뒷담화

If you look deep into the night sky, you see starts, and if you look further, you see more starts, and further, galaxies, and further, more galaxies. But if you keep looking further and further, eventually you see nothing for a long while, and then finally you see a faint, fading afterglow, and it's the afterglow of the Big Bang.

Now, the Big Bang was an era in the early universe when everything we see in the night sky was condensed into an incredibly small, incredibly hot, incredibly roiling mass, and from it sprung everything we see.

Now we've mapped that afterglow with great precision, and when I say we, I mean people who are'nt me. We've mapped the afterglow with spectacular precision, and one of the shocks about it is that it's almost completely uniform. fourteen billion light years that way and fourteen billion light years that way, it's the same temperature. Now it's been fourteen billion year since that Big Bang, and so it's got faint and cold. it's now 2.7 degrees. But it's not exactly 2.7 degrees. It's only 2.7 degrees to about 10 parts in a million. Over here, it's a little hotter, and over there, it's a little cooler, and that's incredibly important to everyone in this room, because where it's a little hotter, there was a little more stuff, and where there was a little more stuff, we have galaxies and clusters of galaxies and superclusters and all the structure you see in the cosmos. And those small, little, inhomogeneities, twenty parts in a million, those were formed by quantum mechanical wiggles in that early universe that were stretched across the size of the entire cosmos.

That is spectacular, and that's not what they found on Monday; what they found on Monday is cooler. So here is what they found on Monday: Imagine you take a bell, and you whack the bell with a hammer. What happens? It rings. But if you wait, that ringing fades and fades and fades until you don't notice it anymore. Now that early universe was incredibly dense, like a metal, way denser, and if you hit it, it would ring, but the thing ringing would be the structure of space-time itself, and the hammer would be quantum mechanics. What they found on Monday was evidence of the ringing of the space-time of the early universe, what we call gravitational waves from the fundamental era, and here's how they found it. Those waves have long since faded. If you go for a walk, you don't wiggle. Those gravitational waves in the structure of space are totally invisible for all practical purposes. But early on, when the universe was making that last afterglow, the gravitational waves put little twists in the structure of the light that we see. So by looking at the night sky deeper and deeper - in fact, these guys spent 3 years on the South Pole looking straight up through the coldest, clearest, cleanest air they possibly could find looking deep into the night sky and studying that glow and looking for the faint twists which are the symbol, the signal, of the gravitational waves, the ringing of the early universe. And on Monday, they announced they'd found it.

And the thing that's so spectacular about that to me is not just ringing, though that is awesome. The thing that is totally amazing, the reason I'm on this stage, is because what that tells us is something deep about the early universe. It tells us that we and everything we see around us are basically one large bubble - and this is the idea of inflation - one large bubble surrounded by something else. This isn't conclusive evidence for inflation, but anything that isn't inflation that explains this will look the same. This is a theory, an idea, that has been around for a while, and we never thought we'd really see it. For good reasons, we thought we'd never see killer evidence, and this is killer evidence.

But the really crazy idea is that our bubble is just one bubble in a much larger, roiling pot of universal stuff. We are never going to see the stuff outside, but by going to the South Pole and spending 3 years looking at the detailed structure of the night sky, we can figure out that we're probably in a universe that looks kind of like that. And that amazes me.

Thanks a lot.

Why do so many people reach success and then fail? One of the big reasons is, we think success is a one-way street. So we do everything that leads up to success, but then we get there. We figure we’ve made it, we sit back in our comfort zone, we actually stop doing everything that made us successful. And it doesn't take long to go downhill. And I can tell you this happens, because it happened to me.

