TED演讲 | 那些所谓的“成功人士”，到底骗了我们什么？- 大数跨境

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TED演讲 | 那些所谓的“成功人士”，到底骗了我们什么？

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2021-01-28

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hello大家好，我是达达。那些看似站在金字塔顶端的“成功人士”，表面看似自信心十足，但实则大多都会经常性地自我怀疑，觉得自己“德不配位”。企业家兼首席执行官迈克•坎农•布鲁克斯（Mike Cannon Brookes）表示，这被称为“冒名顶替综合症”，我们应该都曾经体验过这种感觉。在这场有趣的的谈话中，他分享了他自己的冒名顶替综合症的经历如何为他的成功铺平了道路，并展示了你可以如何利用它为自己获取更多便利。

演讲者：Mike Cannon-Brookes

演讲题目：How you can use impostor syndrome to your benefit

中英文对照翻译

So I've experienced a lot of success in my life. Over a decade ago, I started a business straight out of uni with my mate, Scott. Now, having no prior business experience and not really any grand plan -- in fact, our goals when we started were not to have to get a real job and to not have to wear a suit to work every day. Check and check.

我人生中经历过许多成功。十多年前，我和我的同伴史考特一起在大学毕业后直接创了业。没有任何商业经验，也没有什么宏伟蓝图——事实上，当时我们创业时的目标是不用找一份真正的工作，以及不用每天穿着西装上班。两个目标都达成了。

Today, we have thousands of amazing employees, and millions of people use our software around the planet. And technically, even outside the planet, if you count those that are currently on their way to Mars. So you'd think that I know what I'm doing every day when I go to work. Well, let me let you in on something: most days, I still feel like I often don't know what I'm doing. I've felt that way for 15 years, and I've since learned that feeling is called "impostor syndrome."

今天，我们有上千名优秀的员工，以及全球有上百万人在使用我们的软件，严格上说，甚至在我们地球外，如果正前往火星的那些人也算。你可能会觉得，我知道自己每天去上班的时候都知道自己在干嘛吗？好吧，让我告诉你些事情：大多数时候，我仍然感觉不知道自己在干嘛。我已经这么觉得15年了，后来我知道这样的感觉被叫做“冒充者综合症”。

Have you ever felt out of your depth, like a fraud, and just kind of guessed/bullshitted your way through the situation -- petrified that anytime, someone was going to call you on it? Well, I can think of many examples where I felt like this.

你是否曾在内心深处觉得自己像个骗子？就那种你通过坑蒙拐骗的方式，披襟斩将获取成就——时刻都在恐慌，就担心有人要揭穿你？我可以回想到很多自己有这般感觉的例子。

Interviewing our first HR manager, having never worked in a company that had an HR department -- terrified as I walked into the interview, thinking, "What am I going to ask this person?" Or attending board meetings in a T-shirt surrounded by suits, and acronyms are flying around, feeling like a five-year-old as I surreptitiously write them down in my notebook, so I can look them up on Wikipedia when I get home later.

在面试我们的第一位人力资源经理时，我却从来没有在一家有着人力资源部门的公司工作过——当我走去面试房间时，我紧张得要命，心想，“我要问这人什么问题？”或是穿着T恤衫参加董事会议，被一群西装人包围着，他们满口都是首字母缩略词，感觉自己就是个5岁的小孩偷偷在笔记本上记下那些词汇，等我回家后可以马上到维基百科上查。

Or, in the early days, when people would call up and ask for accounts payable, I would freeze and think, "Wait, are they asking for money or giving it to us?"

或者，早些时候，当人们给我电话追讨应付帐款时，我会整个人怔住并想：“等等，他们是在要钱，还是想给我们钱？”

And I would cover the phone, cover the mouthpiece of the phone, and say, "Scott, you're in accounts," and pass it across. We both did a lot of jobs back then.

之后我会捂住电话，捂住电话的话筒，并说：“史考特，你的账目电话。”之后把电话转接给他。那时我俩都做了很多工作。

So for me, impostor syndrome is a feeling of being well, well out of your depth, yet already entrenched in the situation. Internally, you know you're not skilled enough, experienced enough or qualified enough to justify being there, yet you are there, and you have to figure a way out, because you can't just get out.

所以对我来说，冒充者综合症是当你面对力所不能及的情况，却无法脱身时的一种感受。内心中，你知道自己没有足够的技能和经验，或是没有足够的资格来解释你所在的高度，但是你就在那里，并且你需要想办法解决这个情况，因为你无法甩手不干。

It's not a fear of failure, and it's not a fear of being unable to do it. It's more a sensation of getting away with something, a fear of being discovered, that at any time, someone is going to figure this out. And if they did figure it out, you'd honestly think, "Well, that's fair enough, actually."

