Anxiety-Challenge by another name教学文稿

精品文档

Between my sophomore and junior year at college，a chance came up

for me to spend the summer vacation working on a ranch in Argentina.

My roommate’s father was in the cattle business, and he wanted Ted

to see something of it. Ted said he would go if he could take a

friend, and he chose me. The idea of spending two months on the

fabled Argentina pampas was exciting. Then I began have second

thoughts. I had never been very far from England, and I had been

homesick my first few weeks at college. What would it be like in

a strange country? What about the language? And besides, I had

promised to teach my younger brother to sail that summer. The more

I thought about it, the more the prospect daunted me. I began waking

up nights in sweat.

In the end, I turn down the proposition. As soon as Ted asked somebody

else to go, I began kicking myself. A couple of weeks later I went

home to my old summer job, unpacking cartons at the local supermarket,

feeling very low. I had turn down something I wanted to do because

I was scared, and had ended up feeling depressed. I stayed that

way for a long time. And it didn’t help when I went back college

in the fall to discover that Ted and his friend had had a terrific

time.

In the long run that unhappy summer taught me a valuable lesson

out of which I developed a rule for myself: do what makes you anxious;

don’t do what makes you depressed.

I am not, of cause, talking about severe states of anxious, which

require medical attention. What I mean is that kind of anxiety we

call state fright, butterflies in the stomach, a case of nerves-

the feelings we have at a job interview, when we are giving a big

party, when we have to make an important presentation at the office.

And the kind of depression I am referring to is that downhearted

feeling of blues, when we don’t seem to be interested in anything,

when we can’t going and seem to have no energy.

I was confronted by this sort of situation toward the end of my

senior year. As graduation approached, I began to think about taking

a crack at making my living as a writer. But one of my professors

was urging me to apply to graduate school and aim at a teaching

career. I wavered. The idea of trying to live by writing was a lot

more scary than spending a summer on the pampas, I thought. Back

and forth I went, making my decision, unmaking it. Suddenly, I

精品文档

精品文档

realized that every time I give up the idea of writing, that sinking

feeling went through me; it gave me the blues.

The thought of graduate school wasn’t what depressed me. It was

giving up on what deep in my gut I really wanted to do. Right then

I learned another lesson. To avoid that kind of depression meant,

inevitably, having to endure a certain amount of worry and concern.

The great Danish philosopher Soren Kierkegaard believe that anxiety

always arisen when we confront the possibility of our own

development. It seems to be a rule of life that you can’t advance

without getting that old, familiar, jittery feeling.

Even as children we discover this when we try to expand ourselves

by, say, learning to ride a bike or going out for the school play.

Later in life we get butterflies when think about having that first

child, or uprooting the family from the old hometown to find a better

opportunity halfway across the country. Any time, it seems, that

we set out aggressively to get something we want, we meet up with

anxiety. And it’s going to be our traveling companion, at least

part of the way, into any new venture.

When I first began writing magazine articles, I was frequently

required to interview big names-people like Richard Burton, Joan

Rivers, sex authority Williams Master, baseball-great Dizzy Dean.

Before each interview I would get butterflies and my hands would

shake.

At the time, I was doing some writing about music. And one person

I particularly admired was the great composer Duke Ellington. On

state and on television, he seemed the very model of confident,

sophisticated man of the world. Then I learned that Ellington still

get state fright. If the highly honored Duke Ellington, who had

appeared on the bandstand some 10,000 times over 30 years, had

anxiety attacks, who was I to think I could avoid them? I went on

doing those frightening interviews, and one day, as I was getting

onto a plane for Washington to interview columnist Joseph Alsop,

I suddenly realized to my astonishment that I was looking forward

to the meeting. What had happened to these butterflies?

Well, in truth, they were still there, but there were fewer of

them. I had benefited, I discovered, from a process psychologists

call “extinction”. If you put an individual in an anxiety-provoking

situation often enough, he will eventually to learn that there isn’t

anything to be worried about.

Which brings us to a corollary to my basic rule: you’ll never

eliminate anxiety by avoiding the things that caused it.

精品文档

精品文档

I remember how my son Jeff was when I first began to teach him to

swim at the lake cottage where we spend our summer vacations. He

resisted, and when I got him into the water he sank and sputtered

and wanted to quit. But I was insistent. And by summer’s end he

was splashing around like a puppy. He had “extinguished” his anxiety

the only way he could-by confronting it. The problem, of cause,

is that it is one thing to urge somebody else to take on those

anxiety-producing challenges; it is quite another to get ourselves

to do it.

Some years ago I was offered a writing assignment that would

require three months of travel through Europe. I had been abroad

a couple of times on the usual “If it’s Tuesday this must be Belgium”

trips, but I hardly could claim to know my way around the continent.

Moreover, my knowledge of foreign language was limited to a little

college French. I hesitated. How would I, unable to speak the

language, totally unfamiliar with local geography or

transportation system, set up interviews and do research? It seemed

impossible and with considerable regret I sat down to write a letter

begging off. Halfway through, a thought-which I subsequently made

into my corollary to my basic rule-ran through my mind: you can’t

learn if you don’t try. So I accepted the assignment.

There were some bad moments. But by the time I had finished the

trip I was an experienced traveler. And ever since, I have never

hesitated to head for even the most exotic of place, without guides

or even advanced bookings, confident that somehow I will manage.

The point is that the new, the different, is almost by definition

scary. But each time you try something, you learn, and as the

learning piles up, the world opens to you.

I’ve made parachute jumps, learned to ski at 40, flown up the

Rhine in a balloon. And I know I’m going to go on doing such things.

It’s not because I am braver or more daring than others. I’m not.

But I don’t let the butterflies stop me from doing what I want.

Accept anxiety as another name for challenge and you can accomplish

wonders.

精品文档