The first self-described self-help book was published in 1859. The author's name, improbably, was Samuel Smiles; the title, even more improbably, was Self-Help. A distillation of lessons from the lives of famous people who had pulled themselves up by their bootstraps, it sold millions of copies and was a mainstay in Victorian households. Every generation since had its runaway bestseller, such as How to Live on 24 Hours a Day (1908), Think and Grow Rich (1937), or Don't Sweat the Small Stuff (1997).
第一本自称的自助书籍于 1859 年出版。作者名为塞缪尔·斯迈尔斯，书名更是不可思议，叫做《自助》。本书提炼了许多从著名人物自我奋斗的生活经验中得出的教训，销量达数百万本，成为维多利亚时期家庭的常备读物。自那以来，每一代都有其热销书籍，如《如何在 24 小时内生活》（1908）、《思考致富》（1937）或《别为小事烦恼》（1997）。
By now, the $11 billion self-help industry is most definitely not small stuff. Yet when you strip it down, there's very little new information. After all, we were consuming self-help for centuries before Smiles, just under different names. Roman emperor Marcus Aurelius gave tweet-sized advice in Meditations; so did Benjamin Franklin in Poor Richard's Almanack. Even self-help parody isn't new. Shakespeare did it with Polonius' "to thine own self be true" speech in Hamlet: basically a bullet-point list from a blowhard.
到现在为止，110 亿美元的自助行业绝对不是小事。然而，当你剥离这些表象时，实际上并没有多少新信息。毕竟，在斯迈尔斯之前，我们在几个世纪以来就已经消费自助，只是叫法不同。罗马皇帝马库斯·奥勒留斯在《沉思录》中提供了推特大小的建议；本杰明·富兰克林在《老理查德年鉴》中也如此。即使自助的讽刺也不是新鲜事。莎士比亚在《哈姆雷特》中通过波洛尼乌斯的“对你自己的真实”演讲进行了讽刺：基本上是个自夸者的要点列表。
The 21st century has seen a measure of self-awareness about our self-help addiction. There's the wave of sweary self-help bestsellers I wrote about, such as The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck. They hover somewhere between parody and dressing up the same advice as their forebears in earthier language. More recently, there's a trend you might call meta-self-help: books in which people write about their experiences following self-help books, such as Help Me! (2018) and How to Be Fine (2020), based on the similar self-help podcast By the Book.
21 世纪我们对自助成瘾有了一定的自我意识。出现了一波带有粗口的自助畅销书，我曾提到过，例如《不在乎的微妙艺术》。这些书介于讽刺和以更通俗的语言重新包装相同建议之间。最近，有一种可以称为元自助的趋势：书中人们讲述他们阅读自助书籍后的经历，比如《帮帮我！》（2018 年）和《如何过得不错》（2020 年），它们基于类似的自助播客《按书而行》。
But hey, if it's all pretty much the same stuff — and it is — why stop at distilling it into a single book? Why not condense the repeated lessons of an entire genre into one article? That's what I've attempted here, after reading dozens of history's biggest bestsellers so you don't have to. Here is the essence of the advice I've seen delivered again and again.
但是，嘿，如果这些内容都差不多 — 而且确实如此 — 为什么只把它提炼成一本书呢？为什么不把一个整个类型的重复教训浓缩成一篇文章呢？我在这里尝试了这个，读了数十本历史上最大的畅销书，以便你不必这样做。以下是我见到的反复传递的建议的本质。
1. Take one small step.
迈出一步。
Your daily habits aren't just important; they're the whole ballgame. Aristotle knew this when he wrote "we are what we repeatedly do." And despite your natural desire to fix everything at once, the best way to get big results is to make tiny, continuous changes to daily habits. In Japan, this is known as kaizen, a concept introduced to American readers in Stephen Covey's 1989 bestseller The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People.
