There is a particularly poignant way to be a social disaster: through over-friendliness, a pattern of behaviour driven by the very best of motives which ends up feeling as irritating as outright rudeness.有一种特别的方法可以把一个人变成社交悲剧。那就是过分友好，这种行为源自于最善良的动机，却最终让人感觉粗暴无礼令人恼火。We meet the over-friendly at the office, laughing at the jokes of the senior management; behind the desk at the hotel, wishing Sir or Madam a highly enjoyable stay and across the table on a first date, lavishly endorsing their would-be partner’s every opinion about recent books and films.我们会在工作中遇到过分友好的人，他们应和着上司说话，在酒店也能遇到，他们站在服务后台后面祝愿着每一个客人能住的开心，在饭店也能看到，有些人第一次约会就无条件的奉承潜在对象的看法。The over-friendly are guilty of three large errors:过分友好的人犯了三个大的错误：Firstly, they believe they must agree on everything. If the other says the world is going to the dogs, they immediately nod in consent. If a second later, there is a prediction of a utopian technological future, they will agree just as much.首先他们认为他们必须同意每件事，如果别人说这个世界糟透了，他们会立马点头同意。如果一秒钟后有一个预言预测未来是乌托邦，他们也会欣然表示赞同。When we say something clever, they are thrilled. When we say something equally daft, they like it no less. Their ritual approval may seem attentive. In truth, it’s a version of not listening at all.当我们说一些有趣的话，当我们说一些愚蠢的事，他们同样也喜欢他们礼节性的赞同，看起来非常贴心，事实上他们完全没有听你在说什么。Secondly, their praise is ill-targeted. Plenty of nice things are being said, but they are not the ones we happen to value. They claim to love our umbrella, our credit card is from their favourite bank, our chairs are deeply beautiful, we apparently have a nice way of holding our fork…其次，他们的赞美没有意义，有很多话听起来在夸你，但却都不是你在意的方面。他们会说你的伞真漂亮，你的信用卡是从我最喜欢的银行办的，你的椅子真好看，你刀叉使得真好，but none of this counts for us if it isn’t connected up with our own sense of meaning and achievement. Everyone loves being praised, but to be praised inaccurately is its own kind of insult.但这一切对我们都不重要，因为它与我们自己的意义和成就感没有联系，每个人都喜欢被称赞，但被错误的称赞本身就是一种侮辱。Thirdly, their friendliness is remorselessly upbeat. They point out how well we look, how impressive our job sounds, how perfect our family life seems. They want to make us feel good, but they dangerously raise the cost of revealing any of the lonelier, darker, more melancholic aspects of our characters.第三，它们对友谊盲目乐观，他们说你看起来很精神，你的工作听起来很给力，你的家庭真完美，他们想让我们感觉良好，但他们很危险地提高了门槛，使你没法说出你并没那么好，其实很孤独，很丧。By contrast, the less ardently friendly and therefore properly pleasing person will keep three things closely in mind:相比之下，不过分友好反而更讨人喜欢，谨记以下三点：Firstly, that disagreement isn’t necessarily or always terrible, that it may be exhilarating to be contradicted when we don’t feel that our dignity is at stake and that we are learning something valuable at the hands of a combative interlocutor.首先意见存在分歧不一定是可怕的，当我们不觉得尊严受到威胁时，你甚至可以愉快的进行反驳，我们可以从持不同意见的对手那里学到有价值的东西。Secondly, that people only want to be complimented on things they are actively proud of. The value of the currency of praise depends entirely on it not being spent too freely –其次人们只想别人来称赞那些他们为之骄傲的东西，赞美不讲求数量，但讲求质量。and so the truly pleasing person knows they must pass over many things in discreet silence, so that when they eventually do bestow a blessing, their words can have a proper resonance.真正讨人喜欢的人知道什么时候该说话什么时候不该说话，所以，当他们最终表达赞美时，他们的话可以产生恰当的共鸣。Thirdly, that we are cheered up not so much by people who say cheery things, as by people who appear to understand us, which usually means, sympathise with our sorrows and show a willingness to travel with us to the anxious, hesitant or confused parts of our psyches.第三，让我们高兴的不是那些说好听话的人，而是懂得理解我们的人。这通常意味着能感受我们的悲伤，并表示愿意陪我们去解开我们心里中的焦虑，犹豫和困惑的部分。