【推荐1】In my “Dare to Connect” workshop, I instructed all my students to participate full-out in their jobs for one entire week. I asked them to “act as if” their _________ really made a difference to everyone around them. The key _________ they should bear in mind was: If I were really important here, what would I be doing?

Peggy _________ the assignment at the beginning. She hated her job. Each day was suffering as she watched the clock _________ move through eight painful hours. With great skepticism, she_________ agreed to try it for just one week—to _________   100 percent to her job, “as if” she really _________ .

The following week, as I watched Peggy walk into the room, I couldn't believe the _________ in her energy level. With _________ in her voice, she reported:

“First, I stopped complaining about the job and started to use some plants and posters to __________ the office. I then started to really pay attention to the people I__________ with. If someone seemed __________ , I asked if there was anything wrong and if I could help. Every day, I made a list of things I wanted to__________ I was really __________ by how much I could do in a day when I__________ what I was doing! I put a sign with that question on my desk. And every time I started to fall back into my__________ patterns of boredom and complaining, the __________ reminded me what I was supposed to be doing. That really__________.”

What a difference a simple question made in just one short __________! It made Peggy feel __________ to everyone and everything around her. She also learned a way to transform any work experience.

【推荐2】When she was 86, Mom moved to our city. My husband, Kevin, and I found a lovely apartment for her. I was happy to help take care of her ________ she arrived.

The day after she moved in, she called me to ________ about the food at the facility. “The pizza was like rubber. I couldn’t ________ it.” “Mom, you’re complaining to me. Wouldn’t it make more sense to tell someone who can ________the problem?” We hung up. This was only her second day here! And week after week, Mom found more to complain about.

When with my friend Beth, I spent 20 minutes sharing how Mom’s attitude

________ me. “She seems ________. After everything Kevin and I do for her, all we hear is what she doesn’t like.” As the words spilled from my lips, I realized that I’d developed the same ________ of complaining that annoyed me so much in Mom.

I decided to keep a better watch on my ________. Things went fine for a few weeks. But soon I felt powerless to ________ by myself and couldn’t help complaining to Beth about Mom’s ________ again.

A few days later, I received a journal from my friend Torry. On the first page, he had written, “Jeanette, I use such a journal every day to ________ things I’m thankful for.” I wrote three things I was grateful for. ________ filled my heart. Maybe this was it. It was a joyous ________ that helped me overcome the complaining—Gratitude.

Over the next few months, as I continued, I noticed little things I’d ________. Life was handing out gift after gift, including Mom, complaints and all. I couldn’t change her; I could only________ her.

【推荐3】Henry remembers the day well. It was a day that would change his life. He was sitting at the kitchen table, watching his ten-year-old granddaughter, Sophia, do her homework. She had asked him a question about history and was now _________ him with big brown eyes, waiting for an answer. Henry looked at the kettle and then out of the kitchen window. Henry can still hear himself say, “I’m sorry, my dear. I don’t know.”

Henry had spent forty years working as a librarian in a school. He was now _________ and spent his days looking after Sophia. However, he felt that he should be doing more with his life, though he was in his seventies with grey hair and _________ wrinkles in his forehead (额头). As Sophia continued her homework, he read an article in the newspaper about the health _________ of older people going back to university. The article said that it kept the brain _________ and helped prevent loneliness. He made the _________ there and then. The next morning, he would go to Birkbeck, University of London and take a _________ in history.

After four years, Henry got his degree in history. “_________ the course has given me such a sense of achievement,” he says. “It has also made me _________ about doing all the other things that I’ve never had the courage to try before. It’s __________ too old to learn.”