这不是对于失败的恐惧，这也不是对于自己能力不足的恐惧。这更像是一种想要逃离某件事的感觉，一种害怕被发现的恐惧，担心在任何时候，有人会发现你的真面目。而且如果他们确实发现了，你会诚实地想：“好吧，这实际没什么毛病。”

One of my favorite writers, Neil Gaiman, put it so beautifully in a commencement address he gave at a university, called "Make Good Art." I want to make sure I get his quote correct.

尼尔·盖曼，我最喜欢的作家之一，在一个大学毕业典礼致辞中把这现象非常美好地描述为“创造卓越的艺术”。我想要确保我的引用准确无误。

"I was convinced that there would be a knock on the door, and a man with a clipboard would be there to tell me that it was all over, that they'd caught up with me, and that I would now have to go and get a real job."

“我深信，有一天，有人会敲开我家的门，一个手拿写字夹板的男人将会站在门外，告诉我一切都结束了，他们必须将我抓捕归案，我将必须离开，去找份正儿八经的工作。”

Now, when there's a knock on my door, I still feel like some sort of dark-suited clipboard man is going to be there to tell me that my time is kind of up. And being a crap cook, I'm quite relieved when it's just someone with a pizza for the kids.

现在，当有人敲我门，我仍然会有那种身穿黑色西装、携带写字夹板的人要出现在门口的感觉，告诉我：我的时间到了。我不擅长做饭，门外的人若是来外送披萨给孩子，我会大舒一口气。

But it's important to note that it's not all bad. There's a lot of goodness, I think, in those feelings. And this isn't some sort of motivational-poster type talk, a "Begin it now." It's more of an introspection into my own experiences of impostor syndrome, and how I've tried to learn to harness them and turn them into some sort of a force for good.

但重要的是是要知道，那些感觉并非都是不好的。其实我觉得，当中也有很多好处。这并非是励志标语式的演讲，以及“现在就开始”的那种口号。这更像是对我自身冒充者综合症经历的自省，以及我是如何学会掌控它并将其转化为一种永恒的力量。

And a great example of those experiences is in the early days of Atlassian's history. We were about four years old, and we had about 70 employees. And at the advice of our auditors -- most good stories start with advice from an auditor --

这些经历中一个很好的例子就是在我们公司Atlassian创建初期。公司仅成立了 4 年，大概有70位员工。在我们审计师的建议下——大多好故事都是源于审计师建议——

we entered the New South Wales Entrepreneur of the Year competition. Now, we were surprised when we won the New South Wales Entrepreneur of the Year in the young category for entrepreneurs under 40. There were eight categories. And so surprised, in fact, having looked at the list of people we were up against, I didn't even turn up to the awards ceremony.

我们参加了新南威尔士州年度企业家竞赛。当我们得知自己在40岁以下创业家组别中获胜时，我们非常惊讶意外。总共有 8 个组别。真的非常惊讶，真的，在看了我们竞争对手的名单后，我甚至都没敢出现在颁奖典礼上。

So Scott collected the gong by himself. And then we traveled off to the national awards. I thought I should probably turn up to those. So we rented some suits, I invited a girl that I had just met -- we'll get to her in a second --

所以史考特只能自己去领奖。之后我们一起去了全国奖的颁奖典礼，我想我可能应该去参加一下那些颁奖典礼。于是我们租了几套西服，我邀请了一个刚遇上的女孩——我们一会儿会说到她——

and off we went to the big black-tie gala. Now, our surprise turned to shock in the first award of the night, the young category, when we beat all of the other states and won the Australian Young Entrepreneur of the Year. When the shock had worn off, we got a lot of champagne to the table and the party began, and the night was surely over. We were having a royally great time.

我们一起前往了正式礼服的晚宴。当晚我们还沉浸在摘取比赛年轻组别第一名的惊喜中时，惊喜便转变为震惊，当我们得知自己打败了所有来自其余州的创业家，并且赢得了澳大利亚年度青年企业家的奖项。当震惊褪去，我们准备了满桌子的香槟，庆祝派对开始，于是这晚就这么过去了。我们度过了美好的时光。

Fast-forward to the last award of the night, and our shock turned into everybody's shock when we won the Australian Entrepreneur of the Year against all of the other categories. Now, so shocked was everybody else, in fact, that the announcer, the CEO of Ernst and Young, opened the envelope, and the first words out of his mouth were, "Oh my God."