What enables the pleasing person to please is their capacity to hold on in social encounters, even with rather intimidating and alien-seeming people, to an intimate knowledge of what satisfies them. They instinctively use their own experience as a base for thinking about the needs of others.讨人喜欢的人被喜欢，是因为他们在社交场合中能hold住场面，即使与让我们感到畏惧的人相处也知道怎么让对方满意。他们会本能地用自己的经验作为思考他人需求的基础。By contrast, the over-friendly person allows themselves to forget their own likes and dislikes, under the pressure of an excessive humility which suggests to them that anyone impressive could not possibly share in the principles that drive their own psychology.相比之下，过分友好的人，让自己忘记自己的喜恶，在过度谦卑的压力下，使他们中任何人都不可能分享他们心里真实的想法。At the core of the pleasing person’s charm is a metaphysical insight: that other people cannot, deep down, ever be very ‘other’ and therefore that, in core ways, what one knows about oneself will be the master-key to understanding and getting along with strangers – not in every case, but enough of the time to make the difference.讨人喜欢的人的核心魅力是一种形而上的独到见解，每个人都不可能真正成为别人。因此，核心是，一个人先了解他们自己，将是他们理解和与陌生人相处的关键，虽然不是全然适用，但也足以产生不同。Over-friendliness isn’t just a feature of one-to-one encounters. It’s an entrenched flaw within modern consumer society more generally.过分友好，不仅是发生在一对一的情况，它实际在现代消费社会非常普遍。This explains why the airline exuberantly wishes us a perfect day upon landing in a new city, why the waiter hopes we’ll have a truly wonderful time around the first course and why the attendant in a clothes shop pulls such a large smile along with their suggestion that we try on a new pair of trousers.这解释了为何航空公司热忱的祝愿我们抵达目的地并愉快地开始一天，或者为何希望我们能在用餐时，享受到真正美好的时光，以及为何带着夸张的笑容推荐我们试穿新的裤子。Here too, the cause of an asphyxiating friendliness is a sudden modesty and loss of confidence around using oneself as a guide to the temperament and needs of a stranger. Companies become over-impressed by the apparent ‘otherness’ of their clients and thereby overlook how many aspects of their own selves are being trampled upon in a service context.在这些情况，他们极度友好的原因是突然的羞怯和失去自信，用自己当向导来满足陌生人的性格和需要。公司对客户表面上的“差异性”过于重视，从而忽略了自身的各方各面，反而在服务中对客户内心造成了践踏。They sidestep the knowledge that just after landing back home after a trip abroad, we may feel horrified at the thought of our responsibilities in the family; or that moods of introversion and sadness can accompany us even inside a clothes boutiques. They behave as if they were cheerful Martians encountering broken, complex humans for the very first time.他们回避从国外旅行回家会遇到的问题，我们可能会在想到我们的家庭责任时压力很大，或在逛服装精品店时，我们怀着内向和忧伤的情绪，他们却表现得就像是快乐的火星人第一次遭遇到玩坏了的人类。The fault of the excessively over-friendly person can, in the end, be traced back to a touching modesty. They are guilty of nothing more than a loss of confidence in the validity of their own experiences as a guide to the pleasure of others.过分友好的人的问题，最后可以归结到他们的羞怯上。他们只不过是丧失信心而已，他们想在自己的经验的有效指导下，让他人感觉愉快。The failure of the over-friendly types teaches us that in order to succeed at pleasing anyone, we must first accept the risk that we might well displease them through a candid expression of our being. Successful charm relies on an initial secure sense that we could survive social failure.过分友好的失败告诉我们想要成功取悦他人，我们必须首先承担风险，我们很可能会因为我们坦诚的表达而得罪他们。成功的魅力依赖于一种初级的安全感，认为我们可以承受社交失败。Rehearsing how it would in the end be OK to make a hash of seducing someone is perhaps the best way to seduce them properly and confidently. We must reconcile ourselves to the risk of not making friends to stand any chance of actually making any.预想最后没巴结到那个人是不是也没问题，也许是最好的方法，也是恰当和自信的吸引别人的方法，我们必须说服自己要冒交不到朋友的风险，才有机会真正交到朋友。
