Alain de Botton A kinder, gentler philosophy of success
A snob is anybody who takes a small part of you and uses that to come to a complete vision of who you are. That is snobbery.
I don't think we are particularly materialistic. I think we live in a society which has simply pegged certain emotional rewards to the acquisition of material goods. It's not the material goods we want. It's the rewards we want. And that's a new way of looking at luxury goods. The next time you see somebody driving a Ferrari don't think, "This is somebody who is greedy." Think, "This is somebody who is incredibly vulnerable and in need of love."
hold your horses when you're coming to judge people. You don't necessarily know what someone's true value is. That is an unknown part of them. And we shouldn't behave as though it is known.
It would be insane to call Hamlet a loser. He is not a loser, though he has lost. And I think that is the message of tragedy to us, and why it's so very, very important, I think.
Here's an insight that I've had about success. You can't be successful at everything. We hear a lot of talk about work-life balance. Nonsense. You can't have it all. You can't. So any vision of success has to admit what it's losing out on, where the element of loss is. I think any wise life will accept, as I say, that there is going to be an element where we are not succeeding.
And we also suck in messages from everything from the television, to advertising, to marketing, etc. These are hugely powerful forces that define what we want and how we view ourselves. When we're told that banking is a very respectable profession a lot of us want to go into banking. When banking is no longer so respectable, we lose interest in banking. We are highly open to suggestion.
So what I want to argue for is not that we should give up on our ideas of success, but we should make sure that they are our own. We should focus in on our ideas and make sure that we own them, that we are truly the authors of our own ambitions. Because it's bad enough, not getting what you want, but it's even worse to have an idea of what it is you want and find out at the end of a journey, that it isn't, in fact, what you wanted all along.So I'm going to end it there. But what I really want to stress is by all means, success, yes. But let's accept the strangeness of some of our ideas. Let's probe away at our notions of success. Let's make sure our ideas of success are truly our own.
温和的成功学。这个社会给成功赋予了太大的地位，人们judge people by money，status，house，cars,阿兰波特顿讲，我们需要的不是物质，而是物质反馈给我们的情感，这就是奢侈品的存在的解释，所以一个人越追求虚荣，可能他内心就越空虚，因为他想在这个社会的评价体系中获得“好”的评价，但问题是，什么是成功？人们以对别人的一小部分的揣测他的整个价值，这就是别人眼里的成功，所以在评论别人前悬崖勒马，因为你不知道的太多。所以说，他认为成功更多的来自于自我的定义，别人看到的永远只是一小部分，我们内心知道我们想要的是什么，然后去追求，即使失败，也不代表自己是个loser，成功了也要感谢这些偶然。你不可能在所有事情上成功，这是必然的，好好工作了就意味着你的休闲生活减少，玩的好了就以意味着在工作上投入时间减少。这就是他讲的，温和的成功哲学，即朝着目标进发，允许自己怪异的想法，追寻心中所想，对别人不要妄加揣测，对自己多一些宽容，judge yourself by your own.
P.S.悲剧是讲失败的艺术，他告诉我们失败并不是loser
I don't think we are particularly materialistic. I think we live in a society which has simply pegged certain emotional rewards to the acquisition of material goods. It's not the material goods we want. It's the rewards we want. And that's a new way of looking at luxury goods. The next time you see somebody driving a Ferrari don't think, "This is somebody who is greedy." Think, "This is somebody who is incredibly vulnerable and in need of love."
hold your horses when you're coming to judge people. You don't necessarily know what someone's true value is. That is an unknown part of them. And we shouldn't behave as though it is known.
It would be insane to call Hamlet a loser. He is not a loser, though he has lost. And I think that is the message of tragedy to us, and why it's so very, very important, I think.
Here's an insight that I've had about success. You can't be successful at everything. We hear a lot of talk about work-life balance. Nonsense. You can't have it all. You can't. So any vision of success has to admit what it's losing out on, where the element of loss is. I think any wise life will accept, as I say, that there is going to be an element where we are not succeeding.
And we also suck in messages from everything from the television, to advertising, to marketing, etc. These are hugely powerful forces that define what we want and how we view ourselves. When we're told that banking is a very respectable profession a lot of us want to go into banking. When banking is no longer so respectable, we lose interest in banking. We are highly open to suggestion.
So what I want to argue for is not that we should give up on our ideas of success, but we should make sure that they are our own. We should focus in on our ideas and make sure that we own them, that we are truly the authors of our own ambitions. Because it's bad enough, not getting what you want, but it's even worse to have an idea of what it is you want and find out at the end of a journey, that it isn't, in fact, what you wanted all along.So I'm going to end it there. But what I really want to stress is by all means, success, yes. But let's accept the strangeness of some of our ideas. Let's probe away at our notions of success. Let's make sure our ideas of success are truly our own.
温和的成功学。这个社会给成功赋予了太大的地位，人们judge people by money，status，house，cars,阿兰波特顿讲，我们需要的不是物质，而是物质反馈给我们的情感，这就是奢侈品的存在的解释，所以一个人越追求虚荣，可能他内心就越空虚，因为他想在这个社会的评价体系中获得“好”的评价，但问题是，什么是成功？人们以对别人的一小部分的揣测他的整个价值，这就是别人眼里的成功，所以在评论别人前悬崖勒马，因为你不知道的太多。所以说，他认为成功更多的来自于自我的定义，别人看到的永远只是一小部分，我们内心知道我们想要的是什么，然后去追求，即使失败，也不代表自己是个loser，成功了也要感谢这些偶然。你不可能在所有事情上成功，这是必然的，好好工作了就意味着你的休闲生活减少，玩的好了就以意味着在工作上投入时间减少。这就是他讲的，温和的成功哲学，即朝着目标进发，允许自己怪异的想法，追寻心中所想，对别人不要妄加揣测，对自己多一些宽容，judge yourself by your own.
P.S.悲剧是讲失败的艺术，他告诉我们失败并不是loser
