Feel Like You’re Falling Behind Your Peers?

落后于相似的同輩，這絕不是一件令人愉快的事。我們常說，"不要與人比較，只與自己比"，但說易行難。隨著社交媒體的興起，如果要與他人保持聯(lián)系，就難免會看到一些同輩取得的成就。事實上，這些動態(tài)也有好處，最近的一項研究表明，它可以成為工作和生活中的靈感源泉。 It’s never pleasant to lag behind others that we consider similar. The conventional wisdom says to “stop competing with others, only with yourself.” But that’s easier said than done. With the rise of social media, it’s?hard to avoid evidence?of your colleagues’ accomplishments if you want to stay connected. And in fact that evidence can have benefits. A?recent study?shows that it can become a source of inspiration in both work and life. 那么，你要如何利用它積極的一面，而不用承受它可能導(dǎo)致的不安感呢？以下五種策略可以幫到你。 So how can you harness the positive benefits of competition without suffering from the insecurity it may breed? By employing these five strategies.

找到觸發(fā)壓力的因素

Track your triggers.

?

感覺自己落后于同齡人的這種壓力，會以多種形式出現(xiàn)。它可能是短暫的，比如聽到老板夸獎另一位同事；也可能是持續(xù)的，比如看著同事們告別朝九晚五的工作，去開創(chuàng)他們自己的事業(yè)。 The stress of feeling behind your peers can emerge in many forms throughout the day. It might be something transient, such as hearing your boss compliment another colleague, or it might be something constant, such as watching your colleagues leave the 9-5 to build businesses of their own. 回想一下，到底是什么因素觸發(fā)了你的自我比較。老板對同事的支持，是否會讓你感到自卑？某個朋友的成就，是否會對你造成打擊？你是否經(jīng)常瀏覽領(lǐng)英（LinkedIn）、Facebook 或者Instagram，同時不可避免地感受到強烈的不安感和孤獨感？如果是，那么你并不孤單。研究表明，社交媒體的使用加劇了我們內(nèi)在的消極偏見，我們會將更多注意力放在消極經(jīng)歷而不是積極經(jīng)歷上。 Reflect on what triggers self-comparison for you. Does your boss’s support of others make you feel inferior? Do specific friends’ accomplishments bring you down? Do you find yourself regularly scrolling through LinkedIn, Facebook, or Instagram, inevitably feeling a higher level of insecurity and isolation as you do? If so, you’re not alone.?Research shows?that using social media exacerbates our inherent negativity bias, where we put more weight on negative experiences than positive ones.

注意那些促使你覺得不如他人的事情，這一點很重要，因為一旦你意識到這些事情是觸發(fā)因素，你就可以將它們轉(zhuǎn)化為機會，以獲取更有成效的結(jié)果。

It’s vital to pay attention to the things that provoke self-comparison for you, because once you’re aware that these are triggers, you can transform them into opportunities for a more productive response.

從被動的反省轉(zhuǎn)變?yōu)橛幸庾R的改變

Shift from reactive rumination to purposeful reframing.

?

一旦感覺到落后于人，你也許會放棄所有引起不安感的活動。但一般情況下這個辦法既不合理，也不實用。 Once you track the situations that provoke feeling behind, you may decide to quit all activities that prompt insecurity. But that’s rarely a reasonable or pragmatic solution. 比如，你可能無法避免聽到老板對你或同事的看法。還有，就算你可以離開朋友，或者不再使用社交媒體，你也會因為孤獨而感覺自己越來越不如他人。更好的辦法是有意識地讓那些感受對你有利。 For instance, you probably can’t avoid hearing?what your boss says?about you or your colleagues. And while you can cut off your friends or stop using social media, your feelings of inadequacy may increase with isolation. A better approach is to be intentional: deliberately engage those feelings to your benefit. 比如，當(dāng)你下次瀏覽社交媒體的時候，問問自己為什么在這個時候做這件事。是因為覺得無聊嗎？如果是，那就有意地進(jìn)行娛樂，而不是評判自己。或者，下次當(dāng)你聽到同事事業(yè)成功的消息，感覺自己不如他人時，退后一步，不加評判地觀察自己的感受。然后主動承諾去客觀地看待同輩的進(jìn)步，就好像你是一個調(diào)查他們故事的記者，而不是與他們直接競爭的人。 Take, for example, the next time you are scrolling through your social media accounts. Ask yourself why you are doing it at this moment. Are you bored? Then intentionally decide to engage for entertainment, not to judge yourself. Or the next time you come across news of a peer’s career success and find yourself feeling inadequate, step back and observe your feelings without judgment. Then make a proactive commitment to view your peer’s progress objectively, as if you were a journalist researching their story rather than someone in direct competition with them.

