戒掉这13种坏习惯你将更幸福

It’s no secret that we’re obsessed with happiness. After all, the “pursuit of happiness” is even enshrined in the Declaration of Independence. But happiness is fleeting. How can we find it and keep it alive?
显然我们都对幸福着迷，毕竟“追求幸福”甚至被独立宣言奉为神圣。但是幸福转瞬即逝，我们如何能找到幸福并且让它持续下去呢？

Psychologists at the University of California have discovered some fascinating things about happiness that could change your life.
加利福尼亚大学的心理学家发现一些关于幸福的有趣事情，它能改变你的生活。

Dr. Sonja Lyubomirsky is a psychology professor at the Riverside campus who is known among her peers as “the queen of happiness.” She began studying happiness as a grad student and never stopped, devoting her career to the subject.
桑雅·吕波密斯基博士是河滨校区的心理学教授，她以“幸福王后”在同行中著称。她从研究生开始研究幸福，并且一直没有停止，把她的事业奉献给了这个学科。

One of her main discoveries is that we all have a happiness “set point.” When extremely positive or negative events happen -- such as buying a bigger house or losing a job -- they temporarily increase or decrease our happiness, but we eventually drift back to our set point.
她的一个主要发现是我们都有一个幸福“设定值”。当极度积极或极度消极的事情发生时，比如买一所大房子或丢掉一份工作，他们会暂时地增长或降低我们的幸福值，但最终将回到我们的设定值。

The breakthrough in Dr. Lyubomirsky’s research is that you can make yourself happier -- permanently. Lyubomirsky and others have found that our genetic set point is responsible for only about 50 percent of our happiness, life circumstances affect about 10 percent, and a whopping 40 percent is completely up to us.
吕波密斯基教授的研究取得了突破性进展：你可以让自己更幸福——永久地。吕波密斯基和其他人发现我们与生俱来的设定值大概只占幸福的50%，生活环境占10%，还有很大的40%完全取决于我们自己。

The large portion of your happiness that you control is determined by your habits, attitude, and outlook on life.
决定你幸福的很大一部分取决于你的习惯、态度以及人生观。

Even when you accomplish something great, that high won’t last. It won’t make you happy on its own; you have to work to make and keep yourself happy.
即使你完成了一些了不起的事，兴奋的感觉不会很持久。事情的本身并不会让你感到幸福，你必须努力让自己保持幸福。

Your happiness, or lack thereof, is rooted in your habits. Permanently adopting new habits -- especially those that involve intangibles, such as how you see the world -- is hard, but breaking the habits that make you unhappy is much easier.
你的幸福，或是缺乏幸福，都是由你的习惯决定的。长期采用新习惯——尤其是那些包含无形资产的习惯，比如你如何看待这个世界——是很困难的，但打破让你不幸福的习惯会更容易一些。

There are numerous bad habits that tend to make us unhappy. Eradicating these bad habits can move your happiness set point in short order.
下面是容易让我们不幸福的一些坏习惯。消除这些坏习惯能快速移动你的幸福设定值。

1. Immunity to awe.
1. 对敬畏免疫

Amazing things happen around you every day if you only know where to look. Technology has exposed us to so much and made the world so much smaller. Yet, there’s a downside that isn’t spoken of much: exposure raises the bar on what it takes to be awestricken. And that’s a shame, because few things are as uplifting as experiencing true awe. True awe is humbling. It reminds us that we’re not the center of the universe. Awe is also inspiring and full of wonder, underscoring the richness of life and our ability to both contribute to it and be captivated by it. It’s hard to be happy when you just shrug your shoulders every time you see something new.
如果你知道在哪里看，神奇的事情每天都会在你身边发生。科技给我们曝光了太多，也让这个世界变得更小。然而，它也有不为人知的坏的一面：曝光提高了需要人们肃然起敬的标准。这是一个耻辱，因为当经历真正的敬畏时，越来越少的事情会让人感觉振奋。真正的敬畏是耻辱，它提醒我们自己不是宇宙的中心。敬畏也鼓舞人心、充满奇迹，强调生活的丰富以及我们对于做贡献和被吸引的能力。如果你每次看到新鲜的东西就耸肩，这将很难让你感到幸福。

