TED：热情不是一个计划，热情是一种感觉（附视

[原文来自：www.11jj.com]

英语演讲君按 [本文来自：www.11jj.com]

热情不是一个计划，热情是一种感觉。人们总是认为热情创造成功，其实相反，往往是成功创造热情。不要无所事事地去等待热情的出现，现在就去解决你想要解决的问题吧！

The day I got laid off from my job at Martha Stewart I was relieved. I loved the job. I really did but the relationship was over and I didn’t know how to end it and then it broke up with me. At the time I’ve been also hosting a radio show for the Martha Stewart brand on SiriusXM and then not long after that got canceled too.

On the day of my last show I got onto the elevator at the 36th floor and as it started to drop, I started to cry. Every floor took me further and further from what I had been, a magazine editor, a radio host, the person with the cool job to talk about at parties. And honestly, I had no idea what I was going to do and quite frankly no one was looking for me. So I did what anyone would do in that situation. I was making some phone calls, hey, what are you up to, that I mention I’m available. I needed to get paid to do something, right? I mean, I live in New York City. If you’re not paid to do something, you’re not going to be there very long.

With this idea that I had to know when I was supposed to do now, is to pursue this passion. It just bugged me. It always had and that’s because there’s a  dangerously limiting idea at the heart of everything we believe about success  and life in general. And it’s that you have one singular passion and your job is to find it and to pursue it to the exclusion of all else. And if you do that, everything will fall into place. And if you don’t you fail.

The pressure starts really young and it goes your whole life but it’s perhaps most pronounced when you’re graduating from school, right? Wow, the world at your feet, what are you going to do now? And it’s so intimidating it’s like picking a major for life. I had a hard time picking a major for four years and I changed that once if not twice. I mean it was like just intimidating. And this compelling, I mean this really forceful cultural imperative to choose your passion is stressful to me but it’s not just me. Everyone I talked to agrees with me. The woman who sold me this dress, I told her what I needed to dress for when I was talking about and she said, oh my gosh, I really need to hear this  talk because I just graduate from school, my friends and I we don’t know what we’re passionate about. We don’t know what we’re supposed to do.

I’m leery of passion for a few reasons. But one of them is that passion is not a plan. It’s a feeling and feelings change. They do. You can be passionate about a person one day, at a job and then not passionate the next. We know this and yet we continue to use passion as the yardstick to judge everything by, instead of seeing passion for what it really is, the fire that ignites when you start rubbing sticks together. Anyway I was such a mess when I was in my twenties, such a mess, I was anxious and depressed and had no life to speak of. I was tempting to keep my options open and I was sitting around at night in my underwear watching Seinfeld reruns, actually I still do that, that’s not the worst thing in the world to do. Fine.

But I called my mother every night crying and I was turning away perfectly good fulltime jobs, why because I was afraid. I was sure that I would pick the wrong one and get on the wrong train headed to the wrong future. My mother begged me to please take a job, any job, you’re not going to be stuck. You’re stuck now. You don’t create your life first and then live it. You create it by living it, not agonizing about it. She’s right, she’s always right.

And so I took a full time job as an assistant at a management consulting firm where I knew nothing about nothing. Okay, zero. Except I knew I had a reason to get up in the morning, get showered, leave the house and people who are waiting for me when I got there. And I got a paycheck every two weeks and that is as good a reason to take a job as any. Did I know that — if I want to be an office administrator for the rest of my life? No, I had no idea, truly. But this idea that everything you’re supposed to do should fit into this passion vertical is unrealistic. You show me someone who washes windows for a living and I will bet you $1,000,000 if not because he has a passion for clean glass.

One of my favorite columns is a piece by Dilbert creator Scott Adams. He wrote a piece in The Wall Street Journal few years ago about how he failed his way to success and one of his jobs was as a commercial loan officer. And he was taught specifically: do not loan money to someone following their passion. Now loan it to someone who wants to start a business, the more boring the better.

Adam says that in his life success fueled passion more than passion fueled success. When I got my first job as a magazine editor in publishing, I was thrilled. But I had to take a pretty big paycut because at the time I’d been a catalog copywriter at a Wig Company. Laugh if you will, clearly you are and many many people did. But Wigs paid and so I had to figure out a way to make some  money. So a friend of mine invited me to a jewelry party and I said what is a jewelry party? She said it’s like tupperware but with bracelets. I said, okay, got it.

I went and I had the best time. I was there hanging out trying on jewelry and the salesperson’s having a great time and I was like, that’s a job. I could do  that. I mean really she seems to be having a great time. Now I had no background in sales — Girl Scouts, and I was terrible and I had no passion for jewelry. I mean honestly my earrings cost $20 combined all of them and then I was like I think I can fling silver jewelry to suburban moms drinking daiquiris. Yes, I  could do that.

And so I did it, I signed up, I became a jewelry designs rep and listen to me I was not setting the world on fire away, really. I was so like awkward and afraid of selling, and I got better, I got better. I started making some money. I started getting really passionate about it, not just because of the money but because what I realized is people bought at the stuff. They were happy to pay for it. I sold so much jewelry that year. I won a free trip to St. Thomas. I eventually let my jewelry business go because my career path shifted, but I was so glad that I did that because it planted an entrepreneurial seed I didn’t know was there and that bears fruit to this day.

Now as you know, an entire cottage industry has sprung up around helping people find their passions, write books, coaching, webinars, whatever and their  heart is in the right place, it’s great. I’m all about self-discovery. But when you ask someone what’s your passion, it’s triggering. It’s like upsetting, like oh my god, I have to come up with a good answer for this.

