1 . The quality of patience goes a long way toward your goal of creating a more peaceful and loving self. The more patient you are, the more accepting you will be of what life is, rather than insisting that life be exactly as you would like it to be. Without patience, life is extremely frustrating.     1     Patience adds some ease and acceptance to your life. It’s important for inner peace.

    2     If you are stuck in a traffic jam, late for an appointment, being patient would mean keeping yourself from building a mental snowball before your thinking gets out of hand and gently reminding yourself to relax. It might also be a good time to breathe as well as an opportunity to remind yourself that, in the bigger scheme of things, being late is “small stuff”.

Patience is a quality of heart that can be greatly enhanced with deliberate practice.    3     They are the periods of time that I set up in my mind to practise the art of patience. Life itself becomes a classroom, and the curriculum is patience. You can start with as little as five minutes and build up your capacity for patience over time. What you’ll discover is truly amazing. Your intention to be patient, especially if you know it’s only for a short while, immediately strengthens your capacity for patience. Patience is one of those qualities where success feeds on itself. Once you reach little milestone—five minutes of successful patience—you’ll begin to see that you do indeed have the capacity to be patient, even for longer periods of time. Over time, you may even become a patient person.

Being patient will help you to keep your perspective. You will see even a difficult situation, say your present challenge, isn’t “life or death” but simply a minor obstacle that must be dealt with.     4    

A．An effective way that I have found to deepen my own patience is to create actual practise periods.

B．You are more easily annoyed and bothered.

C．It is generally believed that the quality of being patient is very difficult to develop.

D．Becoming more patient involves opening your heart to the present moment, even if you don’t like it.

E．Without patience, you will see the same scene as an emergency complete with yelling, frustration, hurt feelings and high blood pressure.

F．If you lack patience, you are destined to fail in what you are pursuing.

7 . Who’s in control of your life? Who’s pulling your strings? For the most of us, it’s other people society, colleagues, friends, family or our community.

We learned this way of operating when we were very young, of course.     1     Therefore we learned to do everything we could to make other people like us. As Oscar Wilde puts it, “Most people are other people. Their thoughts are someone else’s opinions, their lives a mimicry (模仿), their passions a quotation.”

So when people tell us how wonderful we are, it makes us feel good. We long for this good feeling like a drug  we are addicted to it and seek it out wherever we can.     2     Just as drug addicts and alcoholics live worsened lives to keep getting their fix (成瘾物), we worsen our own existence to get our own constant fix of approval.

But just as with any drug, there is a price to pay. The price of the approval drug is freedom the freedom to be ourselves. The truth is that we cannot control what other people think. People have their own schedule and they come with their own baggage and, in the end, they’re more interested in themselves than in you.     3     Everyone has a different way of thinking, and people change their opinions all the time. The person who tries to please everyone will only end up getting exhausted and probably pleasing no one in the process.

So how can we take back control?     4     We should guide ourselves by means of a set of values  not values imposed from the outside by others, but innate values which come from within. If we are driven by these values and not by the changing opinions and value systems of others, we will live a more authentic, effective, purposeful and happy life.

A．It’s the inner self born in our mind that is keeping us under control.

B．Furthermore, if we try to live by the opinions of others, we will build our life on sinking sand.

C．We discovered that feeling important and feeling accepted was a nice experience.

D．As a matter of fact, people sometimes fail to understand who they are and where they are going.

E．I think there’s only one waymake a conscious decision to stop caring what other people think.

F．Therefore, we are so eager for the approval of others that we live unhappy and limited lives, failing to do the things we really want to.

9 . Dr. Thomas Gilovich, psychology professor at Cornell University, has studied the psychology of spending for over 20 years. Lately, Gilovich has been making a stir with his newest area of research, which explores the idea that people derive more satisfaction from experiential purchases than from material ones—and that the anticipation of an experience brings higher levels of pleasure as well.

According to Dr. Gilovich, “We buy things to make us happy, and we succeed, but only for a while. New things are exciting to us at first, but then we adapt to them. ”In other words, once the freshness of our newest purchase wears off, we begin looking for something else to buy to make us happy.

“People often think spending money on an experience is not as wise an investment as spending it on a material possession,” Gilovich says. “They think the experience will come and go in a flash, and they’ll be left with little compared to owning an item. But in reality we remember experiences long afterward, while we soon become used to our possessions. At the same time, we also enjoy the anticipation of having an experience more than the anticipation of owning a possession.”

Dr. Gilovich found that our satisfaction with possessions fades over time. Yet our happiness over things we’ve experienced increases. For that reason, he has concluded that we are spending our money on the wrong things. A study out of San Francisco State University agrees. The research showed that those people who spent money on experiences instead of possessions were happier. They also thought their money was better invested.

To begin with, activities like a trip, adventure, hobby, etc. tend to bring the participants together and unite them over a shared interest. According to Gilovich, “We consume experiences directly with other people. “As a result, these experiences typically create a positive link and good feelings toward the other person or people.

Besides, your experience shows others who you are and what you are. For example, you might be someone who loves taking cooking classes. More than likely, you'll become known by friends and family as a great cook. They won't know you as someone who owns the latest kitchen equipment.

Lastly, planned experiences are frequently something we look forward to. Then when the moment arrives, if we enjoy the time involved in the activity, we’re left with fond memories. These memories will often last a lifetime. Even our worst trips, on many occasions, are later remembered with laughter.

1. Which one of the following is the closest in meaning to the underlined phrase in Paragraph TWO?

A．takes off

B．fades away

C．falls apart

D．gives way

2. What may be Dr. Gilovich’s hypothesis (假设) before his team conducted the studies?

A．People are more inclined to invest in material possessions than experiential purchases.

B．People anticipate more happiness from experiences than items to be bought.

C．People are less willing to purchase expensive materials.

D．People generally think that experiences are worth more than material purchases.

3. Which one of the following experiences may bring the greatest happiness according to the passage?

A．Mia has bought the latest model of tablets for a better experience of watching shows.

B．Tom was given a brand-new switch and he played online all night with his friends.

C．Mary and her friends taught children at a primary school in their summer vacation.

D．Jack quit school and began to learn cooking for a prospective job as a chef.

4. Which of the following CANNOT account for the theory that experiences bring more lasting happiness than possession?

A．Experiences tend to be group activities that unite participants together.

B．It’s easier to show off one’s experiences than his possessions.

C．Doing something can better define you than buying something.

D．People are more likely to remember the tender part left from the past experiences.