【推荐1】Fear is something we all experience, especially when setting out on any new undertaking. Failure is one of the most common and most damaging fears that many people struggle with.     1    . You can take a close look at your fear of failure and then work with it to shape your future success. Let’s learn how to move past your fear and to ward your goals.

    2     . When people are mastering a skill or project, failure is a necessary part of the learning process. Embracing failure as a learning experience allows you to see it as a gift, not a punishment or sign of weakness.

Re-evaluate your approach. Often times, when a result doesn’t match our expectations, we are likely to mark the attempt as a failure.     3     . However, if we view our results as more or less effective, with the aim of improvement, we are able to always make positive changes. Studies show that people who are successful usually don’t encounter fewer or more setbacks than people who aren’t. The key is entirely in how you interpret those setbacks. Don’t let them convince you that success is impossible.

Take things slow. Rushing into new ventures without any personal preparation can make things worse.     4     . Don’t push too far outside your comfort zone all at once.

Be kind to yourself. Don’t mock your fears; they are there for a reason. Work with your fears.     5    . The more you learn about why you have these fears and what causes them, the better you can work with them.

【推荐2】It’s natural for people to compare themselves with their peers. Peer pressure is a force that nearly everyone has faced at some point. If it’s not well handled, there might be some destructive consequences.    1     Below are tips on how to deal with peer pressure and avoid making tough decisions that may trigger unfavorable outcomes.

Find positive influence

At any age, it’s beneficial to stay involved with extracurricular activities like sports, music, art, or other hobbies. Team building activities can help increase self-confidence and create a support system that allows an individual to succeed. Additionally, enjoying hobbies and other harmless pastimes like exercising can release feel-good hormones.    2    

Plan ahead

Experiencing peer pressure, especially when in an unfriendly environment, can cause a person to panic and make impulsive decisions.    3     Think of different situations that spark discomfort and think about how to deal with peer pressure. It’s ok to give excuses to avoid making decisions that you may feel are not right for you.

    4    

Positive influences, usually parents or siblings, can teach you how to deal with peer pressure directly. Having a trusted friend, family member, or another resource to call on can relieve some of the everyday life stresses. They can be there to give advice or just support the decisions you’ve made that you feel are right for you.

Convey feelings and emotions

Honesty goes a long way in reducing the harmful effects of peer pressure. Speak to the person or group of people who may be causing feelings of unease or uncertainty and kindly ask them to stop.     5    

【推荐3】If you know someone with borderline personality disorder (BPD), you’re aware of how quickly they can step up from mild annoyance to outbursts of anger. However, Sonya Varma, a professor from York University, wondered, do people with BPD have problems in all aspects of this process? Could they have an as-yet-undiscovered set of emotional strengths?

According to new research by Varma and her colleagues, emotion regulation involves both the internal reactions of the body and the conscious efforts people make to label those bodily feelings. This labeling process, they maintain, could make all the difference when it comes to settling back down and putting the mind back at rest.

To tease apart these features of emotion regulation, Varma designed an experimental situation in which they put participants into an “emotion induction (引导)” treatment. Participants read a story that was intended to cause a negative emotion such as a hit-and-run car accident or the death of your dog. The sample included 29 participants with diagnosed BPD who were age- and sex-matched with healthy controls, and they ranged in age from 18 to 60. To examine the effect of labeling, Varma asked their participants to type their current emotional states into a computer, choosing from a set they saw on the screen. They could use the same word multiple times if they wished.

If indeed people with BPD have difficulty labeling their emotions, then this fault should have been reflected in their ability to return to baseline (起点) after the negative emotion induction. However, the findings surprisingly ran counter to the research team’s expectations: People with BPD were equal to the control participants in the negativity of their expressed emotion, the intensity of that emotion, and even the words they used to describe their emotions. Although using a wider range of words following the emotion induction helped to bring about greater physiological control for all participants, there were no differences between groups in this effect.

Given its role in helping restore physiological peace, it appears that regardless of whether someone has BPD or not, it can be beneficial to learn to label your emotions. When you’re starting down the pathway of experiencing a negative emotion, you can benefit by applying an accurate label to that emotion as opposed to holding it back or calling it something else. This can potentially prevent engagement in destructive behaviors that may function to downregulate emotion such as self-harm.

To sum up, this new information about BPD can offer hope that at least one key element of the emotion regulation process appears to function effectively. Building on this strength could very well provide a new and unexplored pathway for their satisfaction.

【推荐2】A few weeks ago, I drove down a back road in West Virginia. Sometime after I passed Spruce Mountain, my phone lost service — and I knew it would remain silent for the next few days. I was headed toward Green Bank, a town that agrees to the ban on technology in the United States. The people there do without not only cellphones but also Wi-Fi , microwave ovens, and any other devices that create signals.

The ban is to protect the Green Bank Observatory, a group of radio telescopes in a mountain valley. The telescopes are very powerful for human beings. Scientists travel here to measure gravitational waves. Astronomers study the stars. It has also become a destination for alien hunters who hope to discover messages there sent from other planets. And in the past ten years, the town has become a destination for people who believe they’re sick of cellphone towers.

