Quit Lying to Yourself
别再对自己撒谎
Real happiness starts with telling yourself the truth, even when it hurts.
真实的幸福始于面对痛苦的真相
No one wants to be seen as a liar. Liars are on side reduntrust worthy at best and immoral at worst. And yet,we are perfectly content to lie to ourselves all the time. “l'll enjoy this sleeve of Or eos today because my diet starts tomorrow,” I might tell myself, Or,“I love my job; who cares that I complain about it constantly?"Or even-ironically-“I am always honest with myself”
没有人愿意被看作是骗子。撒谎者被认为在最好的情况下是不可信的，最坏的情况下是不道德的。然而，我们却经常乐于对自己撒谎。例如，我们可能告诉自己:“今天我就享受这一整包奥利奥，因为明天就开始减肥了。”又或者，“我喜欢我的工作，谁在乎我总是抱怨它呢?”甚至还会说出讽刺的话，我一直对自己很诚实。”
Deceiving yourself shouldn't make logical sense. After all, lying involves telling someone something you know to be untrue.When you are both the liar and one lied to, this means you have to both know the truth and not know the truth. In practice,that means will fully disregarding key knowledge to arrive at a conclusion that is more convenient than what the facts appear to suggest.
自我欺骗在逻辑上是说不通的。毕竟，撒谎是告诉别人一些我们知道不是的事情。当自已既是撒谎者又是受骗者时，就意味着我们既要知道相，又要装作不知道眞相。实际上，这意味着故意忽略关键的事实，以便得出一个比实际情况更让人舒适的结论。
Everyone self-deceives, but that doesn't make it harmless. At high levels,it is associated with poor mental health. At moderate levels, it can temporarily protect the self-deceiver from bad feelings but still presents a barrier to the deep well-being that comes from living with integrity. To be really happy, we must learn to be completely honest with ourselves.
每个人都会自我欺骗，但这并不意味着它无害。在高水平的自我欺骗中，它与心理健康问题有关。在适度的情况下，它可能暂时保护自欺者受消极情绪的影响，但仍然阻碍了从与自己眞实的一致性中获得的深层幸福。要眞正快乐，我们必须学会对自己完至诚实。
Relatively few people are completely honest with others.Research from the University of Massachusetts at Amherst on undergraduate students found that 60 percent lied at least once during a 1-minute conversation, and many lied multiple times. Distorting reality inside your own head might be even more common,As one scholar summarizes the evidence,“All humans have self-deceptions." No one is completely honest with herself,because,well, the truth hurts. Accuracy in perceiving the world is actually a common feature of depression, sometimes referred to as“depressive realism.
相对而言，很少有人会对他人完全诚实·马萨诸塞大学阿默斯特分的研究发现，60%的大学生在一次10分钟的谈话中至少撒过一次谎，许多人多次谎。在自已头脑中扭曲现实可能更为普逼。一位学者总结证据时提到:“所有人类都有自我欺骗。”没有人会对自己完全诚实，因为相往往很痛苦精准地感知世界实际上是抑郁的一个常见特征，有时被称为“抑郁现实主义
Life is simply full of harsh realities, If you want a glimpse into this,consider the last time someone left a room you were in and you cracked a joke at his expense. Deep down he knows this is because he probably did the same thing once happening,left the room,yet he has to disregard this when you knowledge in order to get on with his day.
生活中充满了严酷的现实。若你想窥探其中一角，可以回想上次某人离开房间时你开过的玩笑。内心深处，他知道这种事情会发生，因为当你离开房间时，他可能也曾这样做，但他必须忽略这一事实以继续正常生活。
Sometimes, people engage in self-deception to protect their ego or gather courage, Former Senator Al Franken famously embodied that phenomenon on Saturday Night Live when he played an irritating,cloying self-help television-show host named Stuart Smalley who used the catch phrase “I'm good enough, I'm smart enough,and dog gone it, people like me.” Similarly, if talking to crowds isn't your forte,you might try to boost your courage before a scary presentation by declaring,“I am a great public speaker!" At a more grandiose level, the entrepreneur convinces himself that his hare brained scheme is a truly great idea.
有时，人们会选择自我欺骗来保护自尊或鼓起勇气。例如，前参议员阿尔·弗兰肯在《周六夜现场》中饰演一个合人烦躁的自助电视节目主持人斯图尔特斯莫利，他的口头禅是:“我足够好，我足够聪明，而且人们喜欢我。”同样，如果你不擅长与人群讲话，在一场合人紧张的演讲前，你可能会自我鼓励:“我是一个出色的公众演讲者!"而在更夸张的情况下，某位企业家可能说服自已相信他的异想天开的计划其实是个好主意。
To fake it 'till you make it is one thing; to fake it forever, even to yourself, is entirely different. Such is the case if your success at work or school is the result of cheating or preferential treatment but you choose to chalk it up to your own merit. The psychologist Paul K,Piff and his colleagues showed in a 2020 experiment that humans tend to appreciate the role of luck more when theirs is down than when they come out on top.For example,your coworker might choose to think that her last promotion was entirely a consequence of her excellent work others might notice that she is also the boss's niece.
