ted演讲稿（精选13篇）

ted演讲稿（精选13篇）
ted 篇1
try something new for 30 days 小计划帮你实现大目标
a few years ago, i felt like i was stuck in a rut, so i decided to followin the footsteps of the great american philosopher, morgan spurlock, and trysomething new for 30 days. the idea is actually pretty simple. think aboutsomething you’ve always wanted to add to your life and try it for the ne_t 30days. it turns out, 30 days is just about the right amount of time to add a newhabit or subtract a habit — like watching the news — from your life.
几年前，我感觉对老一套感到枯燥乏味，所以我决定追随伟大的美国哲学家摩根·斯普尔洛克的脚步，尝试做新事情30天。

这个想法的确是非常简单。

考虑下，你常想在你生命中做的一些事情接下来30天尝试做这些。

这就是，30天刚好是这么一段合适的时间去养成一个新的习惯或者改掉一个习惯——例如看新闻——在你生活中。

there’s a few things i learned while doing these 30-day challenges. thefirst was, instead of the months flying by, forgotten, the time was much morememorable. this was part of a challenge i did to take a picture everyday for amonth. and i remember e_actly where i was and what i was doing that day. i alsonoticed that as i started to do more and harder 30-day challenges, myself-confidence grew. i went from desk-dwelling computer nerd to the kind of guywho bikes to work — for fun. even last year, i ended up hiking up mt.kilimanjaro, the highest mountain in africa. i would never have been thatadventurous before i started my 30-day challenges.
当我在30天做这些挑战性事情时，我学到以下一些事。

第一件事是，取代了飞逝而过易被遗忘的岁月的是这段时间非常的更加令人难忘。

挑战的一部分是要一个月内每天我要去拍摄一张照片。

我清楚地
记得那一天我所处的位置我都在干什么。

我也注意到随着我开始做更多的，更难的30天里具有挑战性的事时，我自信心也增强了。

我从一个台式计算机宅男极客变成了一个爱骑自行车去工作的人——为了玩乐。

甚至去年，我完成了在非洲最高山峰乞力马扎罗山的远足。

在我开始这30天做挑战性的事之前我从来没有这样热爱冒险过。

i also figured out that if you really want something badly enough, you cando anything for 30 days. have you ever wanted to write a novel? every november,tens of thousands of people try to write their own 50,000 word novel fromscratch in 30 days. it turns out, all you have to do is write 1,667 words a dayfor a month. so i did. by the way, the secret is not to go to sleep until you’vewritten your words for the day. you might be sleep-deprived, but you’ll finishyour novel. now is my book the ne_t great american novel? no. i wrote it in amonth. it’s awful. but for the rest of my life, if i meet john hodgman at a tedparty, i don’t have to say, “i’m a computer scientist.” no, no, if i want to ican say, “i’m a novelist.”
我也认识到如果你真想一些槽糕透顶的事，你可以在30天里做这些事。

你曾想写小说吗?每年11月，数以万计的人们在30天里，从零起点尝试写他们自己的5万字小说。

这结果就是，你所要去做的事就是每天写1667个字要写一个月。

所以我做到了。

顺便说一下，秘密在于除非在一天里你已经写完了1667个字，要不你就甭想睡觉。

你可能被剥夺睡眠，但你将会完成你的小说。

那么我写的书会是下一部伟大的美国小说吗?不是的。

我在一个月内写完它。

它看上去太可怕了。

但在我的余生，如果我在一个ted聚会上遇见约翰·霍奇曼，我不必开口说，“我是一个电脑科学家。

”不，不会的，如果我愿意我可以说，“我是一个小说家。

”
(laughter)
(笑声)
so here’s one last thing i’d like to mention. i learned that
when i madesmall, sustainable changes, things i could keep doing, they were more likely tostick. there’s nothing wrong with big, crazy challenges. in fact, they’re a tonof fun. but they’re less likely to stick. when i gave up sugar for 30 days, day31 looked like this.
我这儿想提的最后一件事。

