针对女性树立自信心的六条建议

Major General Jessica Wright, the most senior woman in the US military today, is utterly warm, charming and not scared to embrace a feminine style. She’s also crisp and assured and not somebody who appreciates dithering. Over her long military career, she’s suffered from “spaghetti nerves” like most of us, and has had plenty of confidence building moments becoming a leader in such masculine world. One confidence tip she offered was an early discovery: some of your most challenging moments can be turned to your advantage. Early in her career, one superior told her that he didn’t much like females in the military. “About 500 things went through my head,” she says, “but what I told him was ‘Sergeant, this is your chance to get over that.’” Her decision to seize that potentially fraught moment paid off. She gained his respect, and she felt her confidence soar.
杰西卡·怀特少将，也是当今美国军队中军衔最高的女性，是一个极其热心且富有魅力的人，她并不担心自己的风格女性化。同时她也并不喜欢优柔寡断，相反她十分行事果决。在她漫长的军事生涯中，她就像我们中的大部分人一样经历了“迷茫和混乱”的时刻；在这个男人的世界里成长为一个领导人，她也经历了许多树立起信心的瞬间。她告诉我们她很早以前发现的一条树立信心的窍门：一些你人生中遇到过的最具挑战性的瞬间，可能反过来成为你的优势。在她事业的早期，曾有一位上级告诉她他并不喜欢参军的女人。“我一下子觉得脑袋里很混乱，”她说，“但是我还是告诉他‘中士，这正是你克服这种心理的好时机。’”对于这种可能造成造成尴尬的时刻，她作出的这种迎难而上的决定最终赢得了他的尊重，也增强了自己的信心。

Practice makes perfect confidence
练习造就十足的自信

Work and repetition can change your confidence game, literally. It starts not with a belief that you are naturally good or bad at something, but rather a belief that you can learn. Chrystal Langhorne is one of the top players for the Washington Mystics basketball team. To watch her on the court today is to see a dazzling blur of athletic prowess and confident moves. Her first year in the league though, she told us, she thought about quitting basketball. Her game was just not coming together. She was in Lithuania for the winter, and decided to focus, in a big way, on her shooting style. She became single-minded, spending hours every day, shooting, and completely remaking her style. What she accomplished was remarkable. She’s been an all-star player every year since, and she says that the work, the history of what she accomplished, now lives in her head. With each difficult shot she prepares to take, she tells herself: “I know I can do this. I worked on it.”
努力以及反复努力能够真正改变你树立信心的过程。它并不从树立一种“你天生就善于或不善于做某件事情”的信念开始，而是要你相信自己拥有学习的潜能。克里斯蒂尔·兰霍恩是华盛顿神秘队最好的球员之一。她在球场上的表现简直就是运动员的精湛技术和自信心的完美结合。而她告诉我们，她在联盟的第一年她几乎想要放弃篮球。她打球完全不在状态。在立陶宛度过了冬天以后，她决定开始彻底转向于射篮风格的练习。她变得专心致志，每天要花好几个小时练习射篮，并最后完全重塑了自己的投球风格。她的成就令人侧目。自那以后，她每年都是全明星球员，她说，她所成就的事业，或者创造的历史，至今仍历历在目。每一次在她准备射篮的时候，无论有多困难，她都会告诉自己：“我知道我能行，我已经努力过了。”

Don’t ruminate—rewire
对事勿反刍 而要切换思路

The creation of solid confidence isn’t just a brain game. It comes from work and risk and experiences that give us the proof we can keep doing more. Still, our brains don’t do us any favors when it comes to confidence. They need to be trained, because they get in the way, big time. We spend a lot of time thinking, ruminating, and dwelling on problems and things that might go wrong. Even brilliant brain experts fall victim to the habit. Laura Ann Pettito, a renowned neuroscientist who is one of the top in her field, who runs a prestigious laboratory supported by Gallaudet University and the NIH, had a debilitating mental habit. She would sit on the bus on the way home each day going over a long list of her failings. It was her mental default mode. But all of the emerging research into the power of brain plasticity convinced her she could and should rewire. Now she forces herself, as she starts her journey home, to focus on three things she did well. Usually, after that, the negative assessments are kept at bay. And she’s found her mindset is more open to new challenges and risks.
树立坚实的信心并非只是个脑力活。坚实的信心源于努力，源于冒险，源于经验，源于这些证明我们可以走的更远的东西。而且，我们的大脑对于如何树立信心方面也根本给不了我们什么帮助。在树立信心方面他们常常碍事儿，所以他们需要长时间训练。我们花很多时间思考，反刍，并驻足于那些可能出错的问题和事情上，这样的习惯甚至会使杰出的大脑专家也成为受害者/甚至连杰出的大脑专家也会深受其害。劳拉·安·佩蒂托，一位著名的业内顶尖神经科学家，并运营着一个由加劳德特大学和NIH共同出资设立的极富盛名的实验室，她便是被一个心理习惯所困扰着。在每天回家坐公交车的路上，她都会细数脑中关于自己的一大串失败。这就是她的思维定式。但是所有的关于大脑可塑性能力的新兴研究都使她相信，她可以且应当换一种思维模式进行思考了。现在她迫使自己在回家路上只关注做的不错的三件事。之后通常她能远离负面评估，而且能以更开放的心态对待新的挑战和任务了。