ANGELA DUCKWORTH2026年8月31日I was once stranded with my 86-year-old mother in the Atlantic Ocean. We were on a snorkeling excursion off the coast of Miami, and the two of us were quickly swept behind our boat, my mother overtaken by the current. In her panic, she’d inhaled water into both lungs and lost consciousness. Attempting to tug her to safety, I thrashed and kicked with all my might, but the ocean swallowed my efforts whole. Lungs burning, legs heavy, I changed tactics. I used one hand to keep her head above water and waved the other wildly in the air, shouting for help as I did.我曾和86岁高龄的母亲一起被困在大西洋中。当时我们在迈阿密海岸附近参加一次浮潜游览，我们俩很快就被冲到了游艇的后面，母亲被海流卷走了。她在惊慌中把水吸入了双肺，失去了意识。我拼命想把她拉回安全的地方，使出浑身解数挣扎踢水，但大海吞噬了我所有的努力。肺部灼烧般地疼，双腿也越来越沉，我改变了策略。我用一只手让她的头保持在水面之上，另一只手则拼命挥舞，同时大声呼救。Ultimately, what saved my mother’s life that day, and mine, too, was not fighting the current on my own. It was calling for help. The rescuers who came to our aid knew more than I did about how to handle this kind of emergency. Together, they got my mom onto the boat deck, then to solid ground and finally into the hands of expert medical staff who could care for her properly.最终，那天救了我母亲和我一命的，不是我靠自己的力量与海流搏斗，而是我开口呼救。赶来的救援人员比我更懂得如何处理这种紧急情况。他们合力把我母亲救上了甲板，然后转移到陆地上，最后交到专业的医务人员手中，让她得到了妥善的救治。Most people understand the importance of asking for help in a life-or-death crisis. We know we should wave to the lifeguard during a riptide or call 911 if our house catches fire. But in our personal and professional lives, Americans are encouraged to pursue rugged individualism over interdependency. “Help from without is often enfeebling in its effects. But help from within invariably invigorates,” wrote the journalist Samuel Smiles in his 1859 book “Self-Help,” which reached a wider audience in America than in his native Britain and spawned an entire literary genre of the same name. Heroic tales of self-made Americans abound — like Thomas Edison, who tested thousands of filaments in his quest to invent the lightbulb, or Steve Jobs, a loner who transformed technology.大多数人都明白在生死攸关的危机中寻求帮助的重要性。我们知道在遇到激流时应向救生员挥手，或在房子着火时拨打911。但在我们的个人生活和职业生涯中，美国人被鼓励追求极端的个人主义，而不是相互依赖。“来自外部的帮助往往会使人变得软弱，而来自内心的帮助则总能振奋人心。”记者塞缪尔·斯迈尔斯在1859年出版的《自助》(Self-Help)一书中写道。这本书在美国的读者比在他的祖国英国还多，并由此催生了一个以“自助”为名的文类。美国有无数关于白手起家的英雄故事——比如托马斯·爱迪生为了发明电灯泡测试了数千种灯丝；又比如史蒂夫·乔布斯，一个独来独往的人，却改变了整个科技行业。You might think I’d love the image of the solo striver triumphing over every challenge. After all, I’m a psychologist who wrote a book called “Grit” about the necessity of passion and perseverance for achieving long-term goals. The truth is, I hate it. Without exception, every high performer I’ve studied credits a host of supporters for success. Research has found that a willingness to ask for help is crucial to achievement.你可能会以为，我应该很喜欢这种一个人克服一切困难、最终取得胜利的形象。毕竟，我是一名心理学家，还写过一本名为《坚毅》(Grit)的书，讲的是激情和毅力对于实现长期目标的必要性。可事实恰恰相反：我讨厌这种说法。无一例外，我所研究的每一位杰出人士都将自己的成功归功于众多支持者。研究也发现，愿意寻求帮助是取得成就的关键因素。Consider Nicolai Tangen, the chief executive of the world’s largest wealth fund. I interviewed him recently as he was putting the finishing touches on a book he’d been writing about leadership. After praising personal qualities like energy and grit, Mr. Tangen’s book spills more ink than you can believe about his assistant, Grete Starheim. He trusts her to speak on his behalf, and he believes her when she tells him he’s wrong. “Why should such important people end up in the shadows?” Mr. Tangen asked. “Is it embarrassing to admit that you need help?”以全球最大财富基金的首席执行官尼古拉·坦根为例。我最近采访了他，他正在为自己写的一本关于领导力的书做最后的收尾工作。他在书中先是称赞了个人的精力、坚毅等品质，但接下来用了多得出人意料的篇幅来谈他的助理格蕾特·斯塔海姆。“为什么这些重要的人最终只能默默无闻？”坦根问道。“承认自己需要帮助是很丢脸的事吗？”