你的日常习惯不仅重要；它们是全部。亚里士多德在写道“我们就是我们反复做的事情”时就知道这一点。尽管你自然希望一次性解决所有问题，但取得重大成果的最佳方法是对日常习惯进行微小、持续的改变。在日本，这被称为改善（kaizen），这一概念在斯蒂芬·柯维 1989 年的畅销书《高效能人士的七个习惯》中介绍给了美国读者。
Habit adjustment got a lot of help in the 21st century from groundbreaking studies into human behavior. These are outlined in the 2014 bestseller The Power of Habit. Then came Atomic Habits (2018), which points out that improving any metric by one percent at a time adds up to exponential growth over the long term. What matters in the short term is the repetition, which takes your behavior out of the limited realm of willpower and makes it automatic.
习惯调整在 21 世纪得到了来自人类行为开创性研究的很多帮助。这些研究在 2014 年的畅销书《习惯的力量》中概述。接着是《原子习惯》（2018），该书指出，逐步将任何指标提高一个百分点会在长期内累积成指数增长。短期内重要的是重复，这使你的行为超越了意志力的有限领域，变得自动化。
Personally I like the summary in Mini Habits (2013): Make your daily practice "too small to fail." Ensure you exercise for five minutes every day, for example, and you'll soon find yourself eager to do more.
个人而言，我喜欢《迷你习惯》（2013）中的总结：让你的日常练习“太小而无法失败”。确保你每天锻炼五分钟，例如，你很快会发现自己渴望做更多。
2. Change your mental maps.
2. 改变你的思维地图。
Time to enter the world of sports cliché. "If you believe it, the mind can achieve it": These motivational-poster words are attributed to the NFL's Ronnie Lott, but also reflect what nearly every self-help book has tried to tell us since The Power of Positive Thinking (1952). In achieving any goal, basically, you have to thoroughly visualize your preferred end result, then work backwards in precisely-planned steps.
是时候进入体育陈词滥调的世界了。“如果你相信，心灵就能实现”：这些励志海报上的话被归功于 NFL 的罗尼·洛特，但也反映了自《积极思考的力量》（1952 年）以来几乎
The planning part is key. Take it away and you get the semi-spiritual mumbo jumbo of The Secret (2006), which itself was a rewrite of The Science of Getting Rich (1910), which was based on the 19th century's "mind over body" movement. But science tells us there is no "law of attraction" (though there is a psychological explanation for why we might think we see examples of it).
规划部分是关键。如果去掉它，你就会得到《秘密》（2006）中的半神秘胡言乱语，而这本身是对《致富的科学》（1910）的改写，后者又基于 19 世纪的“意念胜于身体”运动。但科学告诉我们没有“吸引法则”（尽管有心理解释说明我们为什么会认为自己看到这样的例子）。
The plan is how you get to your goal, and the process may take years. You're playing the long game. Emotional connection to your visualization is how you acquire "mental toughness" to get past the hurdles that make us want to quit on the way to anything worthwhile.
计划是你实现目标的方式，而这个过程可能需要数年。你正在进行一场持久战。与视觉化的情感联系是你获得“心理韧性”的方式，以克服那些让我们在追求任何有价值的事物时想要放弃的障碍。
3. Struggle is good. Scary is good.
3. 问题是好的。恐惧是好的。
The Stoic philosophy dates back to the 3rd century B.C. And it's still enormously popular, cropping up not just in The Stoic Challenge: A Philosopher's Guide to Becoming Tougher, Calmer and More Resilient (2019), but in more or less every other modern self-help tome.
斯多葛哲学可以追溯到公元前 3 世纪。它至今仍然非常受欢迎，不仅出现在《斯多葛挑战：哲学家成为更坚韧、更冷静和更有韧性的指南》（2019）中，还出现在几乎所有其他现代自助书籍中。
Stoicism is not about being unfeeling, but about shifting your mental framework so that you expect and even welcome the worst instead of fearing it. "Say to yourself in the early morning: I shall meet today ungrateful, violent, treacherous, envious, uncharitable men," Marcus Aurelius wrote. Which is, apart from anything else, the perfect mantra for using Twitter.
斯多葛主义并不是不感情用事，而是改变你的思维框架，以便你期待甚至欢迎最糟糕的情况，而不是害怕它。马库斯·奥勒留写道：“在清晨对自己说：我今天将会遇到不知感恩、暴力、背叛、嫉妒和不仁慈的人。”这除了其他任何事情外，都是使用推特的完美口号。
Throughout history there are many similar attempts to rewire our expectations — such as the Buddhist principle, stolen by controversial academic Jordan Peterson, that says life is suffering. Once you accept this, the next level is not simply to expect it — but to rush headlong into the things that make you afraid.
