【推荐1】Looking back is a wonderful thing. It allows you to see what has led you here and, hopefully, how society has changed and improved.

Take, for instance, my career goal. First, I wanted, in 1999, to be a “farmer”, soon archaeologist, then driving instructor and somewhere along the way, footballer.

I had grown up in a football-loving family. I remember the exact moment when I said “I’m sad I can’t be a footballer” while watching the game with Dad as a pre-teen. He asked why not. “Because I’m not a boy.” He immediately responded, “You can, if you want to.” “Yeah, I suppose so,” I sighed, “but no one watches women’s football.”

Looking back, I can see exactly why I felt like that. At school, there was an unwritten rule that sports like hockey and netball were “girl” sports and rugby and football were for the boys. I’d never seen a women’s football match on TV. You see, you can’t be what you can’t see, and lack of representation leads, at best, to misunderstanding, and at worst, fear and negative opinions.

Today, the Lionesses will take on Scotland in the World Cup, and people across the world will tune in — over 950,000 tickets have been sold so far. But, although women’s football is one of FIFA’s best investments — with a pound for pound return, the majority of female players are earning under a fair wage. Some argue that’s because viewing statistics are lower than those of men’s, but the rise in support shows the demand is there. Hopefully, more investment will push female football forward.

Today, I’ll be cheering on the Lionesses, because it’ll mean talented, skillful female footballers being broadcast into millions of homes and maybe, just maybe, a little girl believing that she can also be a Lioness one day.

【推荐2】Ernest Gaines, the son of sharecroppers (佃农), was born in January 15, 1933 on the River Lake Plantation near the small village of Oscar, Louisiana. He attended school for kids more than five months out of the year. But that was more education than his family before him had received. He would say later in life that his ear for the stories of his elders was developed as he wrote letters for adults who couldn’t read or write.

In the late 1940’s, at the age of 15, his family moved to the northern California where he could do something that had been forbidden in the South: visit a library. Ernest later attended San Francisco State University. Then he returned to Louisiana in 1963, inspired by James Meredith’s bid to enroll in the then-all-white University of Mississippi. He took it as a sign that the South was changing and that he could be part of that change. “As I’ve said many times before, the two greatest moves I’ve made were on the day I left Louisiana in 1948, and on the day I came back to Louisiana in 1963,” he said.

Less than 10 years later, in 1971, he published the novel that brought him attention, The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman which told the story of a black woman born as a slave who lives long enough to witness the civil rights era. Ernest would later say that the fictional Jane was modeled after his disabled great-aunt, Augustine Jefferson, who could not walk, but was strong enough to raise a family. Another novel, A Gathering of Old Men, published in 1983, was made into a movie in 1987. He won the National Book Critics Circle Award in 1993 for his novel A Lesson Before Dying. A number of his stories and essays were gathered in the 2005 collection Mozart and Leadbelly.

His permanent residence in Louisiana was a house that he and his wife built on land that was once part of River Lake Plantation. Ernest talked about his home, “If Auntie could sit here with me, or my stepfather who took me away from here, or my uncle George, who used to take me to those old beat-up bars in Baton Rouge — if I could, I’d just buy him a good glass of Gentleman Jack, and we could sit here and talk. Oh, I wish I could do that.”

Fear of missing out

It’s Friday night. While many of your friends may celebrate by going to the movies or checking out a restaurant that’s just opened, you’ve decided to spend this highly cherished night of the week by yourself. The night is yours to enjoy. If you think this sounds relaxing, you’re not alone. At least for a little while until you start wondering if you’ve made the right choice. A doubt begins sinking in as you imagine the fun your friends are having in your absence. Suddenly, the quiet evening you planned for yourself begins to lose its initial appeal, and you find your excitement quickly turns to anxiety.

Fear of missing out, or FOMO, is a common feeling. A recent study defined FOMO as “the uneasy and sometimes all-consuming feeling that you’re missing out — your peers are doing or in possession of more or something better than you.

Fear of missing out often develops as a result of deeper unhappiness. Research has found that those with low levels of general life satisfaction are more likely to experience FOMO. Further worsening the all- too-common feeling is the rise of social media use. Active users of social media have a higher probability of comparing their achievements with others’. Rather than finding happiness through their own experiences, they begin worrying that theirs aren’t objectively better than anyone else’s.

The consequences of FOMO are significant and far-reaching. One study conducted with first-year university students found that fear of missing out was associated with fatigue( 疲 劳 ), stress, and sleep problems.   Furthermore,   in   a   2018   study   of   1,045   Americans   aged   18-34,   nearly   40%   of   participants admitted going into debt just to keep up with their friends’ lifestyles, often through increased spending on food, travel, clothes, and electronics.

So how can you overcome the fear? Begin with gratitude. By reflecting on what you already have, you’re less likely to put valuable mental energy in worrying about what you don’t. Another alternative?