One of my friends is in her mid-forties and she’s looking at like what’s her life going to be now. And she’s like I don’t know what I’m passionate about. And she is legitimately concerned about this. She’s ready to hire a team of people, it’s like why are we worried about this, you know why, because you think something’s wrong with her. I felt something was wrong with me when I was in the seventh grade and everyone was really in this like the rock bands and their actors and they would carve the names of those bands in the tables at the library. And I never carve anything because I couldn’t think of anything to carve. I mean I liked Bon Jovi as much as the next girl but not enough to deface school property. That’s probably why I don’t have any other — I don’t have any tattoos either, I’m assuming that’s boring. It’s really boring, I thought something was wrong with me but that’s the fear, isn’t it, that when someone asks you at a party, on a date, at a job interview, what are you passionate about, that you’re not going to have this wow compelling answer, and that that means you’re not interesting or ambitious or that you don’t have a singular obsession or scary talent that you are hiding, and that your life is not worth living and that’s not true.

Passion is not a job, a sport or a hobby. It is the full force of your attention and energy that you give to whatever is right in front of you. And if you’re so busy looking for this passion, you could miss opportunities that change your life. You could also miss out on great love because that’s what happens when you have tunnel vision trying to find the one. We all think we know the kind of person we are and the kind of person we could love. But sometimes we’re wrong, blissfully wrong.

And sometimes you don’t know what you’re going to do next, right? I mean I don’t, I love not knowing what I’m going to be doing five years from now or what I’ll be into. And that’s okay, it’s okay not to know. You know why, because the most fulfilling relationships, the most fulfilling careers are those that still have the power to surprise you. And as for the things you know you want to do, you want to write a book, you want to start a business, you want to change careers, great. But if you’re sitting around waiting for passion to show up and take you there, you’re going to be waiting a long time. So don’t wait, instead spend your time and attention solving your favorite problems. Look for problems that need solving. Be useful, generous. People will thank you and hug you and pay you for it and that’s where passion is, where your energy and effort meet someone else’s need. That’s when you realize passion lives and realizing what you have to contribute. What do you think when you ask what they are passionate about, they say helping other people.

So don’t wait. Listen to my mother. Just start doing because to live a life full of meaning and value, you don’t follow your passion. Your passion follows you. Thank you.

Tim Harford曾在MarthaStewart任职编辑，同时主播一档MS品牌的节目。在前者被解职后，MS的节目也被叫停了。没有人找她工作，她只能打电话给朋友寻找工作机会。然而问题是，自己究竟应该做什么，这个问题让她非常烦躁。

我们总认为每个人都应该有且只有一份热情，我们要做的就是找到它，并将其发挥到极致。如果你找到了，什么都不用担心;如果你没找到，你必定是失败的。

在Tim Harford刚毕业的时候对找工作感到恐慌，好像是要为自己的一生选一个专业。然而她在大学的时候就觉得选专业很难，甚至差点换两次专业。她的生活一团糟，错失了很多机会。每晚她都会打电话给妈妈，哭诉自己拒绝了一个成功的机会。因为她怕自己犯错，走向错误的未来。她的妈妈告诉她：“快去找个工作吧!工作不会困住你，你现在才是被困住了。不是先创造人生，再去过好它;而是一边生活，一遍创造人生的。不是整天抱怨

”于是Tim Harford终于找到了一份管理咨询的工作，一开始她甚至对要做的事情一无所知。

Tim Harford还曾任职于一家假发公司做编辑，工资少得可怜。再一次朋友的派对上，她发现珠宝销售这个行业，她觉得她可以将珠宝卖给郊区的家庭主妇，所以她报名参加了珠宝销售，尽管她对珠宝没有一点热情，所有的耳环加起来才20美元。最后她在这个原没有热情的行业里做出了不错的成绩，并取得了免费旅游的机会。

热情不是一个计划，而是一种感觉，它是会变的。你可能今天对这件事有热情，而明天就没有了。我们都知道这个道理，却还是盲目地用“热情”去判断每件事是否值得去做。

漫画家Scott Adams说他的人生：成功创造热情，多过热情创造成功。

热情不是一份工作，不是一项运动，也不是一种兴趣。热情是一股劲。一股把自己所有的能量和精力投入到你所面临的任何事情中的劲。如果你忙于寻找它，你可能会错过很多能够改变人生的机会，也可能会错过精彩的爱情。因为你把精力用来寻找那个“对的” 。

我们都知道自己是一个怎样的人，适合什么样的人，可有时候我们是会看错的。

虽然我们不知道未来是怎么样，但是没关系，最美好的爱情和最合适的职业，是那些依旧能够带给你惊喜的。至于那些你想做的事情，写一本书，或者创业，都很好。但倘若你只是单纯等待热情带你去做，你会等很久。不要等待，行动起来，做一个有用的人，慷慨的人，人们会拥抱你，给你报酬，这才是你的热情所在。

思考

我们总是会有迷茫的时候，看着眼前的生活提不起劲。想等待一个光看招聘信息就觉得热情满满值得托付一生的工作，期待着一个只看一眼就想要热情满满去爱的人。

似乎在无意识之间，我们对于热情的看法就有失偏颇了。我们把热情看成一份工作，一个兴趣，一个人。而忽略了是工作，是兴趣，是人带来了热情，而不是说它们即是热情本身。当我们没有热情的时候，看着身边满腔热情去投入去释放的人们，仿佛自己的生命无聊得像一块粗面馒头，食之无味。甚至觉得自己的人生是失败的，提不起兴致的工作，无法去爱的感情。但是即使是馒头也可以玩出花样呢，看上去无聊透顶的人生其实也有很多东西值得你去发掘，去投入。

其实这场TED没有什么坚实地例子去支撑，关于Tim Harford自己的故事并没有足够有效地去支撑她的论点。但是她对热情的描述值得一听。很多事情人家一提，恍然醒悟不是一件难的事；但要自己突然明白，就得看运气了。

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