我们对自己没有充分的认识，总是问别人我们价值几何，而不是向自己寻求答案。我们不自然地渴望得到外界的赞扬，为大众的喜爱而疲于奔命，盲目地追踪别人的看法，而不去倾听内心的声音。 然而，知道自己是谁，是被别人正确认识的前提，是内心越来越坚实的基础，那么，我们该如何清醒地认识自己？Many of us are wandering the earth, accomplished in many ways, capable of fulfillment at points, but with a fundamental wound that stops us from becoming who we might be: we don't quite know who we are. It isn't, of course, that we can't remember the basics of our biographies; rather, we're unsure around two things in particular: first, we don't have a stable sense of what we are worth, and secondly, we don't have a secure hold on our own values or judgments.许多浪迹在这个地球上的人，在很多领域都有所作为，一定程度上硕果累累，但总有一个基本的创伤阻碍我们成为那个我们本可能成为的人：我们不太清楚自己究竟是谁。这当然不是说我们记不住人生中的基本经历，而是我们对两件事总是不确定：首先，我们对自己的价值没有一个稳定的认识；其次，我们对自己的价值观或判断没有坚定的把握，缺乏安全感。Without knowing who we are, we tend to have particular trouble coping with either denigration or adulation. If others decide that we are worthless or bad, there will be nothing inside us to prevent us from swallowing their verdicts in their entirety, however wrong-headed, extreme or unkind they may be. We will be helpless before the court of public opinion. We'll always be asking others what we deserve before seeking inside for an answer. Lacking an independent verdict, we also stand to be unnaturally hungry for external praise: the clapping of an audience will matter to us far more than would ever be wise.由于不了解自己是谁，当面对诋毁或奉承时，我们往往很难应对。如果别人认为我们毫无价值或一无是处，我们内心没有任何东西可以阻止我们全盘接受他们的判决，不管他们是多么愚蠢、极端或无情。我们将在舆论法场上束手无策，我们总是问别人我们值得什么，而不是向自己的内心寻求答案。缺乏独立的判断，我们还会不自然地渴望得到外界的赞扬：观众的掌声对我们来说比其他任何都要重要。We'll be prey to rushing towards whatever idea or activity the crowd happen to love. We will laugh at jokes that aren't funny, and we will uncritically accept undeserving concepts that are in vogue and neglect our truer talents for easy popular wins. We'll trail public opinion slavishly, constantly checking the world's whims rather than consulting an inner barometer in order to know what we should want, feel and value.我们会为那些受到大众喜爱的想法或活动而疲于奔命，我们会对无趣的笑话发笑，我们会不加批判地接受一些流行的不值得的观念，忽视我们更真实的才能，为了变的受欢迎。我们会盲目追随舆论，不断地去看世界上的变幻无常，而不是倾听内心的声音，了解我们真正应该想要什么、感受什么和重视什么We need to be kind on ourselves. No one is born with an independent ability to know who they are. We learn to have an identity because if we are blessed, in our early years someone else takes the trouble to study us with immense fairness, attention and kindness, and then plays us back to us in a way that makes sense and that we can later emulate. They give us the beginning of a true portrait of our identity, which we take on and enrich over the years and use as a defence against the distorting verdicts from hurried or ill-intentioned others.我们需要善待自己，没有人生来就有独立的能力知道自己是谁。我们学会有一个身份，因为幸运的话，在我们幼年，会有人不吝于以极大的公平、关注和善意来研究我们，然后以一种有意义的方式将结果反馈给我们，让我们以后可以效仿。他们让我们开始真正了解自己的身份，多年来，我们一直在继承和丰富自己的身份，并将其用作抵御他人恶意和扭曲判决的辩护。Knowing who one is is really the legacy of having been known properly by someone else at the start. This early identity-building tends to unfold with apparently innocuous life-saving small steps. A parent might say in response to an upset, 'It must really have hurt', thereby validating an infant's own feelings. Or: 'It's OK not to feel happy on your birthday', the parent might say another point, delicately upholding an infant's less typical response to certain events.