“假装直到成功"是一回事;但若永远假装，甚至对自己也如此，那就完至不同了。比如，如果你的职场或学业成功来自作弊或特殊照顾，但你却将其归功于自己能力出色·这种自欺可能会合理化不公平的优势，使正的才能更难辨别和奖励。心理学家保罗·K.皮夫及其同事在2020年的实验中发现，人们在处于低谷时更容易队识到运气的作用，而当他们位居高位时，往往忽略运气的因素。比如，你的同事可能认为她的晋升完至是因为自己的出色表现，但其他人可能注意到她是老板的侄女。
Lying to yourself about merit justifies unfair advantage and makes real merit harder to discern and reward. That's bad enough, but self-deception becomes downright dangerous when it denies truths that are painful but important to face, such as an abusive relationship or lethal habit.In people who struggle with substances, denial can serve a same chanism tomanta dependence and avoid the painful process of rehabilitation. In 2016,scholars found that alcohol and drug addicts exhibit elevated scores of self-deception, including active denial (e.g., “]can quit anytime I want")and selective amnesia(e.g.,“I wasn't drunk last night").
对自己在能力方面的自欺，会合理化不公平的优势，并使正的能力更难被辨识和奖励。这已经足够糟糕了，但当自欺否认了那些痛苦却必须面对的现实时，就变得真正危险了，比如一段虐待关系或致命的习惯。在酗酒和物成瘾者中，否认可能成为一种机制，以维持依赖并逃避痛苦的康复过程2016年的研究表明，酗酒者和药物成瘾者的自欺分数较高，包括积极的否(例如“我随时可以戒掉”)和选择性遗忘(例如“我昨晚没喝醉”)。
These self-lies delay the changes we need to make, and a bet our lies to others.In fact,self-deception is a classic technique of manipulative persuasion, As the old saying goes, “It's not a lie if you believe it." And indeed, the biologist Robert Trivers has shown in his experiments that when people are tasked with making a particular argument,they purposely resist hearing evidence to the contrary.In other words, the salesman telling you that the lemon you are looking at is the finest car ever has probably convinced himself that it is.
这些自欺的谎言推迟了我们需要做出的改变，并助长了我们对他人的欺骗。事实上，自欺是操性说服的一种经典技巧。正如俗话所说，“如果你相信它，就不算撒谎。”生物学家罗伯特.特里弗斯的实验表明，当人们被要求提出某种论点时，他们故意抗拒相反证据的出现。换句话说，那位向你推销这辆二手车是有史以来最好"的销售员，可能真的相信自己所说的。
All that self-deception-whether it's about your skills or your relationship with substances-takes a lot of work to maintain.Consider procrastination,a form of self-deception that can be trivial (“I'll unload the dish washer later")or catastrophic (“l'll call the doctor next week about that chest pain"). This form of self-deception is costly not only because avoiding problems can make them worse but also because the procrastin at or must do the mental work of a task over and over, without reaping the rewards of actually getting it done. Why write“Change banks” on your to-do list for months on end instead of doing it once and being free of the task?
所有这些自欺--无论是关于你的技能还是与成瘾物貭的关系--都需要大量的努力来维持。想想拖延症，这是一种可以是琐碎的自欺(例如“稍后我会卸下洗碗机的碗碟”),也可以是灾难性的(例如“我下周再联系医生检查胸痛”)。这种自欺不仅代价高昂，因为拖延问题可能会使问题恶化，还因为拖延者必须一次又一次地重复任务的心理工作，却没有实际完成的奖励。为什么要在待办事项清单上连续几个月写“更换银行”而不是一次性完成从而摆脱这个任务呢?
To maximize your near-term happiness without doing excessive harm to others, the self-deception for mula might seem to be just a little to protect your feelings and make life easier.” Maybe you convince yourself that others admire you, plus you throw in a little harmless procrastination here and there, but never deny realities that are dangerous to you and others, or lie to yourself so you can manipulate others.
为了最大化近期的幸福威而不对他人造成太大伤害，自欺的公式似乎是“少量的自我安慰以让生活更轻松”。你也许会说服自己别人都欣赏你，偶尔再加上一点无害的拖延，但不要否认那些对自己和他人有危险的现实，也不要为了操纵他人而自欺。
But what about your long-term happiness? Living in a cocoon of falsehoods may be comforting, but it is like experiencing bliss at the end of an opium pipe: It will never lead you to the deepest kind of satisfaction, That contentment can be found only within the true version of yourself, The French existentialist philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre saw all self-deception, no matter how mild,as a form of what he called“bad faith”: an unwillingness to discover our essence as conscious beings and take true responsibility for ourselves. Ignorance may be bliss, in this view, but it is an irresponsible waste of a life.