Embrace(欣然接受) JOMO, or the joy of missing out. JOMO allows you to shift your focus to what you really want at any given moment, without feeling concerned about what those around you may be doing. So, turn off your phones and tablets, and engage in something you enjoy while resisting the urge to upload and share it. While this may take practice and perseverance(坚持不懈), the results are well worth the effort.

By embracing the joy of missing out, you make room for all the benefits that come from spending time with yourself and the inner wholeness you contain; you create space to keep up with the things you wish you had more time for — gardening, reading, resting, exercising, cooking, learning, or simply being; and you see yourself in new ways and unearth the talents, fears, joys and quirks that lie beneath the surface.

【推荐1】When I was nine years old, I loved to go fishing with my dad. But the only thing that wasn’t very fun about it was that he could catch many fish while I couldn’t catch anything. I usually got pretty upset(心烦的） and kept asking him why. He always answered, “Son, if you want to catch a fish, you have to think like a fish”, I remember being even more upset then because, “I’m not a fish!” I didn’t know how to think like a fish. Besides, I reasoned, how could what I think influence what a fish does.

As I got a little older I began to understand what my dad really meant. So, I read some books on fish. And I even joined the local fishing club and started attending the monthly meetings. I learned that a fish is a cold-blooded（冷血的）animal and therefore is very sensitive（敏感的） to water temperature. That is why fish prefer shallow water to deep water because the former is warmer. Besides, water is usually warmer in direct sunlight than in the shade（阴凉处）. Yet, fish don’ t have any eyelids(眼皮) and the sun hurts their eyes. The more I understood fish, the more I became effective at finding and catching them.

When I grew up and entered the business world, I remember hearing my first boss say, “We all need to think like sales people.” But it didn’t completely make sense. My dad never once said, “If you want to catch a fish you need to think like a fisherman.” What he said was, “You need to think like a fish.” Years later, with great efforts to promote long-term services to people much older and richer than me, I gradually learned what we all need is to think more like customers. It is not an easy job. I will show you how in the following chapters.

【推荐2】It is easier to negotiate（谈判）first salary requirement because once you are insider, the organizational constraints influence wage increases. One thing, however, is certain: your chances of getting the raise you feel you deserve are less if you don't at least ask for it. Men tend to ask for more, and they get more, and this holds true with other resources, not just pay increases. Consider Beth's story.

I did not get what I wanted when I did not ask for it. We had cubicle（小隔间）offices and window offices. I sat in the cubicles with several male colleagues. One by one they were moved into window offices, while I remained in the cubicles, several males who were hired after me also went to offices. One in particular told me he was next in line for an office and that it had been part of his negotiations for the job. I guess they thought me content to stay in the cubicles since I did not voice my opinion either way.

It would be nice we all received automatic pay increases equal to our merit（价值）, but "nice" isn't a quality shared by most organizations. If you feel you deserve a good raise in pay, you'll probably have to ask for it.

Performance is your best bargaining chip （筹码） when you are seeking a raise. You must be able to prove that you deserve a raise. Timing is also a good bargaining chip. If you can give your boss something he or she needs（a new client or a sizable contract, for example）just before merit pay decisions are being made, you are more likely to get the raise you want.

Use information as a bargaining chip coo. Find out what you are worth on the open market. What will someone else pay for your services?

Go into the negotiations prepared to place your chips on the table at the appropriate time and prepared to use communication style to guide the direction of the interaction

【推荐3】It feels like every time my mother and I start to have a conversation, it turns into an argument. We talk about something as simple as dinner plans and suddenly my mother will push the conversation into the Third World War. She’ll talk about my lack of (缺乏) bright future because I don’t plan to be a doctor. And much to her disappointment, I don’t want to do any job related to science, either. In fact, when I was pushed to say that I planned to major (主修) in English, she nearly had a heart attack.

“Why can’t you be like my co-worker’s son?” she shouts all the time. Her co-worker’s son received a four-year scholarship and is now earning 70,000 dollars a year as an engineer. I don’t know what to say except that I simply can’t be like Mr. Perfect as I’ve called the unnamed co-worker’s son. I can’t be like him. I am the type of the person who loves to help out in the community, write until the sun goes down, and most of all, wants to achieve something because of loving it, not because of fame or salary.

I understand why my mother is worried about my future major. I’ve seen my mother struggle to raise me on her small salary and work long hours. She leaves the house around 6:30 am and usually comes back home around 5:00 pm or even 6:00 pm.

However, I want her to know that by becoming a doctor, it doesn’t mean I’ll be successful. I’d rather follow my dreams and create my own future.

【推荐1】Store owners have been inventing new tricks to get consumers into their stores and purchasing their goods. Even as we find new strategies to resist, neuroscientists (神经科学家) are employed at marketing agencies across the country to best figure out what is going through a consumer’s brain at each point in the decision process.

