今天继续来跟大家一起学习纳瓦尔访谈的双语内容。
本文为纳瓦尔此前接受Youtube知名博主Chris Williamson访谈的最新视频“44 Harsh Truths About The Game Of Life”（人生的44个残酷真相）的双语文字实录，前序文章请拉到文末，我放了跳转链接。
Chris: Lots of people are addicted to solving problems, so much, that sometimes people create problems when we don't have any, simply so that we can solve them.
Chris: 很多人对“解决问题”是有瘾的。甚至到了没事也要硬造出问题的地步——就为了享受那种解决问题带来的快感。
Naval: We have that going on. And then even worse, as we take on problems that we can affect. So, another one of my little quips was, a rational person should cultivate indifference to things that are out of their control, or a rational person can find peace by cultivating indifference to things that are out of their control.
Naval: 这种情况很普遍。但更糟糕的是，我们总爱去揽那些自己根本改变不了的问题。我常说：理性的人，是通过对那些无力掌控的事情保持“漠不关心”，来获得内心安宁的。
And I'm as guilty as anybody of doom surfing on X or social media and getting worked up about things. I can't do anything about, right? Do I want to be fighting those battles in my mind when I literally can not do anything about it? So if you find yourself looping on a problem, like you're watching the news too much, and you're getting caught up in a problem you can't do anything about, you have to step away from that.
我也和大家一样，偶尔会陷入这种罪过——在 X 或社交媒体上刷那些末日新闻，为一些自己根本无能为力的事感到愤慨。既然我连一丁点忙都帮不上，那何苦要在自己的脑子里开辟战场、自耗心神？所以，如果你发现自己陷入了某种“焦虑循环”——比如新闻看多了，满脑子都是那些你搞不定的烂事——你必须强行抽离。
Modern media is a delivery mechanism for mimetic viruses. 100 years ago, 500 years ago, if something wasn't happening in your immediate vicinity, you wouldn't hear about it. It wouldn't be a problem for you. But now every single one of the world's problems has turned into a mimetic virus, which is going into the battlefield of the news and is trying to infect your mind in real time. So that you become obsessed with the war in Ukraine, which is really far away. Or you get obsessed with climate change, or you get obsessed with AI doom, or you get obsessed with whatever. And there's nothing as riveting as the old religion "The world is ending, the world is ending. Pay attention, the world is ending."
现代媒体，本质上就是一套“模仿病毒”的输送系统。放在一百年前、五百年前，如果一件事没发生在你眼皮子底下，你根本听都不会听到，它也就不会成为你的烦恼。但现在，全世界的每一个麻烦都化作了病毒。它们在新闻战场上厮杀，试图实时感染你的大脑。你会莫名迷上远在天边的乌克兰战争，或者为气候变化忧心忡忡，亦或是为 AI 末日而惶恐。毕竟，没有什么比那句古老的“宗教咒语”更抓人眼球了：“世界要毁灭了，大家注意，末日快到了！”
Chris: And if you don't, you end up with a Cassandra complex at a global scale.
Chris：如果不这么做，你最终会陷入一种“全球性的卡桑德拉情结*”
*卡桑德拉情结：指能预见灾难却无人相信，进而陷入无力的焦虑
Naval: And I would argue that large percentages of the population are essentially just infected with these viruses that have taken over their brain and are causing them to do incredible gyrations about things that probably aren't even true, or are greatly exaggerated.
Naval：我认为，现在很大一部分人本质上是被这种“思想病毒”感染了。病毒占据了他们的大脑，让他们为了一些可能根本不存在、或者被极度夸大的事情而焦虑抓狂。
But even to the extent they are true, there are things that that person can do nothing about, and they should put their own house in order first. So, another little line I have for myself is: Your family is broken, but you're going to fix the world, right? People are running out there to try and fix the world when their lives are a mess. And I think it defies credibility if you can't fix your own life first. I'm not going to take you seriously.
但即便这些问题是真的，那往往也是个人无能为力的事情。他们最该做的，是先打理好自己的生活。我常对自己说的一句话是：你的家庭一团糟，你却要去拯救世界，对吧？很多人自己的人生还是一团乱麻，就急着冲出去拯救世界。我觉得如果你连自己的生活都搞不定，那就毫无公信力可言。我不会认真对待这种人的观点。
If you can't fix your own life—like all these philosophers who seem like people you should emulate and are so smart, or like these brilliant celebrities—and then they go off and commit suicide, well, you just kind of invalidated your whole way of life.
