如何建立自信并激发心中的火花How to build your confidence and spark it in others

So when I was a little girl, a book sat on the coffee table in our living room, just steps from our front door. And the living room is a first impression. Ours had white carpet and a curio of my mother’s most treasured collectibles. That room represented the sacrifices of generations gone by who, by poverty or by policy, couldn’t afford a curio of collectibles, let alone a middle class house to put them in. That room had to stay perfect. But I would risk messing up that perfect room every day just to see that book. On the cover sat a woman named Septima Clark. She sat in perfect profile with her face raised to the sky. She had perfect salt-and-pepper cornrows platted down the sides of her head, and pride and wisdom just emanated from her dark skin. Septima Clark was an activist and an educator. But more than all the words she ever spoke, that single portrait of Septima Clark defined confidence for me before I ever even knew the word.

当我还是个小女孩的时候，我们客厅的咖啡桌上放着一本书，离前门只有几步远。客厅，是留给外界的第一印象——白色地毯、母亲最珍贵的收藏品。那个房间，承载着几代人付出的牺牲：因为贫穷，或因为制度，他们连这些收藏都负担不起，更别说拥有一套中产阶级的房子来安放它们。那个房间必须保持完美，而我却每天都愿意冒着把它弄乱的风险，只为去看那本书。封面上是一位名叫Septima Clark的女性。她侧脸端正，仰望天空，夹杂灰白的玉米辫从头部两侧垂下，黝黑的皮肤中散发出骄傲与智慧。Septima Clark 是一名行动者、也是一名教育家。但比她说过的所有话更有力的，是那一张肖像——在我还不知道“自信”这个词之前，它就已经为我定义了什么是自信。

It may sound simple, but confidence is something that we underestimate the importance of. We treat it like a nice-to-have instead of a must-have. We place value on knowledge and resources above what we deem to be the soft skill of confidence. But by most measures, we have more knowledge and more resources now than at any other point in history, and still injustice abounds and challenges persist. If knowledge and resources were all that we needed, we wouldn’t still be here.

它可能听起来简单，但自信是我们低估了其重要性的东西。我们把它当作锦上添花而非必需品。我们重视知识和资源，却将其置于我们认为是软技能的自信之上。但从大多数标准来看，我们现在拥有的知识和资源比历史上任何时候都多，不公和挑战依然存在。如果知识和资源就是我们所需的一切，我们就不会仍处于此境地。

I’m completely obsessed with confidence. It’s been the most important journey of my life, a journey that, to be honest, I’m still on. Confidence is the necessary spark before everything that follows. Confidence is the difference between being inspired and actually getting started, between trying and doing until it’s done. Confidence helps us keep going even when we failed.

我完全痴迷于自信。这是我人生中最重要的旅程，坦白说，我至今仍在这条路上。自信是一切后续行动的必要火花。自信是灵感与真正开始的差别，是尝试与坚持到完成的差别。自信帮我们在失败时继续前行。

I can’t help but think back to the time when I was a little scared of success. I was convinced that I was not good enough for this journey. I was afraid of failure. I was afraid of making mistakes. I was afraid of making mistakes again. I was afraid of failing.

我不禁回想起自己曾对成功略感畏惧的时光。我坚信自己配不上这段旅程，害怕失败，害怕犯错，害怕再次犯错，害怕再次失败。

All of my students were black or brown. All of them were growing up in a low-income circumstance. Some of them were immigrants, some of them were disabled, but all of them were the very last people this world invites to be confident. That’s why it was so important that my classroom be a place where my students could build the muscle of confidence.

我的学生几乎全部是黑人或棕色人种，成长在低收入环境中；有的是移民，有的带着身体或学习上的障碍。而他们，恰恰是这个世界最不愿意“邀请”去自信的那群人。正因如此，我的课堂必须成为一个地方——在这里，他们可以练习自信，把它当作一种需要不断锻炼的能力。

A lack of confidence pulls us down from the bottom and weighs us down from the top, crushing us between a flurry of can’ts, won’ts and impossibles. Without confidence, we get stuck, and when we get stuck, we can’t even get started. Instead of getting mired in what can get in our way, confidence invites us to perform with certainty. We all operate a little differently when we’re sure we can win versus if we just hope we win.

缺乏自信，会从底部拖住我们，又从顶部压住我们，把人困在一连串“我不行”“我不会”“这不可能”之间。没有自信，我们会卡在原地，而一旦卡住，连开始的那一步都迈不出去。与其被障碍困住，自信反而会邀请我们带着确定感去行动。当我们确信自己能赢，和只是希望能赢时，状态是完全不同的。

For some of us, confidence is a revolutionary choice, and it would be our greatest shame to see our best ideas go unrealized and our brightest dreams go unreached all because we lacked the engine of confidence. So how do we crack the code on confidence? In my estimation, it takes at least three things: permission, community and curiosity. Permission births confidence, community nurtures it and curiosity affirms it. In education, we’ve got a saying, that you can’t be what you can’t see.

对我们当中的一部分人来说，自信本身就是一种革命性的选择。如果仅仅因为缺乏自信这个引擎，而让最好的想法无法实现、最亮的梦想始终够不着，那将是我们最大的遗憾。那么，如何破解自信的密码？在我看来，至少需要三样东西：允准、社群和好奇心。允准孕育自信，社群滋养自信，而好奇心不断确认并巩固它。教育领域有一句话：你无法成为你从未见过的样子。