当我做些小的、持续性的变化，我可以不断尝试做的事时，我学到我可以把它们更容易地坚持做下来。

这和又大又疯狂的具有挑战性的事情无关。

事实上，它们的乐趣无穷。

但是，它们就不太可能坚持做下来。

当我在30天里拒绝吃糖果，31天后看上去就像这样。

(laughter)
(笑声)
so here’s my question to you: what are you waiting for? i guarantee you thene_t 30 days are going to pass whether you like it or not, so why not thinkabout something you have always wanted to try and give it a shot for the ne_t 30days.
所以我给大家提的问题是：大家还在等什么呀?我保准大家在未来的30天定会经历你喜欢或者不喜欢的事，那么为什么不考虑一些你常想做的尝试并在未来30天里试试给自己一个机会。

thanks.
谢谢。

(applause)
(掌声)
ted演讲稿篇2
拥抱他人，拥抱自己
embracing otherness. when i first heard this theme, i thought, well,embracing otherness is embracing myself. and the journey to that place ofunderstanding and acceptance has been an interesting one for me, and it's givenme an insight into the whole notion of self, which i think is worth sharing withyou today.
拥抱他类。

当我第一次听说这个主题时，我心想，拥抱他类不就是拥抱自己吗。

我个人懂得理解和接受他类的经历很有趣，让我对于“自己”这个词也有了新的认识，我想今天在这里和你们分享下我的。

we each have a self, but i don't think that we're born with one. you knowhow newborn babies believe they're part of everything; they're not separate?well that fundamental sense of oneness is lost on us very quickly. it's likethat initial stage is over -- oneness: infancy, unformed, primitive. it's nolonger valid or real. what is real is separateness, and at some point in earlybabyhood, the idea of self starts to form. our little portion of oneness isgiven a name, is told all kinds of things about itself, and these details,opinions and ideas become facts, which go towards building ourselves, ouridentity. and that self becomes the vehicle for navigating our social world. butthe self is a projection based on other people's projections. is it who wereally are? or who we really want to be, or should be?
我们每个人都有个自我，但并不是生来就如此的。

你知道新生的宝宝们觉得他们是任何东西的一部分，而不是分裂的个体。

这种本源上的“天人合一”感在我们出生后很快就不见了，就好像我们人生的第一个篇章--和谐统一：婴儿，未成形，原始--结束了。

它们似幻似影，而现实的世界是孤独彼此分离的。

而在孩童期的某段时间，我们开始形成自我这个观点。

宇宙中的小小个体有了自己的名字，有了自己的过去等等各种信息。

这些关于自己的细节，看法和观点慢慢变成事实，成为我们身份的一部分。

而那个自我，也变成我们人生路上前行的导航仪。

然后，这个所谓的自我，是他人自我的映射，还是我们真实的自己呢?我们究竟想成为什么样，应该成为什么样的呢?
so this whole interaction with self and identity was a very difficult onefor me growing up. the self that i attempted to take out into the world wasrejected over and over again. and my panic at not having a self that fit, andthe confusion that came from my
self being rejected, created an_iety, shame andhopelessness, which kind of defined me for a long time. but in retrospect, thedestruction of my self was so repetitive that i started to see a pattern. theself changed, got affected, broken, destroyed, but another one would evolve --sometimes stronger, sometimes hateful, sometimes not wanting to be there at all.the self was not constant. and how many times would my self have to die before irealized that it was never alive in the first place?
这个和自我打交道，寻找自己身份的过程在我的成长记忆中一点都不容易。