如果你连自己的生活都处理不好——就像那些看起来绝顶聪明、值得效仿的哲学家，或者那些才华横溢的明星，如果他们最终选择了自杀，那就在某种程度上否定了他们整个人生逻辑。
It's like the line in No Country for Old Men where the killer is waiting for the protagonist, and the killer says, "Well, if your set of rules brought you here, then what good were your rules?" They didn't work. I'm holistically selfish in that I want to be objectively successful in everything I set out to want.
就像电影《老无所依》里那样，杀手对着落入陷阱的主角说：“如果你的规则把你带到了这步田地，那你的规则又有什么用呢？”它们就失效了。我是“全方位利己”的，因为我想在我决定追求的每一件事上，都取得客观上的成功。
Chris: Yeah, you have one life. Don't settle for mediocrity.
Chris：没错，你只有一次人生，不要甘于平庸。
Naval: And I think—people debate intelligence, for example, right? We talk about IQ tests and all that, but I think the only true test of intelligence is if you get what you want out of life. And there are two parts to that: One is getting what you want, so you know how to get it. And the second is wanting the right things—knowing what to want in the first place. I could want to be a, you know, 6'8" basketball player, and I'm not going to get that. So that’s wanting the wrong thing.
Naval：人们经常争论什么是“聪明”，比如智商测试。但我认为，衡量智力的唯一真实标准，就是你是否在人生中得到了你想要的东西。这包含两个部分：一是“得到所想”，这意味着你知道如何达成目标；二是“想对东西”，也就是从一开始就知道该追求什么。如果我非要当一个身高两米的篮球运动员，我注定得不到，这就是“想错了东西”。
Chris: So it's wanting something that you can't get. And also wanting something that you don't actually want.
Chris：所以一种是想要你得不到的东西。还有一种是，追求那些你其实并不真正想要的东西。
Naval: Yeah, wanting something that's a booby prize. There are plenty of booby prizes out there too—prizes that are just not worth having or that create their own problems.
Naval：是的，追求那些“安慰奖”。世上有太多这类奖项了，它们要么根本不值得拥有，要么会带来更多新麻烦。
Chris: But if you're not careful, you can end up in a place in life not only that you don't want to be, but one that you didn't even mean to get to.
Chris：如果你不留神，你最终不仅会处在一个你不喜欢的位置，甚至会发现自己到了一个最初根本没打算去的地方。
Naval: That's if you're proceeding unconsciously. And usually, I think people end up there because they are going on autopilot with societal expectations or other people's expectations. Out of guilt or out of mimetic desire. Peter Thiel has this whole thing from René Girard about how our desires are picked up from other people.
Naval：那是“无意识”生活的结果。人们之所以陷入那种境地，通常是因为他们开启了“自动驾驶模式”，顺从于社会或他人的期待。这往往源于内疚感或“模仿欲望”。彼得·蒂尔曾引用勒内·吉拉尔的理论，解释我们的欲望是如何从他人身上习得的。
Some of those are automatically baked into society—like "go to law school," "go to med school," "go to business school." Or they might come from watching what your friends are doing, or what your parents expect, or out of guilt. Guilt is just society's voice speaking in your head. It's socially programmed so you'll be a "good little monkey" and do things that are good for the tribe. But I think the best outcomes come when you think it through for yourself and decide for yourself.
有些期待是社会预设好的，比如考法学院、医学院或商学院；有些则是看到朋友在做什么就想跟着做，或者为了满足父母的期待，亦或是出于内疚。内疚感只是社会在你脑海中说话的声音。它是一种社会编程，目的是让你成为一只“乖巧的小猴子”，去做对部落有利的事。但我认为，最好的结果往往源于你独立的思考和决定。
And I don't think people spend enough time deciding. We run on these four-year cycles. In Silicon Valley, you join a startup, you vest your stock over four years. In college, you go for four years. Some things take longer—you have children, they hit puberty years later, that's a much longer cycle. But we're used to these multi-year cycles in which we are committed to things. You go to law school, that's a 4-5 year cycle; you become a lawyer, that's a 40-year cycle. These are very long cycles.
