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1、美妙生活的三个秘诀 The three As of awesomeNeil Pasricha uses the power of blogging to spread a little optimism each day about the awesome things that make life worth living. Blog: So the Awesome story: It begins about 40 years ago, when my mom and my dad came to Canada. My mom left Nairobi, Kenya. My dad lef
2、t a small village outside of Amritsar, India. And they got here in the late 1960s. They settled in a shady suburb about an hour east of Toronto. And they settled into a new life. They saw their first dentist, they ate their first hamburger, and they had their first kids. My sister and I grew up here
3、, and we had quiet, happy childhoods. We had close family, good friends, a quiet street. We grew up taking for granted a lot of the things that my parents couldnt take for granted when they grew up - things like power always on in our houses, things like schools across the street and hospitals down
4、the road and popsicles in the backyard. We grew up, and we grew older. I went to high school. I graduated. I moved out of the house, I got a job, I found a girl, I settled down - and I realize it sounds like a bad sitcom or a Cat Stevens song. (Laughter) But life was pretty good. Life was pretty goo
5、d. 2006 was a great year. Under clear blue skies in July in the wine region of Ontario, I got married, surrounded by 150 family and friends. 2007 was a great year. I graduated from school, and I went on a road trip with two of my closest friends. Heres a picture of me and my friend, Chris, on the co
6、ast of the Pacific Ocean. We actually saw seals out of our car window, and we pulled over to take a quick picture of them and then blocked them with our giant heads. (Laughter) So you cant actually see them, but it was breathtaking, believe me. (Laughter) 2008 and 2009 were a little tougher. I know
7、that they were tougher for a lot of people, not just me. First of all, the news was so heavy. Its still heavy now, and it was heavy before that, but when you flip open a newspaper, when you turned on the TV, it was about ice caps melting, wars going on around the world, earthquakes, hurricanes and a
8、n economy that was wobbling on the brink of collapse, and then eventually did collapse, and so many of us losing our homes, or our jobs, or our retirements, or our livelihoods. 2008, 2009 were heavy years for me for another reason too. I was going through a lot of personal problems at the time. My m
9、arriage wasnt going well, and we just were growing further and further apart. One day my wife came home from work and summoned the courage, through a lot of tears, to have a very honest conversation. And she said, I dont love you anymore. And it was one of the most painful things Id ever heard and c
10、ertainly the most heartbreaking thing Id ever heard, until only a month later, when I heard something even more heartbreaking. My friend Chris, who I just showed you a picture of, had been battling mental illness for some time. And for those of you whose lives have been touched by mental illness, yo
11、u know how challenging it can be. I spoke to him on the phone at 10:30 pm on a Sunday night. We talked about the TV show we watched that evening. And Monday morning, I found out that he disappeared. Very sadly, he took his own life. And it was a really heavy time. And as these dark clouds were circl
12、ing me, and I was finding it really, really difficult to think of anything good, I said to myself that I really needed a way to focus on the positive somehow. So I came home from work one night, and I logged onto the computer, and I started up a tiny website called . I was trying to remind myself of
13、 the simple, universal, little pleasures that we all love, but we just dont talk about enough - things like waiters and waitresses who bring you free refills without asking, being the first table to get called up to the dinner buffet at a wedding, wearing warm underwear from just out of the dryer, o
14、r when cashiers open up a new check-out lane at the grocery store and you get to be first in line - even if you were last at the other line, swoop right in there. (Laughter) And slowly over time, I started putting myself in a better mood. I mean, 50,000 blogs are started a day. And so my blog was ju
15、st one of those 50,000. And nobody read it except for my mom. Although I should say that my traffic did skyrocket and go up by 100 percent when she forwarded it to my dad. (Laughter) And then I got excited when it started getting tens of hits. And then I started getting excited when it started getti
16、ng dozens and then hundreds and then thousands and then millions. It started getting bigger and bigger and bigger. And then I got a phone call, and the voice at the other end of the line said, Youve just won the best blog in the world award. I was like, that sounds totally fake. (Laughter) (Applause