如果這些活動讓你感到不安，一定要暫時遠(yuǎn)離。

但是記住，你可以帶著學(xué)習(xí)的意圖去接近他們。不要對自己說，“我希望我能做到(或擁有)”，而要問問自己，“為什么我不能做到(或擁有)?”然后花點時間去聽聽你腦海中浮現(xiàn)的想法。

If these activities become disturbing for you, by all means,?take a break?from them.

But remember that you can always approach them with an intention to learn. Instead of saying to yourself, “I wish I did [or had] that,” ask yourself, “Why can’t I do [or have] that?” Then take some time to listen to what ideas emerge in your mind.

展示個人長處，重獲認(rèn)可與動力

Exhibit a personal strength to regain validation and momentum.

?

在強烈的不安感爆發(fā)期間，你可能會開始思考如何才能趕上別人。在這個時候，你可以通過采取小的行動來獲得小的成功，重新找回你的自我效能感。在你的核心優(yōu)勢上加倍努力，向世界展現(xiàn)它們，并利用他人的認(rèn)可來培養(yǎng)韌性。 During an acute bout of insecurity, you may start to brood about how you can catch up to others. At this time, recapture your sense of self-efficacy by taking small actions to achieve?small wins. Double down on your core strengths, express them to the world, and use the validation for a shot of resilience. 我培訓(xùn)的一位高管很傷心，因為他本來會在今年晉升為高級副總裁，但由于疫情爆發(fā)而被推遲了。他很擔(dān)心獲得這個夢寐以求的職位的機會將慢慢消失；也很羨慕其他公司的同齡人，他們在這次危機之前就已經(jīng)成功晉升。 An executive coaching client of mine was heartbroken that his planned promotion to SVP this year was postponed due to the pandemic. He worried that his chances of gaining this coveted position in his company would slowly disappear. And he envied his associates in other companies who had already crossed that hurdle before this crisis. 這種消極狀態(tài)令人不快，可能會不利于他今年的表現(xiàn)。為了打破這種狀態(tài)，他決定利用過去賴以生存的長處：寫作才能。他為公司的博客撰寫了一篇有深度的文章，主題為如何度過當(dāng)前危機，這篇文章成為該公司有史以來發(fā)表的文章中點擊率最高的一篇。許多新老同事對他誠懇樂觀的指導(dǎo)表示感謝。反過來，這種反饋讓他對自己的價值充滿信心，也增加了他領(lǐng)導(dǎo)能力的可信度，那么在時機成熟時，他自然會得到晉升。 To disrupt his negative state, which was unpleasant and could be detrimental to his performance this year, he decided to leverage a strength he relied upon in the past: his writing talent. He composed a thoughtful article for the company blog on leading through the current crisis—and it became the most viewed post the company had ever published. Countless junior and senior colleagues expressed their gratitude for his honest and optimistic guidance. This feedback, in turn, made him confident about his value and also added to his leadership credibility for promotion when the time was right.

重新定義你的同輩圈子

Redefine your peer set and create a new field of play.

?

當(dāng)你把自己和一群固定的同齡人比較時，你就陷入了一場零和游戲，要么領(lǐng)先，要么落后。但是，通過擴(kuò)大視野，融入新的、多樣化的同齡人群體，你在看待成功時將打破二元對立的思維方式，并在新的領(lǐng)域發(fā)揮優(yōu)勢。 When you compare yourself to a fixed set of peers, you engage in a zero-sum game where you are either ahead or behind. But by expanding your view to include new and diverse peer groups, you create less of a binary evaluation of your success and enable new domains to dominate. Jackie是一家世界100強企業(yè)的經(jīng)理，三年來一直沒有機會晉升至副總裁一職。她開始感到越來越絕望，陷入當(dāng)前的困境。重新設(shè)計工作內(nèi)容、改變與同事的互動，她希望以此來尋找意義，努力拓寬自己的工作方式，但似乎找不到滿足感，因為她知道副總裁的頭銜總是與她無緣。 Jackie, a director at a Fortune 100 company, was passed over for a VP role for three years. As she began to feel more hopeless and stuck in her current position, she tried to broaden her approach to work by?job crafting?and changing her interactions with colleagues to find meaning. But she couldn’t seem to find fulfillment, knowing that the VP title always eluded her. 她意識到，自己總是將觀點局限于由副總裁組成的這個小的同輩群體之中，于是她開始與公司外的人建立聯(lián)系，聽他們分享自己的創(chuàng)業(yè)價值觀。漸漸地，她重塑了自己的觀念。盡管落后于那些擁有自己公司的新同輩，但她喜歡向他們學(xué)習(xí)。通過這樣的方式，她不僅消除了在公司里進(jìn)行自我比較的痛苦，而且?guī)е渑娴木蛣恿θブ匦略u估自己的職業(yè)抱負(fù)。 Recognizing that she always limited her perspective to a small peer group of other VP’s, she began networking with people outside of the company that shared her values around entrepreneurship. After participating in a monthly panel to hear pitches from local startups and mentor them, she found a renewal of spirit. Even though she was behind these new peers who had their own companies, she enjoyed?learning from them. And by doing so, she not only neutralized the pain of self-comparison in her company but felt energized and motivated to re-evaluate her career aspirations.

