Proactive Choice – The Key to Rebirth 主动选择——重生的钥匙

When I was 28, I applied to join New Oriental and became a teacher. Looking back now, it all seems like a distant memory. However, at that time, it was actually a very difficult decision and a significant turning point.
28岁时，我申请加入新东方，成为一名教师。现在回想起来，这一切似乎都是遥远的记忆。然而，在当时，这实际上是一个非常困难的决定，也是一个重要的转折点。

Firstly, my English was not good at the time. Although my father was an English professor, it didn’t help me much in learning English. Abilities are not necessarily inherited. Furthermore, what parents excel in, their children may not. My father was extraordinarily patient with his students, but this patience disappeared when dealing with his own child. He would get frustrated after just a short time, thinking “Is this my son? He’s so slow.” I, too, would get frustrated, thinking, “Aren’t I adopted?” So, my father had long since lost hope for my English learning. During my university years, I was not a diligent student, and it took me two attempts to pass the English Proficiency Test, barely achieving a score of 61 on the second try, after which I abandoned learning English altogether.
首先，我当时的英语不好。虽然我的父亲是一名英语教授，但这对我学习英语没有多大帮助。能力不一定是遗传的。此外，父母擅长的事情，他们的孩子可能不擅长。我父亲对他的学生非常有耐心，但在对待自己的孩子时，这种耐心就消失了。过了一会儿，他就会感到沮丧，心想：“这是我的儿子吗？他太慢了。我也会感到沮丧，心想：“我不是被收养了吗？所以，我父亲早就对我学习英语失去了希望。在大学期间，我不是一个勤奋的学生，我花了两次尝试才通过英语水平测试，第二次尝试勉强达到 61 分，之后我完全放弃了学习英语。

Secondly, based on my life and work experience at the time, the easiest way to make money was to continue in sales, selling houses or cars, which were both lucrative opportunities. Looking back, around 2000 was the start of a boom in the real estate and automobile markets. With my personal abilities, I could have made a lot of money selling houses or cars at that time. However, I no longer wanted to be in sales, even though I was very good at it.
其次，根据我当时的生活和工作经验，最简单的赚钱方式就是继续做销售，卖房卖车，都是有利可图的机会。回顾过去，2000年左右是房地产和汽车市场繁荣的开始。以我的个人能力，当时我可以通过卖房子或汽车赚很多钱。然而，我不再想从事销售工作，尽管我非常擅长。

My first job after graduating from university was in sales. Sales is a marvelous profession – you don’t create, yet you gain value. I quickly became addicted to this work. I would take something, anything, and sell it for a profit, then buy more things to sell. Many people were selling the same things as me, but I sold more. Why? Because customers trusted me over others. I was so good at it that others in the industry could only look at me with envy and admiration.
我大学毕业后的第一份工作是销售。销售是一个了不起的职业——你不创造，但你获得价值。我很快就沉迷于这项工作。我会拿一些东西，任何东西，卖掉它以获取利润，然后买更多的东西来卖。很多人卖和我一样的东西，但我卖得更多。为什么？因为客户信任我胜过其他人。我太擅长了，以至于业内其他人只能用羡慕和钦佩的眼光看着我。

But I no longer wanted to be in sales, because as I mentioned earlier, sales does not involve creating products; it merely involves obtaining profit through the flow of goods. I was selling other people’s creations, not my own. I hoped that one day I could sell something of my own creation, rather than someone else’s. Even though I didn’t know what I could create, I knew that I wanted to be someone capable of producing something. I wasn’t sure what I would create in the future, so I actually didn’t know what I should do. However, one thing was certain – although I was very good at sales, I couldn’t keep relying on it. Otherwise, I’d end up just depending on it and that would be a terrible thing.
但我不再想从事销售工作，因为正如我之前提到的，销售不涉及创造产品;它只涉及通过货物流动获得利润。我卖的是别人的作品，而不是我自己的作品。我希望有一天我能卖掉我自己创造的东西，而不是别人的。尽管我不知道我能创造什么，但我知道我想成为一个能够创造一些东西的人。我不确定我将来会创造什么，所以我实际上不知道我应该做什么。然而，有一件事是肯定的——虽然我非常擅长销售，但我不能一直依赖它。否则，我最终会依赖它，那将是一件可怕的事情。

However, at that time, I urgently needed a high and stable income, because my father had been hospitalized for a long time and we needed money. This made matters even more difficult, as it was nearly impossible to seek stable income without doing what I was best at. So, when Lao Luo said, “You can come to New Oriental to teach, Xiaolai,” it struck a chord with me. Why? Because the eloquence I honed during sales could still be utilized here. As for English, it can be learned and tested, and I know that test scores are not as closely related to actual capability as most people imagine.
然而，当时我急需一份高而稳定的收入，因为父亲住院很久了，我们需要钱。这让事情变得更加困难，因为如果不做我最擅长的事情，几乎不可能寻求稳定的收入。所以，当老罗说“小来，你可以来新东方教书”时，引起了我的共鸣。为什么？因为我在销售过程中磨练的口才仍然可以在这里使用。至于英语，它是可以学习和测试的，我知道考试成绩并不像大多数人想象的那么与实际能力密切相关。

What followed was a challenging and relentless effort – four months to achieve high scores in TOEFL/GRE, from Beijing to New Oriental in Guangzhou, and then back to Beijing… There are many stories within this journey, which I will discuss later. Anyway, at the age of 28, I underwent a major transformation – a rebirth.
接下来是充满挑战和不懈的努力——四个月的时间在托福/GRE考试中取得高分，从北京到广州的新东方，然后回到北京……这段旅程中有很多故事，我稍后会讨论。无论如何，在28岁那年，我经历了一次重大的转变——重生。

