2 . As my husband and I drove down a country road, we passed a fire station with a sign that read, "Are you ready for the next storm?” Our area had just been in the path of Hurricane Irma, causing downed trees and outages. We were stuck in the dark and cut off from the outside world.

We have had our share of storms in the past--a snowstorm and other heavy snows that knocked down trees, sometimes up to a week at a time. Those days in a cold house weren't fun, but we learned so much from those early storms, things that made later storms easier to bear.

Now we have stored up flashlights, lanterns and candles. We bought a battery-operated radio to keep up with the news. We stocked up on batteries so that we'd have plenty for extended power failures. We make sure our grill（烤架） is ready and its tank is full, and we purchase food that can be easily prepared and then cooked or heated on the grill. And we don't forget to buy emergency chocolate! We have book lights to read in the dark. We keep our car gas tanks full and have emergency cash on hand.

We're ready for the next storm, but we wouldn't have learned to do all those things if we hadn't encountered a storm in the past. The same is true spiritually. Those little storms in our lives are never fun, but they prepare us for the big storms--the big trials--that will come our way, They can teach us some valuable lessons.

Are you ready for the next storm? Now is the time to get ready. . . not when the storm arrives.

3 . Growing up, we are constantly reminded that young people are heavily affected by technology. We are the “antisocial club”, those who prefer to text our friends in the same room rather than make eye contact with them. And even though never-ending studies reveal to us the extent of our social media addiction, we should at least consider that it’s not only our young people’s problem any more.

There’s the rise of the Instagram mums, who like to post an abundance of cute baby pictures, share their mom feelings along the way and show their wonderful lifestyles. They are the so-called “Facebook mum generation”, a growing group of parents that like to overshare.

While all of this might be fine, and even a little humorous, new research suggests that parents’ technology addiction is negatively affecting their children’s behavior. According to the study, 40% of mothers and 32% of fathers have admitted having some sort of phone addiction. This has led to a significant fall in verbal interactions within families and even a decline in mothers’ encouraging their children.

There is no denying that I get annoyed when receiving the words “I’ll be with you soon” from a parent, when all I want to do is ask one question. But, at the same time, every day leaving the room to wait until my father is finished with his “serious business” (Farmville), has now become the norm. Whether you want to escape your disturbing children for a bit, or want to stay up late flicking through Twitter, know that wanting to do all of these is normal. We, your children, know how addictive it can be and how difficult it is to switch off. But before telling us to put our phones away at the table or even worse, listing statistics of how damaging social media can be for us, maybe lead by example, considering how much time you spend on the phone and how this is impacting your children and your relationship with us. Maybe in this way we can work on our addiction together.

4 . Unluckily, there are some rules that teenagers should be allowed to learn in school, but not. They are important to teenagers, although not all of them have to do with their subjects.

Rule 1: Life is not fair. Try to learn to get used to it. Many people won’t understand the real meaning of this rule until they’ve failed to find fairness again and again.

Rule 2: The real world won’t care about you as much as your school does. It will expect you to learn to understand the real world after you leave school. Then you’ll be sure of what to do with real world.

Rule 3: If you think your teacher is terrible, wait until you get a boss. Your boss won’t ask how you feel about your work and will never give you more care or help. He’ll only care about how much money you can help him earn.

Rule 4: TV is not real life. Your life is not a sitcom (情景喜剧). Your problems won’t be solved in 30 or 45 minutes. In real life, people usually have to leave the coffee stores to look for jobs.

Rule 5: Smoking does not make you look cool. Instead, it makes you look moronic (低能的). At the same time, purple hair and pierced body parts make you look like a silly kid. A grown-up teenager should know how to be smart.

5 . There are some very good inventions which, for one reason or another, don’t become popular. These inventions should be better known, even though I think that some of them are crazy. Let’s have a look at some of these inventions and see if you agree that they should be more successful.

The Australians had a great idea to stop people from drinking and driving. The idea was that if a driver wanted to start the car, she or he would have to blow into a bag first. If there was too much alcohol (酒精) in their breath, the car wouldn’t start. It sounded like a great idea to me, but people said that they might need to drive the car in an emergency (紧急情况) even if they had drunk too much alcohol. Another idea I liked was an invention by a scientist who thought his children watched too much TV. He connected the TV to an exercise bike so that the electricity to power the TV was produced by the bike. If the children wanted to watch a lot of TV, they had to pedal (踩动) very hard. I found another invention on the Internet which encouraged good habits. Believe it or not, this invention was an ashtray (烟灰缸) which spoke to you when you lit a cigarette! The “voice” of the ashtray was started by the heat from the cigarette and reminded you how dangerous it is to smoke.

