How to build your confidence -- and spark it in others | Brittany Packnett Cunningham | TED · TED
Brittany Packnett Cunningham分享如何建立自信并激发他人自信。她通过个人经历和教育实践，强调自信在实现梦想中的关键作用，适合练习口语和思维表达。
So when I was a little girl, a book sat on the coffee table in our living room,
当我还是个小女孩的时候，有一本书放在我们客厅的咖啡桌上。
just steps from our front door.
距离我们前门只有几步之遥。
And the living room is a first impression.
客厅是给人留下第一印象的地方。
Ours had white carpet and a curio of my mother's most treasured collectibles.
我们家的客厅铺着白色地毯，还摆放着我母亲最珍视的收藏品之一。
That room represented the sacrifices of generations gone by
那个房间象征着过去几代人所做出的牺牲。
who, by poverty or by policy, couldn't afford a curio of collectibles let alone a middle class house to put them in.
这些人要么因为贫困，要么因为某种政策安排，根本买不起任何收藏品；更别说拥有一套适合存放这些收藏品的、属于中产阶级的房子了。
That room had to stay perfect.
那个房间的状态必须始终保持完美无瑕。
But I would risk messing up that perfect room every day just to see that book.
不过，我愿意每天冒着弄乱那个完美房间的风险，只为了能看到那本书。
On the cover sat a woman named Septima Clark.
封面上坐着一位名叫塞普蒂玛·克拉克（Septima Clark）的女性。
She sat in perfect profile with her face raised to the sky.
她端正地坐着，面朝天空。
She had perfect salt-and-pepper cornrows platted down the sides of her head, and pride and wisdom just emanated from her dark skin.
她的头发被整齐地编成传统的“盐与胡椒”式发髻（即两侧呈波浪状的发型），并固定在头部两侧；从她深色的皮肤中，仿佛散发着一种既自豪又充满智慧的气质。
Septima Clark was an activist and an educator, a woman after whom I'd eventually model my own career.
塞普蒂玛·克拉克（Septima Clark）是一位社会活动家和教育工作者，她的榜样激励着我最终选择了自己的职业道路。
But more than all the words she ever spoke,
但比她说过的一切话都更重要的是……
that single portrait of Septima Clark, it defined confidence for me before I ever even knew the word.
那幅塞普蒂玛·克拉克的肖像画，在我甚至还不知道“自信”这个词的含义之前，就已经为我诠释了什么是自信。
It may sound simple, but confidence is something that we underestimate the importance of.
这听起来可能很简单，但实际上，我们往往低估了自信的重要性。
We treat it like a nice-to-have instead of a must-have.
我们把它看作是一种“可有可无”的东西，而不是必须拥有的东西。
We place value on knowledge and resources above what we deem to be the soft skill of confidence.
我们认为，知识与资源的重要性超过了所谓的“自信这种软技能”。
But by most measures, we have more knowledge and more resources now than at any other point in history,
但从大多数标准来看，我们现在拥有的知识和资源比历史上任何时候都要丰富。
and still injustice abounds and challenges persist.
然而，不公正的现象依然普遍存在，各种挑战也持续不断。
If knowledge and resources were all that we needed, we wouldn't still be here.
如果知识和资源真的是我们所需要的全部，那么我们早就不再存在于这个世界上了。
And I believe that confidence is one of the main things missing from the equation.
我相信，自信正是这个过程中所缺失的关键要素之一。
I'm completely obsessed with confidence.
我对“自信”这个概念简直着了迷。
It's been the most important journey of my life, a journey that, to be honest, I'm still on.
这是我人生中最重要的一段旅程；说实话，我至今仍在继续这段旅程。
Confidence is the necessary spark before everything that follows.
信心是后续一切行动得以顺利开展的前提和关键。
Confidence is the difference between being inspired and actually getting started, between trying and doing until it's done.
自信，就是那种能够让人产生行动冲动（即“受到启发”）与真正开始行动之间的关键因素；它也是区分“尝试”与“坚持到底、直至完成任务”之间的分水岭。
Confidence helps us keep going even when we failed.
自信能帮助我们在遭遇失败后依然继续前进。
The name of the book on that coffee table was "I Dream A World,"
放在那个咖啡桌上的书名叫《我梦想一个世界》。
and today I dream a world where revolutionary confidence helps bring about our most ambitious dreams into reality.
今天，我梦想着一个这样的世界：在那里，人们充满革命性的自信，能够帮助我们将最宏伟的梦想变为现实。
That's exactly the kind of world that I wanted to create in my classroom when I was a teacher,
这正是我作为一名教师时希望在课堂上营造的那种世界。
like a Willy Wonka world of pure imagination, but make it scholarly.
就像威利·旺卡创造的那个充满纯粹想象力的奇幻世界一样，只不过要将这种幻想赋予学术性的内涵。
All of my students were black or brown.
我的所有学生都是黑人或棕色皮肤的人。
All of them were growing up in a low-income circumstance.
他们所有人都是在低收入的环境中长大的。
Some of them were immigrants, some of them were disabled, but all of them were the very last people this world invites to be confident.
他们中有些人是移民，有些人有残疾；但所有人都是这个世界上最容易被忽视、最缺乏自信的人。
That's why it was so important that my classroom be a place where my students could build the muscle of confidence,
这就是为什么我的课堂必须成为一个让学生们能够培养自信心的地方——这一点非常重要。
where they could learn to face each day with the confidence you need to redesign the world in the image of your own dreams.
在那里，他们可以学会以一种自信的态度面对每一天；这种自信正是重新塑造世界、使之符合自己梦想所需的关键。
After all, what are academic skills without the confidence to use those skills to go out and change the world.
毕竟，如果没有信心去运用这些学术技能去改变世界，那么这些学术技能本身又有什么意义呢？
Now is when I should tell you about two of my students, Jamal and Regina.
现在，我应该向你们介绍一下我的两位学生：贾马尔（Jamal）和雷吉娜（Regina）。
Now, I've changed their names, but their stories remain the same.
虽然我已经更改了他们的名字，但他们的故事依然没有改变。
Jamal was brilliant, but unfocused.
贾马尔非常聪明，但缺乏专注力。
He would squirm in his chair during independent work, and he would never stay still for more than three or four minutes.
在独立完成作业时，他总会在椅子上坐立不安，根本无法安静地待上三分钟或四分钟以上。