 왜 많은 사람들이 성공에 이르고 다시 실패할까요? 가장 큰 이유 중 하나는, 성공이 한 방향 길이라고 생각하기 때문입니다. 그래서 우리는 성공으로 이끌어 줄 모든 일들을 합니다. 그리고 성공에 이르게 되죠. 우리는 해냈다고 느끼고, 편안함에 안주합니다. 우리는 실제로 우리를 성공하게 해줬던 모든 일을 하는 것을 멈추죠. 그리고 곤두박질치는데 그리 오래 걸리지 않죠. 이런 일이 생긴다고 확신할 수 있습니다. 제가 경험했기 때문이죠.

Reaching success, I worked hard, I pushed myself. But then I stopped, because I figured, “Oh, you know, I made it. I can just sit back and relax.”

  성공하면서, 전 열심히 일했고 나 자신을 채찍질 했습니다. 하지만 그러고나서 전 그만두었죠. 왜냐하면 “그래, 난 해냈어. 이제 그만두고 쉬어도 돼.” 라고 생각했기 때문이죠.

Reaching success, I always tried to improve and do good work. But then I stopped because I figured, "Hey, I'm good enough, I don't need to improve anymore."

  성공하면서, 전 항상 개선하고 훌륭히 일을 하려고 노력했습니다. 그러나 그후에 저는 멈추었죠. 왜냐하면 “이봐, 난 충분히 훌륭해, 더 이상 개선할 필요가 없어.”라고 생각했기 때문이죠.

Reaching success, I was pretty good at coming up with good ideas. Because I did all these simple things that led to ideas. But then I stopped, because I figured, I was this hot-shot guy and I shouldn't have to work at ideas, they should just come like magic. And the only thing that came was creative block. I couldn't come up with any ideas.

  성공하면서, 전 좋은 아이디어를 떠올리는데 꽤 능력이 있었습니다. 왜냐하면 아이디어를 떠올리는 이 모든 단순한 것들을 했기 때문이죠. 하지만 그리고나선 전 그만두었죠. 왜냐하면 난 능력 좋은 남자고 아이디어관련 일을 할 필요 없이 마법처럼 아이디어가 생겨날 것 이라고 생각했기 때문이죠. 그리고나서 일어난 일은 창의력의 벽에 부딪히는 것이었죠. 어떠한 아이디어도 떠올리기 힘들었죠.

Reaching success, I always focused on clients and projects, and ignored the money. Then all this money started pouring in. And I got distracted by it. And suddenly I was on the phone to my stockbroker and my real estate agent, when I should have been talking to my clients.

And reaching success, I always did what I loved. But then I got into stuff that I didn't love, like management. I'm the world’s worst manager, but I figured I should be doing it, because I was, after all, the president of the company.

Well, sooner a black cloud formed over my head and here I was, outwardly very successful, but inwardly very depressed. But I am a guy; I knew how to fix it. I bought a fast car. It didn't help. I was faster but just as depressed.

So I went to my doctor and I said, "Doc, I can buy anything I want. But I am not happy. I am depressed. It's true what they say, and I didn't believe it until it happened to me. But money can't buy happiness.“ He said, "No. But it can buy Prozac." And he put me on anti–depressants. And yeah, the black cloud faded a little bit, but so did all the work, because I was just floating along. I couldn't care less if clients ever called.

And clients didn't call. Because they could see I was no longer serving them, I was only serving myself. So they took their money and their projects to others who would serve them better.

Well, it didn't take long for business to drop like a rock. My partner and I, Thom, we had to let all our employees go. It was down to just the two of us, and we were about to go under. And that was great. Because with no employees, there's nobody for me to manage.

So I went back to doing the projects I loved. I had fun again, I worked harder and, to cut a long story short, did all the things took me back up to success. But it wasn't a quick trip. It took seven years.

But in the end, business grew bigger than ever. And when I went back to following these 8 principles, the black cloud over my head disappeared altogether. And I woke up one day and I said, "I don't need Prozac any more." And I threw it away and haven't needed it sense.

I learned that success isn't one way-street. It doesn't look like this; It really looks more like this. It's a continuous journey. And if you want to avoid “success-to-failure-syndrome,” we just keep following these 8 principles, because that's not only how you achieve success, it's how we sustain it. So here is to your continued success.

