TED演讲:选择的困惑(9)

 He had no idea what that was, so I spent an hour trying on all these damn jeans, 他一头雾水，结果我花了一个钟头试穿了所有这些该死的牛仔裤，

and I walked out of the store -- truth! -- with the best-fitting jeans I had ever had. I did better. 最后，说实话，我带着一条我从未有过的最合身的裤子走出店门。我做得的确不错。

All this choice made it possible for me to do better. But -- I felt worse. Why? 这些选择使得我有机会做的更好。但是心里感觉却更糟。为什么？

I wrote a whole book to try to explain this to myself. 为这我还专门写了一本书来为我自己找借口。

The reason is -- The reason I felt worse is that, with all of these options available, 让我感觉更糟糕的理由就是，由于有了这么多的可选性，

my expectations about how good a pair of jeans should be went up. 我对于一条牛仔裤到底该有多好才算好的期望值大大升高。

I had very low, no particular expectations when they only came in one flavor. 我以前期望值很低。当牛仔裤就那么一种时，我没有过多指望。

When they came in 100 flavors, damn it, one of them should've been perfect. 当它们有一百种规格时，哼，最好至少有一条是极致完美的。

And what I got was good, but it wasn't perfect. 我那条的确不错，但是它还是不够完美。

And so I compared what I got to what I expected, and what I got was disappointing in comparison to what I expected. 所以我拿我已有的去和我期望的进行比较，和我期望的比起来，我这条就变得令人失望了。

Adding options to people's lives can't help but increase the expectations people have about how good those options will be. 在人们的生活里加进选择，除了提高人们对事情到底能有多好的期望值以外，并没有给人们带来多少好处。

And what that's going to produce is less satisfaction with results, even when they're good results. 带来的只是使人们对结果不那么满意了，即使那是好结果。

Nobody in the world of marketing¹ knows this. 搞市场的人没有人懂得这个道理。

Because if they did, you wouldn't all know what this was about. The truth is more like this. 因为如果他们里面有人懂的话，你也就不会有机会知道这是什么意思了。事实很像这个。

The reason that everything was better back when everything was worse is that when everything was worse, 原因在于，当一般的东西都不怎么好时，

it was actually possible for people to have experiences that were a pleasant surprise. 人们有可能体验到某些惊喜。

Nowadays, the world we live in -- we affluent², industrialized citizens, 如今，在我们这些富裕的，工业化的市民生活的世界里，

with perfection the expectation, the best you can ever hope for is that stuff is as good as you expect it to be. 尽善尽美已是理所当然的，对于每一件东西你最多也只能希望它不比你预期的差。

You will never be pleasantly surprised because your expectations, my expectations, have gone through the roof. 你再也不会被什么所惊喜，因为你我的期望值比天还高。

The secret to happiness -- this is what you all came for -- the secret to happiness is low expectations. 什么是幸福的秘密，这是你们今天来这里想要知道的，幸福的秘密就是：知足常乐，不要期望过高。

1 marketing   

n.行销，在市场的买卖，买东西

参考例句：

• They are developing marketing network.他们正在发展销售网络。
• He often goes marketing.他经常去市场做生意。

2 affluent   

adj.富裕的，富有的，丰富的，富饶的

参考例句：

• He hails from an affluent background.他出身于一个富有的家庭。
• His parents were very affluent.他的父母很富裕。