1 . The Oxford dictionary defines the word “success” as “an accomplishment of an aim” and “attaining fame, social status (地位) or wealth”. Is this how we measure success in life? If you are rich, you’ll have people say “you have everything” or “you’re already successful in life” or a similar statement that means you have money and are well settled. There are many people who feel this way, while there are many who feel that success is not just having a lot of money.

The thing is, your concept of success is connected to your beliefs and values, and if your values tell you that success in life means money, then there is nothing that will change your mind. On the other hand, if your value system says that having money, stability, peace, happiness and contentment in your life are equally important, then you have an entirely different idea of success in life. There are a lot of people in this world that are wealthy. However, they are unhappy. There are a lot of people who do not make a lot of money, but are happy with what they have.

There are different kinds of people in the world, and each one has a different view on what being successful really is about. Here are a few common opinions about success.

●Success in life means having money.

●Success in life means winning games or competitions.

●Success in life means achieving your goal.

●Success in life means getting the job you wanted.

●Success in life means owning a nice house, a good car and having all the costly comforts life has to offer.

●Success in life means being famous.

●Success in life means having influence, power and control.

●Success in life means being free from insecurities, fears and wants.

The one thing that is common to the statements above is that they include accomplishment, attainment and fulfillment (履行). Another thing is that it’s something you yearn for or that gives you an unspoken advantage over others.

2 . Vigilance: The Next Strategic Weapon for Entrepreneurs

Can your organization see around corners? It’s a crucial capability in today’s world. Kodak and digital cameras, Nokia and the smartphone: the pages of business history are crowded with examples of companies that missed the boat. And you can expect more chapters to be written, considering the unprecedented levels of change and ______ today. It’s become even harder to spot early warning signals, making vigilance an ever more ______ leadership capability. Are you truly vigilant? And just what does that take?

We ______ this issue by comparing vigilant and vulnerable companies. We did not just want to understand why companies ______ or missed external opportunities but also why some leaders got blindsided by internal problems that ______ for years. Why did Volkswagen or Boeing miss the tripwires(使人挫败的人或事)or run through red lights that were flashing before scandals and disasters unfolded?

Whether it’s a missed opportunity or threat, from either inside or outside the organization, the root cause is usually ______ of organizational vigilance. We all miss signals due to limited attention, competing ______ , and, often, a lack of curiosity. What manager has not said, “My plate is full,” then ______ a signal of potential problem and later regretted it?

In my new book See Sooner, Act Faster, coauthored with Wharton professor George Day, we ______ the key skills and practices of vigilant organizations and leaders.

______ methods of strategic planning, risk analysis and decision modeling are less effective today. This may seem odd, given the growing information processing capabilities available. But there is just too much uncertainty on the surface and too little ______ at the core. To deal with this new reality, you’re going to need a new set of skill-building tools, including: how to allocate the scarce resource of attention, detect weak signals and respond ______ ahead of competitors. You can use the diagnostic survey at the end of our book to check current levels of vigilance in your organization. Then, ______ the leadership agenda that follows to build vigilance throughout your organization as planned.

Assemble a diverse team of independent thinkers from both inside and outside the company. Invite everyone to ______ concerns, doubts or intuitions. The leadership team can then spotlight issues that may emerge as big ones over the next few years.

Many companies interrogate the present by monitoring blogs, social media sites and chat rooms for signs of brewing trouble with customers, but they may not really see ahead. Truly vigilant organizations, ______ , track market changes by studying cases that signal opportunities or threats. Leaders should also develop different future scenarios that capture how today’s major uncertainties might jointly play out in years to come.

Looking around corners for new threats and opportunities allow leaders to peer farther ahead than rivals.

3 . Forty-five minutes was considered an appropriate amount of time to supply 12-year-old me — and 20 other teenagers — with enough information about eating disorders to last us through high school. A documentary shown on a dusty VHS tape that had obviously been in use since the early 2000s, about two girls suffering from anorexia and bulimia, had been my only source for eating disorder awareness for five years. No reflection time followed, no discussion was started, and no questions were asked.

Flash forward five years I still know nothing. It wasn’t until I was 16 that I learned, via TikTok, that my daily diet of 1,000 calories is barely enough for a two-year-old, let alone a developing teenager. Despite being educated in America’s sixth best county in education, I only had a single image of what an eating disorder looked like: a skin-and-bones teenage girl with sunken eyes. Schools are clearly ill-equipped to educate students on eating disorders and how they can prevent them.