There’s a key point here – during that time, I made the first significant proactive choice of my life.
这里有一个关键点——在那段时间里，我做出了人生中第一个重要的主动选择。

This is why I believe that I hadn’t really lived before the age of 28. During those years, I seldom had the chance to make significant choices. To put it accurately, I had always been swept along by the current and, in reality, I could only be swept along by it. When my abilities were insufficient, when I was still very small, life didn’t provide me with any opportunities to choose. I only had one thing to do: make good use of what life gave me, which was already a strong attitude.
这就是为什么我相信我在 28 岁之前并没有真正活过。在那些年里，我很少有机会做出重大选择。准确地说，我一直被潮流席卷，实际上，我只能被它席卷。当我的能力不足时，当我还很小的时候，生活没有给我任何选择的机会。我只有一件事要做：好好利用生活给我的东西，这已经是一种坚强的态度。

However, this time’s choice was proactive. In my struggle, I saw my future – I had to become a person capable of creation, rather than just living off trades made by others.
然而，这次的选择是主动的。在我的奋斗中，我看到了我的未来——我必须成为一个有能力创造的人，而不仅仅是靠别人的交易为生。

This choice was difficult. Not only because I decided not to pursue what I excelled at, but also because the pressure of life at the time was tremendous.
这个选择是困难的。不仅是因为我决定不追求自己擅长的东西，还因为当时的生活压力是巨大的。

This choice was ambiguous. I didn’t even know what I would create in the future, I only knew that I must become a person capable of creating. After two or three years, I began writing a book. When I talked about it to others, I made it seem casual, but in reality, I had put all my efforts into it. My first product was “TOEFL Core Vocabulary Breakthrough in 21 days.” I hardly used the royalties from this book, and they remain untouched to this day, serving as my first ever passive income – income that continues to generate even while sleeping. Though I have never used this income, it has evidently been a crucial factor in maintaining my peace of mind for many years.
这个选择是模棱两可的。我甚至不知道我将来会创造什么，我只知道我必须成为一个有能力创造的人。两三年后，我开始写书。当我和别人谈论它时，我让它看起来很随意，但实际上，我已经付出了所有的努力。我的第一个产品是“21 天内的 TOEFL 核心词汇突破”。我几乎没有使用过这本书的版税，直到今天它们仍然没有动过，这是我有史以来的第一个被动收入——即使在睡觉时也能继续产生的收入。虽然我从未使用过这笔收入，但它显然是多年来保持我内心平静的关键因素。

And ultimately, the fact proved that even an ambiguous choice still held great significance.
最终，事实证明，即使是模棱两可的选择仍然具有重要意义。

In the blink of an eye, it was 2007 and I was 35. I decided to leave New Oriental, I had to leave. At the end of 2005, my father passed away. I no longer had such serious “posthumous expenditure” and the pressure of choosing became much lighter. Since the proactive choice at the age of 28, the difficulty of making proactive choices had been continuously decreasing, so making another proactive choice at that time seemed natural.
一眨眼，就到了2007年，我35岁了。我决定离开新东方，我必须离开。2005年底，我父亲去世了。我不再有那么严重的“死后支出”，选择的压力也减轻了很多。自从28岁主动选择以来，主动选择的难度一直在不断降低，所以在那个时候再做出一次主动选择似乎是自然而然的。

This proactive choice was this: no longer teaching. Although by that time, teaching had become what I excelled at, the thing I excelled at wasn’t sales anymore. At this time, I had become a person with products – my products were two TOEFL training books. However, apart from not teaching anymore, I no longer wanted to rely on English-related matters. So, during the process of leaving New Oriental, I wrote a book, “Use Time as a Friend,” initially published on my blog under the title “Managing My Time.” As for what I should do after that, I was as ambiguous as I was seven years earlier. But this time, I wasn’t worried at all, because I knew that in my new life, I would quickly adapt and find my own realm. Of course, in reality, it wasn’t until four years later that I “unexpectedly” (in quotes) found a field that suited me perfectly. But that’s another story.
这个主动的选择是：不再教书。虽然到那时，教学已经成为我擅长的事情，但我擅长的事情不再是销售。这时，我已经成为一个有产品的人——我的产品是两本托福培训书。然而，除了不再教书之外，我不再想依赖与英语有关的事情。因此，在离开新东方的过程中，我写了一本书，“把时间当作朋友”，最初发表在我的博客上，标题是“管理我的时间”。至于在那之后我应该做什么，我和七年前一样模棱两可。但这一次，我一点也不担心，因为我知道，在我的新生活中，我会很快适应并找到自己的境界。当然，实际上，直到四年后，我才“出乎意料地”（用引号括起来）找到了一个非常适合我的领域。但那是另一回事了。

All rebirths are proactive choices. In fact, I increasingly tend to believe what I said earlier:
所有的转世都是主动的选择。事实上，我越来越倾向于相信我之前说过的话：

The fundamental way to determine if a person is truly alive is to see whether they have the willingness and ability to make proactive choices.
判断一个人是否真的活着的根本方法是看他们是否愿意和有能力做出主动的选择。

A lifelong passivity and complacency, living a life of quiet desperation, cannot be considered truly living or perhaps even worse than death. At a crucial juncture, a person must make proactive choices. Only then can life have meaning.
一辈子的被动和自满，过着安静绝望的生活，不能被认为是真正的活着，甚至可能比死亡更糟糕。在关键时刻，一个人必须做出积极主动的选择。只有这样，生活才有意义。

In this light, my friend I mentioned earlier, Liu Jin, is someone who made proactive choices. Therefore, he is also a person who has truly lived, who has truly experienced rebirth.
从这个角度来看，我前面提到的朋友刘进是一个做出积极选择的人。所以，他也是一个真正活过，真正经历过轮回的人。

Originally posted 2024-04-05 11:56:33.