知道自己是谁，是被别人正确认识的前提，这种早期的身份建立往往以看似无害却足以挽救人生的小步骤展开。“这一定很疼”，父母可能会这样回应一个难过的孩子，从而验证了孩子自身的感受。或者：“生日那天不开心也没关系”，父母可能会像这样委婉地提出另一个观点，支持孩子对某些事件不那么典型的反应。Ideally, the child isn't just known; he or she is also interpreted as likeable. A good parent offers generous interpretations; they are on the side of the child and are always ready to put the best possible gloss on moments of ill-temper or of failure, which forms the basis upon which resilient self-esteem can then later emerge.理想的情况是，孩子不仅知道也会理解自己的可爱之处。好的父母会不厌其烦地为孩子解释，他们站在孩子的角度上，随时准备为孩子的坏脾气或失败加以详解。这些构成了孩子长大后拥有弹性自尊的基础。That is the ideal, but it can of course go very wrong and often does. A parent may offer mirroring that is out of synch with the reality of the child. 'Look who is such a happy little boy/girl', a parent might insist when the opposite is the case, thereby badly scrambling the child's ability to connect with their own emotions. Or the parent might only lend the child a very punitive way of interpreting itself, repeatedly suggesting that it is ill-intentioned and no good.这是理想情况，但很多父母都会做错，并且经常如此。父母可能会提供与孩子现实情况不相符的镜像，“看看是谁这么快乐呀”，当孩子不开心时，父母可能还会坚持这样说，从而严重影响了孩子与自己情感的联系能力。或者，父母可能只会给孩子一个非常惩罚性的解释方式，反复暗示这是恶意的，不好的。Or the parent may simply not show very much interest in the child, focusing themselves elsewhere, so that the child grows up with a feeling that not only is it not worth cherishing, but also that it doesn't quite exist. A feeling of unreality is the direct consequence of emotional neglect.或者父母根本不在意孩子的难过，只关心自己的事，这样使孩子在成长的过程中不仅感到自己不值得珍惜，并且因为没有得到充分的观察和反映，他会认为自己没什么存在感。在情感上被忽视的直接后果是，导致个体难以建立真实的自我认同。Realising that we lack a stable identity is a sobering realisation. But we can, with a fair wind, start to correct the problem at any point. We need to seek out the help of a wise and kindly other person, perhaps a good psychotherapist, someone who can study us closely, mirror us properly, and then validate what they see.意识到我们缺乏一个稳定的身份是一个清醒的认识，但是我们可以随时开始纠正这个问题。我们需要寻求一个明智和善良的人的帮助，也许是一个好的心理治疗师，一个能仔细研究我们，准确地反映我们行为的人，然后验证他们所看到的。Through their eyes, we can learn to study perhaps for the first time how we really feel and take seriously what we actually want. We can, by being witnessed generously, more often take our own sides and feel increasingly solid inside, trusting ourselves more than the crowd, feeling that we might be able to say no, not always swaying in the wind, and feeling that we are in possession of some of the ultimate truths about us.通过他们的眼睛，我们也许会第一次试着学习我们真正的感受和认真对待我们真正想要的。我们可以，通过更多别人的慷慨的关注来支持我们自己，并感到内心越来越坚实，更多的相信自己而不是大众，相信自己可以说不，而不再总是随波逐流，并且感到自己掌握了一些关于自己的终极真理。Having come to know ourselves like this, we will not be a little less hungry for praise, a little less worried by opposition, and much more original in our thinking. We will have learnt the vital art of both knowing and befriending who we really are.我们这样认识了自己，我们将不再那么渴望表扬，不再那么担心别人的反对，我们的思维会更有独创性。我们将学会了解并与真正的自己成为朋友的重要艺术。
