Day 221: On Antimodels

第221天：关于反面典型

People focus on role models; it is more effective to find antimodels — people you don’t want to resemble when you grow up.

人们关注的是榜样，而更有效的方法是找到反面典型——你长大后不想模仿的人。

—Nassim Taleb

A common piece of advice to inspire you to pursue your ideal lifestyle is to find successful people whom you’d like to emulate.

激励你追求理想生活方式的一个常见建议是，找到你想效仿的成功人士。

However, what sometimes works better than positive motivation is negative motivation. For example, you’ll most likely run faster if you’re running away from a psychopathic killer than if you’re running in a race with monetary prizes.

然而，有时比正面激励更有效的是负面激励。

例如，如果你在逃避一个变态杀手，你很可能会比参加一场有奖金的比赛跑得更快。

In the same way, you might find more motivation in making a list of traits or describing the kind of a lifestyle you don’t want to live, identifying people you don’t want to resemble, and then using them as your antimodels.

同样，如果你能列出你不想过的生活方式的特征或描述，找出你不想模仿的人，然后把他们作为你的反面教材，你可能会找到更多的动力。

Whenever you find yourself tempted to give up, cheat, or otherwise betray your values, remind yourself that each time you’re doing it, you’re getting closer to becoming your antimodel. If you’ve chosen your antimodels well, you’ll do whatever you can to avoid their fate — and that’s the power of negative motivation.

每当你发现自己想要放弃、欺骗或以其他方式背叛自己的价值观时，请提醒自己，每当你这样做的时候，你就离成为你的反面典型越来越近了。

如果你的反面典型选得好，你就会想方设法避免和他们一样——这就是负面激励的力量。

If you don’t know any people who can serve as antimodels, imagine your future self as a person who did the opposite of what you want and is now stuck in living the worst kind of a lifestyle that you could ever imagine. Treat the undesirable “future you” as your antimodel.

如果你不认识任何可以作为反面教材的人，那就把未来的自己想象成一个与你的愿望背道而驰的人，他现在只能过着你所能想象的最糟糕的生活方式。

把这个不理想的 "未来的你 "当作你的反面典型。