17、) Which African country do you want me to wire all my money to? (Laughter) But it turns out, I jumped on a plane, and I ended up walking a red carpet between Sarah Silverman and Jimmy Fallon and Martha Stewart. And I went onstage to accept a Webby award for Best Blog. And the surprise and just the a
18、mazement of that was only overshadowed by my return to Toronto, when, in my inbox, 10 literary agents were waiting for me to talk about putting this into a book. Flash-forward to the next year and The Book of Awesome has now been number one on the best-seller list for 20 straight weeks. (Applause) B
19、ut look, I said I wanted to do three things with you today. I said I wanted to tell you the Awesome story, I wanted to share with you the three As of Awesome, and I wanted to leave you with a closing thought. So lets talk about those three As. Over the last few years, I havent had that much time to
20、really think. But lately I have had the opportunity to take a step back and ask myself: What is it over the last few years that helped me grow my website, but also grow myself? And Ive summarized those things, for me personally, as three As. They are attitude, awareness and authenticity. Id love to
21、just talk about each one briefly. So attitude: Look, were all going to get lumps, and were all going to get bumps. None of us can predict the future, but we do know one thing about it and thats that it aint gonna go according to plan. We will all have high highs and big days and proud moments of smi
22、les on graduation stages, father-daughter dances at weddings and healthy babies screeching in the delivery room, but between those high highs, we may also have some lumps and some bumps too. Its sad, and its not pleasant to talk about, but your husband might leave you, your girlfriend could cheat, y
23、our headaches might be more serious than you thought, or your dog could get hit by a car on the street. Its not a happy thought, but your kids could get mixed up in gangs or bad scenes. Your mom could get cancer, your dad could get mean. And there are times in life when you will be tossed in the wel
24、l too, with twists in your stomach and with holes in your heart. And when that bad news washes over you, and when that pain sponges and soaks in, I just really hope you feel like youve always got two choices. One, you can swirl and twirl and gloom and doom forever, or two, you can grieve and then fa
25、ce the future with newly sober eyes. Having a great attitude is about choosing option number two, and choosing, no matter how difficult it is, no matter what pain hits you, choosing to move forward and move on and take baby steps into the future. The second A is awareness. I love hanging out with th
26、ree year-olds. I love the way that they see the world, because theyre seeing the world for the first time. I love the way that they can stare at a bug crossing the sidewalk. I love the way that theyll stare slack-jawed at their first baseball game with wide eyes and a mitt on their hand, soaking in
27、the crack of the bat and the crunch of the peanuts and the smell of the hotdogs. I love the way that theyll spend hours picking dandelions in the backyard and putting them into a nice centerpiece for Thanksgiving dinner. I love the way that they see the world, because theyre seeing the world for the
28、 first time. Having a sense of awareness is just about embracing your inner three year-old. Because you all used to be three years old. That three year-old boy is still part of you. That three year-old girl is still part of you. Theyre in there. And being aware is just about remembering that you saw
29、 everything youve seen for the first time once too. So there was a time when it was your first time ever hitting a string of green lights on the way home from work. There was the first time you walked by the open door of a bakery and smelt the bakery air, or the first time you pulled a 20-dollar bil
30、l out of your old jacket pocket and said, Found money. The last A is authenticity. And for this one, I want to tell you a quick story. Lets go all the way back to 1932 when, on a peanut farm in Georgia, a little baby boy named Roosevelt Grier was born. Roosevelt Grier, or Rosey Grier as people used
31、to call him, grew up and grew into a 300 lb. six-foot five linebacker in the NFL. Hes number 76 in the picture. Here he is pictured with the fearsome foursome. These were four guys on the L.A. Rams in the 1960s you did not want to go up against. They were tough football players doing what they love,
32、 which was crushing skulls and separating shoulders on the football field. But Rosey Grier also had another passion. In his deeply authentic self, he also loved needlepoint. He loved knitting. He said that it calmed him down, it relaxed him, it took away his fear of flying and helped him meet chicks
33、. Thats what he said. I mean, he loved it so much that, after he retired from the NFL, he started joining clubs. And he even put out a book called Rosey Griers Needlepoint for Men. (Laughter) (Applause) Its a great cover. If you notice, hes actually needlepointing his own face. (Laughter) And so wha