快进到那晚的最后一个奖项，我们的震惊变成了在场每一个人的震惊，因为我们击败所有其余组别，赢得了澳大利亚年度企业家的奖项。别人也都很惊讶，包括奖项发布人，安永的首席执行官，打开信封，从他嘴里冒出来的第一句话是“我的天呐。”

And then he reset himself and announced that we had won.

之后他重新调整了状态，宣布我们赢得了奖项。

So we knew we were in way too deep. And from there, the water got a lot deeper, because we jetted off to Monte Carlo to represent Australia in the World Entrepreneur of the Year against 40 other different countries.

所以我们知道我们已经过火了。尤其从获得国内最高奖项开始，这一切变得一发不可收拾，因为我们飞往蒙特卡洛代表澳大利亚，参加世界年度企业家的比赛，与其他 40 个国家的团队比拼。

Now, in another rented suit, I was at one of the dinners and sitting next to a lovely man called Belmiro de Azevedo, who was the winner from Portugal. Total champion. At 65, he had been running his business for 40 years. He had 30,000 employees. Don't forget, at the time, we had 70.

有天，我在一个晚宴上穿着另一套租来的西服，坐在一个可爱的名叫贝尔米罗·德·阿泽维多的男人边上，是来自葡萄牙的获奖者。比赛总冠军。他 65 岁，已经从商 40 年了。有着3万名员工。别忘了，那时候我们只有70名。

And he had four billion euro in turnover. And after a couple of wines, I remember admitting to him that I felt that we did not deserve to be there, that we were well out of our depth, and at some time, someone was going to figure this out and send us home to Australia.

他公司的营业额高达40亿欧元。在共进几杯红酒后，我记得自己向他承认，我觉得我们不值得坐在这，因为这已经远超出我们的水平，某个时点，有人会发现这件事并把我们送回澳大利亚。

And he, I remember, just paused and looked at me and said that he felt exactly the same way and that he suspected all the winners were feeling that way, and that despite not knowing Scott or I or really anything about technology, he said that we were obviously doing something right and should probably just keep going.

之后他，我记得，只是不语、看着我，之后说他也有同样的感觉，并且怀疑所有的获奖者都是这么觉得的，尽管他不了解我和史考特，还有我们的技术，他说我们显然把事情做对了，可能应该继续这件事。

Now, this was a pretty big light bulb moment for me for two reasons. One, I realized that other people felt this as well. And two, I realized it doesn't go away with any form of success. I had assumed that successful people didn't feel like frauds, and I now know that the opposite is more likely to be true.

两个原因，这我对来说是个比较重要的顿悟瞬间。第一，我意识到别人也有着同样的感受。第二，这个感受不论是何种形式的成功，都是挥之不去的。我一直在假设那些成功人士不觉得自己像个骗子，但现在我知道，事实更可能相反。

And this isn't just a feeling that I have at work. It happens in my personal life, too. In the early days, I was flying back and forth to San Francisco every week for Atlassian, and I racked up a lot of frequent flyer points and got access to the Qantas business lounge. Now, if there's ever a place that I don't belong ...

这不只是在工作中，我才有这个感觉。我的个人生活也是如此。早些时候，为Atlassian的生意，我时常往返飞旧金山，之后我累计了很多常旅客的积分，后来获得了进入澳航商务休息室的权限。噢，如果世上有一个不属于我的地方……

It doesn't help when I walk in and they generally look at me in shorts and jeans, or jeans and a T-shirt, and say, "Can I help you, son? Are you lost?" But anyway, sometimes life happens in the Qantas lounge when you'd least expect it.

这丝毫没有帮助，当我走近休息室，服务人员一般会看着身穿短袖和牛仔裤或牛仔裤和T恤的我，说：“我能帮助你吗，孩子？你走丢了吗？”但不管怎么，在你没有任何期待之时，在澳航休息室，一些“大事”就会发生。

One morning, over a decade ago, I was sitting there on my regularly weekly commute, and a beautiful woman from way out of my league walked into the Qantas lounge and continued walking straight up to me in a case of mistaken identity. She thought I was someone else, so in this case, I actually was an impostor.

十年多前，一个早晨，我坐在那，这是我日常每周的通勤，一个和我仿佛是两个世界的美丽女士走进了澳航休息室，并且径直向我走来，因为她认错人了。她把我误认为了另一个人。所以在这个情况下，我实际上是一个冒充者。

But rather than freeze as I would have historically done or chivalrously maybe informed her of her error, I just tried to keep the conversation going.

然而不同往常在这种情况下呆若木鸡，或是正直地告诉她认错人的我，我只是尽可能保持这段对话的继续。

And classic Australian bullshit became some sort of forward movement and a phone number. And I took that girl to the awards ceremony a couple of months later. And more than a decade later, I'm incredibly happy that she is now my wife, and we have four amazing children together.

