2 . Having faith in something means you trust it completely. People with strong faith are so confident in themselves that they can do anything they set their minds to and get through the toughest times.     1    

Faith improves your daily work. Being faithful in your day-to-day life can help lift your mood.     2     Even something as simple as wearing an inspirational T-shirt that reminds you to have faith can lift your spirits enough to deal with the day.

Faith gives you courage.     3     It motivates you to act on something despite the risks or dangers involved. For instance, you gather the courage to go for a job interview. You think you won’t get the job, but there is always a chance you will.

    4     It is easy to become a victim of anxiety and stress while dealing with so many tasks in this fast-paced world. These worries lead to extreme mental stress and physical problems. However, faith helps you keep stress away. Just keep faith that things will get better. Then you will see anxiety and stress decrease if you have faith in yourself.

Faith helps you in difficult times. Sometimes you may find yourself drowning in despair. Even when you lose your job, suffer the pain of losing a beloved or face any other challenges, remember to have faith.     5     Because of faith, you will be more joyful, hopeful, motivated and even ready to take on challenges and welcome new paths in your life.

4 . New York’s Central Park has a statue dedicated to him, and there’s even been a movie about him: a sled dog named Balto. Now he is the focus of a DNA study, 90 years after he died, to see what made the dog so famously tough (坚韧).

In 1925, this Siberian husky was part of an expedition in Alaska called the serum run, the goal of which was to bring life-saving medicine to young people that were threatened by a deadly disease in the remote town of Nome, over 600 miles away. Balto led the long-distance stretch, and wound up getting most of the honor.

After Balto’s death in 1933, his remains were preserved and put on display at the Cleveland Museum of Natural History.

“Balto’s fame and the fact that he was taxidermized gave us this cool opportunity 100 years later to see what that population of sled dogs would have looked like genetically and to compare him to modern dogs,” said Katherine Moon, a postdoctoral researcher at the University of California.

Her team took skin samples from the dog’s belly and reconstructed its genome — the complete set of genes in an organism. They compared this genetic material with that of 680 contemporary dogs from 135 breeds.

Contrary to a legend that thought that Balto was half wolf — as suggested in an animated Universal Pictures film that came out in 1995 — this analysis found no evidence he had wolf blood. It turned out Balto shared ancestors with modern day Siberian Huskies and the sled dogs of Alaska and Greenland.

Moon’s team also compared Balto’s genes with the genomes of 240 other species of mammals.

This allowed researchers to determine which DNA fragments (片段) were common across all those species and have not therefore changed over the course of millions of years of evolution. This stability suggests that these fragments of DNA are associated with important functions in the animal, and that mutations (基因突变) there could be dangerous.

The bottom line from the research was that Balto had fewer potentially dangerous mutations than modern breeds of dogs did, suggesting he was healthier.

5 . When I was little, I was really little. But my dream was big. I dreamed of being a basketball player. I tried out for the teams at school, but I was never given a chance.

As I got older, I did grow a little bigger, but not a lot bigger. On my 12th birthday, I decided to try a new sport: running. I told Grandpa. “I’m going to be an athlete.”

“Dave.” Grandpa began gently, “if you can’t be big, you can do something big.”

I ran 12 miles on my 12th birthday. On my 13th birthday, I did it again, but I added an extra mile. On my 14th birthday, I ran 14 miles. 15 on my 15th, 16 on my 16th, and you guessed it—17 miles on my 17th birthday.

All this running inspired (激发) another big dream. Someday, I’d run the Boston Marathon (波士顿马拉松赛). I told Grandpa about my decision.

“But, Dave, you haven’t trained for the marathon. Are you sure you’re ready?” Grandpa asked. But he still promised to walk over and cheer me on.

I ran fast that day. But I fell at Mile 18 and was driven to the hospital. Later that night, I called Grandpa and told him I failed.

“No,” he said calmly, “you didn’t fail. You discovered something.”

“I did?” I asked.

“Yes, you discovered that big dreams don’t just come true. They take work. If you train and work hard, I promise to wait for you next year and cheer you on.”

I trained every day, running miles and miles. Sadly, just two months into my training, Grandpa died. He wouldn’t be waiting for my second Boston Marathon. I decided I’d run for him.

That day, I ran fast. “Keep going! You can do it!” His words filled my head as I forced my legs to make each painful step. As I crossed the finish line, I threw my arms in the air and cried, “Grandpa, we did it!”

6 . There is a dangerous view in today’s society, and it is a restriction to happiness, success, and growth. The view states that human beings are inner fragile (内在脆弱) and that the only way to be happy and successful in life is to protect oneself by avoiding misfortune.

Not only are those statements false, but the actions we take believing them-to be “protective” also usually limit happiness and even stop personal and professional growth. Take sports as an example, seldom do those who play the game of life not to lose ever really win.

Rather than fear and try to avoid all misfortune, perhaps we should accept the misfortune and the occasional crises in life and prepare for them. As a muscle grows stronger with stress, so can people, teams, organizations, even communities. Crisis reveals true strength.

Sports psychologists Fletcher and Sarkar have studied Olympic gold medal winners. They conclude, “Indeed, most of the participants argued that if they had not experienced certain types of stressors at specific times, including highly demanding misfortunes, they would not have won their gold medals.”

Psychologists Richard Tedeschi and Lawrence Calhoun created the term “posttraumatic growth.” They describe it as the experience of positive change that occurs as a result of highly challenging life crises. It is shown in a variety of ways, including an increased appreciation for life in general, more meaningful interpersonal relationships, an increased sense of personal strength, changed priorities, and a richer existential and spiritual life.

The remarkable success stories that can arise after moments of great challenge and failure are countless. Thomas Edison failed thousands of times trying to create a light bulb filament (灯丝) that would light and burn in a consistent manner, but finally created the world’s first practical light bulb. Harland Sanders developed the brand Kentucky Fried Chicken (KFC) in his 60s while recovering from a failed career as a lawyer. There are thousands of other lesser-known people, whose lives are characterized by key moments of great recovery from difficulty. Let us understand that growth arises from challenge and even failure. The myth of fragility and overprotection keeps us all from realizing our full potential.