34、t I love about this story is that Rosey Grier is just such an authentic person. And thats what authenticity is all about. Its just about being you and being cool with that. And I think when youre authentic, you end up following your heart, and you put yourself in places and situations and in convers
35、ations that you love and that you enjoy. You meet people that you like talking to. You go places youve dreamt about. And you end you end up following your heart and feeling very fulfilled. So those are the three As. For the closing thought, I want to take you all the way back to my parents coming to
36、 Canada. I dont know what it would feel like coming to a new country when youre in your mid-20s. I dont know, because I never did it. But I would imagine that it would take a great attitude. I would imagine that youd have to be pretty aware of your surroundings and appreciating the small wonders tha
37、t youre starting to see in your new world. And I think youd have to be really authentic, youd have to be really true to yourself in order to get through what youre being exposed to. Id like to pause my TEDTalk for about 10 seconds right now, because you dont get many opportunities in life to do some
38、thing like this, and my parents are sitting in the front row. So I wanted to ask them to, if they dont mind, stand up. And I just wanted to say thank you to you guys. (Applause) When I was growing up, my dad used to love telling the story of his first day in Canada. And its a great story, because wh
39、at happened was he got off the plane at the Toronto airport, and he was welcomed by a non-profit group, which Im sure someone in this room runs. (Laughter) And this non-profit group had a big welcoming lunch for all the new immigrants to Canada. And my dad says he got off the plane and he went to th
40、is lunch and there was this huge spread. There was bread, there was those little, mini dill pickles, there was olives, those little white onions. There was rolled up turkey cold-cuts, rolled up ham cold-cuts, rolled up roast beef cold-cuts and little cubes of cheese. There was tuna salad sandwiches
41、and egg salad sandwiches and salmon salad sandwiches. There was lasagna, there was casseroles, there was brownies, there was butter tarts, and there was pies, lots and lots of pies. And when my dad tells the story, he says, The craziest thing was, Id never seen any of that before, except bread. (Lau
42、ghter) I didnt know what was meat, what was vegetarian; I was eating olives with pie. (Laughter) I just couldnt believe how many things you can get here. (Laughter) When I was five years old, my dad used to take me grocery shopping. And he would stare in wonder at the little stickers that are on the
43、 fruits and vegetables. He would say, Look, can you believe they have a mango here from Mexico? Theyve got an apple here from South Africa. Can you believe theyve got a date from Morocco? Hes like, Do you know where Morocco even is? And Id say, Im five. I dont even know where I am. Is this A&P? And
44、hed say, I dont know where Morocco is either, but lets find out. And so wed buy the date, and wed go home. And wed actually take an atlas off the shelf, and wed flip through it until we found this mysterious country. And when we did, my dad would say, Can you believe someone climbed a tree over ther
45、e, picked this thing off it, put it in a truck, drove it all the way to the docks and then sailed all the way across the Atlantic Ocean and then put it in another truck and drove that all the way to a tiny grocery store just outside our house, so they could sell it to us for 25 cents? And Id say, I
46、dont believe that. And hes like, I dont believe it either. Things are amazing. Theres just so many things to be happy about. When I stop to think about it, hes absolutely right; there are so many things to be happy about. We are the only species on the only life-giving rock in the entire universe, t
47、hat weve ever seen, capable of experiencing so many of these things. I mean, were the only ones with architecture and agriculture. Were the only ones with jewelry and democracy. Weve got airplanes, highway lanes, interior design and horoscope signs. Weve got fashion magazines, house party scenes. Yo
48、u can watch a horror movie with monsters. You can go to a concert and hear guitars jamming. Weve got books, buffets and radio waves, wedding brides and rollercoaster rides. You can sleep in clean sheets. You can go to the movies and get good seats. You can smell bakery air, walk around with rain hai
49、r, pop bubble wrap or take an illegal nap. We got all that, but we only got 100 years to enjoy it. And thats the sad part. The cashiers at your grocery store, the foreman at your plant, the guy tailgating you home on the highway, the telemarketer calling you during dinner, every teacher youve ever had, everyone th