Or consider Conan O’Brien, who told Harvard’s graduating class that he always reminds himself that he’d done nothing alone. “If I could invite everybody, alive or dead, who has contributed to my being your commencement speaker today, all of Cambridge and half of Allston would be crammed shoulder to shoulder,” he said.再比如柯南·奥布莱恩。他曾对哈佛大学毕业生说，他总是提醒自己，自己从来不是凭一己之力走到今天的。他说：“如果我能把所有那些帮助我成为今天这个毕业典礼演讲嘉宾的人——无论他们还活着还是已经去世——全都请来，那么整个剑桥市，再加上半个奥尔斯顿，都会被他们挤满。”Mr. Tangen and Mr. O’Brien aren’t just being modest. Studies show that knowing when to ask for help is an essential skill for children’s learning and achievement. College students who proactively seek assistance from others typically outperform those who avoid doing so. In adulthood, seeking support is an effective strategy for regulating our emotions, and having a support network is a reliable predictor of overall mental health.坦根和奥布莱恩并不只是在谦虚。研究表明，知道何时寻求帮助是儿童学习和成长的一项基本技能。那些主动向他人寻求帮助的大学生通常比回避求助的学生表现更好。到了成年以后，寻求他人支持也是我们调节情绪的一种有效策略，而拥有支持网络是整体心理健康的可靠预测指标。Research also shows that entrepreneurs are more successful when brought together to learn from one another. That is why one venture capital firm, Y Combinator, favors funding co-founders over solo founders. It also links founders in what it calls batches, with group office hours, group dinners and an internal messaging platform for sharing knowledge. “Even if you could do all the work yourself, you need colleagues to brainstorm with, to talk you out of stupid decisions and to cheer you up when things go wrong,” Paul Graham, one of Y Combinator’s founders, once wrote.研究还表明，让创业者聚在一起互相学习会让他们取得更大的成功。这也是为什么风险投资公司Y Combinator更倾向于投资联合创始人团队，而不是单打独斗的创业者。它还把创业者分“批次”安排集体办公时间、集体晚餐，并提供内部通讯平台，让大家分享知识。Y Combinator联合创始人之一保罗·格雷厄姆曾写道：“即使你可以独自完成所有工作，你仍然需要同事和你一起头脑风暴，在你做出愚蠢决定时劝你回头，在事情搞砸时给你打气。”From an early age, we suffer from what cognitive psychologists call the illusion of self-sufficiency, overlooking how much we owe our skills to other people. In one experiment, two groups of children were given a machine they’d never seen before. In the first, none managed to figure out how it worked on their own. In the second, the vast majority succeeded after seeing someone else use the machine and getting hints along the way. Still, after the experiment, 70 percent of the second group claimed they would have learned to use the machine without help.从小我们就会受到认知心理学家所说的“自给自足幻觉”的影响，忽视了我们有多少技能是得益于他人的。在一项实验中，两组孩子得到了一台他们从未见过的机器。第一组中，没有孩子能独自弄明白它是如何工作的。而在第二组中，绝大多数孩子在看到别人使用这台机器并得到提示后成功了。然而，实验结束后，第二组中仍有70%的孩子声称他们即使没有他人的帮助也能学会使用这台机器。Being a successful self-starter doesn’t mean pulling yourself up by your bootstraps. It’s raising your hand and asking a teacher to explain, once again, a concept you still don’t understand. It’s calling up a former boss for advice. It’s announcing to your team that you’re stuck on an important problem and need their collective brain to solve it. It’s not just stoically making the best of a bad situation — it’s proactively making your situation more supportive. Don’t assume you’re being a burden when you reach out asking for help. Research shows we consistently underestimate how happy it makes others to lend a hand.成为一个成功的自我驱动者并不意味着凡事都要靠自己单打独斗。它意味着举起手来，请老师把你仍然没有理解的概念再解释一遍；意味着你可以给曾经的上司打电话寻求建议；意味着你可以坦率地告诉团队，自己在某个重要问题上卡住了，需要大家集思广益。这不是一味隐忍、独自消化困境，而是主动去创造一个更能获得支持的环境。不要以为开口求助就是在给别人添麻烦。研究表明，我们往往低估了别人在帮助我们时所感受到的那份快乐。“Do it yourself” is no way to live. Take it from my mom, who, five years after a cry for help saved her life, recently celebrated her 91st birthday.“凡事靠自己”绝不是可取的生活方式。看看我母亲的经历吧——五年前，正是一次呼救救了她的命；而就在最近，她庆祝了自己的91岁生日。Angela Duckworth是宾夕法尼亚大学的心理学教授，她的著作《定位：找到能让你发挥最佳状态的人和地方》(Situated: Find the People and Places That Bring Out Your Best)即将出版。翻译：杜然点击查看本文英文版。