我认为人们在“决策”上花的时间远远不够。我们的生活充满了各种“四年周期”：在硅谷，加入一家创业公司拿期权要四年；读大学要四年。有些周期更长，比如养育孩子。我们习惯了这些长达数年的承诺。读法学院是 5 年，做律师可能是 40 年。这些周期极长。
Yet, the amount of time we spend deciding what to do and who to do it with is very, very short. We spend maybe one month deciding on a job where we're going to be for five or ten years. Because discovery is path-dependent—the next thing you find on the path depends on where you were on the previous path—you start going down a vector for a very long distance.
然而，我们用来决定“做什么”以及“和谁一起做”的时间却短得可怜。我们可能只花一个月去决定一份要干上五到十年的工作。因为人生的探索是“路径依赖”的——你下一步能发现什么，取决于你上一步在哪。一旦选错向量，你就会在错误的方向上走出去很远。
People decide frivolously which city to live in. But that's going to decide who their friends are, what their jobs are, their opportunities, the weather, even their air and food supply. It's such an important decision, but people spend so little time thinking it through. I would argue that if you're making a four-year decision, spend a year thinking it through.
人们在决定居住城市时往往很草率。但那个决定决定了你的社交圈、工作、机遇、天气，甚至你的空气和食物质量。这是如此重要的决定，人们却很少深思熟虑。我的建议是：如果你要做一个为期四年的决定，那就花一年的时间去把它想清楚。
Chris: 25% of the time.
Chris：拿出 25% 的时间来做决定。
Naval: Yeah, exactly. There's the Secretary Problem (Optimal Stopping Theory)... I don't know if you know about it...
Naval：没错。这就像数学里的“秘书定理”（最优停止理论）……我不知道你听过没……
Chris: So, the Secretary Theorem—after you've done this for a while, you pick the next one that’s better than the previous best. That’s right?
Chris： 所以这就是“秘书定理”（最优停止理论）——在面试过一定数量的人后，只要遇到一个比之前所有人都好的，就果断锁定。对吧？
Naval: Yeah, the Secretary Theorem. There's this computer science problem where you're trying to figure out how much time to spend interviewing candidates, and how long to keep searching.
Naval：没错。这源于一个计算机科学问题：如果你要招聘，你应该花多少时间在“寻找”上，又该在什么时候停止搜索、正式拍板？
Let's say you're going to hire for a position that lasts 10 years. You search for one year, two years, three years... what is the optimal time to stop? It turns out that the optimal time is somewhere around a third—about 37% of the way through.
假设你要为一个长达 10 年的目标去寻人。你找了 1 年、2 年、3 年……到底什么时候该定下来？数学结果证明，最优的搜索比例大约是三分之一（37%）。
By the time you've gone about a third of the way through, you’ve seen enough that you now have a sense of what the bar is. Then, anybody who meets or exceeds that bar is good enough. And this applies to dating, jobs, and careers. But the interesting thing is: it's not actually time-based; it's iteration-based.
当你观察了前三分之一的样本，你心里就有数了，知道“门槛”在哪了。此后，只要遇到任何一个达到或超过这个门槛的人，他就足够优秀了。这套理论适用于约会、找工作和职业选择。但最有趣的一点是：它计算的不是“时长”，而是“迭代次数”。
Chris: The number of shots you took on goal.
Chris：是看你“射门”的次数。
Naval: That’s right. You want lots and lots of iterations. In that, you need to be decisive: take opportunities quickly, and bail out quickly.If you look through failed relationships, the biggest regret will be staying in the relationship long after you knew it wasn’t going to work out. You should have left sooner; the moment you knew, you should have moved on.
Naval：没错。你需要大量的尝试。而在尝试中，你必须果断：快速抓住机会，也要快速止损抽身。回顾那些失败的感情，人最大的遗憾通常是：明明早就知道不行了，却还是硬拖了很久。你本该在察觉不合的那一刻，就果断离开。
In that sense, Malcolm Gladwell popularized the "10,000 hours" rule. I would say it’s actually 10,000 iterations to mastery. It’s not about the number of hours; it’s about the number of iterations that drive the learning curve. And iteration is not repetition. Repeating is doing the same thing over and over. Iteration is modifying it with a learning, and then doing another version of it. That’s error correction. If you get 10,000 error corrections in anything, you will be an expert at it.
