2 . Real financial security and freedom is not in our job but in our passion. It’s easy to define and evaluate a man by his pursuit. Joseph Campbell once said, “Follow your dream and the universe will open doors where there are only walls.”

In life, we’ll always be found doing any of these two things: either making a living or making a difference. Pensions (养老金) and salaries stop many from pursuing excellence while passion unlocks hidden potentials that equip us for challenges and opportunities. A job helps us make a living while passion enables us to make a difference.

I want to sincerely help to adjust and clarify the misguided belief among workers that a job is a means of livelihood. Rather, it should be a means to fuel our passion. The earlier you realize this basic truth of life, the more clearly you’ll be able to position yourself in living a life of impact and value.

The success of Kentucky Fried Chicken (KFC) shows how meaningful it is to pursue your passion instead of your pension. Its founder, Colonel Harland Sanders, didn’t realize this until he was given his first social security check of 105 dollars. But he decided that there surely was something to do for himself and other people instead of living on that small pension. He was determined to engage himself in what brought him impact and value. Drawing inspiration from his mother’s special recipe for fried chicken, he invented “finger-licking” seasoning with eleven spices and herbs. Despite much rejection, he managed to round up some investors and promote company’s rapid expansion to more than 6,000 locations. Sanders’ life pointed towards two facts about making a difference: one, there is no age that is too old to make a difference; two, there is nothing too small or insignificant to make a difference with, as long as it is your passion.

3 . Many of us seem to have lives that follow a certain path. From kindergarten all the way to marriage, every stage of our lives seems to be preset. Although this works well for many people, according to British motivational philosopher Jay Shetty, there is no “right” schedule to live our lives by.

A few months ago, a video of Shetty’s speech Before You Feel Pressure went viral on the Internet across the world. In the video, he sends an important message that we should think “outside of the path” and have the courage to follow our hearts. Shetty adds that, we don’t have to get stressed and put ourselves in a race with our peers or judge our lives based on others. Everything in life happens according to our time, our clocks.

In his inspiring speech, Shetty points out that UK author J. K. Rowling got her famous Harry Potter series published at age 32, after being turned down by 12 publishers. Shetty also mentions that Chinese businessman Jack Ma didn’t even start the Alibaba Group until he was 35 and US actor Morgan Freeman didn’t get his big break until he was 52 years old.

We shouldn’t let anyone rush us. As Albert Einstein once said, “Not everything that counts can be counted, and not everything that’s counted truly counts. ”

The key to staying on our own tracks is to be patient and embrace our own passions. In Australian nurse Bronnie Ware’s best-selling book, she recorded the regrets of her dying patients, and the top one on the list was, “I wish l had the courage to live a life true to myself, not the one others expected of me.” Indeed, we are all unique in our personalities and gifts, and there’s no perfect fit for all. We should listen to our inner voices and unlearn what the world has taught us.

“It is important to allow people to go back to being self-aware of their own interests, needs and concerns”, Shetty told National Geographic. “It’s disconnecting from what ‘makes sense’ to what actually moves you and what makes sense internally.”

7 . Feeling hungry? If so, what’s the easiest way to satisfy your hunger? Many of us will reach for a takeaway menu and order some delicious but possibly unhealthy food. And our increasingly busy and hectic lives, or some other reasons that we lack the skills to prepare a meal for ourselves might add to our need to buy ready-made food on the go or delivered to home.

Eating options (the freedom to choose) are endless, and new technology means we can feed our cravings or eager desires at the push of a button. Takeaway delivery apps make ordering food quick and convenient, and during the recent corona virus (冠状病毒) crisis, it provided a lifeline to those stuck at home with nothing to cook or who lacked the skills to prepare a meal for themselves. It’s estimated (估计) that in the UK alone, people eat three million takeaway meals a day, and the three biggest delivery apps together offer a choice of 100 cuisines from 60,000 restaurants. Amelia Brophy, Head of UK Data Products at YouGov, told the BBC that its research “suggests that the frequency of takeaways ordered is expected to increase in the future”.

It’s no wonder we are tempted and attracted to skip the grocery shopping, bypass the kitchen, and tuck into something that someone else has prepared. But ordering a deep crust pizza, a spicy curry or a box of noodles, can come at a price both financially and to our health. Eating too much processed and unhealthy fast food has some effect on obesity (肥胖) and the risk of developing certain metabolic and cardiovascular diseases. A few years ago, The BBC Good Food Nation Survey found that most people ate fast food on average two days per week. But, in the 16 to 20-year-old category, one in six ate fast food at least twice a day.