2. Isolating yourself.
2. 孤立自己

Isolating yourself from social contact is a pretty common response to feeling unhappy, but there’s a large body of research that says it’s the worst thing you can do. This is a huge mistake, as socializing, even when you don’t enjoy it, is great for your mood. We all have those days when we just want to pull the covers over our heads and refuse to talk to anybody, but the moment this becomes a tendency, it destroys your mood. Recognize that when unhappiness is making you antisocial, you need to force yourself to get out there and mingle. You’ll notice the difference right away.
从社交中把自己孤立是感到不幸福的常见反应，但有许多研究表明这是你最不应该做的事。这是一个社交中的很大错误，即使你不喜欢，它对你的情绪也是有好处的。我们都经历过那些日子，只想把被子蒙在头上，不跟任何人说话。但当这变成了一种趋势，他将会毁了你的情绪。当不幸福让你反对社交时，你应该强迫自己走出去，和别人交流。你会很快注意到其中的差异。

3. Blaming.
3. 责备

We need to feel in control of our lives in order to be happy, which is why blaming is so incompatible with happiness. When you blame other people or circumstances for the bad things that happen to you, you’ve decided that you have no control over your life, which is terrible for your mood.
为了快乐，我们需要对生活有掌控权，这也就是为什么责备和幸福之间彼此不相容。当你因为坏事发生在自己身上而责备别人或是环境时，就决定了你对生活没有掌控权，这对你的情绪是很糟糕的。

4. Controlling.
4. 控制

It’s hard to be happy without feeling in control of your life, but you can take this too far in the other direction by making yourself unhappy through trying to control too much. This is especially true with people. The only person you can control in your life is you. When you feel that nagging desire to dictate other people’s behavior, this will inevitably blow up in your face and make you unhappy. Even if you can control someone in the short term, it usually requires pressure in the form of force or fear, and treating people this way won’t leave you feeling good about yourself.
对生活没有掌控是很难快乐的，但过犹不及，你也可能因为掌控太多而让自己不快乐。这对于人们来说尤为正确。你生命中唯一能控制的人就是自己。当你感到挥之不去的欲望指示了别人的行为，这将不可避免地表现在你脸上，并让你感到不高兴。即使你能阶段性地控制别人，通常需要武力或是恐惧的压力。以这种方式对待别人不会让你对自己感觉良好。

5. Criticizing.
5. 批判

Judging other people and speaking poorly of them is a lot like overindulging in a decadent dessert; it feels good while you’re doing it, but afterwards, you feel guilty and sick. Sociopaths find real pleasure in being mean. For the rest of us, criticizing other people (even privately or to ourselves) is just a bad habit that’s intended to make us feel better about ourselves. Unfortunately, it doesn’t. It just creates a spiral of negativity.
评判别人或是说别人的坏话就像是沉溺于过期的甜品，当你在做的时候感觉很好，但随后你就会感到内疚和厌恶。反社会者会在刻薄中感到真正的快乐。但对于我们剩余的人来说，批判别人（即使是私底下或者我们自己说）是一种坏习惯，会让我们自我感觉良好。不幸的是，事实并不是这样。它只是制造了一个消极的漩涡。

6. Complaining.
6. 抱怨

Complaining is troubling, as well as the attitude that precedes it. Complaining is a self-reinforcing behavior. By constantly talking -- and therefore thinking -- about how bad things are, you reaffirm your negative beliefs. While talking about what bothers you can help you feel better, there’s a fine line between complaining being therapeutic and it fueling unhappiness. Beyond making you unhappy, complaining drives other people away.
和前面的几种态度一样，抱怨让人烦恼。抱怨是一种自我强化的表现，通过不停地说和想事情有多么的坏，你重申了自己的消极信念。谈论困扰你的事情可以让你感觉好一些，这和抱怨被治疗有微妙的区别，后者助长了不快乐。除了让你不开心，抱怨也会让其他人远离你。

7. Impressing.
7. 给人留下好印象

People will like your clothes, your car, and your fancy job, but that doesn’t mean they like you. Trying to impress other people is a source of unhappiness, because it doesn’t get to the source of what makes you happy -- finding people who like you and accept you for who you are. All the things you acquire in the quest to impress people won’t make you happy either. There’s an ocean of research that shows that material things don’t make you happy. When you make a habit of chasing things, you are likely to become unhappy because, beyond the disappointment you experience once you get them, you discover that you’ve gained them at the expense of the real things that can make you happy, such as friends, family, and taking good care of yourself.
人们会喜欢你的衣服、你的汽车、你的高档工作，但这并不是说他们喜欢你。试图给他人留下深刻印象是苦恼的根源，因为找到喜欢你的人并且接受真实的你，这并不是你得到快乐的源泉。为了给别人留下好印象而让你获得的东西都不会让你真正的快乐。相当多的研究表明物质的东西并不会让你感到快乐。当你养成追求物质的习惯，你就容易变得不开心，因为除了你经历过的失望，你发现获得它们的代价是真正能让你快乐的东西，比如朋友、家人以及好好照顾自己。