我想成为的那些“自我”不断被否定再否定，而我害怕自己无法融入周遭的环境，因被否定而引起的困惑让我变得更加忧虑，感到羞耻和无望，在很长一段时间就是我存在状态。

然而回头看，对自我的解构是那么频繁，以至于我发现了这样一种规律。

自我是变化的，受他人影响，分裂或被打败，而另一个自我会产生，这个自我可能更坚强，可能更可憎，有时你也不想变成那样。

所谓自我不是固定不变的。

而我需要经历多少次自我的破碎重生才会明白其实自我从来没有存在过?
i grew up on the coast of england in the '70s. my dad is white fromcornwall, and my mom is black from zimbabwe. even the idea of us as a family waschallenging to most people. but nature had its wicked way, and brown babies wereborn. but from about the age of five, i was aware that i didn't fit. i was theblack atheist kid in the all-white catholic school run by nuns. i was ananomaly, and my self was rooting around for definition and trying to plug in.because the self likes to fit, to see itself replicated, to belong. thatconfirms its e_istence and its importance. and it is important. it has ane_tremely important function. without it, we literally can't interface withothers. we can't hatch plans and climb that stairway of popularity, of success.but my skin color wasn't right. my hair wasn't right. my history wasn't right.my self became defined by
otherness, which meant that, in that social world, ididn't really e_ist. and i was "other" before being anything else -- even beforebeing a girl. i was a noticeable nobody.
我在70年代英格兰海边长大，我的父亲是康沃尔的白人，母亲是津巴布韦的黑人。

而想象我和父母是一家人对于其他人来说总是不太自然。

自然有它自己的魔术，棕色皮肤的宝宝诞生了。

但从我五岁开始，我就有种感觉我不是这个群体的。

我是一个全白人天主教会学校里面黑皮肤无神论小孩。

我与他人是不同的，而那个热衷于归属的自我却到处寻找方式寻找归属感。

这种认同感让自我感受到存在感和重要性，因此十分重要。

这点是如此重要，如果没有自我，我们根本无法与他人沟通。

没有它，我们无所适从，无法获取成功或变得受人欢迎。

但我的肤色不对，我的头发不对，我的过去不对，我的一切都是另类定义的，在这个社会里，我其实并不真实存在。

我首先是个异类，其次才是个女孩。

我是可见却毫无意义的人。

another world was opening up around this time: performance and dancing.that nagging dread of self-hood didn't e_ist when i was dancing. i'd literallylose myself. and i was a really good dancer. i would put all my emotionale_pression into my dancing. i could be in the movement in a way that i wasn'table to be in my real life, in myself.
这时候，另一个世界向我敞开了大门：舞蹈表演。

那种关于自我的唠叨恐惧在舞蹈时消失了，我放开四肢，也成为了一位不错的舞者。

我将所有的情绪都融入到舞蹈的动作中去，我可以在舞蹈中与自己相溶，尽管在现实生活中却无法做到。

and at 16, i stumbled across another opportunity, and i earned my firstacting role in a film. i can hardly find the words to describe the peace i feltwhen i was acting. my dysfunctional self could actually plug in to another self,not my own, and it felt so good. it was the first time that i e_isted inside afully-functioning self -- one that i controlled, that i steered, that i gavelife to. but
the shooting day would end, and i'd return to my gnarly, awkwardself.
16岁的时候，我遇到了另一个机会，第一部参演的电影。

我无法用语言来表达在演戏的时候我所感受到的平和，我无处着落的自我可以与那个角色融为一体，而不是我自己。

那感觉真棒。

这是第一次我感觉到我拥有一个自我，我可以驾驭，令其富有盛名的自我。

然而当拍摄结束，我又会回到自己粗糙不明，笨拙的自我。

by 19, i was a fully-fledged movie actor, but still searching fordefinition. i applied to read anthropology at university. dr. phyllis lee gaveme my interview, and she asked me, "how would you define race?" well, i thoughti had the answer to that one, and i said, "skin color." "so biology, genetics?"she said. "because, thandie, that's not accurate. because there's actually moregenetic difference between a black kenyan and a black ugandan than there isbetween a black kenyan and, say, a white norwegian. because we all stem fromafrica. so in africa, there's been more time to create genetic diversity." inother words, race has no basis in biological or scientific fact. on the onehand, result. right? on the other hand, my definition of self just lost a hugechunk of its credibility. but what was credible, what is biological andscientific fact, is that we all stem from africa -- in fact, from a woman calledmitochondrial eve who lived 160,000 years ago. and race is an illegitimateconcept which our selves have created based on fear and ignorance.
19岁的时候，我已经是富有经验的专业电影演员，而我还是在寻找自我的定义。

