你好呀，我是良哥。

又一篇好文来啦，请阁下细细品尝。

Money often evokes fear because it triggers our sense of survival. Since it’s correlated with the ability to put food in our stomachs and to keep a roof over our heads, the lack of it will feel like our very lives are in jeopardy.

金钱常常让我们心里发慌，因为金钱触发了我们对生存的本能反应。金钱与我们能否获得食物和居所息息相关，因此缺乏金钱会让我们感到仿佛生存本身都岌岌可危。

But most likely, this isn’t the shade of survival you feel threatened by. You feel secure about where your next meal will come from, and find comfort in knowing that you’ll have a place to stay tonight. In other words, survival as a form of biological upkeep isn’t what worries you.Rather, it’s the psychological projections of survival that may keep you on edge.

但很可能，你并不真正担心生存问题，你对下一顿饭有没有着落感到安心，对今晚有没有地方住感到安慰，换句话说，这些基本的生存需求，你不会感到担忧。相反，你时刻保持警惕的是：心理上对生存的预期和担忧。

If your basic necessities are covered, how is it that money can still trigger a survival instinct that is indistinguishable from that biological fear? Why is it that having enough money doesn’t just alleviate this fear, but often has the opposite effect of strengthening it?

如果你的基本生存需求已经得到满足，为什么金钱仍然能触发一种与生物意义上的恐惧难以区分的生存恐惧呢？为什么拥有足够的金钱不仅不能缓解这种恐惧，反而常常更加强烈呢？

There are many angles I can take to address these questions, but for today’s reflection, I’ll keep it to just two things:

我可以从多个角度来探讨这些问题，但出于反思，今天我想简单聊聊两个问题：

(1) Our attachment to preservation, and

为什么我们总是想维持现状，

(2) Our tendency to use growth as a proxy for survival.

(2) 为什么我们总是把进步当成生存的保障。

Let’s start with #1.

我们先从第一个问题开始。

The tricky thing about survival lies in its subjectivity. The anxiety that results from a middle-class salaryman losing his job could be biologically indistinguishable from a billionaire having to write off a valuable investment. The scales of wealth appear to hold no weight when it comes to the triggering of one’s survival instinct.

生存的复杂之处在于主观性。一个普通的中产上班族因失业所引起的焦虑，和一个亿万富翁因投资失败导致的焦虑，在生物意义上可能没多大区别。在触发生存本能方面，财富的多少似乎并不重要。

That’s why I rarely view our relationship with money through the lens of statistics or mathematics. A number – no matter how small or large – is something we familiarize ourselves with over time. What seems to evade acclimation, however, is the power of the story we tell ourselves about what that number enables us to do.

我通常不拿统计或数字来衡量我们和金钱的关系。数字这东西，不管大小，我们都能随着时间慢慢习惯。但让我们真正难以适应的，是我们自己心里对这笔钱的想象和期待。

And when it comes to money, the narrative that drives us is one of preserving what we already have.

说到钱，我们心里想的往往是如何保住手里现在拥有的这些财富。

It’s well-known that we are far more impacted by loss than gain, but I’m still surprised at just how wide that emotional gap is. Someone who wins a million dollars will be ecstatic and quickly acclimate to it, whereas someone who loses a million dollars will be troubled and proceed to never forget about it. This asymmetry highlights the fact that survival is less of an accumulation game, and more of a preservation one.

众所周知，我们对损失的感受远大于收益，但这种情感上的差别大到让我都感到吃惊。赢得一百万美元的人会非常兴奋，并且迅速适应它，但失去一百万美元的人则会陷入困扰，并且永远不会忘记这件事。这种不对称性突显了一个事实：生存更多是一场保住现状游戏，而不仅仅是积累财富游戏。

Life familiarizes us with its contents, and anything that threatens this familiarity kicks in the survival instinct. And herein lies the conundrum: The more money you have, the more you have to preserve. And the more you have to preserve, the more fear that surrounds its potential loss.

我们会逐渐习惯生活的样子，任何打破这种习惯的东西都会让我们感到生存受到了威胁。这就产生了一个难题：你手里的钱越多，你就越得小心维护；而你越小心维护的东西，你就越害怕失去它。

If you are attached to a certain lifestyle, the primary role of money is to ensure that you don’t lose it. This keeps you anchored to whatever identity you embody to ensure the regular influx of money, be it your current job or career. Even if you dislike it, you’ll feel like there’s no choice but to carry on because any change may threaten your ability to keep what you have. And it is this adherence to identity that can lead to an existential crisis when you begin to wonder if all this preservation was important in the first place.

