【推荐3】What does it really mean to be successful?    1    . It is about being able to live a happy life. If you want to have a successful life, here are three things you need to focus on.

1. Believe in yourself

If you don’t believe in yourself, how do you expect other people to? When you believe in yourself, it fuels your creativity and your motivation to do things. All successful people from Gandhi to Tesla believed in themselves.    2    . We all have to trust that we have the ability to turn the impossible into the possible.

2. Know your intention

    3     , it is important to have an understanding of your intention. If your intention is simply rooted in money and fame, you are never going to truly feel successful. Money and fame only serve the ego (自负) and don’t provide true feelings of success. For a truly successful life, your intention has to be rooted in your purpose and passions (热情). When your intention is to serve your purpose, make a change in the world and express your talents, you will feel true success and satisfaction.

3.     4    

Success is all around you right now. Stop to take a moment and you’ll notice the amazing success that is already present in your life.    5    . Being thankful for the tiniest successes in life will help you to create more and more success.

【推荐1】HOW TO GET MORE SLEEP

Many studies warn that not having enough sleep may lead to serious health problems, affecting our daily life, work and study. You’ve probably known this for long, yet you still don’t get a full night sleep due to an incredible work schedule. So what can you do to make more time for sleep, and get a better night’s rest overall?

• Invest in a better-quality mattress. If you’re sleeping on a years-old, worn-out mattress(床垫), it’s no wonder why you wake up feeling tired in the morning.     1     With a new mattress that’s better suited to your sleeping habits, you’ll get to sleep faster and stay asleep consistently.

•     2     There are many habits that can affect how much sleep you get, including how much caffeine you consume throughout the day (and when you consume it — even a few hours before bedtime can interfere with sleep), whether or not you physically exercise, and how long you spend staring at a digital screen before bed.

• Take a closer look at your schedule.    3     In Western culture, there’s a lot of pressure to fill up our schedules to seem important and socially integrated, so your daily activities might have some faults or unnecessary tasks that can be skipped or delayed.     4    

Sleep is even more important than you probably realized, but it’s entirely within your power to reshape your sleeping habits for good. Make sleep your first priority, scheduling time for it the way you’d schedule a meeting, and work the rest of your schedule around it.     5    

【推荐3】American actress Marisa Tomei won an Academy Award for her work in the 1992 movie My Cousin Vinny. People laughed when they saw her film character telling a boyfriend that they need to get married. Why marriage? Because her biological clock is ticking and she wants a baby.

“Well I hate to bring it up because I know you got enough pressure on you already. But…we agreed to get married as soon as you won your first case(law case). Meanwhile, ten years later…my niece…the daughter of my sister is getting married. My biological clock is ticking like this (stomp, stomp, stomp). And the way this case is going…I ain’t never getting married.”

“Lisa, I don’t need this. I swear to God I don’t need this right now.”

Using it this way, a biological clock means the time in a woman’s life when she is able to bear children. In the not-so-distant past, most people thought that when a woman reached her 40s it was too late for her to have children. The time on her biological clock had run out.

Well, that has changed. These days some women are resetting their biological clocks. They are giving themselves more time to have children.

Make no mistake. Being a “Single Mother by Choice” is very different from younger women who find themselves pregnant, perhaps not by choice.

Generally speaking, single mothers by choice are older and well educated. They are usually financially secure and successful in their careers. So, they have the money. What they may not have is a partner.

This is the place in life where writer Kerry Reichs found herself several years ago. She says she did not plan to become a single mother. She says she just did not find the right partner.

“Well, I think I had a set of standards for the partner I was looking for and I didn’t meet anyone that fit those standards. And, at 39 I found myself single, without children and I wanted them very much. So, I made the difficult decision that I could do this on my own.

【推荐2】As we all know, trees are always stationary: they stay more or less where you plant them, and no one worries about finding a tree wandering around a park or back yard.

However, there is one special exception, some say: the so-called walking palm tree (棕桐树) was found in the rainforests of Central and South America. Many people believe it can really walk around. This is because of its unusual root system: while most trees have one trunk, the palm breaks into many smaller roots a few feet off the ground, giving it the appearance of many little legs.

The amazing walking ability of the palm tree has always been told by rainforest guides to tourists for years, and appears in many sources of documents as an amazing plant adaptation. As journalist Sherry Seethaler writes in her book Curious Folks Ask 2: “Screen writers searching for the perfect B-movie (小成本电影) plant hero could take inspiration from the walking palm. The tree slowly walks from shade to sunlight by growing new roots toward the light.”

A tree that walks in search of the sun is a fascinating, strange story. And it’s not true either; the tree is real enough, but it doesn’t walk. It sits where it began to grow, not moving except under the force of wind or an axe.

Biologist Gerardo Avalos is one of the world’s top experts on the palm tree. His analysis of the plant and its roots shows that the walking tree can’t walk because its roots don’t move. A few roots on one side or another may die off, but the trunk itself remains, well, rooted to the spot.

“My paper proves that the belief of the walking palm is just a myth,” Avalos said. “Thinking that a palm tree could actually track the sunlight changes by moving slowly over the forest floor… is a myth that tourist guides find amusing to tell visitors to the rainforest.”