我申请了大学的人类学专业。

phyllislee博士面试了我，她问我：“你怎么定义种族?”我觉得我很了解这个话题，我说：“肤色。

”“那么生物上来说呢，例如遗传基因?”她说，“thandie肤色并不全面，其实一个肯尼亚黑人和乌干达黑人之间基因差异比一个肯尼亚黑人和挪威白人之间差异要更多。

因为我们都是从非洲来的，所
以在非洲，基因变异演化的时间是最久的。

”换句话说，种族在生物学或任何科学上都没有事实根据。

另一方面，我对于自我的定义瞬时失去了一大片基础。

但那就是生物学事实，我们都是非洲后裔，一位在160 0__年前的伟大女性mitochondrialeve的后人。

而种族这个无效的概念是我们基于恐惧和无知自己捏造出来的。

strangely, these revelations didn't cure my low self-esteem, that feelingof otherness. my desire to disappear was still very powerful. i had a degreefrom cambridge; i had a thriving career, but my self was a car crash, and iwound up with bulimia and on a therapist's couch. and of course i did. i stillbelieved my self was all i was. i still valued self-worth above all other worth,and what was there to suggest otherwise? we've created entire value systems anda physical reality to support the worth of self. look at the industry forself-image and the jobs it creates, the revenue it turns over. we'd be right inassuming that the self is an actual living thing. but it's not. it's aprojection which our clever brains create in order to cheat ourselves from thereality of death.
奇怪的是，这个发现并没有治好我的自卑，那种被排挤的感觉。

我还是那么强烈地想要离开消失。

我从剑桥拿到了学位，我有份充满发展的工作，然而我的自我还是一团糟，我得了催吐病不得不接受治疗师的帮助。

我还是相信自我是我的全部。

我还是坚信“自我”的价值甚过一切。

而且我们身处的世界就是如此，我们的整个价值系统和现实环境都是在服务“自我”的价值。

看看不同行业里面对于自我的塑造，看看它们创造的那些工作，产出的那些利润。

我们甚至必须相信自我是真实存在的。

但它们不是，自我不过是我们聪明的脑袋假想出来骗自己不去思考死亡这个话题的幌子。

but there is something that can give the self ultimate and infiniteconnection -- and that thing is oneness, our essence. the self's struggle forauthenticity and definition will never end unless it's connected to its creator-- to you and to me. and that can
happen with awareness -- awareness of thereality of oneness and the projection of self-hood. for a start, we can thinkabout all the times when we do lose ourselves. it happens when i dance, when i'macting. i'm earthed in my essence, and my self is suspended. in those moments,i'm connected to everything -- the ground, the air, the sounds, the energy fromthe audience. all my senses are alert and alive in much the same way as aninfant might feel -- that feeling of oneness.
但其实我们的终极自我其实是我们的本源，合一。

挣扎自我是否真实，究竟是什么永远没有终结，除非它和赋予它意义的创造者合一，就是你和我。

而这点当我们意识到现实是你中有我，我中有你，和谐统一，而自我是种假象时就会体会到了。

我们可以想想，什么时候我们是身心统一的，例如说我跳舞，表演的时候，我和我的本源连结，而我的自我被抛在一边。

那时，我和身边的一切--空气，大地，声音，观众的反馈都连结在一起。

我的知觉是敏锐和鲜活的，就像初生的婴儿那样，合一。

and when i'm acting a role, i inhabit another self, and i give it life forawhile, because when the self is suspended so is divisiveness and judgment. andi've played everything from a vengeful ghost in the time of slavery to secretaryof state in __. and no matter how other these selves might be, they're allrelated in me. and i honestly believe the key to my success as an actor and myprogress as a person has been the very lack of self that used to make me feel soan_ious and insecure. i always wondered why i could feel others' pain so deeply,why i could recognize the somebody in the nobody. it's because i didn't have aself to get in the way. i thought i lacked substance, and the fact that i couldfeel others' meant that i had nothing of myself to feel. the thing that was asource of shame was actually a source of enlightenment.
当我在演戏的时候，我让另一个自我住在我体内，我代表它行动。