历史上有许多类似的尝试来重塑我们的期待——比如被有争议的学者乔丹·彼得森窃取的佛教原则，认为生活即苦。当你接受这一点后，下一步不仅仅是期待它——而是要勇往直前地面对那些让你害怕的事物。
"You must do the thing you think you cannot do," said Eleanor Roosevelt. This is often rendered as the version that appeared in the famous "sunscreen" advice column and song: "Do one thing every day that scares you." Which, with its nod to daily habits, is probably the most succinct self-help sentence ever.
“你必须做你认为自己做不到的事情，”埃莉诺·罗斯福说。这常常被引用为出现在著名的“防晒霜”建议专栏和歌曲中的版本：“每天做一件让你感到害怕的事情。”这句话，考虑到日常习惯，可能是有史以来最简洁的自助句子。
This leads us to what we might call "self-scare" books, with titles like Feel the Fear and Do It Anyway (1987), which the author of the meta-self-help book Help Me! judged her most effective read. You don't have to quit your job, plunge into ice-cold ponds or face the embarrassment of public speaking as she did, but getting your ass off the couch and putting butterflies in your stomach is a necessary part of every stoic self-help plan.
这使我们想到可以称之为“自我恐吓”的书籍，如《感受恐惧并照样去做》（1987），这本元自助书《帮帮我！》的作者认为这是她最有效的阅读。你不必像她那样辞掉工作、跳入冰冷的池塘或面对公众演讲的尴尬，但从沙发上站起来，让肚子里有些紧张感是每个斯多噶自助计划中必不可少的一部分。
4. Instant judgment is bad.
瞬时判断是不好的。
It's hard to explain this common self-help rule without slipping into clichés. How often have you been told to take a deep breath and count to 10 before reacting to some perceived slight? Or to keep an open mind? Or to walk a mile in someone's shoes? Or to question your assumptions? Or that it's probably not about you? "Be kind," says a quote from a Scottish author that is often misattributed to Plato, "for everyone you meet is fighting a hard battle."
这条常见的自助规则很难解释，而不落入陈词滥调。你多久被告知在对某种被感知的轻视作出反应之前，深呼吸并数到 10？或是保持开放的心态？或是设身处地为他人着想？或是质疑你的假设？或者说这可能与您无关？“要善良，”一位苏格兰作者的名言常常被错误归 attributed to 柏拉图，“因为你遇到的每一个人都在与艰难的战斗搏斗。”
Call it empathy, call it compassion, call it playing devil's advocate, call it examining your privilege. It's all one and the same purpose — avoiding a rush to judgment about your fellow humans. Evolution has hardwired us to see patterns and make snap decisions. Which is useful when saber-toothed tigers are charging our cave, but not so much in a tight-knit multicultural society.
称之为同理心，称之为同情心，称之为持不同政见者，称之为审视你的特权。它们的目的都是一样的——避免对同胞们的匆忙判断。进化使我们本能地寻找模式并迅速做出决定。这在剑齿虎冲向我们的洞穴时非常有用，但在紧密团结的多元文化社会中就不那么适用了。
That's bad news for us, but good news for every self-help author who gets to remind us, repeatedly, in too many books to count.
这对我们来说是个坏消息，但对每位自助书作者来说却是个好消息，他们可以在数不胜数的书中一次又一次地提醒我们。
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5. Remember the end of your life.
5. 记住你生命的尽头。
As we pass what would have been Robin Williams' 69th birthday, let us recall the "carpe diem" scene from Dead Poets' Society. "We are food for worms, lads," says Williams; a line that is now almost too poignant to bear.
