3 Be Radically Open-Minded
3 彻底的开放心态
This is probably the most important chapter because it explains how to get around the two things standing in most people’s way of getting what they want out of life. These barriers exist because of the way that our brains work, so nearly everyone encounters them.
这也许是本书最重要的章节因为本章节解释了拦截在人们通往成功之路的两大事物。这些障碍因为大脑的工作原理而存在，几乎所有人都会遭遇。
3.1 Recognize your two barriers.
3.1 认识两种障碍
The two biggest barriers to good decision making are your ego and your blind spots. Together, they make it difficult for you to objectively see what is true about you and your circumstances and to make the best possible decisions by getting the most out of others. If you can understand how the machine that is the human brain works, you can understand why these barriers exist and how to adjust your behavior to make yourself happier, more effective, and better at interacting with others.
a. Understand your ego barrier. When I refer to your “ego barrier,” I’m referring to your subliminal defense mechanisms that make it hard for you to accept your mistakes and weaknesses. Your deepest-seated needs and fears—such as the need to be loved and the fear of losing love, the need to survive and the fear of not surviving, the need to be important and the fear of not mattering—reside in primitive parts of your brain such as the amygdala, which are structures in your temporal lobe that process emotions. Because these areas of your brain are not accessible to your conscious awareness, it is virtually impossible for you to understand what they want and how they control you. They oversimplify things and react instinctively. They crave praise and respond to criticism as an attack, even when the higher-level parts of the brain understand that constructive criticism is good for you. They make you defensive, especially when it comes to the subject of how good you are.
At the same time, higher-level consciousness resides in your neocortex, more specifically in the part called the prefrontal cortex. This is the most distinctively human feature of your brain; relative to the rest of the brain, it’s larger in humans than in most other species. This is where you experience the conscious awareness of decision making (the so-called “executive function”), as well as the application of logic and reasoning.
b. Your two “yous” fight to control you. It’s like Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, though your higher-level you is not aware of your lower-level you. This conflict is universal; if you pay close enough attention, you can actually see when the different parts of a person’s brain are arguing with one another. For example, when someone gets “angry with himself,” his prefrontal cortex is sparring with his amygdala (or other lower-level parts of his brain25). When someone asks, “Why did I let myself eat all that cake?” the answer is “Because the lower-level you won out over the thoughtful, higher-level you.”
Once you understand how your a) logical/conscious you and b) emotional/subconscious you fight with each other, you can imagine what it’s like when your two yous deal with other people and their own two “thems.” It’s a mess. Those lower-level selves are like attack dogs—they want to fight even when their higher-level selves want to figure things out. This is very confusing because you and the people you are dealing with typically don’t even know that these lower-level beasts exist, never mind that they are trying to hijack everyone’s behavior.
Let’s look at what tends to happen when someone disagrees with you and asks you to explain your thinking. Because you are programmed to view such challenges as attacks, you get angry, even though it would be more logical for you to be interested in the other person’s perspective, especially if they are intelligent. When you try to explain your behavior, your explanations don’t make any sense. That’s because your lower-level you is trying to speak through your upper-level you. Your deep-seated, hidden motivations are in control, so it is impossible for you to logically explain what “you” are doing.
Even the most intelligent people generally behave this way, and it’s tragic. To be effective you must not let your need to be right be more important than your need to find out what’s true. If you are too proud of what you know or of how good you are at something you will learn less, make inferior decisions, and fall short of your potential.
c. Understand your blind spot barrier. In addition to your ego barrier, you (and everyone else) also have blind spots—areas where your way of thinking prevents you from seeing things accurately. Just as we all have different ranges for hearing pitch and seeing colors, we have different ranges for seeing and understanding things. We each see things in our own way. For example, some people naturally see big pictures and miss small details while others naturally see details and miss big pictures; some people are linear thinkers while others think laterally, and so on.
Naturally, people can’t appreciate what they can’t see. A person who can’t identify patterns and synthesize doesn’t know what it’s like to see patterns and synthesize any more than a color-blind person knows what it’s like to see color. These differences in how our brains work are much less apparent than the differences in how our bodies work. Color-blind people eventually find out that they are color-blind, whereas most people never see or understand the ways in which their ways of thinking make them blind. To make it even harder, we don’t like to see ourselves or others as having blind spots, even though we all have them. When you point out someone’s psychological weakness, it’s generally about as well received as if you pointed out a physical weakness.
If you’re like most people, you have no clue how other people see things and aren’t good at seeking to understand what they are thinking, because you’re too preoccupied with telling them what you yourself think is correct. In other words, you are closed-minded; you presume too much. This closed-mindedness is terribly costly; it causes you to miss out on all sorts of wonderful possibilities and dangerous threats that other people might be showing you—and it blocks criticism that could be constructive and even lifesaving.