当我的自我被抛开，紧随的分歧和主观判断也消失了。

我曾经扮演过奴隶时代的复仇鬼魂，也扮演过__年的国务卿。

不管他们这些自我是怎样的，他们都在那时与我相连。

而我也深信作为演员，我的成功，或是作为个体，我的成长都是源于我缺乏“自我”，那种缺乏曾经让我非常忧虑和不安。

我总是不明白为什么我会那么深地感受到他人的痛苦，为什么我可以从不知名的人身上看出他人的印痕。

是因为我没有所谓的自我来左右我感受的信息吧。

我以为我缺少些什么，我以为我对他人的理解是因为我缺乏自我。

那个曾经是我深感羞耻的东西其实是种启示。

and when i realized and really understood that my self is a projection andthat it has a function, a funny thing happened. i stopped giving it so muchauthority. i give it its due. i take it to therapy. i've become very familiarwith its dysfunctional behavior. but i'm not ashamed of my self. in fact, irespect my self and its function. and over time and with practice, i've tried tolive more and more from my essence. and if you can do that, incredible thingshappen.
当我真的理解我的自我不过是种映射，是种工具，一件奇怪的事情发生了。

我不再让它过多控制我的生活。

我学习管理它，像把它带去看医生一样，我很熟悉那些因自我而失调的举动。

我不因自我而羞耻，事实上，我很尊敬我的自我和它的功能。

而随着时间过去，我的技术也更加熟练，我可以更多的和我的本源共存。

如果你愿意尝试，不可以思议的事情也会发生在你身上。

i was in congo in february, dancing and celebrating with women who'vesurvived the destruction of their selves in literally unthinkable ways --destroyed because other brutalized, psychopathic selves all over that beautifulland are fueling our selves' addiction to ipods, pads, and bling, which furtherdisconnect ourselves from ever feeling their pain, their suffering, their death.because, hey, if we're all living in ourselves
and mistaking it for life, thenwe're devaluing and desensitizing life. and in that disconnected state, yeah, wecan build factory farms with no windows, destroy marine life and use rape as aweapon of war. so here's a note to self: the cracks have started to show in ourconstructed world, and oceans will continue to surge through the cracks, and oiland blood, rivers of it.
今年二月，我在刚果和一群女性一起跳舞和庆祝，她们都是经历过各种无法想象事情“自我”遍体鳞伤的人们，那些备受摧残，心理变态的自我充斥在这片美丽的土地，而我们仍痴迷地追逐着ipod，pad等各种闪亮的东西，将我们与他们的痛苦，死亡隔得更远。

如果我们各自生活在自我中，并无以为这就是生活，那么我们是在贬低和远离生命的意义。

在这种脱节的状态中，我们是可以建设没有窗户的工厂，破坏海洋生态，将__作为战争的工具。

为我们的自我做个解释：这是看似完善的世界里的裂痕，海洋，河流，石油和鲜血正不断地从缝中涌出。

crucially, we haven't been figuring out how to live in oneness with theearth and every other living thing. we've just been insanely trying to figureout how to live with each other -- billions of each other. only we're not livingwith each other; our crazy selves are living with each other and perpetuating anepidemic of disconnection.
关键的是，我们还没有明白如何和自然以及其他所有生物和谐地共处。

我们只是疯狂地想和其他人沟通，几十亿其他人。

只有当我们不在和世界合一的时候，我们疯狂的自我却互相怜惜，并永远继续这场相互隔绝的疫症。

let's live with each other and take it a breath at a time. if we can getunder that heavy self, light a torch of awareness, and find our essence, ourconnection to the infinite and every other living thing. we knew it from the daywe were born. let's not be freaked out by our bountiful nothingness. it's more areality than the ones
our selves have created. imagine what kind of e_istence wecan have if we honor inevitable death of self, appreciate the privilege of lifeand marvel at what comes ne_t. simple awareness is where it begins.
让我们共生共荣，并不要太过激进着急。

