The frightening day of our diving test was here. Our parents thought we were lucky to have an Olympic-size swimming pool at the school. My mom stressed that the swimming pool was one of the best in our city. But I didn’t feel happy about it at all. Instead, I felt afraid of the swimming pool. It was mainly because I was terribly shy.
I was so shy that I always sat at the back of the room in class so I’d not be called upon to read. As for the present physical education class each Monday morning, I would work my way to the back of the line forming at the diving board so I would not have to practice the dives.
Now, it was another Monday morning - the morning of our diving test. My blood ran cold when the teacher Ms. Robbins announced that we would be graded for our final on the most difficult dive- the jackknife. And she added, “This diving test is important. The one who fails has to spare time in the following Monday mornings to practice diving in this swimming pool and attend this test again.”
My body kept shaking with fear as the line to the scary diving board shortened. As I watched, each student seemed to perform the challenging dive effortlessly. And shortly I would have to attempt something that I had never even practiced before.
Then I remembered someone telling me that when you picture yourself doing a skill over and over, it’s just as effective as physically practicing that skill. So I watched carefully as each classmate jumped at the end of the board once, added a jump for height, folded their body in half to reach for their toes, and finally straightened out like an arrow for going into the water. After carefully watching for a while, I was actually in a state of surprise, because all of a sudden I realized that it was possible for me to perform these four steps of diving.
Eventually all classmates except me finished jumping. The teacher announced that it was my turn.
注意：1. 续与词数应为150左右；2. 请按如下格式在答题卡的相应位置作答。
With my heart knocking wildly, I walked down the diving board towards its end.
______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________Knowing I failed, I climbed out of the pool, embarrassed.
______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________Are your children getting on your last nerve? Did a coworker's comment rub you the wrong way? There's no need to plug the steam coming out of your ears. In fact, science now gives you full permission to release those emotions; you might actually be happier for it. If that seems counter—intuitive(违反直觉的), hear us out. A new study suggests that people tend to be happier if they can feel and express emotions as they want. That goes for unpleasant emotions like anger and hatred, too.
An international team of researchers recruited 2,300 university students from the United States, Brazil, China, Germany, Ghana, Israel, Poland, and Singapore. They then asked the participants to tell them which emotions they desired and which ones they actually felt, and then compared those responses to how the participants rated their overall happiness or life satisfaction.
The results showed an interesting trend. While participants wanted to experience more pleasant emotions, they reported higher life satisfaction if the emotions they experienced matched those they desired. More surprising still, 11 percent of people wanted to feel less of positive emotions, such as love and empathy, and 10 percent of people wanted to feel more negative emotions, such as hatred and anger.
At first glance, these result might seem confusing. But there's a simple explanation, according to the study's authors. Happiness is "more than simply feeling pleasure and avoiding pain," they write. It is also learning to release negative emotions when you feel them, instead of ignoring them or bottling them up.
"If you feel emotions you want to feel, even if they're unpleasant, then you're better off," lead researcher Dr Maya Tamir from The Hebrew University of Jerusalem told the BBC News website. 71