8. Negativity.
8. 消极

Life won’t always go the way you want it to, but when it comes down to it, you have the same 24 hours in the day as everyone else. Happy people make their time count. Instead of complaining about how things could have been or should have been, they reflect on everything they have to be grateful for. Then they find the best solution available to the problem, tackle it, and move on. Nothing fuels unhappiness quite like pessimism. The problem with a pessimistic attitude, apart from the damage it does to your mood, is that it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy: if you expect bad things, you’re more likely to get bad things. Pessimistic thoughts are hard to shake off until you recognize how illogical they are. Force yourself to look at the facts, and you’ll see that things are not nearly as bad as they seem.
生活并不会尽如人意，当不如意时，你和别人一样每天都有24小时。快乐的人让他们的时间变得有价值。他们思考让自己心存感激的事，而不是抱怨事情为什么会这样以及应该是什么样。他们找到问题的最佳解决方法，处理它，然后继续前进。没有什么像悲观那样助长不快乐。用悲观的态度处理问题，除了破坏你的情绪，还成为了一个自我应验的预言：如果你期待不好的事，那不好的事很有可能发生。悲观的想法很难摆脱，直到你意识到它们有多不合逻辑。强迫自己看清现实，你会发现事情并不像看起来那么遭。

9. Hanging around negative people.
9. 和消极的人在一起无所事事

Complainers and negative people are bad news because they wallow in their problems and fail to focus on solutions. They want people to join their pity party so that they can feel better about themselves. People often feel pressure to listen to complainers because they don’t want to be seen as callous or rude, but there’s a fine line between lending a sympathetic ear and getting sucked into their negative emotional spirals. You can avoid getting drawn in only by setting limits and distancing yourself when necessary. Think of it this way: If a person were smoking, would you sit there all afternoon inhaling the second-hand smoke? You’d distance yourself, and you should do the same with negative people. A great way to set limits is to ask them how they intend to fix their problems. The complainer will then either quiet down or redirect the conversation in a productive direction.
抱怨的人和消极的人是很令人讨厌的，因为他们沉迷于自己的问题中而不去寻求解决办法。他们希望人们加入到他们的同情聚会中，这样他们能感觉好一些。人们往往对听抱怨者说话感到压力很大，因为他们不想让人觉得自己很麻木或是很粗鲁，但借出同情之耳和卷入消极情绪漩涡之间是有微妙差别的。只有设定界限以及必要时让自己远离，才能避免陷入其中。不妨这样想：如果一个人在抽烟，你会一下午坐在那吸二手烟吗？你会远离他，同样的对消极的人你也应该这样做。设定界限最好的方法是问他们是否愿意解决自己的问题。抱怨者要么安静下来，要么抱着解决问题的想法重新开始这段谈话。

You should strive to surround yourself with people who inspire you, people who make you want to be better, and you probably do. But what about the people who drag you down? Why do you allow them to be a part of your life? Anyone who makes you feel worthless, anxious, or uninspired is wasting your time and, quite possibly, making you more like them. Life is too short to associate with people like this. Cut them loose.
你应该努力让能激励的人围在你身边，那些人让你愿意变得更好，而你可能真的会变得更好。但拖累你的那些人呢？你为什么让他们成为你生活的一部分？任何让你感到没有价值的、焦虑的、不受鼓舞的人都是在浪费你的时间，也很有可能让你变得更像他们。生命太短暂，不要和这样的人交往，远离他们吧。

10. Comparing your own life to the lives people portray on social media.
10. 把自己的生活和别人在社交媒体上的生活比较

The Happiness Research Institute conducted the Facebook Experiment to find out how our social media habits affect our happiness. Half of the study’s participants kept using Facebook as they normally would, while the other half stayed off Facebook for a week. The results were striking. At the end of the week, the participants who stayed off Facebook reported a significantly higher degree of satisfaction with their lives and lower levels of sadness and loneliness. The researchers also concluded that people on Facebook were 55% more likely to feel stress as a result.
管理Facebook实验的幸福研究所发现了社交媒体如何影响我们的幸福感。一半的研究参与者和往常一样继续使用Facebook，另一半人停止使用Facebook一周。研究结果不同寻常。在这一周结束时，离开Facebook一周的参与者对他们的生活更满意、更少地感觉到悲伤和孤独。研究人员同样发现，一直使用Facebook的人有55%感觉到压力。

