【推荐3】Maybe you don’t think animals have certain mental powers which human beings do not have. But the truth is that some of them have instincts, and besides this, I am sure they can feel certain things we humans cannot. A personal experience showed me this.

Some years ago, I had a dog named Howard. From the time when he was a puppy, he was timid, so we named him Howard, sounding like “coward”! He was especially afraid of thunderstorms. At the first flash of lightning or crash of thunder, he would run whining into his house and hide under a table.

I often went for a walk with Howard. Once, as we were walking along a road, it began to rain. I quickly ran to a bus stop for shelter. The bus stop had a roof supported by metal poles. Soon after I had got there, Howard caught my trousers in his teeth and tried to pull me away. At first I was puzzled and a little angry at his behavior. But I decided to humor him and walked away from the shelter into the rain and started to go home.

When I was about two hundred metres from the shelter, there came a flash of lightning and soon after, there was thunder which nearly deafened me. Howard stopped walking and began whining. Thinking he was afraid, I bent to pick him up. As I straightened up, I glanced at the bus shelter we had just left. I was shocked to see that two of the poles were bent and the roof was lying on the ground, broken. The shelter had been struck by the bolt of lightning!

【推荐1】When I think of the word perfect, I think of something few can achieve, like high beauty standards, Helen, the super-smart girl in my class, or anything I can compare myself to. For weeks, I have been noticing this girl who is in a few of my middle school classes. She has fabulous long dark hair, big eyes, and the most beautiful face. She always wears the prettiest outfits and seems to be the most popular girl in school, at least in my eyes. It seems like she has a perfect life.

One day, I was in language arts talking to my teacher about one of the upcoming tests, when I saw the girl staring at me. I immediately felt nervous, thinking, “Why is she looking at me? Did I do something wrong? Is my hair messed up?” When the class was dismissed and everyone rushed to their next class, Helen caught up to me and said, “I just thought you should know, I think you are really pretty.” I replied doubtfully, “Oh my god, thank you!” I then watched her as she walked away and thought, “She thinks I am pretty?”

The whole day, I thought about one thing: Why does she think that? After thinking about that topic in my head through each second of the day, I came to learn one big lesson. I learned that everyone has their own insecurities even though it may not seem like it on the outside. In this case, I was thinking that she was everything I wanted to be and she thought the same of me. Neither of us are perfect. We are just us and that’s OK. We are all that perfect person we have been comparing ourselves to in our own special way. It is our choice to either accept that and love ourselves or keep torturing (折磨) ourselves with cruel comparisons. When I really look at myself, not from my point of view but a fresh one, I do see everything I want to be. I see a beautiful, smart, kind girl who is unique. I think that being able to fully love yourself is the true meaning of the word perfect.

【推荐2】Rene Compean had hiked the park near his home in Southern California many times. But after exploring a new path last April, he was lost.

With no flashlight, only a little water and less than ten percent battery remaining on his cell phone, Compean climbed to a spot where he found at least one bar of signal. “SOS. My phone is going to die. I’m lost,” he texted a friend, attaching a photo showing where he was. The shot showed his dirty legs hanging over a number of steep rocks. All Compean could do then was to wait and hope.

Sixty miles away in Ventura, Ben Kuo was working at home when he read a tweet from the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department, showing an unclear image of a man’s legs. The sheriff’s search-and-rescue teams had spent the previous night unsuccessfully looking for Compean, so they released the photo to the public, hoping someone might know the location.

When he saw the unclear picture, he pulled up a satellite map on his laptop. The first thing he noticed in Compean’s photo was patches of greenery. After comparing it to the satellite map, Kuo realized something: He’s got to be on the south side because there’s not really any green valleys on the north side.

That finding tightened his search, leading him to an area that resembled the place in the image. The final step was cross-referencing(相互参照) the original photo with 3D images of the area from Google Earth. The locations matched!

He quickly called the sheriff’s department with the latitude and longitude supplied by Google Earth. Soon, a search-and-rescue team helicopter was in the air, hovering above Compean.

After spending 27 hours alone in the wilderness, Compean cried, “I’m safe!”

Sgt. John Gilbert in the sheriff’s department thought Compean’s story probably would have ended very differently had a total stranger with strong satellite skills and a sharp eye for detail not taken action.

【推荐2】Everybody, at some point in his or her life, has experienced setbacks. It could be something as simple as not getting the job you wanted, or getting lower marks even after hard work. How you get back up after being hit makes you successful.

Once, a young schoolboy was caught in a fire accident in his school and was assumed that he would not live. His mother was told that he was sure to die, for the terrible fire had destroyed the lower half of his body. Even if he were to survive, he would be lame throughout his life.

But the brave boy did not want to die nor did he want to be lame. Much to the amazement of the doctor, he did survive. But unfortunately from his waist down, he had no motor ability. His thin legs just hung there, lifeless. Eventually he left the hospital. But his determination to walk was unshakable. At home, when he was not in bed, he had to stay in a wheelchair. One day, he threw himself from the chair and pulled himself across the grass, dragging his legs behind him. He reached the fence, raised himself up and then began dragging himself along the fence, firmly determined. He did this every day, with faith in himself that he would be able to walk unaided. With his iron determination, he did develop the ability to stand up, then to walk on and off, then to walk by himself and then to run.

He began to walk to school, and then ran to school, and then ran for the joy of running. Later in college he was in the track team.

In February 1934, in New York City’s Madison Square Garden, this young man who was not expected to survive, who would surely never walk, who could never hope to run — this determined young man, Dr. Glenn Cunningham, ran the world’s fastest mile.

A good example of the power of positive thinking and faith in oneself, Glenn Cunningham continues to be an inspiration (鼓舞人心的人) for many, and his story is brilliant evidence to show how one can bounce back even when all difficulties are piled on one, to the degree that death seems the preferable option.

【推荐3】Alex Elman runs a big business—something hard to imagine after she lost her sight in her twenties. But Elman says that losing her sight helped her focus on finding success.

Elman’s father planted a hillside vineyard in western Massachusetts in 1981. It’s where Elman fled during the darkest period of her life. When she was 27 years old, she went blind due to complications from juvenile diabetes(幼年型糖尿病) 17 years ago. She recalled, “I hid in my home. I hid in the place, to me, that was the safest place in the world.”

Elman is now the founder of Alex Elman Wines, a growing portfolio(系列产品) of organic wines from all around the world: Chianti from Italy, Torrontes from Argentina. Elman doesn’t work alone. Her assistant, a guide dog named Hanley, is something of a wine snob, and quite a beggar. Hanley travels to all of the wineries that Elman does, from South America to Europe.

At first, Elman resisted the idea of a seeing-eye-dog. Now it’s hard to imagine her life, or her business, without him. She said. “When someone tells me something is organic and I don’t really believe it because I taste something funny on it, I’ll put it in front of his face and if he likes the wine, he’ll actually go in and sniff it. If it’s not right, he’ll turn his head away...He gets in the dirt with me. He scratches around. He makes sure that we see earthworms and butterflies. That’s how we know that the soil is actually organic, that there are no chemicals.”

Elman told CBS News she believes the loss of her vision was a gift. She said, “It allowed me to pay attention to what I thought was important and also to be able to teach people that the broken hang nail is not a big deal, you know what I mean? Don’t sweat the small stuff. Don’t sweat the big stuff either.”