One of the strangest inventions I have come across is a bicycle which can cross rivers! The idea was that when you came to a river, you could inflate a huge plastic ball all around the bike. You would then get into the ball which would float on the river while you pedaled the bike inside the ball! Why not use a bridge instead? A friend of mine at school once bought a strange pair of football shoes. On the bottom of the shoes there was a rotating pad of studs (转动钉垫). The idea was that you would change direction more quickly if the studs rotated(旋转) with you. The problem was that every time you stopped you changed direction whether you wanted to or not! I think he wore those shoes twice! One thing I would like is a baseball cap with a built-in radio so you can listen to sport all day with your hands free. While we are on the subject of sport, the Americans invented a kind of robot for sports fans. If you were watching your team on TV on your own, you could press a button and the robot would do “high fives” with you! Fantastic! I wonder if you have any good ideas for inventions like these.

6 . One of the easiest ways to stop the spread of disease is to simply wash your hands. Twenty seconds of handwashing with soap and water can reduce illnesses and save lives. But, many people, especially children, do not have good handwashing habits. One problem is that children do not wash their hands often enough or long enough. Children may think that it is a tiresome thing to do.

To help handle this problem, two businesswomen from India created a product to turn handwashing into a fun activity.   Amanat Anand and Shubham Issar created a tool called SoaPen, aimed at teaching kids good handwashing habits and encouraging kids to wash their hands with soap appropriately and regularly.

“It’s such a simple habit to do, but the fact is that people aren’t doing it, and it’s resulting in actual deaths---which is shocking. So, we decided to come up with a fun method, said Issar.

As the name suggests, SoaPen is a pen made out of soap. The children draw on their hands with the soap pen and then wash the drawing off. If they don’t spend enough time washing it off, the colors remain on the children’s hands. Issar said it makes sure that children take enough time to wash their hands. This may be especially helpful in a classroom. Often a teacher does not have the time to make each child wash his hands properly.

Kids actually wash their hands for the proper amount of time because they’re drawing on their hands. To obliterate the drawing, they actually wash their hands instead of just going under water and, you know, a one-second wash and off.

Good news is that the school children in Mumbai, India, will soon most likely wash their hands after handling a pet. Issar and Anand stated that SoaPen to be created everywhere will help promote good habits through handwashing in the city across the globe.

7 . Do you always struggle to understand others’ feelings? Perhaps you should listen to your heart.

According to a team of scientists at Anglia Ruskin University in the UK, people who are more aware of their own heartbeat are better at understanding others’ emotions.

Researchers have long suspected (怀疑) that this ability is important for understanding others’ thoughts and feelings.

To test this theory, the British team asked 72 volunteers to count their own heartbeats without feeling a pulse (脉搏). This aimed to see how aware they were of the feelings inside their own bodies.

Then, the volunteers were shown video clips of social interactions (互动), which tested their ability to read the minds of the characters.

During the clips, they were asked questions that required an understanding of the emotions of a certain character — for example, “What is Sandra feeling?” In addition, they were asked questions that did not involve any emotions, such as “What is Michael thinking?” They were also asked non-social questions, like “What was the weather like that evening?”

The results showed that those who had counted their heartbeats most accurately were better at answering questions relating to the characters’ emotions. However, there was no link between the ability to feel what’s going on inside your body and questions that did not involve any emotions.

Punit Shah, lead author of the study, used an example to explain this: If your colleague Michael is rude toward Sandra in public, your body processes (处理) this by increasing your heart rate. This may make you feel anxious and allow you to understand that Sandra is embarrassed.

“If you do not feel your heart rate increase, it may reduce your ability to understand that situation and respond (反应) appropriately,” Shah told The Telegraph.

Researchers believed their findings mean it could be possible to make people more empathetic by training them to listen to their hearts.

This also lends support to the argument that feelings are, at the very least, deeply rooted in physical sensations (感觉).