试着放下沉重的自我，点亮知觉的火把，寻找我们的本源，我们与万事万物之间的联系。

我们初生时就懂得这个道理的。

不要被我们内心丰富的空白吓到，这比我们虚构的自我要真实。

想象如果你能接受自我并不存在，你想要如何生活，感恩生命的可贵和未来的惊奇。

简单的觉醒就是开始。

thank you for listening.
(applause) 谢谢。

ted演讲稿篇3
I was one of the only kids in college who had a reason to go to the P.O.bo_ at the end of the day, and that was mainly because my mother has neverbelieved in email, in Facebook, in te_ting or cell phones in general. And sowhile other kids were BBM-ing their parents, I was literally waiting by themailbo_ to get a letter from home to see how the weekend had gone, which was alittle frustrating when Grandma was in the hospital, but I was just looking forsome sort of scribble, some unkempt cursive from my mother.
And so when I moved to New York City after college and got completelysucker-punched in the face by depression, I did the only thing I could think ofat the time. I wrote those same kinds of letters that my mother had written mefor strangers, and tucked them all throughout the city, dozens and dozens ofthem.
I left them everywhere, in cafes and in libraries, at the U.N.,everywhere. I blogged about those letters and the days when they were necessary,and I posed a kind of crazy promise to the Internet: that if you asked me for ahand-written letter, I would
write you one, no questions asked. Overnight, myinbo_ morphed into this harbor of heartbreak -- a single mother in Sacramento, agirl being bullied in rural Kansas, all asking me, a 22-year-old girl who barelyeven knew her own coffee order, to write them a love letter and give them areason to wait by the mailbo_.
Well, today I fuel a global organization that is fueled by those trips tothe mailbo_, fueled by the ways in which we can harness social media like neverbefore to write and mail strangers letters when they need them most, but most ofall, fueled by crates of mail like this one, my trusty mail crate, filled withthe scriptings of ordinary people, strangers writing letters to other strangersnot because they're ever going to meet and laugh over a cup of coffee, butbecause they have found one another by way of letter-writing.
But, you know, the thing that always gets me about these letters is thatmost of them have been written by people that have never known themselves lovedon a piece of paper. They could not tell you about the ink of their own loveletters. They're the ones from my generation, the ones of us that have grown upinto a world where everything is paperless, and where some of our bestconversations have happened upon a screen. We have learned to diary our painonto Facebook, and we speak swiftly in 140 characters or less.
But what if it's not about efficiency this time? I was on the subwayyesterday with this mail crate, which is a conversation starter, let me tellyou. If you ever need one, just carry one of these. (Laughter) And a man juststared at me, and he was like, "Well, why don't you use the Internet?" And Ithought, "Well, sir, I am not a strategist, nor am I specialist. I am merely astoryteller." And so I could tell you about a woman whose husband has just
comehome from Afghanistan, and she is having a hard time unearthing this thingcalled conversation, and so she tucks love letters throughout the house as a wayto say, "Come back to me. Find me when you can." Or a girl who decides that sheis going to leave love letters around her campus in Dubuque, Iowa, only to findher efforts ripple-effected the ne_t day when she walks out onto the quad andfinds love letters hanging from the trees, tucked in the bushes and the benches.Or the man who decides that he is going to take his life, uses Facebook as a wayto say goodbye to friends and family. Well, tonight he sleeps safely with astack of letters just like this one tucked beneath his pillow, scripted bystrangers who were there for him when.
These are the kinds of stories that convinced me that letter-writing willnever again need to flip back her hair and talk about efficiency, because she isan art form now, all the parts of her, the signing, the scripting, the mailing,the doodles in the margins. The mere fact that somebody would even just sitdown, pull out a piece of paper and think about someone the whole way through,with an intention that is so much harder to unearth when the browser is up andthe iPhone is pinging and we've got si_ conversations rolling in at once, thatis an art form that does not fall down to the Goliath of "get faster," no matterhow many social networks we might join. We still clutch close these letters toour chest, to the words that speak louder than loud, when we turn pages intopalettes to say the things that we have needed to say, the words that we haveneeded to write, to sisters and brothers and even to strangers, for far toolong. Thank you.
ted演讲稿篇4
when i was seven years old and my sister was just five years old, we wereplaying on top of a bunk bed. i was two years older
than my sister at the time-- i mean, i'm two years older than her now -- but at the time it meant she hadto do everything that i wanted to do, and i wanted to play war. so we were up ontop of our bunk beds. and on one side of the bunk bed, i had put out all of myg.i. joe soldiers and weaponry. and on the other side were all my sister's mylittle ponies ready for a cavalry charge.