擺脫內(nèi)化的期望

Shake free of internalized expectations.

?

你在實際競爭中會感覺落后于同輩，比如看到他們在工作中升職。但還有一種更具破壞性的心態(tài)，會導(dǎo)致永久的不安感：認(rèn)為自己不僅應(yīng)該比同齡人做得更好，還應(yīng)該得到他們想要的一切。

這種心態(tài)創(chuàng)造了一種永無止境的競爭，在這種競爭中，你永遠(yuǎn)無法享受已經(jīng)獲得的東西。你對成功的內(nèi)在期望會隨著別人的渴望而不斷變化。

It’s one thing to feel behind your peers in an actual competition, such as a promotion at work. But there is an even more damaging mindset that leads to perpetual insecurity: the belief that you should not only outperform your peers but also want all of what they are trying to achieve.

This “tyranny of the should” creates a never-ending race in which you can never enjoy what you have already gained. Your internal expectations of what defines success keep changing depending on what others desire.

我的許多CEO級別以下的客戶發(fā)現(xiàn)自己正處于這種境地。在內(nèi)心深處，他們不想要巨大的工作壓力，但又一直認(rèn)為應(yīng)該這樣做，因為同齡人都渴望這樣的工作。這種心態(tài)造成了一種無法取勝的局面。如果他們不追求或獲得CEO的頭銜，就會覺得自己不如別人。但如果他們真的做到了，可能又會覺得自己被困在了一個他們從未真正想要的位置上。 Many of my clients who are one rung below the CEO find themselves in this position. Deep down, they don’t want the top job pressure, yet keep believing they should because of how much their peers aspire to it. This mindset creates an unwinnable scenario. If they don’t pursue or gain the CEO title, they will feel inferior to others who do. But if they do get there, they may feel trapped in a position they never truly wanted. 試著考慮這樣一種可能性：

到目前為止，你選擇做的每件事都是正確的，不管你現(xiàn)在認(rèn)為自己當(dāng)時應(yīng)該做什么。

正念提醒是這樣的：“路都是自己走出來的。”不要通過回顧過去把你的不安感過度復(fù)雜化。然后，根據(jù)你的價值觀來評估未來的決定，以及這些決定是否為你的成長提供了機會。根據(jù)他人的需求或他人擁有的東西而改變方向，你將會永遠(yuǎn)落后于他人，并受制于你的同輩。 Consider the possibility that everything you have chosen to do until now has always been the right path, regardless of what you think you were supposed to do. As the mindfulness reminder goes, “Wherever you go, there you are.” Don’t overcomplicate your insecurity by looking backward. Then commit to evaluating future decisions based on your values and whether they present opportunities for your growth. To change course based on what others want or have will keep you perennially behind and at the behest of your peers. 你在事業(yè)和生活中的任何努力，都會不可避免地帶來種種比較和不安感。但是當(dāng)你感覺自己落后于別人(不管是不是真的)的時候，你可以使用這些策略來重拾自信，并在那些對你而言真正重要的競爭中脫穎而出。 Any endeavor in your career and life will inevitably bring bouts of self-comparison and insecurity. But whenever you feel like you’re falling behind others (whether that’s true or not), you can use these strategies to regain your confidence and excel in the competitions that genuinely matter to you. 尼哈爾·查亞是美國航空、可口可樂、通用電氣、戴爾等全球化企業(yè)的高管教練。查亞曾在一家世界500強公司擔(dān)任人才發(fā)展主管，現(xiàn)任PartnerExec公司的總裁，協(xié)助公司領(lǐng)導(dǎo)們掌握人際交往能力，以創(chuàng)造卓越的商業(yè)與戰(zhàn)略成果。 劉靜賢|譯???周強|編校