马尔科姆·格拉德威尔*带火了“一万小时定律”。但我认为，真正的精通应该是“一万次迭代”。决定学习曲线的不是小时数，而是迭代次数。记住：迭代不等于重复。重复是原地踏步；迭代是带着学到的东西去修正，然后推出一个新版本。本质上，精通就是“纠错”。如果你在任何领域完成了 1 万次有效的纠错，你就是顶级专家。
*马尔科姆·格拉德威尔，英裔加拿大作家、记者、演讲家
Chris: Don't partner with cynics and pessimists. But a lot of the time, that cynicism and pessimism is just in us—it's the way we see the world. How can people avoid it within themselves?
Chris：你说过不要和愤世嫉俗和悲观的人合伙。但很多时候，这种情绪是根植于我们内心的——它是我们观察世界的底色。人该如何克服内在的悲观？
Naval: Cynicism and pessimism are tough because we're naturally hardwired for them. I go back to evolution: if you can't explain human nature through evolution, you probably don't have a good theory for it. In the natural environment, you're hardwired to be pessimistic. Let's say I see something rustling in the woods. If I move towards it and it turns out to be prey, good—I get one meal. But if it's a predator, I get eaten. That's the end of that.
Naval：悲观很难克服，因为它是人类进化的“出厂设置”。如果一个心理学理论不能从进化论的角度解释通，那它多半不是好理论。在原始自然环境中，悲观是能救命的。比如树丛里有响动，如果你跑过去看，发现是猎物，你只是多吃一顿饭；但如果是猎食者，你就没命了。
We are hardwired to avoid ruin. So we are naturally pessimists. But modern society is far, far safer than living in the jungle, and the upside is non-linear. For example, when investing: if you short a stock, the most you can make is 2x. But if the stock is the next Nvidia and it goes 100x or 1000x, you make a fortune. Because of leverage, the upside is nearly unlimited.
我们的基因里刻着“规避毁灭”的本能。 所以我们天生悲观。但现代社会比丛林安全得多，而且这里的回报是非线性（爆发式）的。以投资为例：如果你做空一只股票，你最多赚两倍；但如果你买中了下一只英伟达，它可能会涨 100 倍甚至 1000 倍。因为杠杆效应的存在，收益几乎是无限的。
In a tribal system, there might have been 20 potential partners. In modern society, if a date fails, there are infinite more people to meet. Modern society is far more forgiving of failure. You have to use your neocortex to override your primal brain—to realize you're just running a search function to find the thing that works.
在原始部落，你可能一共就 20 个可选的配偶。但在现代社会，约会失败了，外面还有无限的人选。现代社会对失败的包容度极高。你必须用你的理智去强行覆盖原始本能——你要意识到，你现在所做的一切尝试，本质上都是在运行一个“搜索算法”，去寻找那个有效的答案。
Once you find that one mate, or that one business, it will pay off in massive compounding. It's okay if you had 50 failed dates or 50 failed job interviews in between. The number of failures doesn't matter. There’s no point in being a pessimist. You want to be an optimist. But I would say: Be optimistic in the general, but skeptical about specific things. Every specific opportunity is probably a fail, but you want to be like: "Something in here is going to work."
一旦你找对了伴侣，或是找准了事业，复利会带来恐怖的回报。 在这之前，哪怕有 50 次失败的约会或面试，那都不叫事儿。失败的次数根本不重要。所以，悲观毫无意义。你要做一个乐观主义者。我的建议是：在宏观上保持乐观，在具体事物上保持审慎。每一项具体的尝试大概率都会失败，但你要坚信：“这里面总有一个能成。”
Chris: How do you navigate that tension?
Chris：你如何平衡这种张力（宏观乐观与微观审慎之间的矛盾）？
Naval: Exactly as I said: I'm optimistic in the general. If something fails right now—this sounds a little "woo-woo"—but it wasn't meant to be. It was a learning experience; it was an iteration. As long as I learned something from it, then it's a win. If I didn't learn, it's a loss. As long as you keep iterating fast and cutting your losses quickly, then when you find the right thing, you have to be optimistic and compound into it. You don't want to marry the first person you date. You want to explore very, very quickly until you find the match, and then you have to be willing to go all in. You have to move your chips to the center of the table.
