【Background】

The Astronaut’s Guide to Risk Mitigation: Pre-Visualize Success, with Scott Parazynski, Retired NASA Astronaut and Author, The Sky Below

Practice is important. But the conscious intention behind the practice matters at least as much as the repetition. For high-stakes and potentially high-stress events, it’s important to pre-visualize success. To practice with winning in mind. This habituates you not only to the set of actions you’re planning to perform, but to the mindset you’ll need to do your very best. Relaxation is a crucial component of success in most high-stakes events, so it, too, should be a component of your practice.

今天我们请到了史考特·帕拉金斯奇。他是美国航空航天局的一位退役宇航员，同时也是《云端之上》一书的作者。今天的课程中，他将为我们讲解如何通过在脑内预先演习的方法成功完成挑战。

练习无疑是重要的。但相较于重复的机械练习，有意识的目的性同等重要，甚至更为重要。针对高风险、高压力的任务，你需要以成功为目标进行预先演习，也就是说，你在练习时需要在脑海中想象成功的状态。这样一来，你不仅可以对自己需要执行的一系列行动形成惯性，同时也会形成一种思维定势，令自己尽可能表现到最好。在大多数高风险任务中，放松是成功的关键因素之一，因此，放松也应同样成为你练习中的重要组成部分。

【Course】

The way that I’ve always been able to maintain my calm, my steely nerves, if I can say that, is to pre-visualize success. If you can’t visualize ultimately being successful, it’s tough to sometimes get there because you can be distracted by everything coming at you all at once. So it’s channeling your vision towards seeing a pathway to success. One example that I’d give you I learned early in my life as a luge athlete, believe it or not. I used to do this crazy sport called luge – it’s a Winter Olympic sport on a sled about the size of a cafeteria tray, and you’re laying on your back and careening down this icy track at speeds of up to 85 mph and feeling forces up to 6 g’s pushing you back in your sled. So it’s really exciting, it’s high-adrenaline, but the way you really excel at that sport is by relaxing. You have to have an explosive start off the start handles, but then you have to get back into position, and it’s all about carving that perfect line. And the way that we would prepare to do that is a method called pre-visualization. We would be in the start house, we’d lay down on a bench up in the start house, and we’d close our eyes and move our body exactly as we would on the track. And it was amazing, we would actually time ourselves and we would finish the run in our mind at the exact same time within a second of what it would take on the real track. So we were actually going down the track in our minds with physical inputs and pre-visualizing our success.

我想，一直以来，我能够使自己保持情绪冷静、心态坚定的秘诀在于我总是会预演成功。如果你无法预演成功，那么想要达到成功就会有些困难。因为你在一瞬间面临的问题太多，也就为各种因素而分心。所以，你需要在想象之中描绘出通往成功的行动步骤。在我年轻的时候，我曾是一名短雪橇运动员。不管你信不信，我做过短雪橇这项疯狂的运动，它是冬奥会的运动项目之一，运动员坐在只有餐馆托盘大小的雪橇之上，然后保持仰卧姿势，以高达85英里每小时的速度在滑道上极速猛冲，感受高达6g的重力加速度在雪橇背后推着你下滑。短雪橇真是特别刺激，让你在过程中肾上腺素猛增，但是想要在这项运动中真正出类拔萃，你还是得学会放松。在松开起点处的手柄时，你需要爆发出充分力量，随即就位保持仰卧姿势，并使自己的身体形成有助于滑行的完美曲线。要想达到这种境界，我们采用的方法就是预先演习。我们待在出发点，躺在长椅上，闭上眼睛，像在滑道上一般移动身体。这种练习真的很神奇，我们还会给自己计时，模拟运动的时间和滑道上实际完成运动的时间只有一秒以内的误差。总的来说，我们实际上是在脑海中想象着冲下滑道的过程，同时不断练习动作，然后预演了我们的成功。

I’ve done that in so many different aspects of my life, from space walks to my summit climb on Mount Everest. It’s really important to be able to see your pathway to success, and then also of course to have thought through what is my Plan B and my Plan C when things will inevitably go wrong.

在人生的各种职业与运动中，无论是太空行走，还是攀爬珠峰，我都使用过预先演习的练习方法。你得把通往成功的行动步骤给吃透，当然也得事先想好Plan B 甚至是Plan C，以免在真正执行挑战时发生不可避免的意外状况。

【Summary】

Pre-visualization: The practice of seeing a pathway to success for any challenge you face.

Excelling in high-risk environments often requires you to relax.

To calm yourself and prepare for a big challenge:

close your eyes and run through the course of action in your mind

time yourself, when applicable

use physical inputs, if possible

预先演习指的是面临挑战时的一种练习方法，在脑内模拟通往成功的行动步骤。

要想在高风险的环境中表现出色，你得学会如何放松

保持情绪冷静，为迎接巨大挑战做好准备：

闭上眼睛，在脑海中过一遍行动步骤

如果可以的话，在脑内为自己计时

如果条件允许，加上动作练习