但你的长期幸福呢?生活在虚假的茧中可能很舒适，但这就像在鸦片的幻觉中找到安慰:它永远无法带给你最深层次的满足威。眞正的满足只能在眞实的自我中找到。法国存在主义哲学家让-保罗.萨特认为，所有的自欺，无论多么轻微，都是一种“恶意”,即拒绝发现作为有意识存在的本质并对自己承担眞正的责任。从这个角度来看，无知可能是福，但这是一种对生命的浪费和不负责任的表现。
To be sure, Sartre was a notorious downer;he recommended that without a future, without hope, without illusion.” But one live his basic point is a good one. Personal integrity is absolutely necessary for personal progress,which psychologists show is a central ingredient of happiness.Progress requires knowing honestly where you are compared with where you have been.
当然，萨特的观点相对悲观;他會建议人们生活得“没有未来，没有希望，没有幻想”。但他的基本观点是正确的。个人诚信对个人进步至关重要，而心理学研究表明，进步是幸福的核心要素。进步需要诚实地队识自己所处的位置，并与过去作比较。
If you are will fully oblivious to your flaws,you can't correct them. As my colleague Steven Pinker,the author of the new book Rationality:What It Is,Why It Seems Scarce, Why It“Whatever advantages Matters,reminded me by email,self-deception may have in motivation it has to be balanced against the obvious downside of not learning from mistakes.Research shows that self-deception is associated with an inability to see our own flaws, which makes self-improvement harder. Refusing to admit that I am a bit neurotic might make me feel better in the moment, but it also discourages me from undertaking efforts to change for the long-term good of myself and those around me.
如果故意忽视自己的缺点，就无法改正它们。我的同事、《理性:它是什么，为何稀缺，为何重要》一书的作者斯蒂芬.平克通过邮件提醒我，“无论自欺在激励方面有什么优势……它必须与无法从错误中学习的明显缺点平衡起来。”研究表明，自欺与无法看到自身缺点有关，这使得自我改进变得更加困难。拒绝承队我有些种经质可能会让我瞬间感觉更好，但这也会我不愿意为长远的个人和周围人的利益而努力改变自己。
This does not mean taking all negative opinions to be the truth,any more than it means accepting positive opinions without a second thought.The key is to receive critical information defensive, and to consider evidence about without getting yourself the way you would if it were about another person.
这并不意味着将所有负面意见视为真理，就像不应该毫无质疑地接受所有正面意见一样。关键在于不带防御地接收批评性信息，并像对待他人信息一样看待关于自己的証据。
In the end, each of us has to decide: Do I want the full truth, no matter where it leads? If you're ready to try it, I recommend that you start with small acts of defiance against your own self-deception to get a feel for it.
最终，我们每个人都必须做出决定:我是否愿意面对完整的相，无论它通向何处?如果你愿意尝试，我建议从一些小小的反自欺行动开始，去适应这种生活方式。
For example,ask yourself this question: What do people probably laugh about behind my back? Make a list of your quirks and foibles, and imagine yourself laughing about them as well. Next.put your toe in the water by joking about these traits with others. You will find that this exercise creates both relief from acknowledging something you felt a need to hide and confidence in your true self, warts and all. Later, you can expand into more difficult areas, such as examining the true reasons for your success and achievements,facing your health worries squarely and interrogating your habits.
例如，问问自己:别人背后可能会笑我什么?列出你的怪和小毛病，想象自己也在笑这些问题。接下来，可以试着在与他人交谈中开玩笑提及这些特点。你会发现，这种练习既让你感到承队自己管试图隐藏的部分的轻松，也让你对眞实的自己充满信心，尽管有缺陷。之后，你可以扩展到更困难的领域，例如检视自己成功的真正原因，直面健康问题，并审视自己的习惯。
If this scares you, ask yourself questions like the following: Do I prefer to have people laugh behind my back, or along with me?Do I really want something I have not earned? Will sobriety be easier if I ignore my drinking problem for another year? The honest path isn't easy, but you can be sure that day by day, you will be proud to say that the person in the mirror is not a liar.And that will be the truth.
如果这些让你威到害怕，可以问自己这样的问题:我更喜欢别人背后笑我，还是和我一起笑?我真的想要自己没有挣得的东西吗?如果再忽视一年我的饮酒问题，戒酒会变得更容易吗?诚实的道路并不轻松，但你可以确信，日复一日，你会为镜中的自己不是一个撒谎者而到骄傲。这才是实的满足。