The end result of these two barriers is that parties in disagreements typically remain convinced that they’re right—and often end up angry at each other. This is illogical and leads to suboptimal decision making. After all, when two people reach opposite conclusions, someone must be wrong. Shouldn’t you want to make sure that someone isn’t you?
This failure to benefit from others’ thinking doesn’t just occur when disagreements arise; it occurs when people encounter problems that they are trying to solve. When trying to figure things out, most people spin in their own heads instead of taking in all the wonderful thinking available to them. As a result, they continually run toward what they see and keep crashing into what they are blind to until the crashing leads them to adapt. Those who adapt do so by a) teaching their brains to work in a way that doesn’t come naturally (the creative person learns to become organized through discipline and practice, for instance), b) using compensating mechanisms (such as programmed reminders), and/or c) relying on the help of others who are strong where they are weak.
Differences in thinking can be symbiotic and complementary instead of disruptive. For example, the lateral approach to thinking common among creative people can lead them to be unreliable, while more linear thinkers are often more dependable; some people are more emotional while others are more logical, and so on. None of these individuals would be able to succeed at any kind of complex project without the help of others who have complementary strengths.
Aristotle defined tragedy as a terrible outcome arising from a person’s fatal flaw—a flaw that, had it been fixed, instead would have led to a wonderful outcome. In my opinion, these two barriers—ego and blind spots—are the fatal flaws that keep intelligent, hardworking people from living up to their potential.
Would you like to learn how to get past them? You can do it; everybody can. Here’s how.
做出好决策的两大障碍是自我和盲点。他们通常一起制造麻烦，当你需要客观看待自己和你周围的环境时以便做出最佳的选择时。如果你能理解人类的大脑是如何工作的，那么你就能明白为什么这些障碍存在以及如何纠正你的行为让自己更快乐点，跟积极，更高效，与他人相处融洽。
a． 理解自我藩篱。当我特指你的“个人障碍”。我指的是你的潜意识的防卫机制让你很难接受自己的错误和弱点。你最深层次的根本的需求和恐惧-例如被爱的需要和害怕失去爱的恐惧，生存的需求和不能生存的恐惧，渴望成为重要部分的需要和边缘人物的恐惧-人类大脑的核心区域-诸如杏仁核—在这里有人类感知时间的结构-管理情绪。因为这些大脑区域并不能由意识直接控制，而且几乎不可能弄明白他们工作的原理和控制机制。他们只是本能地做出反应。他们渴望表扬，极度讨厌批评，甚至当大脑的更高级的 部分明白建设性的批评对自身的好处。他们让人类更加的抵触，尤其当批评来自于你擅长的项目。
同时，更高层次意识驻留在大脑皮层中，一般在被称之为前额叶皮质的部分。这是人类大脑的最活跃的部分；相对于其他区域，比其他绝大多数物种都要更加巨大。这也就是人类做出决策制定的意识反应的部分，与逻辑和推理应用一样重要。
B．你的两个“你”在互相争斗取得你的控制权。就像化身博士和海德先生，经管更高级的你并没有意识到低级的你。冲突是普遍的；如果你集中注意力，你能明确的分辨出你的大脑在与另一个自己争辩。举例，有人陷入了“自我愤怒中”他的前额叶皮层在和他的杏仁核（或者大脑的更高级的部分）战斗。当有人问“为什么我让自己吃了所有蛋糕？” 答案是“因为低级的你战胜了高级的，更偏思考的你”。
一旦你。。。
这种挫折受益于他人的思考不仅仅法正在意见不一致时，当人们遇到问题而极力解决时也能发生。当尽力解决时，大多数人限于自身束缚，而不是用所有对他有效的思考方法。结果就是他们限于自己所见和陷于未知而导致最后只能接受。那些这么做的人通过a）教会他们的大脑用不常用的方法工作（富余创造力的人通过纪律和训练来形成，例如），b）应用补偿机制（例如编程提醒） 和 c）依赖于强者的帮助
思考的差别可以共生和互补的，而不是相互破坏。举例，通常那些有创造力的人通过横向方法思考能让他们独立，而线性思考的人则大多更加可靠；有些人过于情绪化而其他人则更加理性，或者如此。没有人能在任何复杂情况下获得成功而不需要其他能互补的人的帮助。
亚里士多德定义悲剧是人们致命缺陷的外在显现的结果—一种缺陷，一旦被修正，就会带来相反的显著的结果。在我的观点中，这两种藩篱—自大和盲目是阻碍聪慧的，努力工作的人们运用他们潜质的最大障碍。
你愿意学习怎样跨越两个障碍吗？你可以做到，每个人都可以，下面就是为什么。