【推荐1】How to Achieve a School Goal

Setting goals can help you stay on top of your studies and earn good grades, but it's important to set the right kinds of goals. Realistic goals can help you succeed in school and in life.     1    

●Decide what type of goal you want to set. There are many possible goals you could set, but the type of goal refers to how you'll measure your progress and success.     2    Process goals focus on the work that you'll do in a given time period. Outcome goals focus on the results of your work.

●Find out the reasons why your goal is important.     3    If that’s the case, it may be important to remind yourself of why that goal is meaningful to you, and why you hope to achieve it. Reflecting on the outcome of that goal may help you stay more focused and driven over time.

●Set up a reward system to stay motivated. Some people work best when they know there is some type of reward to be had.     4    At the same time, it tracks your progress so you'll know whether or not you deserve your "treat" for the day, week, month or term.

●    5    Having support can make a huge difference in your success rate. Not only will the people in your support network help you stay active, they can also celebrate with you once you’ve achieved your goal.

【推荐2】Some days, you are just not feeling motivated. You don’t want to do anything.     1     Whether you want to or not, you will have to show up. Some strategies can give your motivation a boost.

Get up and shake your body. You may even want to jump around, and really get that blood flowing. When you sit at your desk for too long, you become painful. A quick and easy way to treat this pain is by getting back in your body.     2    

Some people develop well under pressure, while others need loose guidelines. There is no one rule for getting you into action. It always depends on you—your individual needs and personal preferences. If you currently find yourself stuck, think back to a time when you last felt motivated. Then ask yourself:     3     How can you recreate this context to move you to action?

We rarely suddenly feel motivated to do certain things and then jump into action.     4     We get started doing something, and then we feel motivated to continue doing that thing. Motivation to exercise is often the result of a few previous sessions of exercising. Motivation to work on a project often comes after having some power on this exact project.

    5     As a distinctive individual, you will have to find the approach that works best for you. This means getting to know you personally—your unique needs and preferences—and what has worked for you before. And if everything else fails, just do something. Any little step can move you in the right direction.

【推荐3】Ideas for a healthier holiday season—both mentally and physically

The holidays can be a stressful time. Whatever the season, it’s important for us to take care of our mental health. Here are a few suggestions to consider:

Share holiday tasks.

Let everyone help with shopping, cooking, cleaning, and event planning.     1     If you really dislike doing dishes, help with cooking instead. Sharing tasks ensures everyone plays a part in making the holidays special.

Have realistic expectations.

No holiday gathering is perfect. Don’t let something like forgetting to cook the turkey ruin the day. Be flexible(灵活的). And let it become another holiday memory.     2    

Give back to others.

One more way is to give back by paying it forward to those less lucky. Some businesses have a built-in choice with their rewards card system that makes you able to select a charity, including local choices, which take a part of your charge and donate it to the charity.

A playful way of brightening someone’s day can include hiding a rock that you painted with a meaningful message or picture.     3     You may also use permanent(永久的) markers or paint pens to draw or colour the rock.

Reflect(回顾) together.

    4     Encourage people to share their favorite part of the holiday, as well as how to make get-togethers even more enjoyable next time.

    5    

For some of us, holidays can be challenging. Stress leading up to them is common. Talking to a friend or family member may help. But you may also want to see a specialist before the holidays start. A mental health expert can help you see things in new ways that may be less stressful.

【推荐2】For 85 years, the Harvard Study of Adult Development has tracked an original group of 724 men and more than 1,300 of their male and female descendants (后代) over three generations, asking thousands of questions and taking hundreds of measurements to find out what really keeps people healthy and happy.

Through all the years of studying these lives, one crucial factor stands out for the consistency and power of its bond to physical health, mental health and longevity: good relationships.

In 2008, researchers telephoned the wives and husbands of Harvard Study couples in their 80s every night for eight nights. Researchers spoke to each partner separately and asked them a series of questions about their days.

On days when these men and women spent more time in the company of others, they were happier. Like most older people, those in the Harvard Study experienced day-to-day rises and falls in their levels of physical pain and health difficulties. But researchers found that the people who were in more satisfying relationships were cushioned (缓冲) somewhat from these ups and downs of mood—their happiness did not decline as much on the days when they had more pain. Simply put, their happy marriages seemed to have a protective effect.

Elizabeth Gillespie, a therapist of couples, stated that although most of us found that our experience of relationships might be hard, and at times, impossible, it is essential to our well-being.

Today we live in much more complicated environments, so meeting our social needs presents different challenges. We might be sitting on a gold mine of vitality that we are not paying attention to, because it is hidden by the shiny appeal of smartphones or pushed to the side by work demands.

【推荐3】Mutual cooperation in which humans cooperate with wild animals is extremely rare. One such system involves the greater honeyguide, a small African bird that leads humans to sources of honey. Once a nest is found, the human honey hunters break into it to obtain honey and bee worms, and the birds benefit from consuming beeswax in the now-exposed honey comb. Both the birds and the humans use specialized sounds to communicate their availability to participate in this cooperative interaction.

The two areas studied by Spottiswoode and Wood are northern Mozambique, where the honey hunters are from the Yao cultural group, and northern Tanzania, where the honey hunters are from the Hadza culture. The Yao communicate with honeyguides using a short and high-pitched sound followed by a low sound ”brrrrhm“, whereas the Hadza use a melodic whistle. Thus, signal and response both vary geographically.

Spotiswoode and Wood propose that the geographic variation they have identified in this mutualism is the product of cultural codevelopment. To qualify as cultural, the cooperative behaviors would have to be acquired through social learning from individuals of the same species. Social learning, however, is less of a given on the honeyguide side. Instead, what is required of honeyguides is another form of vocal learning - comprehension learning — in which the meaning of a signal is learned. Comprehension learning is common in birds. Whether social learning is involved, however, is not so, obvious.

Honeyguides put in considerable effort helping their human partners find food and are faithfully rewarded by being given food in return. In some human cultures, honey hunters purposefully leave out honeycomb to reward honeyeaters, but in others the hunters go, to great length to deny the birds any reward, by collecting, burying, or burning any honeycomb exposed when they destroy a nest. The reason given for these acts is that keeping the birds hungry causes them to continue guiding.

A promising question for future research is whether geographic differences in human cultural preferences for rewarding or not rewarding honeyguides affect the preferences of individual birds for guiding versus taking advantage of the guiding of others.