Naval：就像我说的：我在大方向上极其乐观。如果当下的某件事搞砸了——这话听着可能有点“玄学”——我会觉得那是缘分未到。它只是一次学习经历，一次迭代。只要能从中带走点什么，就是赢；没学到东西才是亏。只要你保持高速迭代、快速止损，当你最终撞上那个对的机会时，你就必须坚定乐观，并利用复利滚大它。你没必要非得跟初恋结婚。你应该快速地去探索、去筛选，直到找到那个匹配的人。而一旦找到了，你就要有“梭哈”的勇气，把筹码全部推向桌子中央。
Chris: So it's a barbell strategy—it's black or white. Most people are stuck in the gray, sort of half-assing it.
Chris：所以这是一种“杠铃策略”——非黑即白。而大多数人却困在中间的灰色地带，做什么都半吊子。
Naval: And I also think labels like "pessimist," "optimist," "introvert," "extrovert"—these are very self-limiting. Humans are very dynamic.
Leave all the labels alone. It's better to look at the problem at hand and look at reality the way it is. Try to take yourself out of the equation.
Naval：而且我觉得像“悲观主义者”、“乐观主义者”、“内向”、“外向”这些标签，都是极大的自我限制。人是动态发展的。扔掉所有标签吧。 更好的做法是盯着眼下的问题，看清现实的真面目。试着把自己从这个方程里剔除掉。
Motivated reasoning is the worst kind of reasoning. You're not going to find truth through highly motivated reasoning. Objective means trying to take your personality out of it as much as possible. To the extent you run with this thick identity and personality, it's going to cloud your judgment and lock you into the past.
“先入为主”是最低级的理性。 带着强烈的个人动机，你永远找不到真相。所谓“客观”，就是尽可能把你的个性、你的偏见从判断中剥离出来。如果你带着一层厚厚的“身份认同”去生活，它会遮蔽你的判断力，把你锁死在过去。
If you say "I'm a depressed, unhappy person," then yeah, you're going to be unhappy. That's a way of walking yourself into your past. Even saying "I have trauma" or "I have PTSD"—you feel things, there are memories, but don't define yourself by it, because then you will lock it into your identity and you're just going to loop on it. It's better to stay flexible because reality is always changing and you have to adapt. Adaptation is intelligence. You are here because your ancestors were adapters. To adapt, you must see things clearly. And if you're seeing them through your own identity, it's going to cloud your judgment.
如果你总说“我是一个抑郁、不快乐的人”，那你注定不快乐。那是你在主动退回到过去的阴影里。甚至是说“我有创伤”或“我有创伤后应激障碍”——没错，你有感觉、有记忆，但千万别用这些定义你自己。一旦你把它们写进身份说明书，你就会陷入死循环。保持灵活。现实总是在变，你必须去适应。适应力就是智力。 你之所以能坐在这，是因为你的祖先是适应者。想要适应，你得先看清真相。如果你隔着“身份认同”的滤镜去观察，你的判断力必将受损。
Chris: Moving on to sort of thinking about happiness, obviously a topic of yours...
Chris：聊聊“幸福”吧，这显然是你最擅长的话题之一……
Naval: It's honestly the one that I feel least qualified to talk about.
Naval：老实说，这是我觉得自己最没资格谈论的话题。
Chris: Is it like a guy that's got long arms teaching you how to bench press? Or someone that feels like they came from behind the eight ball?
Chris： 为什么这么说？是因为你觉得自己并不是那种天赋异禀、天生就很快乐的人，而是那种从逆境中摸爬滚打出来的“后天学习者”吗？
Naval: Yeah, you're asking a crazy person about their thoughts...
Naval：没错。你这就像是在问一个疯子对“神智清醒”有什么看法……
Chris: Is happiness still more about peace than it is about joy?
Chris：对现在的你来说，幸福更多是指“平静”，而非那种狂欢式的“快乐”吗？
Naval: It's just one of those overloaded words that means different things to different people. What is happiness? I think it's just basically being okay with where you are.
Naval：“幸福”这个词承载了太多含义，每个人对它的理解都不同。到底什么是幸福？我觉得本质上就是：对现状感到“没问题”。
Chris: Not wanting.
Chris：“无欲”。
Naval:Not wanting things to be different than the way they are. Not having the sense that anything is missing in this moment.
Naval：不再希望事情表现得与现状有所不同。不再觉得此时此刻的生命里还缺少了点什么。
Chris: So happiness is about not needing your current situation to change. It's about not being contingent on...