The thing to remember about Facebook and social media in general is that they rarely represent reality. Social media provides an airbrushed, color-enhanced look at the lives people want to portray. I’m not suggesting that you give up social media; just take it sparingly and with a grain of salt.
关于Facebook和社交媒体，要知道它们通常很少反应现实。社交媒体把人们展示的生活加以粉饰和衬托。我不是建议你再也不用社交媒体，只是提醒你要有保留地看待它。

11. Neglecting to set goals.
11. 疏于制定目标

Having goals gives you hope and the ability to look forward to a better future, and working towards those goals makes you feel good about yourself and your abilities. It’s important to set goals that are challenging, specific (and measurable), and driven by your personal values. Without goals, instead of learning and improving yourself, you just plod along wondering why things never change.
有目标会给你希望，让你期待一个更好的未来，朝着目标努力会让你对自己和自己的能力感到满意。设置有挑战性的、具体的（可衡量的）、反应你个人价值观的目标是非常重要的。没有了目标，你只想知道事情为什么一成不变，而不是学习和提升自己。

12. Giving in to fear.
12. 屈服于恐惧

Fear is nothing more than a lingering emotion that’s fueled by your imagination.Danger is real. It’s the uncomfortable rush of adrenaline you get when you almost step in front of a bus. Fear is a choice. Happy people know this better than anyone does, so they flip fear on its head. They are addicted to the euphoric feeling they get from conquering their fears.
恐惧不过是想象力产生的一种挥之不去的情感。危险是真实的。当你差点被公交车撞到时，肾上腺素会飙升。恐惧则是一种选择。幸福的人比任何人都知道这一点，所以他们克服恐惧。他们沉迷于克服恐惧的愉快情绪中。

When all is said and done, you will lament the chances you didn’t take far more than you will your failures. Don’t be afraid to take risks. I often hear people say, “What’s the worst thing that can happen to you? Will it kill you?” Yet, death isn’t the worst thing that can happen to you. The worst thing that can happen to you is allowing yourself to die inside while you’re still alive.
归根结底，你对没有把握机会的懊悔远远大于失败。别害怕冒险。我总听到人们说，“最坏的事情是什么？能杀了你吗？”然而，死亡并不是最坏的事。最坏的事是你依然活着，却让自己的内心死去了。

13. Leaving the present.
13. 脱离现在

Like fear, the past and the future are products of your mind. No amount of guilt can change the past, and no amount of anxiety can change the future. Happy people know this, so they focus on living in the present moment. It’s impossible to reach your full potential if you’re constantly somewhere else, unable to fully embrace the reality (good or bad) of the very moment. To live in the moment, you must do two things:
像恐惧一样，过去和未来都是你思想的产物。再多的愧疚都改变不了过去，再多的焦虑也改变不了未来。幸福的人知道这一点，所以他们着眼于生活在当下。如果你经常脱离现实，那么你的潜能不太可能全部被发掘，也就无法完全接受这一刻的现实（好的或是坏的）。生活在当下，你必须做到这两件事：

1) Accept your past. If you don’t make peace with your past, it will never leave you and it will create your future. Happy people know that the only good reason to look at the past is to see how far you’ve come.
1）接受你的过去。如果你没有和你的过去讲和，它将永远不会离开你并且会制造你的未来。幸福的人知道回头看过去的唯一理由是，看看自己已经走了多远。

2) Accept the uncertainty of the future, and don’t place unnecessary expectations upon yourself. Worry has no place in the here and now. As Mark Twain once said, “Worrying is like paying a debt you don’t owe.”
2）接受不确定的未来，不要把不必要的期望放在自己身上。现在没有必要担心，就像马克·吐温曾经说的，“担心就像是支付并不存在的债务。”

Bringing It All Together
综上所述

We can’t control our genes, and we can’t control all of our circumstances, but we can rid ourselves of habits that serve no purpose other than to make us miserable.
我们不能控制自己的基因，也不能控制所有的外在环境，但我们可以摆脱那些没有任何作用、只会让我们痛苦的坏习惯。