，因为同龄人都渴望这样的工作。这种心态造成了一种无法取胜的局面。如果他们不追求或获得CEO的头衔，就会觉得自己不如别人。但如果他们真的做到了，可能又会觉得自己被困在了一个他们从未真正想要的位置上。 Many of my clients who are one rung below the CEO find themselves in this position. Deep down, they don’t want the top job pressure, yet keep believing they should because of how much their peers aspire to it. This mindset creates an unwinnable scenario. If they don’t pursue or gain the CEO title, they will feel inferior to others who do. But if they do get there, they may feel trapped in a position they never truly wanted. 试着考虑这样一种可能性：
到目前为止，你选择做的每件事都是正确的，不管你现在认为自己当时应该做什么。
正念提醒是这样的：“路都是自己走出来的。”不要通过回顾过去把你的不安感过度复杂化。然后，根据你的价值观来评估未来的决定，以及这些决定是否为你的成长提供了机会。根据他人的需求或他人拥有的东西而改变方向，你将会永远落后于他人，并受制于你的同辈。 Consider the possibility that everything you have chosen to do until now has always been the right path, regardless of what you think you were supposed to do. As the mindfulness reminder goes, “Wherever you go, there you are.” Don’t overcomplicate your insecurity by looking backward. Then commit to evaluating future decisions based on your values and whether they present opportunities for your growth. To change course based on what others want or have will keep you perennially behind and at the behest of your peers. 你在事业和生活中的任何努力，都会不可避免地带来种种比较和不安感。但是当你感觉自己落后于别人(不管是不是真的)的时候，你可以使用这些策略来重拾自信，并在那些对你而言真正重要的竞争中脱颖而出。 Any endeavor in your career and life will inevitably bring bouts of self-comparison and insecurity. But whenever you feel like you’re falling behind others (whether that’s true or not), you can use these strategies to regain your confidence and excel in the competitions that genuinely matter to you. 尼哈尔·查亚是美国航空、可口可乐、通用电气、戴尔等全球化企业的高管教练。查亚曾在一家世界500强公司担任人才发展主管，现任PartnerExec公司的总裁，协助公司领导们掌握人际交往能力，以创造卓越的商业与战略成果。 刘静贤|译 周强|编校
