本人无意中看到该篇文章的英文版，一下子就爱上了它，每当我觉得不安和焦虑时我就读这篇文章，立马就能重新获得心灵的平静和奋斗的力量。我想把它翻译成中文，推荐给天涯的朋友们，希望大家支持。
谈 自 我 重 塑 (英文原文附后)
——John Gardner（约翰·加德纳）的演讲
很多人都感到很困惑，为什么一些员工在应该精力充沛的时候就未老先衰了呢？可能这样说太抽象，也许，我应该说是他们在某一方面很早就停止了学习和成长。
我们在查找原因时一定是带着同情心的。也许生命呈现了很多难以解决的问题，却没有交给我们全部的答案。或许有些事给他们的信心和自尊心造成了很大伤害；或许成长过程中掩藏在内心深处的委屈和怨恨使他们颓废，它们是如此的强大，就如缠绕的葡萄藤蔓将他们深深束缚。我们知道这样一些人，他们或者感觉被无形地击败，或者有点性情乖戾、愤世嫉俗，或者只是隐约有些沮丧，或者他们努力奔跑了很长段路，却慢慢忘记了奔跑是为了什么。
我不是谈论那些没有取得很高成就的人们，不是所有人都能都达到最高点，这也不是生活的目的。我只想说说这些人：他们看上去很忙碌，实际上却停止了学习和成长，很多人机械地生活着。我并不想嘲笑他们，但确实为那些远远没有发挥潜能的人们担心。当然生活是严酷的，“活着”本身就需要勇气。
我们不得不面对这样的事实，很多职场中人，他们不清楚自己已变得多么懈怠，他们也不愿承认自己的生活是多么乏味。乏味已经成为大型机构的顽症。一些人会问“为什么工作这么忙，我还会觉得无聊乏味呢？”龙根·皮尔森·史密斯先生说过，无聊乏味可以慢慢滋长为一种不自觉的如影随形的体验，它将时时刻刻笼罩着你，如果真是这样，我认为很多忙碌的中层管理人员会处于这种状态。
安于现状、思想僵化及习以为常的习惯和思维带来的束缚等是非常危险的。束缚的危险，带来的。看看你周围的人们吧，有多少人甚至是比你还年轻的人们已经被自己固有的态度、思维和习惯所束缚。一位法国作家说过，“有些人的时钟在人生的某一时刻便停止了。”
我观察过很多职场中人，我断定多数人还是享受不断学习和成长的过程，不过许多人还是被自己职业生涯的自我认识所深深困扰。 (未完待续)
"Personal Renewal" by John Gardner
Delivered to McKinsey & Company, Phoenix, AZ
November 10, 1990
We’ve all seen men and women, even ones in fortunate circumstances with responsible positions who seem to run out of steam in midcareer.
One must be compassionate in assessing the reasons. Perhaps life just presented them with tougher problems than they could solve. It happens. Perhaps something inflicted a major wound on their confidence or their self-esteem. Perhaps they were pulled down by the hidden resentments and grievances that grow in adult life, sometimes so luxuriantly that, like tangled vines, they immobilize the victim. You’ve known such people -- feeling secretly defeated, maybe somewhat sour and cynical, or perhaps just vaguely dispirited. Or maybe they just ran so hard for so long that somewhere along the line they forgot what it was they were running for.
I’m not talking about people who fail to get to the top in achievement. We can’t all get to the top, and that isn’t the point of life anyway. I’m talking about people who -- no matter how busy they seem to be -- have stopped learning or growing. Many of them are just going through the motions. I don’t deride that. Life is hard. Just to keep on keeping on is sometimes an act of courage. But I do worry about men and women functioning far below the level of their potential.
We have to face the fact that most men and women out there in the world of work are more stale than they know, more bored than they would care to admit. Boredom is the secret ailment of large-scale organizations. Someone said to me the other day "How can I be so bored when I’m so busy?" And I said "Let me count the ways." Logan Pearsall Smith said that boredom can rise to the level of a mystical experience, and if that’s true I know some very busy middle level executives who are among the great mystics of all time.
We can’t write off the danger of complacency, growing rigidity, imprisonment by our own comfortable habits and opinions. Look around you. How many people whom you know well -- people even younger than yourselves --are already trapped in fixed attitudes and habits. A famous French writer said "There are people whose clocks stop at a certain point in their lives." I could without any trouble name a half of a dozen national figures resident in Washington, D.C., whom you would recognize, and could tell you roughly the year their clock stopped. I won’t do it because I still have to deal with them periodically.
I’ve watched a lot of mid-career people, and Yogi Berra says you can observe a lot just by watching. I’ve concluded that most people enjoy learning and growing. And many are dearly troubled by the self-assessments of mid-career.
Such self-assessments are no great problem at your age. You’re young and moving up. The drama of your own rise is enough. But when you reach middle age, when your energies aren’t what they used to be, then you’ll begin to wonder what it all added up to; you’ll begin to look for the figure in the carpet of your life. I have some simple advice for you when you begin that process. Don’t be too hard on yourself. Look ahead. Someone said that "Life is the art of drawing without an eraser." And above all don’t imagine that the story is over. Life has a lot of chapters.
(to be continued)