当我们经过罗宾·威廉姆斯本该 69 岁生日之际，让我们回想一下《死亡诗社》中的“及时行乐”场景。威廉姆斯说：“我们是虫子的食物，孩子们。”这句话如今几乎令人难以承受。
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But bear it we must, because the foreknowledge of our own demise isn't just what sets humans apart from animals. It's also one of the most useful tools in the self-help arsenal. Sufi poets originated the phrase "this too shall pass;" Julius Caesar made a servant whisper it in his ear when he entered the gates of Rome. Socrates gave us the memento mori. Why does it work so well? Because when we remember we're going to die, the inane squabbles of daily life tend to fall away, revealing a sudden clarity of purpose. "When a man knows he is to be hanged," 18th century wit Samuel Johnson wrote, "it concentrates his mind wonderfully."
但我们必须忍受，因为对自己死亡的预知不仅是人类与动物的区别所在。它也是自助工具箱中最有用的工具之一。苏菲诗人创造了“这也会过去”这句话；尤利乌斯·凯撒在进入罗马城门时让一个仆人低声对他说。苏格拉底给了我们“记住你会死”的警示。为什么它如此有效？因为当我们记住自己将要死去时，日常生活中的无谓争吵往往会消失，揭示出突然的目标清晰感。“当一个人知道自己将被绞死时，”18 世纪的机智者塞缪尔·约翰逊写道，“这会奇妙地集中他的思维。”
So how do we seize this day? By listing and doing the most important things, the sooner the better. Someday Is Not A Day in the Week (2019) tells the story of the author's father, who dreamed his whole life of visiting every U.S. National Park, then died of a stroke in a hotel bathroom on his way to do exactly that, one week after his retirement. If that's your fate, what would you do differently?
如何抓住这一天？通过列出并尽快完成最重要的事情。《某天不是一周中的一天》（2019）讲述了作者的父亲的故事，他一生都梦想着游览每一个美国国家公园，但在退休一周后，正要去实现这个梦想时，在酒店浴室中因中风去世。如果这是你的命运，你会有什么不同的做法？
If your own death is too scary to contemplate, there's a safer version that is more effective for some: Think of yourself in your 80s in a retirement home. Really picture it: You in a wheelchair, wrinkled and frail, eating soft food from a tray in front of a droning TV. Would that person be glad you took the leap you want to make right now, or would they regret it?
如果你自己的死亡让你感到太可怕而无法思考，那么有一个更安全的版本，对某些人来说更有效：想象一下你在养老院的 80 岁时。真正想象一下：你坐在轮椅上，皱纹满面，虚弱无力，面前的托盘上放着软食，电视在单调地播放。那个人会为你现在想要迈出的那一步感到高兴，还是会后悔呢？
This is a thought experiment known as "prospective retrospection." Jeff Bezos calls it "regret minimization," and it's what he used in 1996 to take the biggest risk of his life. He decided 80-year-old Jeff would be less regretful if he drove to Seattle and founded Amazon, no matter the outcome, than if he stayed in his safe New York consulting gig. Love Bezos or hate him, you can't deny it worked.
这是一个被称为“前瞻性回顾”的思想实验。杰夫·贝索斯称之为“遗憾最小化”，这是他在 1996 年用来承担一生中最大风险的方法。他决定 80 岁的杰夫如果开车去西雅图创办亚马逊，无论结果如何，都比留在安全的纽约咨询工作中更不容易感到遗憾。无论你爱贝索斯还是恨他，你都不能否认这确实有效。
6. Be playful.
6. 保持玩乐。
On Being Awesome: A Unified Theory of How Not to Suck (2017) has one of the more unusual beginnings of any self-help book: A description of nerdy Celtics fan Jeremy Fry rocking out to Bon Jovi's Living on a Prayer on the stadium cam, a viral video viewed nearly 19 million times. Why? Because Fry was behaving as awesomely as we wish we all could, throwing caution to the wind, fully expressing himself in front of thousands.
在《如何变得出色：不糟糕的统一理论》（2017）中，有一本自助书籍中最不寻常的开头之一：描述了迷人的凯尔特人球迷杰里米·弗莱在体育场摄像头前尽情摇摆，伴随着邦·乔维的《活在祈祷中》，这段病毒视频的观看次数接近 1900 万。为什么？因为弗莱的表现如同我们都希望能做到的那样，毫无顾忌地表达自己，在成千上万的人面前尽情展现。
It wasn't that Fry was dancing like no one was watching, to name another cliché. It's that he was dancing with everyone, fully aware they were all watching, and loving it. Here's where The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck and its ilk come in handy, by reminding us of one essential truth: Life is way too short to give any fucks whatsoever about what other people think of you when you're living your best life. And paradoxically, others are drawn to you when you behave like that.
