掌控自我：逆袭人生的底层逻辑
在这段极度自我放纵的十分钟里，我们不讨论任何无法掌控的事物，无论是人工智能、政治风向，还是父母的期待、社交媒体的推送。请将注意力完全聚焦于自身。这是我所知的关于 longevity（长寿）、purpose（目标感）以及践行理想生活的最佳实践策略。
回顾我的个人经历，二十岁时的我极其平庸。三年大学时光，我的 GPA 仅为 1.491，每天抽一包 Camel Lights，酗酒，晚上靠开着柴油版 VW Rabbit 送披萨维持生计。然而十年之内，我却成为了一名能够采访总统的记者，为《华尔街日报》和《华盛顿邮报》报道白宫新闻，随后创办并运营了 Politico 和 Axios。我通过观察那些真正成功和伟大的人，发现了一个共同的底层逻辑：他们 maniacally（狂热地）专注于控制生活中那些你可以控制的变量。
当我们诚实时，会发现很多人实际上 surrender（屈服）于外部环境——归咎于父母、童年、基因或糟糕的运气。这是一种自我欺骗，也是一种糟糕的生存方式。相反，承认“你掌控你自己”（You control you），才是通向光明未来的地图。我所遵循的路径，就是将成功和伟大的构建拆解为一天一天、一件事一件事的微小努力。
Original English Source
I want you to spend the next 10 minutes being absurdly self-indulgent, which is advice I would almost never otherwise give people. I want you to not think about the things you can't control. AI, politics, your parents, your social media feed, your Tinder alerts. (Laughter) By locking in on you for the next 600 seconds, I'm very confident that you're going to walk away with what I think is the single best hack for longevity, purpose and living the type of lives that we want to live. First, who is this middle-aged dude preaching a gospel of self-indulgence? Well, the 20-year-old version of me, I'm very confident, was a much less impressive version of you. Three years into college, I had a 1.491 grade point average that I was dragging around. I was smoking a pack of Camel Lights a day. I was drinking prolifically. At night, I was delivering pizzas in my diesel VW Rabbit. I was remarkably unhealthy, and I was remarkably unremarkable. Within a decade, I'm interviewing presidents, I’m covering the White House for The Wall Street Journal and The Washington Post. Soon after, I’m starting and running companies. First Politico, then Axios. So what the hell happened? And in those dark times and in now, some very good times, I really tried to become a student of what does it take to be successful and what makes great people great? What brings them real success? And there is a commonality to all of them. That all of them maniacally focus on controlling life's variables that you can control. You control you. That became my mantra, and that became my map for life. When I watched these people, whether they were teachers, doctors, entrepreneurs -- every day, they were maniacal about constructing their success and constructing their greatness piece by piece, day by day, on their terms. If we're being honest, a lot of us just surrender to others or to other things. We say, well, we can't do that because of my parents, my childhood, my circumstances, my DNA, my crappy luck. We just can't do it because we're under control of others or other things. And it's just BS. And it's just not a good way to live. You control you, it's just a much better, brighter way to live.在确立了这种底层心理防线后，具体的行动指南涵盖了五个层面，它们完全免费且适用于每个人。首先是掌控今日（You control today）。从醒来到入睡，你面临无数决策：是沉溺于 doomscroll（负面信息刷屏）还是静心 meditation（冥想）？是吃健康的早餐还是垃圾食品？当有人对你恶语相向时，是针锋相对还是保持 grace（优雅）？每一个决策都会导向幸福或 Sadness（悲伤）。我曾经的成功秘诀，就是通过模仿比我更优秀、阅读更广泛、更健康的人，去复制他们的 habits（习惯），进而掌控可控的一切。
基于此，第二步是掌控反应（You control your reactions）。我收到的最好建议只有五个字：“做下一件正确的事”（Do the next right thing）。做一个完美的好人很难，但“做下一件正确的事”却很简单。只要你持续这样做，并以此来约束自己，即便在 shit happens（遭遇烂事）的最糟时期，你也能展现出光芒。这曾在我离开一手创办的 Politico 公司、面临职业生涯最艰难时刻时，有效地保护了我免于做出错误的决定。
第三，掌控你的现实（You control your reality）。你的现实是由阅读、观看和收听的内容形成的。这是一个 reality-shaping machine（现实塑造机器）。如果你摄入的是悲惨、doom and gloom（绝望与阴郁）和 trivial（琐碎）的信息，你的人格也会随之变得琐碎。现在是历史上获取优质信息最容易的时代，只需通过 Google 或 ChatGPT 就能获取所需的 edifying（有益的）知识，主动切换输入源，你的现实也会随之改观。
第四，掌控他人的感知（You control how you're seen）。这看似自我放纵，实则是一种 magic trick（魔术）。在紧张或充满情绪的场景下，试着 envision（设想）自己处于一种 out-of-body experience（出窍体验）中，透过他人的眼睛观察自己。我们的感官经常 deceive（欺骗）我们，但透过他人的视角，你能清晰地感知你所留下的印象。这在七年前我领养了一个处于人生低谷的叛逆期男孩时，帮助极大。通过展现爱、宽容、毅力和 grit（坚毅），我不仅影响了孩子的成长，也为家庭度过难关提供了支撑。
最后，是掌控命运（You control your destiny）。不要像河流上的 bobber（浮标）或原木那样随波逐流。你可以选择逆流而上，这是完全由你决定的。
Original English Source
And so I want to walk you through five different things that you can do that are free, that you can start today and that are available to every single person in this room. You control today. From the moment you wake up to the moment you go to bed, you have scores of decisions to make that only you make. Do you doomscroll, or do you meditate? Do you eat Lucky Charms, or do you eat a healthy breakfast? When someone snaps at you, do you snap back, or do you show a little bit of grace? At night, do you get hammered, or do you get some sleep? You make each one of those decisions. And every one either leads to happiness and feeling better about yourself, or sadness and feeling like crap. Nobody wants to feel like crap. So how did I get from Oshkosh and my 1.491 to DC and then having some success? It was studying other people who were smarter than me, who were better than me, more talented than me, better read than me, who just knew a lot more than me, who were healthier than me. And then I tried to copy them. If they read a book I hadn’t read, I read it. Or if they used a word I’d never heard in Oshkosh, I wrote it down on a piece of paper, and I would work it into my vocabulary. If they were fitter than I were, I'd try to copy their habits. I started to take control of what we can control. You control you. You control your reactions. The best advice I ever got was five words: Do the next right thing. Do the next right thing. It's really hard to be a good person. It's hard to be moral. It's hard to do all the things right. It's pretty easy to do the next right thing. And if you do that, if you do things that would make you proud, your parents proud, your kids proud, your friends proud, you do that and then do it again, suddenly, you're a pretty good person. And then if you do it in bad times, you