Of course, reducing salt, sugar and fat is one way to make takeaway food healthier, as well as offering smaller portion sizes. But the best advice you might want to take away from this Takeaway English is to find a recipe book and try making your own nutritious meal. And if you haven’t got time, try ordering a healthier alternative from the menu.

8 . Boxing is a popular sport that many people seem to be fascinated by. Newspapers, magazines and sports programmes on TV frequently ________ boxing matches. Professional boxers earn a lot of money, and successful boxers are ________ as big heroes.

It seems to me that some people, especially men, find it ________ because it is an aggressive sport. When they watch a boxing match, they can ________ the winning boxer, and this gives them the feeling of being a ________ themselves. It is a fact that many people have feelings of aggression from time to time, but they cannot show their ________ in their everyday lives. Watching a boxing match gives them an outlet for this aggression.

However, there is a ________ side to boxing. It can be a very dangerous sport. Although boxers wear gloves during the fights, and amateur boxers ________ have to wear helmets, there have frequently been accidents in both professional and amateur boxing, sometimes with ________ consequences. Boxers have suffered from head injuries, and occasionally, fighters have even been killed as a result of being knocked out in the ________. Furthermore, studies have shown that there are often long-term effects of boxing, in the form of serious brain ________, even if a boxer has never been knocked out.

I am personally not at all in ________ of aggressive sports like boxing. I think it would be better if less time was ________ to aggressive sports on TV, and we welcomed more men and women from non-aggressive sports as our heroes and heroines in our society. I believe that the world is aggressive enough already! Of course, people like ________ sports, and so do I, but I think that ________ other people in an aggressive way is not something that should be regarded as a sport.

9 . Friday was "Chatty Bus day", an experiment aimed at getting people to talk to each other on public transport. This is not an idea that would appeal to those who commute in the rush hour, because there is a smaller distance within which it's just as uncomfortable to talk. Elbow(肘) room is a precondition for sociability. It is no coincidence that the first truly personal music player, the Sony Walkman, was invented in Japan where the commuter trains are literally crowded with people.

We will also not talk to strangers who are physically too far away, of course. No one wants to shout their small talk. Only on country buses or similar unhurried and uncrowded forms of public transport can people reach out to their neighbors, confident that they are doing so from a position of strength and autonomy.

For all these drawbacks, the idea of talking to strangers is still a good one, and the promotion of sociability is good for society. Although it does seem to be a general rule that people are friendlier the fewer there are of them and more hostile and indifferent as cities get more crowded, there are still considerable cultural variations. And there is evidence that friendlier places are also healthier, and their inhabitants happier.

It is true that the apparent loneliness of many people on public transport is a false impression.

Many will be caught up with conversations with distant friends on their phones; some will be talking to the people in books. Some may be in willed solitude with their headphones. But there are always people who would be interested in an unexpected conversation with a stranger. This need not go on for too long.

It is not large and possibly life-changing conversations that are what most people in loneliness miss most. What they really need is not deep thought but superficiality. The kind of conversation that you could have with anyone reminds you that you yourself might be anyone. It is a release from the prison of the self, which is where lonely people serve their sentences, uncertain whether they ever can be paroled(假释). Friendship may be too rare a gift to hope for, but sometimes the kindest thing to say is also the simplest: "Don't be a stranger"-and sometimes that's also enough.

10 . Throwing away unwanted food has become a big issue in the world. While some of us throw away unwanted items, people in other parts of the world face food shortages and are starving. It’s a shocking fact that a third of the world’s food is wasted each year, which is enough to feed a billion hungry people.

You may think supermarkets are the main contributors to this mountain of food. After all, they do desert stuff that is past its sell-by-date and they often refuse to sell fruits or vegetables that are in the wrong shape or look damaged. They’ve also been criticized for encouraging customers to buy more than they need through promotions such as “buy one and get one free”.

But the biggest culprit for creating food waste is us human beings. In Europe, an incredible 53% of food waste comes from households, which results in 88 million tons of food waste a year. So instead of filling our bellies, our food is filling up landfill sites.

In Denmark, a woman called Selina Juul has been working hard to solve this problem. She moved from Russia many years ago and was amazed to see the abundance of food available in the supermarkets. But despite so much availability, she found that people were buying more than they needed and throwing too much away.

She convinced some supermarkets to stop selling their items in bulk (大量) so that people bought only what they needed. She produced a leftover cookbook and set up an education program in schools, which has helped create a significant 25% reduction in food waste.

Clearly, we need to think twice when we buy something in supermarkets or online, and when we’re at home we should make the most of the food we have — using recipes that use up our leftovers or even sharing our remaining food with our friends and neighbors.