Chris：所以幸福就是不再要求现状必须改变。它不再依赖于……
Naval: ...and not needing to get something from the outside world. Ironically, if you ask people when they were happiest for a sustained period, they were probably doing some variation of nothing.
Naval：不再依赖于从外部世界获取什么。讽刺的是，如果你问人们在一段持续的时间内何时最幸福（不是瞬间的快感，因为快感会制造幸福的假象），他们的答案通常都是在做某种程度上的“无所事事”。
Chris: That's interesting, because "the chase" itself implies a sort of lack, a contingency.
Chris：这很有意思。因为所有的“追逐”本质上都意味着一种匮乏，意味着你的快乐是有条件的。
Naval: That's right. But then you get bored. If you just sit around all the time, you want adventure, you want surprise.
There's a funny thought experiment called the Bliss Machine. Suppose I could drill a hole in your head and put an electrode in to stimulate the exact part of your brain that puts you in a state of pure bliss. Would you want that?
Naval：没错。但问题是，如果你整天只是坐着，你会感到无聊。你会渴望冒险，渴望惊喜。有个有趣的思维实验叫“极乐机器”：假设我能在你头上钻个洞，植入电极，持续刺激你大脑里产生快感的区域，让你永远处于纯粹的极乐中。你想要吗？
Chris: Might be nice. For how long?
Chris： 听起来不错。但能持续多久？
Naval: Most people will say, "I don't want that. I want meaning." If you run the thought experiment long enough, most people realize: What I actually want is surprise. I want the world to surprise me. I want to wrestle with it in ways that are somewhat predictable but somewhat not.
Naval：大多数人最终会拒绝：“我不要那个，我要的是意义。”如果你深挖下去，你会发现：人类真正想要的，其实是“惊喜”。我想要这个世界给我惊喜。我想以一种“半可控、半随机”的方式与世界博弈。
I don't know if pure happiness is the ultimate goal for everyone. Most people would say, "I'm here in this life. I want to be engaged. I want to accomplish things, I want to want things—and then get them." That's the whole game that we're all playing here.
我不确定纯粹的幸福是否是所有人的终极目标。大多数人会觉得：“既然来都来了，我想要参与感。我想要有所成就，我想要拥有欲望——然后去实现它。”这就是我们所有人正在玩的这场人生游戏。
Chris: Surprise is interesting. If you’re an overachiever who craves total control—perfectly planned itineraries and schedules—you're actually reducing your capacity for surprise. Everything becomes so contrived that your ability to be surprised diminishes.
Chris：“惊喜”是个很有意思的维度。如果你是一个追求极致掌控的“卷王”，把日程表排得滴水不漏，你其实是在亲手扼杀惊喜。当一切都被预设好了，生活也就失去了那种不期而遇的生命力。
Naval: Yeah. If nothing worked out as expected, you’d be a ball of anxiety. But if everything worked out exactly as expected, you’d be so bored you might as well be dead. The river of life flows between these two banks.
Naval：没错。如果一切都不在预料之中，你会焦虑得发疯；但如果一切都分毫不差，你会无聊得想死。生命之河，就流淌在这两岸之间。
Chris: You say thinking about yourself is the source of all unhappiness. But don’t we need reflection to work on our weaknesses?
Chris：你说过“思考自我是一切痛苦的根源”。但难道我们不需要通过反思来改进自己的弱点吗？
Naval: What I’m specifically referring to is obsessing over your personality and ego. When you dwell on: "Woe is me," "This happened to me," "I deserve this," "I didn't get that"—you’re just strengthening an insatiable little beast inside you.
Naval：我指的“思考自我”，是那种对个性（Personality）和自我（Ego）的执迷。当你满脑子都是“我好惨”、“这事凭什么发生在我头上”、“我应得的却没拿到”——你其实是在喂养心里的一只小怪兽。
Chris: And those thoughts are very concretized—they’re not malleable.
Chris：而且这些念头一旦成型，就会变得僵化，很难再改变。
Naval: Right. You’re creating narratives, stories, and identities. That is very different from solving personal problems. If you encounter something, learn from it, and then move on, that's productive. But sitting there saying "I'm Naval, I deserve this, that person wronged me, I need revenge"—that's where a lot of mental illness comes from. Here’s the test: If a thought leaves your mind clearer, it was worthwhile. If it leaves your mind busier, you're going in the wrong direction.