We consumers overspend due to the fact that we have a fear of missing the really good deal or having to pay more for the same thing and lose money. Normally, the prefrontal cortex ( 前 额皮 层 ) controls our emotional reactions to things, and keeps us from acting unreasonably by calming down our fears. But an advertiser can disturb our prefrontal cortex just by displaying flashy deal signs, encouraging it to do math on how much money we might save now by buying more of something we don’t actually need yet.

Nostalgia, that regretful affection for past events, is another strong influencer during the holiday season, and it’s shaped by emotion. Emotion—whether good or bad—enhances the formation of memories, engaging more parts of the brain. So hearing a nephew singing a carol, for instance, might reawaken memories associated with that particular song in a much more powerful way than hearing that same nephew sing another song. These kinds of memories are brought back even more easily by sensory input. This might be why we are often greeted by a sensory reminder everywhere we go in a month.

Wherever you purchase gifts, there are social influences on what you buy as well. The holidays are a time when we are especially conditioned to pay more for the label because we’re buying gifts. Receiving a brand-name gift sends the message that “this person has spent more on me, so he or she must value me more.” And it makes sense. If two things seem pretty much the same, how do I know which to choose? Humans have survived as a social species, and we have to rely on each other. So when our brains are trying to make decisions, one of the shortcuts is to assume that if a lot of other people prefer something (and higher cost is often a predictor of that), then there must be a reason.

Much of our holiday spending is driven by unplanned purchases. Plan ahead, resist the urge to purchase in the moment, make notes for comparison shopping, and if the deal is actually good, then it will hold up to inspection and you’ll feel good about your purchases later. Before you blow your budget this season, remember that your brain might be fooling you into that next purchase.

【推荐2】Of all the components of a good night’s sleep, dreams seem to be least within our control. In dreams, a window opens into a world where logic is suspended and dead people speak. A century ago, Freud stated his revolutionary theory that dreams were the disguised (伪装的)shadows of our unconscious desires and fears: by the late 1970se neurologists had switched to thinking of them as just "mental noise"—the random byproducts of the neural-repair work that goes on during sleep. Now researchers suspect that dreams are part of the minds emotional thermostat, regulating moods while the brain is "off-line". And one leading authority says that these intensely powerful mental events can be not only influenced but actually brought under conscious control, to help us sleep and feel better. "It's your dream," says Rosalind Cartwright, chair of psychology at Chicago's Medical Center. "If you don't like it change it."

The link between dreams and emotions shows up among the patients in Cartwright's clinic. Most people seem to have more bad dreams early in the night, progressing toward happier ones before awakening, suggesting that they are working through negative feelings generated(产生)during the day. Because our conscious mind is occupied with daily life. we don't always think about the emotional significance of the day' s events—until, it appears, we begin to dreams.

And this process need not be left to the unconscious. Cartwright believes one can exercise conscious control over repeated bad dreams. As soon as you awaken, identify what is upsetting about the dream. Visualize how you would like it to end instead; the next time it occurs, try to wake up just enough to control its course. With much practice people can learn to, literally, do it in their sleep.

At the end of the day, there's probably little reason to pay attention to our dreams at all unless they keep us from sleeping or "we wake up in a panic," Cartwright says. Terrorism, economic uncertainties and general feelings of insecurity have increased people's anxiety. Those suffering from persistent nightmares should seek help from a therapist. For the rest of us, the brain has its ways of working through bad feeling Sleep—or rather dream—on it and you'll feel better in the morning.

【推荐3】I've been writing since before I could write. As a kid, I dictated stories to my parents.About 12 years ago,I was living in New York City and pursuing a master in creative writing. For years I'd been suffering vision disorder,but in New York my symptoms worsened. I became unable to read or write for any considerable length of time. I tried vision therapy(疗法），an overhead projector,a special pair of glasses-all in vain.

Eventually,I discovered a computer program for the visually challenged. As I typed,my words were read aloud by an automated voice. With my screen dimmed to black,I relied entirely on audio feedback to know what I had written.

Facing the blank page is worrying,but facing the black page is worse. The dark screen is a sinkhole that swallows creative hope. Sentences disappear into it like an astronaut into a black hole. I managed to complete my master degree, but it took me years to adapt to my new reality. The greatest barrier seemed to be the automated voice, which was like a robot parrot on my shoulder, and I wanted nothing more than to drive it away. If a pianist were forced to practice on an untuned piano,would it corrupt his ear over time?

Of course,I could have quit writing and stopped making myself suffer.But it honestly never occurred to me-and I'm glad it didn't. Last year, after I told my story on the radio,I was contacted by VocaliD,a Massachusetts-based company that created a voice modeled on my own.

The first time I heard the voice they created, it is so close to my own that the two are nearly indistinguishable. I've only just begun using this new voice. My hope is that this will restore a sense of solitude(孤独） to my writing process,allowing me easier access to that inner space where the imagination can take over, and I can forget myself, and the real work can begin.

The black screen still exists-it always will-but the robot parrot has taken wing.