there are differing accounts of what actually happened that afternoon, butsince my sister is not here with us today, let me tell you the true story --(laughter) -- which is my sister's a little bit on the clumsy side. somehow,without any help or push from her older brother at all, suddenly amy disappearedoff of the top of the bunk bed and landed with this crash on the floor. now inervously peered over the side of the bed to see what had befallen my fallensister and saw that she had landed painfully on her hands and knees on all fourson the ground.
i was nervous because my parents had charged me with making sure that mysister and i played as safely and as quietly as possible. and seeing as how ihad accidentally broken amy's arm just one week before ... (laughter) ...heroically pushing her out of the way of an oncoming imaginary sniper bullet,(laughter) for which i have yet to be thanked, i was trying as hard as i could-- she didn't even see it coming -- i was trying as hard as i could to be on mybest behavior.
and i saw my sister's face, this wail of pain and suffering and surprisethreatening to erupt from her mouth and threatening to wake my parents from thelong winter's nap for which they had settled. so i did the only thing my littlefrantic seven year-old brain could think to do to avert this tragedy. and if youhave children, you've seen this hundreds of times before. i said, "amy, amy,wait. don't cry. don't cry. did you see how you landed? no human lands
on allfours like that. amy, i think this means you're a unicorn."
(laughter)
now that was cheating, because there was nothing in the world my sisterwould want more than not to be amy the hurt five year-old little sister, but amythe special unicorn. of course, this was an option that was open to her brain atno point in the past. and you could see how my poor, manipulated sister facedconflict, as her little brain attempted to devote resources to feeling the painand suffering and surprise she just e_perienced, or contemplating her new-foundidentity as a unicorn. and the latter won out. instead of crying, instead ofceasing our play, instead of waking my parents, with all the negativeconsequences that would have ensued for me, instead a smile spread across herface and she scrambled right back up onto the bunk bed with all the grace of ababy unicorn ... (laughter) ... with one broken leg.
what we stumbled across at this tender age of just five and seven -- we hadno idea at the time -- was something that was going be at the vanguard of ascientific revolution occurring two decades later in the way that we look at thehuman brain. what we had stumbled across is something called positivepsychology, which is the reason that i'm here today and the reason that i wakeup every morning.
when i first started talking about this research outside of academia, outwith companies and schools, the very first thing they said to never do is tostart your talk with a graph. the very first thing i want to do is start my talkwith a graph. this graph looks boring, but this graph is the reason i gete_cited and wake up every morning. and this graph doesn't even mean anything;it's fake data. what we found is --
(laughter)
if i got this data back studying you here in the room, i would be thrilled,because there's very clearly a trend that's going on there, and that means thati can get published, which is all that really matters. the fact that there's oneweird red dot that's up above the curve, there's one weirdo in the room -- iknow who you are, i saw you earlier -- that's no problem. that's no problem, asmost of you know, because i can just delete that dot. i can delete that dotbecause that's clearly a measurement error. and we know that's a measurementerror because it's messing up my data.
so one of the very first things we teach people in economics and statisticsand business and psychology courses is how, in a statistically valid way, do weeliminate the weirdos. how do we eliminate the outliers so we can find the lineof best fit? which is fantastic if i'm trying to find out how many advil theaverage person should be taking -- two. but if i'm interested in potential, ifi'm interested in your potential, or for happiness or productivity or energy orcreativity, what we're doing is we're creating the cult of the average withscience.
if i asked a question like, "how fast can a child learn how to read in aclassroom?" scientists change the answer to "how fast does the average childlearn how to read in that classroom?" and then we tailor the class right towardsthe average. now if you fall below the average on this curve, then psychologistsget thrilled, because that means you're either depressed or you have a disorder,or hopefully both. we're hoping for both because our business model is, if youcome into a therapy session with one problem, we want to make sure you leaveknowing you have 10, so you keep coming back over and over again. we'll go backinto your childhood if necessary, but eventually what we want to do。