弗莱并不是在像没人看一样跳舞，换句话说，这又是一个陈词滥调。关键在于他和每个人一起跳舞，完全意识到他们都在看，并且乐在其中。这就是《不在乎的艺术》等书籍的用武之地，它们提醒我们一个基本真理：生活太短暂了，根本不值得在意别人对你生活的看法。而且，矛盾的是，当你这样表现时，别人会被你吸引。
What's more, you should actively cultivate your quirks. An increasing number of creative self-help books make this explicit, such as Felicia Day's Embrace Your Weird (2019). "The things that made you weird as a kid are the source of your creative powers," says James Victore in Feck Perfuction: Dangerous Ideas on the Business of Life (2019). "These are the base elements of who you are. Not perfect. Not trying. Just yourself." And as Buddhists will tell you, just being yourself without effort is the best way to leave that troublesome ego at the door.
更重要的是，你应该积极培养你的怪癖。越来越多的创意自助书籍明确指出这一点，例如费莉西亚·戴的《拥抱你的怪异》（2019 年）。詹姆斯·维克托在《糟糕的完美：生活商业中的危险思想》（2019 年）中说：“让你在孩子时显得怪异的事物是你创造力的源泉。这些是你身份的基本元素。不是完美的。不是在努力。只是你自己。”正如佛教徒所说，毫不费力地做自己是将麻烦的自我留在门外的最佳方式。
No matter how difficult your task is, you can always make it playful. You wouldn't think this rule would apply to recovery from serious illness, but games designer Jane McGonigal wrote SuperBetter (2015) to prove the case. Suffering from a concussion so severe that it almost drove her to suicide, she built a digital game that rewarded her for each tiny step in her post-traumatic growth. More than half a million people have since been helped by the recovery game.
无论你的任务多么困难，你总是可以让它变得有趣。你可能不会认为这个规则适用于从重病中恢复，但游戏设计师简·麦戈尼格尔（Jane McGonigal）在 2015 年写了《超级更好》（SuperBetter）来证明这一点。她因严重的脑震荡几乎自杀，随后她创建了一款数字游戏，奖励她在创伤后成长中的每一个小步骤。此后，已有超过五十万人通过这款恢复游戏获得了帮助。
7. Be useful to others.
7. 对他人有用。
What is the oldest piece of self-help advice? In the loosest definition, it's probably the Golden Rule — treat others as you would want to be treated — a basic principle which appears to have emerged independently in every culture in the world. The rule dates to at least the 6th century B.C. in China and Greece, and around 2,000 B.C. in Egypt. There are many more ways to say it, from "love thy neighbor" to, in the words of a 2020 self-help title, Just Don't Be An Assh*le.
什么是最古老的自助建议？在最宽松的定义中，它可能是黄金法则——以你希望被对待的方式对待他人——这一基本原则似乎在世界上每种文化中都独立出现。这个规则至少可以追溯到公元前 6 世纪的中国和希腊，以及公元前 2000 年左右的埃及。还有许多其他表达方式，从“爱邻如己”到 2020 年一本自助书的标题中的话，“只要别做个混蛋”。
But the Golden Rule can trip you up if your neighbors don't want to be treated the way you do. You can become an asshole by being overly helpful, too. C.S. Lewis noted this in his 1942 classic Screwtape Letters (spiritual self-help in the form of correspondence from the devil): "She's the sort of person who lives for others. You can tell who the others are by their hunted expression."