Thank you very much.

A few years ago, I felt like I was stuck in a rut, so I decided to follow in the footsteps of the great American philosopher, Morgan Spurlock, and try something new for thirty days. The idea is actually pretty simple. Think about something you’ve always wanted to add to your life and try it for the next thirty days. It turns out, thirty days is just about the right amount of time to add a new habit or subtrack a habit - like watching the news - from your life.

There are a few things that I learned while doing these thirty days challenges. The first was, instead of the months flying by, forgotten, the time was much more memorable. This was part of a challenge I did to take a picture everyday for a month, And I remember exactly where I was and what I was doing that day. I also noticed that as I started to do more and harder thirty day challenges, my self-confidence grew. I went from desk-dwelling computer nerd to the kind of guy who bikes to work - for fun. Even last year, I ended up hiking up Mt. Killimanjaro, the highest mountain in Africa. I would never have been that adventurous before I started my thirty days challenges.

I also figured out that if you really want something badly enough, you can do anything for thirty days. Have you ever wanted to write a novel? Every November, tens of thousands of people try to write their own 50,000-word novel from scratch in thirty days. It turns out, all you have to do is write 1,667 words a day for a month. So I did. By the way, the secret is not to go to sleep until you’ve written your words for the day. You might be sleep–deprived, but you’ll finish your novel. Now is my book the next great American novel? No~, I wrote it in a month. It’s awful! But for the rest of my life, if I meet John Hodgman at a TED party, I don’t have to say, “I’m a computer scientist.” No, no, if I want to, I can say, “I’m a novelist.”

So, here is one last thing I’d like to mention. I learned that when I made small, sustainable changes, things I could keep doing, they were more likely to stick. there is nothing wrong with big, crazy challenges. In fact, they are a ton of fun. But they are less likely to stick, when I gave up sugar for thirty days, day thirty one looked like this.

So, here is my question to you: What are you waiting for? I guarantee you the next thirty days are going to pass whether you like it or not, so why not think about something you have always wanted to try and give it a shot for the next thirty days.

Thanks.

So, a few years ago I was at JFK airport about to get on a flight.

when I was approached by two old women who I do not think would be insulted to hear themselves described as tiny old tough-talking Italian-American broads

the a taller one, who is like up here, she comes marching up to me,

and she goes,

“honey, I gotta ask you something. You got something to do with that whole ‘eat pray love’ thing that’s been going on lately?”

And I said “yes, I did”

and she smacks her friend and she goes

“See I told you, I said, that’s that girl. that’s that girl who wrote that book based on that movie.”

So, that’s who I am. Believe me, I’m extremely grateful to be that person. Because that whole ‘eat pray love’ thing was a huge break for me. But it also left me in a really tricky position moving forward as an author trying to figure out how in the world I was ever gonna write a book again that would ever please anybody,

Because I knew well in advance that all those people who had adored ‘eat pray love’were gonna be incredibly disappointed in whatever I wrote next because it wasn't gonna be ‘eat pray love’. and all of those people who had hated ‘eat pray love’ were going to be incredibly disappointed in whatever I wrote next because it would provide evidence that I still lived. So I knew that I had no way to win, and knowing that I had no way to win make me seriously consider for a while just quitting the game and moving to the country to raise corgis.

But if I had done that, if I had given up writing, I would have lost my beloved vocation, So I knew that the tasks was that I had to find some way to gin up the inspiration to write the next book regardless of its inevitable negative outcome. In other words, I had to find a way to make sure my creativity survived its own success.And I did, in the end, find that inspiration. but I found it in the most unlikely unexpected place. I found it in lessons that I had learned earlier in life about how creativity can survive its own failure.