之后那种经典的澳式废话让我向前迈进了一步，拿到了她的电话号码。几个月后，我带着那个女孩去了颁奖典礼。十多年之后，我非常高兴地说，她成为了我的妻子，我们一起抚养着4个优秀的儿女。

But you'd think that when I wake up every morning, I wouldn't roll over and look at her and think, "She's going to say, 'Who are you, and who gave you that side of the bed?'

但是你可能会想，当我每天早上醒来，我不会翻过身，看着我的妻子，之后想：她马上要说——“你是谁，谁让你睡在床那边的？”

'Get out of here.'" But she doesn't. And I think she sometimes feels the same way.

“滚出去。”但是她没有。不过我想，她有时也会有这样的感觉。

And apparently, that's one of the reasons that we'll likely have a successful marriage. You see, in researching this talk, I learned that one of the attributes of the most successful relationships is when both partners feel out of their league. They feel that their partner is out of their league. They feel like impostors.

而且显然，这很可能是我们成功婚姻的其中一个原因。在我为这个演讲做准备的时候，我发现，大多数成功关系的特性之一是双方都觉得自己配不上彼此。他们觉得自己配不上自己的伴侣，他们就感觉自己是冒充者。

And if they don't freeze, and they're thankful, and they work harder and they stretch to be the best partner they can, it's likely to be a very successful relationship. So if you have this feeling, don't freeze. Try to keep the conversation going, even if she thinks that you're somebody that you're not.

他们如果没有害怕退缩，而是感恩。他们会更加努力，彼此磨合为最佳伴侣。这一点，可能锻造一段非常成功的关系。如果你有这样的感觉，别怕。尝试保持对话的进行，即使她误以为你是另一个人。

Now, feeling like, or people thinking I'm someone I'm not actually happens quite frequently. A great example from my more recent past, a few months ago, I was up late at night with one of my kids, and I saw something on Twitter about Tesla saying that they could solve South Australia's rolling series of power crises with one of their large industrial batteries.

自己感觉，或是别人认为我是一个并非真实自己的角色，这种状况实际上蛮常发生的。一个来自最近的很好的例子，几个月之前我和我的一个孩子晚上熬着夜，之后我看到推特上关于特斯拉的一些新闻，说是他们能够利用他们的一个巨型工业电池来解决南澳大利亚持续发生的电力危机。

Without thinking, I fired off a bunch of tweets, challenging them and saying were they really serious about this. And in doing so, I managed to kick a very small rock off a very big hill that turned into an avalanche that I found myself tumbling in the middle of.

未经思索，我发了一堆推文挑战他们，并写道，“他们对此真的是认真的吗？”这么做，我只是设法从一座大山上踢下了一块小石子，之后那演变成了雪崩，我发现自己被困在了其中。

Because you see, a few hours later, Elon tweeted me back and said that they were deadly serious, that within a hundred days of contract signing, they could install a 100-megawatt-hour facility, which is a giant battery of a world-class size, one of the biggest ever made on the planet. And that's when all hell really broke loose. Within 24 hours, I had every major media outlet texting and emailing and trying to get in contact with me to get opinion as some sort of "expert" in energy.

因为几个小时后，伊隆·马斯克回复了我的推文并说他们认真得不能再认真，在合同签署后的100天内，他们可以安装一个100兆瓦/时的设施。这是一个具有世界一流尺寸的巨型电池，世上所有被制造的最大的电池之一。我看到回复的时候，一切都崩溃了。在24小时内，各大主流媒体渠道都在给我发消息、发邮件，尝试着联系到我，并且询问我这位能源“专家”的想法。

Now, at the time, I couldn't really have told you the difference between a one-and-a-half-volt AA battery that goes in my kids' toys and a 100-megawatt-hour industrial-scale battery facility that goes in South Australia that could potentially solve their power crisis. I was now feeling a chronic case of impostor syndrome,

那时候，我还没法说出不同：我孩子们玩具中的1.5伏三号电池，和即将出现在南澳大利亚，有潜力解决他们电力危机的100兆瓦/时的工业规模电池设施的不同。我觉得自己的冒充者综合症是一种慢性的症状，

and it got truly bizarre. And I remember thinking to myself, "Shit. I've kind of started something here and I can't really get out. If I abandon the situation, I'm going to sort of set back renewables in Australia and maybe just look like a complete idiot because of my idiocy on Twitter."