但如果你的邻居不想以你希望的方式被对待，黄金法则可能会让你陷入困境。过于热心也可能让你变得讨厌。C.S.路易斯在他 1942 年的经典作品《螺丝钉信》中指出了这一点（以魔鬼的信件形式呈现的精神自助书）： “她是那种为他人而活的人。你可以通过他们被追赶的表情来判断其他人是谁。”
So a better way to think is in terms of usefulness. "The purpose of life is not to be happy, it is to be useful," wrote Ralph Waldo Emerson, and it's as true now as it was in the 19th century. Being useful to others doesn't just give us a warm and fuzzy feeling, one rooted deep in our tribal evolution. It also allows us to employ our particular talents, our quirks, and it gives them a direction. Find the thing that makes you you, then use it in a way that will help as much of humanity as possible: This is as close as we get to the meaning of life.
所以更好的思考方式是从有用性出发。“生活的目的不是为了快乐，而是为了有用，”拉尔夫·瓦尔多·爱默生写道，这在 19 世纪是如此，现在也是如此。对他人有用不仅给我们带来温暖和模糊的感觉，这种感觉深深植根于我们的部落进化中。它还使我们能够运用我们特有的才能和怪癖，并为它们指明方向。找到让你成为你的东西，然后以一种能帮助尽可能多的人类的方式使用它：这就是我们接近生命意义的方式。
Is it too trite to simply say that loving one another is the answer? Indeed it is — and finding new stories that cut through the syrup to remind us of that essential truth is what keeps self-help writers (not to mention novelists, preachers, and screenwriters) in business. "We must love one another or die," wrote the poet W.H. Auden — which, in light of rule #5, he later changed to "we must love one another and die."
爱彼此是否太过陈词滥调，以至于简单地说这是答案？确实是这样——而找到那些穿透糖浆的新故事，以提醒我们这一基本真理，正是让自助作家（更不用说小说家、传教士和编剧）保持生计的原因。诗人 W.H. Auden 写道：“我们必须相爱，否则就会死。”——在规则#5 的背景下，他后来将其改为“我们必须相爱并死去。”
8. Perfectionism = procrastination
完美主义 = 拖延症
Over the years I've bought an armful of books to tackle procrastination, ironically waiting for a rainy day to read them. I also sought books that dealt with my perfectionist behavior. But it wasn't until I read How to Be an Imperfectionist that one simple fact became clear: They were one and the same problem.
多年来，我买了一大堆书来应对拖延，讽刺的是却在等待一个下雨天来阅读它们。我还寻找那些处理我完美主义行为的书籍。但直到我读了《如何做一个不完美主义者》，一个简单的事实才变得清晰：它们是同一个问题。
Perfect results are impossible in this world, so if you're expecting them, of course you're going to procrastinate. Perfectionism isn't playful. It won't let you embrace your flaws, or the notion that habit change is supposed to be slow and easy, so if anything you overreach — hello, New Year's resolutions! — and end up failing to change your habits at all.
完美的结果在这个世界上是不可能的，所以如果你期待它们，当然你会拖延。完美主义不是一种游戏。它不会让你接受自己的缺陷，或者习惯改变应该是缓慢而简单的这个概念，因此如果有什么的话，你会过于追求——你好，新年决心！——最终根本无法改变你的习惯。
Again, there's a Japanese principle at work here: wabi-sabi, the acceptance and love of imperfection in all things. How do you put it into action? You get started, no matter whether you're ready. Sometimes you learn best by doing, by throwing yourself in at the deep end. To use a sometimes annoying aphorism that cropped up in English sometime in the 1970s: Fake it 'til you make it.
再次，这里有一个日本原则在起作用：侘寂，接受和热爱一切事物中的不完美。你如何将其付诸实践？无论你是否准备好，你都要开始。有时你通过实践学习得最好，勇敢地投入其中。用一个在 1970 年代出现在英语中的有时令人烦恼的格言来说：假装直到你成功。
9. Sleep, exercise, eat, chill out. Repeat.
翻译文本：9. 睡觉、锻炼、吃东西、放松。重复。
Being human means accepting the limitations and maintenance of our meat sack. The Roman poet Juvenal put it best: Mens sana in corpore sano, a healthy mind in a healthy body. We need to eat (not too much, not too often, and the right stuff). We need to sleep (between 6 and 10 hours, depending on our age and our DNA) and to pay attention to our chronotype, which we can't change no matter how many times we read self-help books like The 5 A.M. Miracle that promise to make us a morning person.