could become a great person. My personal motto of the last 15 years is: When shit happens, shine. Meaning, in the worst of times, when really bad things happen, that's when I really want to do the next right thing. That helped me through one of the hardest periods of my professional life. I had started Politico, it was my baby. It's emotional. And, you know, like a lot of these start-ups, it was a success. And then there was turmoil, and I felt like I had to leave. And it's emotional. And I could have said and done things that would come back to haunt me. In every minute of every day during that period, I thought, I'm going to do the next right thing. I'm not going to do things that are going to come back and hurt me or haunt me. And it helped me get there. Three, you control your reality. That might sound weird, but you do. What you read, what you watch, what you listen to. That forms your reality. Your podcasts, your YouTube channels, your newsletters, your friends. It's all a reality-shaping machine. The inputs affect your outputs. If you're inputting a lot of misery, a lot of doom and gloom, a lot of trivial stuff, you might be a doomy and gloomy kind of person and kind of trivial. But change that. If you control your reality, all you got to do is realize, listen, there's more good, high-quality information available to everybody in this room than at any point in humanity. It's all free, and it's not even close. If there's something you're curious about, you can Google it or ChatGPT it. If you want to know what Elon Musk thinks or Mel Robbins would advise or Taylor Swift feels, there's probably a podcast or a video or an interview with them. You can search that, you can change the inputs. You can put healthy, edifying content into your mind, have a better reality that you then share with other people. Four, you control how you're seen. This one might seem a little too absurdly self-indulgent, but it's actually a magic trick. You control how you're seen. When you're in a group setting, especially if it's tense or it's emotional, think about how other people are experiencing you. The way I do it is I almost envision myself having this out-of-body experience. Watching me through the eyes of others. Our own eyes deceive. Our own eyes lie. But if you look at how other people feel and experience you, then you know the impression that you're leaving, that you want to leave. And it really helps you, I think, be the person you want to be and have other people experience you as the person that you want to be. This technique helped me through what was probably the hardest period of my life, but the most wondrous period of my life. It’s about seven years ago, and we adopted a teenage boy, and I had two teenagers already at home. And he had lost his parents, it was a rough part of his life. And he's a young guy doing what you do when you have a rough period of life. And I remember thinking, you know what? He's going to be watching me, my kids are going to be watching me, my wife's going to be watching me. If I show love, if I show forgiveness, if I show persistence, if I show grit, that's going to echo through how they experience what we're going through. And if I'm rattled or I'm pessimistic, it would have an opposite consequence. And that process, I really believe, had a very small part in turning my son into this amazing, thriving, grateful college athlete today. And I think that applies to all of us. The fifth thing that you control is you control your destiny. You control where you're going. One of the things I hate the most is when I run into people and they just feel they're like a bobber or a log on a river, and you just have to go with the current. It's not true. You get to control where you go. You can control if you want to go against the current, if you want to go upstream. That is fully in your control.最后，为了确立你的 North Star（北极星），请执行一项写作任务。想象自己处于临终前，回顾一生：你是否过上了令自己骄傲的生活？是否可以自豪地说：“我按自己的方式，以正确的方式走完了这一生。” 写下实现这种人生目标所需的三件事，以及从现在开始到未来，为了真正 achieving（实现）这种生活所必须做的三件事。这是确立自我所有权的关键。
正如 Richard Powers 在其著作 Bewilderment 中所言，生命的目的或许在于在他人心中留下我们的一点点碎片。我希望今天我分享的内容能成为你的一块拼图，也愿你通过“掌控自己”，在他人心中留下属于你的印记。Get ’er done.
Original English Source
And I want to end today with a writing assignment. Not that you need to do right now, but maybe do it later today or later this week. I want you to imagine yourself on your deathbed, thinking about your life. And did you live a life that you were proud of? Did you live a life that you could feel, "You know what? I did it my way." I did it the right way. And write down the three things that it would take for that answer to be: “Yes, that was it. I lived the life I wanted to live." Then write down the three things that it would take to do that between now and then, to actually achieve the life that you want to achieve. That's your North Star. That puts you ahead of 95 percent on Earth in terms of taking ownership of what you want to do with your own life. Man, I'm blessed. I grew up, I had four grandparents who lived in my hometown. I have two parents who are still alive. I have an amazing wife, three wondrous children and tons of really great friends and colleagues who poured a lot of knowledge and a lot of love into my life. Richard Powers, in his book "Bewilderment," says, maybe the purpose of life is about leaving little pieces of ourselves behind in others. And I hope today that I've left a little piece of what all those people poured into me, with you, and that you can leave little pieces of yourself in many others, and you can do it because you control you. So get ’er done. (Cheers and applause) Thank you.📌 文中提及的人物和组织
媒体/书籍: Bewilderment