书城外语让心灵去旅行
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第8章 拥有什么样的人生取决于你自己(8)

Impossibly High Standards Having standards that are impossibly high is a third way you can not accept yourself.It may not come as a surprise to you that most of us are more demanding of ourselves than we are of others.Somehow we can tolerate the fact that other people fail,that they aren’t always kind,that they‘ve done things they aren’t proud of,but we have difficulty accepting those very human aspects of ourselves.The need to be perfect is another way to set yourself up for failure and enhance the feeling that you are not acceptable.We all make mistakes.Accepting less than perfection simply means recognizing the limitations inherent~in being born a human being.Learn to value who you are rather than who you could become.To quote Linus,a sober and often worried character from a popular comic strip,“The world‘s heaviest burden is a great potential.”Wouldn’t it be overwhelming if we always had to do what we imagine we could do?Nobody has the time and energy to do all of that.We must make choices about what we will pursue and do them the best we can under the circum-stances (which aren‘t always ideal,by the way).

不切实际的高标准给自己定立不切实接的标准是第三种无法认可自我的原因。大多数人对自己的要求比对别人严格,这不足为奇。但我们能容忍别人的失败:他们不一定总是完美,做过的事不一定总引以为豪却很难接受自身人性的弱点。追求完美的渴望是导致自己感到失败、增强自我排斥的另一种原因。人人都会犯错误,我们应该认识到人性中固有的局限性。要学会自我欣赏,而不要一味渴求成为怎样的人。在莱纳斯一部流行的喜剧片中,有一个镇定并总是忧虑的角色,引用他的话来说:“世界上最沉重的负担就是潜在的焦虑。”如果我们总是去做那些以为自己能做到的事情,岂不是会将自己完全吞没?没有人拥有那么多的时间和精力。我们必须有所选择地去追求,然后在某些条件(顺带说一句,不一定总是很理想)下付出最大的努力。

Not accepting that there are Real Limits to Your Abilities The idea that you should always be able to attain your goals as long as you work hard enough is another factor interfering with self-acceptance.You will reach many of your goals and should give yourself credit for having done so.Some of us have trouble seeing our successes because we focus so much on our failures and many times the failures come after a lot of hard work and personal suffering.It seems that all that hard work should pay off in our having reaching the goal we set out to achieve.It is hard to accept that a given goal may be out of our reach and that may be because of many factors,including the fact that we may be other factors in operation that make the achieving of that goal at that time impossible-health concerns,financial problems,family difficulties,extraneous stressors,or any number of other factors acting alonle or together.The real trick to self-acceptance is to see that the goal is unattainable,at least for bow,and shifting your focus to accomplishing what you can accomplish under the circumstances.That could include evaluating your original goal and deciding whether or not to continue with it.It also means giving yourself credit for what you have accomplished and what you have learned from your experiences.

不能接受你能力有限的事实我们以为只要努力奋斗就一定能达到目标,这是阻碍自我认可的另一个因素。你可能达到很多目标,并由此树立信心。可是,很多人却看不到成功,因为他们总是把注意力集中在失败上。特别是,当我们付出艰辛、遭受磨难后仍然要面对多次失败时,所有的努力看起来都付之东流了。我们很难接受目标无法达成的事实,而这可能是许多因素造成的,包括我们没有那方面的才干或技能。当然,也可能是其他一些操作上的问题使目标在那个时期落空健康因素、经济问题、家庭困难、外在压力或其他单个或多个因素的综合作用。自我认可真正的诀窍在于要意识到这个目标是不可实现的,至少现在不能,然后把注意力集中到当时条件允许的、能达到的目标上。这可能包括评估你原来的目标,然后决定是否继续追求,也意味着你能从已达成的目标和学到的经验中树立信心。