做一个人意味着接受我们肉体的局限性和维护。罗马诗人尤维纳尔说得最好：Mens sana in corpore sano，健康的心灵在健康的身体中。我们需要吃（不过量，不频繁，吃对的东西）。我们需要睡觉（根据我们的年龄和 DNA，6 到 10 小时），并关注我们的生物钟，无论我们读多少本像《早上 5 点的奇迹》这样的自助书籍，都无法改变。
And yes, sorry, we need to exercise daily. It really is a silver bullet that boosts our resilience while reducing pain, inflammation, depression, and the stress hormone cortisol. But cortisol fighting doesn't end with your run/walk/jazzercise. A ton of self-help books, not just the Buddhist ones, recommend meditation and mindfulness, with good scientific reason.
并且是的，抱歉，我们需要每天锻炼。这确实是一个银弹，可以增强我们的韧性，同时减少疼痛、炎症、抑郁和压力激素皮质醇。但对抗皮质醇并不仅仅依赖于你的跑步/散步/爵士舞。许多自助书籍，不仅仅是佛教书籍，推荐冥想和正念，这有很好的科学依据。
And then there's The Importance of Living, a popular 1937 American self-help book by a Chinese immigrant named Lin Yutang, which recommends just chilling out, loafing, going with the flow. One whole chapter is devoted to the best posture while lying in bed. "If you can spend a perfectly useless afternoon in a perfectly useless manner," Yutang writes, "you have learned how to live."
然后是《生活的意义》，这是一本由华裔移民林语堂于 1937 年出版的流行美国自助书，推荐放松、闲逛、随遇而安。整整一章专门讲述躺在床上时的最佳姿势。“如果你能以一种完全无用的方式度过一个完全无用的下午，”林语堂写道，“你就学会了如何生活。”
Which isn't to say that you shouldn't strive to do more, find your purpose, visualize your goals, etc. etc. But if you don't make room for the simple pleasures, ideally with your cortisol-spiking smartphone as far away as possible, you will never be fully refreshed and restored and ready to give back to the world. It's also vital for your sense of humor, says Yutang, who offers this formula: "Reality + dreams + humor = wisdom."
这并不是说你不应该努力去做更多，找到你的目标，想象你的目标等等。但是如果你不为简单的快乐留出空间，理想情况下让你的皮质醇飙升的智能手机尽可能远离，你将永远无法完全恢复和充电，准备好回馈世界。正如余唐所说，这对你的幽默感也至关重要，他提供了这个公式：“现实 + 梦想 + 幽默 = 智慧。”
10. Write it all down.
将所有内容写下来。
No matter which self-help guide you follow, you aren't going to get far without writing. You need to hone a plan. You need to visualize. You need to make lists. David Allen's 2002 classic Getting Things Done offers the best system I've ever seen for a to-do list, and it can be boiled down to this: Capture literally everything you think you might have to do or want to do, now or in the future. Then for each item, either do it immediately (if it takes less than 5 minutes), defer it (to a specific date or a "someday/maybe" list) or delegate it (if you're lucky enough to have people to do stuff for you).
无论你遵循哪个自助指南，如果不写作，你都不会走得太远。你需要制定一个计划。你需要进行可视化。你需要列出清单。大卫·艾伦在 2002 年出版的经典著作《搞定》提供了我见过的最佳待办事项系统，可以归结为这一点：捕捉你现在或将来可能需要做或想做的所有事情。然后，对于每一项，要么立即执行（如果花费少于 5 分钟），要么推迟（到特定日期或“某天/也许”清单），要么委派（如果你有足够幸运的人为你做事）。
You can and should write in a freeform and spontaneous way too, even if you're not a writer. That's the advice of Julia Cameron, author of the 1992 bestseller The Artist's Way, which introduced the concept of "morning pages." In the first hour of your day, before your brain has a chance to fully wake up and censor itself, write three pages by hand. The subject: anything that comes to mind. Invariably, the first two pages are full of crap like "I don't know why I'm doing this, it's boring," before the third page hits on some surprising epiphany.