Teenagers have failed to learn about the most common eating disorder in the country because it isn’t taught in many school curriculum: binge eating disorder (暴食症). It is more common than anorexia, affecting 2.8 million Americans, including 1.2 percent of all adolescents. Additionally, it’s reported that males make up 40 percent of those with binge eating disorder, which contradicts the existing opinion that only women are affected by eating disorders.

Instead of learning about eating disorders, my junior health class taught me how to count my calories. According to registered dietitian Christy Harrison, “disordered eating patterns began with calorie counting.” Despite this, health classes across the country continue to require students to track their daily calorie intake.

We need a developed and well-informed eating disorder curriculum. After all, the damage of a seemingly harmless 45-minute video may last someone a lifetime.

5 . Hugely ambitious in scope, The Lord of the Rings occupies an uncomfortable position in 20th century literature. This book of J.R.R.Tolkien’s poses a challenge to modern literature and its defenders. (Tolkien on his _______: “Some who have read the book, or at any rate have reviewed it, have found it boring, ridiculous, or annoying; and I have no cause to complain, since I have similar opinions of their works, or of the kinds of writing that they evidently _________.”) Yet The Lord of the Rings has enjoyed massive and enduring popularity. It would seem that Tolkien’s work supplied something that was _________ among the formal innovations of 20th century fiction, something for which readers were hungry. But what was it, and why was it important?

It seems that the key point lies in Tolkien’s wholehearted rejection of modernity and modernism. This is what so powerfully _________ some readers, and just as powerfully drives away others. In his book J.R.R.Tolkien: Author of the Century, T.A. Shippey expands on this idea by arguing that Tolkien saw his story of Middle-earth not as fiction or invention, but as the _________ of something genuine that had become buried beneath the fairy tale and nursery rhythm.

“However fanciful Tolkien’s creation of Middle earth was,” Shippey writes, “he did not think that he was entirely _________. He was ‘reconstructing’, he was harmonizing conflicts in his source-texts, sometimes he was supplying entirely new concepts, but he was also reaching back to an imaginative world which he believed had once really _________, at least in a collective imagination.”

The book is also deeply grounded in Tolkien’s linguistic expertise （语言专长） —he _________ whole languages for his characters. Sometimes he became so absorbed in the creation of languages, in fact, that he _________ the story itself for months or years at a time, believing he could not continue until some inconsistency（不一致）in his invented world had been resolved. But Tolkien’s great intellect and knowledge is not the source of his ____________; without his storytelling gift, The Lord of the Rings would be little more than a curiosity. And this gift seems to originate straight from his ____________ to break from classical and traditional forms.

Tolkien himself often spoke of his work as something ‘found’ or ‘discovered’, something whose existence was ____________ of him. It’s wise to be careful with this sort of interpretation, but it seems ____________ that he believed his work to be something given, something revealed, which contained a kind of truth beyond measure. ____________, his details have the weight of reality, and because of this his great sweep of story feels real as well; you might say that his ____________ castles are built with a certain amount of genuine stone.

6 . Who is a genius? This question has greatly interested humankind for centuries.

Let’s state clearly: Einstein was a genius. His face is almost the international symbol for genius. But we want to go beyond one man and explore the nature of genius itself. Why is it that some people are so much more intelligent or creative than the rest of us? And who are they?

In the sciences and arts, those praised as geniuses were most often white men, of European origin. Perhaps this is not a surprise. It’s said that history is written by the victors, and those victors set the standards for admission to the genius club. When contributions were made by geniuses outside the club—women, or people of a different color or belief—they were unacknowledged and rejected by others.

A study recently published by Science found that as young as age six, girls are less likely than boys to say that members of their gender(性别)are “really, really smart.” Even worse, the study found that girls act on that belief: Around age six they start to avoid activities said to be for children who are “really, really smart.” Can our planet afford to have any great thinkers become discouraged and give up? It doesn’t take a genius to know the answer: absolutely not.

Here’s the good news. In a wired world with constant global communication, we’re all positioned to see flashes of genius wherever they appear. And the more we look, the more we will see that social factors(因素)like gender, race, and class do not determine the appearance of genius. As a writer says, future geniuses come from those with “intelligence, creativity, perseverance(毅力), and simple good fortune, who are able to change the world.”