I came in hopes of finding a certain kind of wildness and solitude. I live in Massachusetts, and I often disappear into the forests and rivers to clear my head. I've always loved the moment when the bars on my phone disappear. When I’m out of range entirely , time grows elastic. I feel deeply free.

In theory, I could achieve this kind of freedom anywhere by shutting off my cellphone. But that has never worked for me — and I doubt it doesn't for most other people either. Turn off your phone and you will turn it on again. To experience the deepest solitude, you need to enter the land where the Internet ends.

【推荐3】In the last two weeks, the only things that have been thrown by Esther Penarrubia have been a broken toy, an old T-shirt used to clean shoes, a balloon from a party and the backing from a sheet of stickers. Ms Penarrubia, who has a PhD in agricultural engineering, realized that her lifestyle was called “zero waste” after watching a TED talk in November 2015.

It was when Ms Penarrubia moved house that she decided to remove single-use plastic from her life to reduce her family’s waste and thus changed her lifestyle.

Bulk (批量) buying, reusing old materials, searching second-hand shops and minimizing products which use plastic have been the key factor to her lifestyle, which sees her family send just one piece of rubbish to landfill every fortnight. Ms Penarrubia tries to remove all plastic products but if she does purchase any, like olive oil, she will bulk buy in a five-litre bottle and will recycle when finished. This also applies to cleaning products. Glass jars and containers are repurposed after use and kitchen leftovers go in the compost (堆肥) bin. The family grow their own tomatoes, cabbages, broccoli and herbs at home and also have orange and apple trees, while she buys fresh fruit, vegetables and bread in bulk from local suppliers for the week.

Ms Penarrubia believes changing to a zero-waste lifestyle is easier and cheaper than per-ceived, but admits the challenging part in convincing others that it can be achievable. She said, “If you think and organize your buying habits, consume less things from better quality, choose reusable alternatives, buy everything you can in quantity from the second-hand market—then it’s not more expensive and you can save money. “Zero waste” culture doesn’t only consist of the reduction of our waste, it involves a more conscious lifestyle and way of consumption.

【推荐1】For some people, physical activity just isn’t a choice when trying to lose weight. Losing weight without exercise is possible.     1     Here are 4 tips to lose weight without exercise:

Think Long-Term for Weight Loss.

Weisenberger encourages those interested in losing weight without exercise to think about their long-term goals .    2     At the same time, you must focus more on cutting the calories you eat while still making sure you eat healthy food.

Drink more water.

Eating more fiber-rich foods while drinking more water is a winning weight-loss combination. Weisenberger says. Water helps to fill you up more, just like fiber does. Set a water drinking schedule.    3    

Play around with plates.

One common strategy used for weight loss is to play around with plate size and the portions on your plate. At dinner, use a smaller salad plate for grains and protein and a larger dinner plate for non-starchy (非淀粉的) vegetables, Kimberlain says.    4    Playing around with plates also can help keep your portion sizes in check.

Eat without distractions (分心).

    5    Were you reading or watching something on a screen? Maybe driving and eating? It’s easy to cat too much if you’re not focused on what you’re eating. Put away the phone, turn off the TV or remove whatever else distracts you to enjoy each bite. Eating without distractions also can make you aware of whether you’re eating because you’re truly hungry or if you’re just bored.

【推荐3】Obesity should be defined by a person's health - not just their weight, says a new Canadian clinical guideline. It also advises doctors to go beyond simply recommending diet and exercise. Instead, they should focus on the root causes of weight gain and take a holistic(整体的)approach to health.

Ximena Ramos-Salas, the director of research and policy at Obesity Canada and one of the guideline's authors, said research shows many doctors discriminate(歧视) against obese patients, and that can lead to worse health outcomes regardless of their weight. "Weight bias(偏见)is not just about believing the wrong thing about obesity," she told the BBC. "Weight bias actually has an effect on the behaviour of healthcare doctors."

Although the latest advice still recommends using diagnostic(诊断的)criteria like the body mass index (BMI) and waist circumference, it admits their clinical limitations and says doctors should focus more on how weight affects a person's health. Small reductions in weight, of about 3-5%, can lead to health improvements and an obese person's "best weight" might not be their "ideal weight" according to BMI, the guideline says.

It emphasizes that obesity is a complex, chronic condition that needs lifelong management. "For a long time we've associated obesity as a lifestyle behaviour. It's been a lot of shame and blame before," Ms Ramos-Salas says. "People living with obesity need support like people living with any other chronic diseases." But instead of simply advising patients to "eat less, move more", the guideline encourages doctors to provide supports along the lines of psychological therapy(治疗), medication and bariatric surgery like gastric-bypass surgery(胃分流手术).

The guideline doesn't completely give up standard weight-loss advice. "All individuals, regardless of body size or composition, would benefit from adopting a healthy, well-balanced eating pattern and engaging in regular physical activity," it says.