您可以并且应该以自由和自发的方式写作，即使您不是作家。这是朱莉娅·卡梅伦的建议，她是 1992 年畅销书《艺术家之路》的作者，该书引入了“晨间页”的概念。在您一天的第一小时，脑袋尚未完全清醒并进行自我审查之前，手写三页。主题：任何想到的事情。通常，头两页都是一些无意义的内容，比如“我不知道我为什么要这样做，这太无聊了”，直到第三页出现一些惊人的顿悟。
Then there's the gratitude journal. The concept still makes me roll my eyes, but it's hard to deny the science of it: The simple act of listing things we're grateful for every day has been shown to rewire our brains and improve our mental health, even after just a few weeks of the practice.
然后是感恩日记。这个概念仍然让我翻白眼，但很难否认其科学性：每天列出我们感激的事物这一简单行为已被证明可以重塑我们的思维，改善我们的心理健康，即使在仅仅几周的实践之后。
11. You can't get it all from reading.
11. 你不能仅仅通过阅读获得一切。
If you read an author who claims you can get literally everything you need from their book or article, that's not self-help. It's a cult. Luckily, almost all writers admit the limitations of reading in a well-rounded life improvement program. At some point, you need to put the book down and do the work. And you need to recognize your limitations. You will always backslide. St. Augustine, in the 5th century A.D., knew this when he wrote about the two parts of the self, the one that perversely enjoys doing the wrong things and the one that wants to kick its ass. Neither one will ever achieve complete victory.
如果你读到一个作者声称你可以从他们的书或文章中获得你所需的一切，那就不是自助书籍，而是一个邪教。幸运的是，几乎所有的作家都承认在全面的生活改善计划中阅读的局限性。在某个时刻，你需要放下书本，去做实际的工作。你需要认识到自己的局限性。你总会退步。圣奥古斯丁在公元 5 世纪时就知道这一点，他写到了自我的两个部分，一个是病态地享受做错事的部分，另一个是想要纠正自己的部分。两者都永远无法实现完全的胜利。
Even the most self-reliant of us need help to get as far along that road as we can. That's the final stage of 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, where we move from the rebellious teenage stage of independence to an adult understanding of interdependence. Plenty of self-help authors suggest nominating an "accountability buddy" to keep you honest, while you do the same for them.
即使是我们中最自立的人也需要帮助，以便在这条路上走得更远。这是《高效能人士的七个习惯》的最后阶段，在这一阶段，我们从叛逆的青少年独立阶段转变为对相互依赖的成年理解。许多自助书作者建议提名一个“责任伙伴”来保持你的诚实，同时你也为他们做同样的事情。
If you're lucky enough to have someone who will call you on literally all of your shit, hang on to that person for dear life. But friends, co-workers and family who love you are naturally going to be wary of telling you everything you can't see for fear of the reaction, just as you would be with them. So a better solution, say it with me now, is to see a therapist. You can read all about Cognitive Behavioral Therapy in books such as the bestselling Feeling Good (1980), for example. But you can't put it into practice until you're talking to a professional who can apply it to your particular case.
如果你有幸能找到一个会直言不讳地指出你所有问题的人，请紧紧抓住这个人。但朋友、同事和爱你的人自然会对告诉你所有你看不到的事情感到谨慎，因为他们害怕你的反应，就像你对他们一样。因此，更好的解决方案，跟我一起说，就是去看心理医生。你可以在一些畅销书中阅读关于认知行为疗法的内容，例如《感觉良好》（1980）。但在你与能够将其应用于你特定案例的专业人士交谈之前，你无法将其付诸实践。
Self-help bestsellers have been recommending talk therapy since The Road Less Traveled in 1978. Still, the stigma remains: If you see a therapist it must be an admission of defeat, that you're somehow mentally deficient, right? Wrong. Even therapists need therapists. Ultimately, this too is part of the meaning of life: Not just to be useful to others, but to be strong enough to let others be useful to us.
自助畅销书自 1978 年的《少有人走的路》以来一直推荐谈话疗法。然而，耻辱感依然存在：如果你去看治疗师，那一定是承认自己失败，说明你在某种程度上精神有缺陷，对吗？错了。即使治疗师也需要治疗师。归根结底，这也是生命意义的一部分：不仅要对他人有用，还要足够强大，让他人对我们有用。
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