如果你已经习惯了某种生活方式，金钱的主要作用就是帮你维持这种生活。这会让你竭力维持你所代表的任何身份，以确保金钱的稳定流入，无论是你目前的工作还是事业。即使你做着不喜欢的事，你也会感觉别无选择，只能硬着头皮继续干。因为任何变动都可能让你失去现在拥有的一切。这种死守身份的做法，一旦你开始怀疑自己这么努力保住的东西是不是真的那么值得，就可能导致生存危机。

The other thing to address is our tendency to use growth as a proxy for survival.

我想聊的另一个问题是，我们总是把进步看作是生存的保障。

There is nothing more empowering than a belief in progress. The reason why annual reviews are so popular is that they allow us to take inventory of our past accomplishments and failures, and to use them as lessons to drive a fruitful future. We want to feel like every subsequent year is an improvement over the last, and want this trend to continue forward until existence draws to an inevitable close.

没有什么比相信自己在不断进步更让人充满力量。年终总结之所以这么受欢迎，是因为年度总结让我们能够回顾过去一年的成就和不足，然后利用这些经验指导我们走向更好的未来。我们都希望每一年都能比上一年有所进步，希望这种向上的趋势能一直持续，直到生命的最后一刻。

However, we often use growth as a barometer for how we gauge our self-worth, and this is particularly pertinent with money.

然而，我们经常用进步作为衡量自我价值的晴雨表，特别是在钱这个问题上。

Due to its ubiquity, money is tied in with so many things that are independent of the goods and services it could buy. It acts as a signal for one’s reputation, one’s social status, and the commanding of one’s respect. It not only shifts the social dynamics we share with others, but it can also shift the perceptions we have of ourselves.

金钱无处不在，无孔不入，不仅能用来交换商品和购买服务，还关系到你的名声、你在社会中的地位，以及别人对你的尊重。金钱不仅能影响我们和别人的关系，还能影响我们怎么看自己。

In our minds, if growth implies progress, then stagnation implies reversion. And since reversion is a form of loss, that can trigger the same survival instinct we talked about in our earlier point. In a culture where growth is hailed as the universal symbol of success, any trend telling a different story can make you feel like a failure.

我们总是认为，进步就是向前，停滞就是倒退。倒退就意味着失去了什么，这会激发我们前面讨论的生存本能。在一个把进步看作成功标志的社会里，任何不符合这种模式的轨迹，都可能让你觉得自己是个失败者。

And it’s that word – failure – that is perhaps most tied in with one’s emotional survival needs.

而正是这个词：失败。最能触动我们情感深处的求生欲。

The avoidance of failure is just as powerful as our will to preserve. That’s because failure is deeply connected with our sense of self, and how we believe others also perceive that self. And since money is measurable and trackable, it’s easy to use it as a proxy for whether you’re growing or stagnating. But of course, the mistake we often make is to associate it with individual progress as a whole.

我们避免失败的动力，和我们想要保持现状的决心同等强烈。失败不仅关系到我们怎么看待自己，还关系到我们觉得别人怎么看我们。因为钱是可以量化和追踪的，我们就很容易用金钱来判断自己是进步了还是停滞不前了。但我们经常犯的一个错误，就是把金钱的多少和个人的整体进步混为一谈。

The survival instinct of money is largely a projection of your current attachments, and is used to signify growth or reversion. If you can’t imagine a life other than what you have now, then any change in your fiscal situation will introduce a storm of anxiety. And similarly, if you’re addicted to growth, then the measurability of money will ensure that a negative trajectory will introduce feelings of failure.

我们对钱的紧张感，往往投射的是我们对现状的依赖，也反映了我们习惯于用金钱来衡量自己是进步了还是退步了。如果你觉得现在的生活就是你拥有的全部，任何变化都会让你感到焦虑。如果你执着于追求进步，那么钱的多少就能告诉你是进步还是倒退，一旦感觉钱少了，就会觉得自己失败了。

The key to equanimity is to reframe your sense of survival to a more objective viewpoint. By making a career change, you won’t be penniless. By missing out on the latest speculative fad, you’re not going to be frowned upon (at least by those who matter).

要想保持平和的心态，就得重新客观地看待生存这件事。换份工作，不代表你就一无所有了。没追上最新的趋势，也不会有人看不起你（至少重要的人不会）。

If you can regularly decouple psychological angst from the reality of your biological safety, then that will go a long way in managing the survival instinct of money.

如果你能定期地将心理上的焦虑从实际的安全需求中分离出来，你将能够更冷静地处理金钱带来的紧张感。

标题：The Survival Instinct of Money

By Lawrence Yeo

怎么看待金钱焦虑？