8 . “He was a nightmare (噩梦),” his mother, Mary said as I talked with her and her son Jamie. “I was sure he was going to end up in prison, or worse”. Seeing Jamie so full of life with his new friends, there was no room for imagination that he was ever a rebellious (叛逆的) kid.

Jamie was raised by his mother after his father left ten years ago. They lived in a small flat with little money. Most of their neighbors were alcoholics, so crime was very common. At middle school, he quickly got in with the wrong crowd and began to steal everything from shoes to phones.

Mary didn’t realize the consequence of the trouble Jamie made until he told her he had been stopped from going to school for three weeks. Mary was very angry, but now she has realized that it was the best thing that had happened to both of them.

During the three weeks, Mary made him volunteer at the local community centre where he saw the street dancers for the first time. “They were so cool and able to express themselves in a way I had never seen before. I asked to join them and they agreed. Because of them I am who I am now.” Jamie told me, tears in his eyes.

Back at school, his whole attitude and behavior improved. “I realized the boys I was hanging out with weren’t cool, stealing wasn’t cool and getting out of school wasn’t cool either. It made me find something I love and have a goal in life.” he said.

Yes, street dance makes him happy. This kind of dance speaks to people, and gives them a purpose.

9 . What I wish I had known at 18

As this year’s new intake of students begin university life, we asked speakers at the FT’s Weekend Festival — authors, comedians, academics and FT columnists — to tell us what they wish they had known when they were 18, and for their tips on getting the most out of university.

Martin Wolf, FT chief economics commentator

The answer to that question ‘what do you wish you had known at 18?’ is nothing. I already knew that university was going to be very exciting, intellectually rewarding as it turned out to be for me — I was at Oxford for six years. It changed me very profoundly intellectually. I’m sure I didn’t know what was going to happen to me and if I look back on my life now — this is more than 50 years ago — all pleasure and excitement comes out of the things you never expected.

Jamie Susskind, barrister and author of ‘Future Politics’

The first people you meet are not necessarily going to be your best friends - don’t worry about it. Don’t get caught up in trying to go to the parties everyone’s expected to go to, rather, try to find people with whom you can forge close connections and who will be with you decades afterwards. You may identify them by doing more listening than speaking. When a lot of people get to university, understandably, they want to tell their new friends who they are and where they are from — but it’s as important to listen, and drink in all these incredibly different people from backgrounds that are completely unlike your own.

Phil Wang, comedian

Break up with your girlfriend or boyfriend, don’t stay together. Leave everyone behind. Your love is not special, there’s a wider world out there and you should take advantage of it. Also, join some societies. I didn’t do that, and I wish I had. It’s possible to feel that you don’t deserve to be there. You should be aware that everybody feels that way. Either have a balanced experience or excel at something, but don’t be mediocre at one thing. If you’re going to be average, at least be average at a bunch of things so you have a full experience.

10 . Two of the saddest words in the English language are “if only(要是……就好了)”. I live my life with the goal of never having to say those words, because they convey regret, lost opportunities, mistakes, and disappointment.

My father is famous in our family for saying “Take the extra minute to do it right.” I always try to live by the “extra minute” rule. When my children were young and likely to cause accidents, I always thought about what I could do to avoid an “if only” moment, whether it was something minor like moving a cup full of hot coffee away from the edge of a counter, or something that required a little more work such as taping padding (衬垫) onto the sharp corners of a glass coffee table.

I don’t only avoid those “if only” moments when it comes to safety. It’s equally important to avoid “if only” in our personal relationships. We all know people who lost a loved one and regretted that they had foregone an opportunity to say “I love you” or “I forgive you.” When my father announced he was going to the eye doctor across from my office on Good Friday, I told him that it was a holiday for my company and I wouldn’t be here. But then I thought about the fact that he was 84 years old and I realized that I shouldn’t give up an opportunity to see him. I called him and told him I had decided to go to work on my day off after all.

I know there will still be occasions when I have to say “if only” about something, but my life is definitely better because of my policy of doing everything possible to avoid that eventuality. And even though it takes an extra minute to do something right, or it occasionally takes an hour or two in my busy schedule to make a personal connection, I know that I’m doing the right thing. I’m buying myself peace of mind and that’s the best kind of insurance for my emotional well-being.