Naval：对。你在编造叙事、讲故事、给自己贴标签。这和“解决个人问题”完全是两码事。如果你遇到挫折，学到了教训，然后继续赶路，这叫反思。但如果你坐在那祥林嫂式地念叨“我是纳瓦尔，我受了委屈，我要报复”，这就是精神内耗的开端。判断标准很简单：如果一次思考让你心智更清晰，它就是值得的；如果它让你的大脑更混乱，那你就是走错路了。
Chris: Is this a justification for detachment or cultivated ignorance?
Chris：这算是在为“抽离”或者“刻意的无知”辩护吗？
Naval: Detachment is just a byproduct of realizing what matters and what doesn't. Everybody craves thinking about something bigger than themselves. To be happy, you have to forget about your personal problems. One way is to take on bigger missions—it could be spirituality, kids, or even caring about the planet. Though people can take that last one too far and become tyrannical.
Naval：“抽离”只是看清了轻重缓急之后的自然副产品。每个人其实都渴望关注一些比自我更宏大的东西。想要快乐，你得学会忘掉那些个人的鸡毛蒜皮。你可以投身于一个更大的使命——无论是精神追求、养育孩子，还是关注地球。唯有跳出小我的圈子，你才能获得真正的解脱。
Chris: Just like anything in excess.
Chris：就像任何事情一旦过度都会出问题。
Naval: Anything in excess, right? But generally, the less you think about yourself, the more you can think about a mission, or about God, or about a child.
Naval：没错。但总的来说，你对自己想得越少，就越能专注在更宏大的使命、信仰、或是孩子身上。
Chris: Vinnie hymas, the founder of Loom, said I am rich and I have no idea to do what to do with my life. And you replied God, kids on mission, pick at least one.
Chris: Vinay Hiremath (Loom 创始人) 曾说：“我很富有，但我完全不知道这辈子该干嘛。”你回复他：“信仰、孩子、使命，至少选一个。”
Naval: That's right. Preferably all three. It's very liberating. Overthinking about yourself may not be the cause of depression, but it certainly doesn't help rumination.
Naval： 是的，最好三个全占，那会让你彻底解脱。过度思考自我未必是抑郁的直接诱因，但它绝对会加剧那种自怨自艾的“反刍”。
Chris: I used to have a sort of "Stockholm Syndrome" with this, because I love to think. But it makes you the prisoner and the prison guard at the same time. There seems to be a direct correlation between how much you think about yourself and how miserable you are.
Chris： 我以前在这方面有点“斯德哥尔摩综合征”，因为我很爱思考。但这种思考会让你同时变成囚犯和狱卒。事实证明：一个人对自我的关注程度，与他的痛苦程度成正比。
Naval: Therapy is great if it lets you vent and solves the thing, and you're done, you're clear. But if you're just looping on the same thing forever, then you're just bathing in it.
Naval：如果心理咨询能让你宣泄并解决问题，让你心智清爽，那它很棒。但如果你永远在同一个问题上死循环，那你就只是在痛苦里“泡澡”而已。
Chris: How have you become happy? Any techniques developed over time?
Chris：那你是怎么变快乐的？这些年有没有总结出什么具体的技巧？
Naval: I used to have a lot of them. Now I try not to have any, because the techniques themselves are a struggle. It’s like bidding for status reveals that you are low status. In the same way, someone who is trying to be happy is creating a frame that says, "I am unhappy."
Naval：我以前有很多技巧，但现在我试着一个都不用。因为“磨练技巧”本身就是一种挣扎。这就好比拼命标榜地位的人，反而暴露了其地位卑微。同理，一个拼命努力变快乐的人，其实是在强化“我不快乐”这一心理设定。
Chris: You're positioning yourself as being in lack in order to attain.
Chris：为了得到，你反而把自己放在了“匮乏”的位置上。
Naval: Yeah. I don't even think in terms of happiness or unhappiness anymore. I just kind of do my thing.
Naval：是的。我现在甚至不再用“幸福”或“不幸福”来思考问题了。我只是顺其自然，做我该做的事。
(这篇写到这里已经9700+字了，我们下期再见吧~近期我会更新更频繁一点，因为除了纳瓦尔的访谈，我还找到了很多有兴趣学习的资料，想都翻译一下发出来)
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