而且变得真的很古怪。我记得当时在想，“我在这搞出了点事，而且我还没办法挣脱出来。如果我放弃这个情况，我将会制约澳洲可再生能源的发展，并且因为我在推特上愚蠢的行为，我还可能看起来像个彻底的白痴。”

So I thought the only thing I could do was to try not to freeze and to try to learn. So I spent a week trying to learn everything I could about industrial-scale batteries and the electricity grid and renewables and the economics of all of this and whether this was even a feasible proposal.

于是我想到了我唯一能做的一件事，就是尝试不要害怕，而是尝试着去学习。于是我花了一周的时间，尽我所能试着学习一切关于工业规模电池、电网、可再生能源、所有这些的经济效应，以及这甚至是否是一个可行的方案。

I talked to the chief scientist, I talked to the CSIRO, had multiple ministers and premiers trying to give me their side of the story from both sides of the aisle. I managed to exchange tweets with the prime minister. I even managed to pull off a passing impression, let's say, of an energy expert on ABC Lateline.

我和首席科学家与CSIRO都进行了交谈，也让几个部长和总理尝试从他们的角度分享他们故事，来听取各方观点。我设法和总理交流推文。我甚至设法给人留下深刻印象，比如，ABC电视新闻节目的能源专家。

But as a result of all this, South Australia did put out a battery tender, and they had more than 90 applications for that battery tender. And the national conversation over a period of a few months moved from the sort of theatrical lumps of coal in the parliament to discussing kind of which industrial-scale battery chemistry was the best for building large-scale renewable batteries.

但这些所有努力的结果是南澳大利亚后来的确进行了一场电池招标，而且这场招标收到了90余供应商的申请。在几个月中，全国性话题从议会中探讨的戏剧性的煤块问题，变成了讨论哪种工业规模的电池化学法最适合制造巨型可再生电池。

So I think that the important lesson is by that time in my life, I knew well that I was an impostor. I knew I was miles out of my depth. But instead of freezing, I tried to learn as much as I could, motivated by my fear of generally looking like an idiot, and tried to turn that into some sort of a force for good.

所以我觉得，直至那时，我人生中最重要的一堂课，就是我很清楚自己是个冒充者。我知道这件事超出了我的能力范围。但因为我不想被看作是白痴，相比怔住，这一恐惧驱动着我尝试去学习了更多的知识，也尝试着把恐惧转化为一股永恒的力量。

So one of the things I've learned is that people think successful people don't feel like frauds. But I think, especially knowing a lot of entrepreneurs, the opposite is more likely to be true. But the most successful people I know don't question themselves, but they do heavily question, regularly question, their ideas and their knowledge. They know when the water is way too deep, and they're not afraid to ask for advice.

所以，我学会的一件事就是：人们认为成功人士不会感觉自己像骗子。但我想，尤其是认识了很多创业家之后，大众想法的反面才更可能是真相。但我知道的大部分成功人士，他们不会质疑自己，尽管他们确实会不断质疑——他们的想法和他们的知识。他们知道什么时候情况超出了他们的能力范围，也不惧怕请教他人。

They don't see that as a bad thing. And they use that advice to hone those ideas, to improve them and to learn. And it's OK to be out of your depth sometimes. I'm frequently out of my depth. It's OK to be out of your depth. It's OK to be in a situation where you just can't push the eject button, so long as you don't freeze, so long as you harness the situation, don't be paralyzed and try to turn it into some sort of a force for good.

他们不觉得那是一件坏事。他们而是用那些建议去打磨、改进那些想法，并同时学习。有时力所不能及，没有关系。我经常面对那些自己力所不能及的情况。超出你能力范畴，没有关系。处于不能按下退缩按钮的情况，没有关系，只要你别怔住，只要你能掌控那种情况，不要气馁，并且尽可能把它变为一种积极的力量。

And it's important that I say "harness" here, because this isn't sort of pop-psychology BS about conquering impostor syndrome for me. It's merely about being aware of it. In fact, I'm extremely aware of feeling like an impostor right now, as I'm up here, some sort of pseudo-expert on a feeling that I couldn't even put a name to a few months ago, when I agreed to do this talk. Which, if you think about it, is kind of the point, isn't it?

我这里说的“掌控”很重要，因为这不是什么流行心理学中帮助我战胜冒充者综合症的废话。这仅仅在于“意识到这点”。事实上，我非常能意识到现在自己有冒充者的感觉，因为我站在这里，像个伪专家，在几个月前，我同意做这个演讲时，我甚至不知道我要谈的这种感觉叫什么。不过，你仔细想想，这才是重点，不是吗？

Thank you.

谢谢。

Remark：一切权益归TED所有，更多TED相关信息可至官网www.ted.com查询！

►领导者说：

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