So just to back up and explain, the only thing I have ever wanted to be for my whole life was a writer. I wrote all through childhood, all through adolescence, by the time I was a teenager I was sending my very bad stories to the New Yorker, hoping to be discovered. After college, I got a job as a diner waitress, kept working, kept writing, kept trying really hard to get published, and failing at it. I failed at getting published for almost six years. So for almost six years, every single day, I had nothing but rejection letters waiting for me in my mail box. And it was devastating every single time, and every single time, I had to ask myself if I should just quit while I was behind and give up and spare myself this pain. But then I would find my resolve, and always in the same way, by saying “I’m not gonna quit. I’m going home.”

And you have to understand that for me, going home do not mean returning to my family’s farm. For me, going home meant returning to work of writing because writing was my home, because I loved writing more than I hated failing at writing, which is to say that I loved writing more than I loved my own ego, which is ultimately to say

that I loved writing more than I loved myself. And that’s how I pushed through it.

But the weird thing is that twenty years later, during the crazy ride of ‘eat, pray, love,’ I found myself identifying all over again with that unpublished young diner waitress who I used to be, thinking about her constantly, and feeling like I was her again, which made

no rational sense whatsoever because our lives could not have been more different. She had failed constantly. I had succeeded beyond my wildest expectation. We had nothing in common. why did I suddenly feel like I was her all over again?

And it was only when I was trying to unthread that that I finally began to comprehend the strange and unlikely psychological connection in our lives between the way we experience great failure and the way we experience great success. So think of it like this: For most of your life, you live out your existence here in the middle of chain of human experience where everything is normal

and reassuring and regular, but failure catapults you abruptly way out over here into the blinding darkness of disapointment. Success catapults you just as abruptly but just as far way out over here into the equally blinding glare of fame and recognition and praise. And one of this fates is objectively seen by the world as bad, and the other one is objectively seen by world as good, but your subconscious is completely incapable of discerning the difference between bad and good. The only thing that it is capable of feeling is the absolute value of this emotional equation, the exact distance that you have been flung from yourself. And there is a real equal danger in both cases of getting lost out there in the hinterlands of psyche.

But in both cases, it turns out that there is also the same remedy for self-restoration, and that is that you’ve got to find your way back home again as swiftly and smoothly as you can, and if you are wondering what your home is, here is a hint: Your home is whatever in this world you love more than you love yourself. So that might be creativity, it might be family, it mighty be invention, adventure, faith, service, it mighty be raising corgis, I don’t know, your home is that thing to which you can dedicate your energies with such singular devotion that the ultimate results become inconsequential.

For me, that home has always been writing. So after the weird, disorienting success that I went through with ‘eat, pray, love,‘ I realize that all I had to do was exactly the same thing that I used to have to do all the time when I was an equally disoriented failure. I had get my ass back to work, and that’s what I did, and that’s how, in 2010, I was able to publish the dreaded follow–up to ‘eat pray love.’ And you know what happened with that book? It bombed, and I was fine. Actually, I kind of felt bulletproof, because I knew that I had broken the spell and I had found my way back home to writing for the sheer devotion on it. And I stayed in my home of writing after that, and I wrote another book that just came out last year and that one was really beautifully received, which is very nice, but not my point. My point is that I’m writing another one now, and I’ll write another book after that and another and another.. and many of them will fail, and some of them might succeed, but I’ll always be safe from the random hurricanes of outcome as long as I never forget where I rightfully live.

Look, I don’t know where you rightfully live, but I know there is something in this world that you love more than you love yourself. Something worthy, by the way, so addiction and infatuation don’t count, because we all know that those are not safe places to live, right? The only trick is that you’ve got to identify the best, worthiest thing that you love most, and then build your house right on top of it and don't budge from it. And if you should someday, somehow get vaulted out of your home by either great failure or great success, then your job is to fight your way back to that home the only way that it has ever been done, by putting your head down and performing with diligence and devotion and respect and reverence whatever the tasks is that love is calling forth from you next. You just do that, and keep doing that again and again and again, and I can absolutely promise you, from long personal experiences in every direction, I can assure you that it is all gonna be okay.

thank you