1 . Armed with a toolkit of techniques and tricks to calm the mind and bring focus back to your body, you can stop stressful situations from sabotaging your day, says Katy Georgiou.

Making contact with the ground is your baseline go-to response for stress. This technique can be especially helpful if you find your stress regularly turns into panic. Wherever you are, whatever you’re doing, place your feet flat on the ground so that you feel stable, and then close your eyes. If you’re able to sit on the floor cross-legged or to lie down flat, then even better.

Think of this as earthing: really connect with the ground beneath your body. Some studies suggest that this simple act can help reduce or relieve symptoms of stress such as pain and fatigue, reduce blood pressure, and improve sleep. If you’re feeling disconnected from the world, it can also remind you that you belong to it and are a crucial part of it — the ground will always be there for you.

Adopting regular, daily or weekly routines for self-care can be very containing, creating consistency amid all sorts of stressful life events happening around you. Looking in the mirror each day can actually remind you that you exist, so feel free to factor some reflective gazing into your daily routine, whether it’s while applying moisturiser, shaving, or brushing your hair. Studies have shown that being confronted with your reflection can have powerful effects, taking us out of our heads and into the immediate present. For added effect, pay attention to the way your products interact with your hair and skin as you apply them.

Playing around with smells, colours and textures in your hands will also engage your senses. Using a scented shampoo or smoothing on body lotion after a warm bath can be easy ways to do this.

Abandon all your thoughts and try to focus only on your surroundings. What can you see, hear, smell, taste and touch? Identify three things you can hear, one thing you can taste, four things you can see and two things you can feel on your skin. Pick out colours in the room you are sitting in, notice textures and different kinds of light. If somebody is with you, tell them what you are experiencing. The point here is that your senses are your best and easiest route back to feeling calm, by coming out of your head and rooting yourself back in the present. This is incredibly helpful if you’re having a panic attack or flop response.

Don’t judge a book by its cover

“Don’t judge a book by its cover,” the old saying goes. Unfortunately, as a teenager, that is often exactly what you do to yourself. Dark thoughts about your physical appearance can hang over you all the time like a rain cloud. Do I look fat in these jeans? Do others think I am too short? What are the causes behind them?

Standards of beauty in the media can have a big influence on what you think of your physical appearance. Teens who try to copy the looks of their favourite stars are fighting a losing battle—these standards are simply impossible for most of the population to live up to. They will only end up feeling worse about themselves. Your friends also influence the way you view your physical appearance. If you have friends who are good-looking or have a great fashion sense, it can feel like you are living in their shadow.

These external influences are always present, but there are certainly ways to deal with them. First of all, be careful not to follow popular beauty standards blindly. They are out of reach for 99% of us, so it is better to just forget about them. Another tip is to remind yourself that you are unique. Everyone has their own talents—you may be good at painting or playing the piano, so take pride in things you do well instead of worrying about things you cannot change. Focusing on your strengths helps you build your confidence.

Finally, it is a good idea to try to direct your attention away from negative thoughts. To achieve this, you should do something you enjoy. Read a book you like, or take part in a social activity, like playing a ball game with your friends. These things can help you take your mind off matters that worry you and make you feel good about yourself.

If you can learn to see the good things about yourself—your individuality, your value to others, your achievements—you will soon begin to love yourself just the way you are.

8 . A Mountain But not a Volcano

On September 20th the Bank of International Settlements (BIS), the central banks' central bank, released data showing that corporate borrowing around the world remains at an all time high. A notable ______ is in China, where there is even more business borrowing as a share of GDP than in Japan at the peak of its bubble-related borrowing fever in the 1990s. But it is high everywhere. Corporate ______ in the rich world stood at 102% of GDP at the end of March, compared with 92% before the outbreak of the covid-19 pandemic. Could high levels of debt ______ the recovery in advanced economies?

Many regulators were sounding the ______ about elevated company debt even before the covid19 pandemic. Since then, the hit to firm's incomes has led to a wave of rating downgrades: between March 2020 and March 2021, Fitch, a ratings agency, ______ 460 firms, or almost 20% of its corporate portfolio. While defanlts (违约) have eased this year as economies have recovered, many firms will be ______ by higher levels of debt for years to come. Even if interest rates remain ______, this "debt overhand" could affect their willingness to invest or to hire new staff.

Intriguingly, however, aftereffects from corporate debt booms rarely cause significant economic damage, even if ______ themselves suffer when firms default. A recent paper by Moritz Schularick, of the University of Bonn, and several co-authors, examines data on business cycles for 17 advanced countries over more than a century, and compares corporate debt bursts with those associated with ______ borrowing (like the 200809 financial crisis).

The authors argue that lenders often have a/an ______ to restructure old corporate loans, reducing the risk of "zombie" companies persisting, and freeing up finance to support the next recovery. For household debt, however, restructuring thousands of ______ loans is often impossible, and lenders may be more inclined to keep the loans on their books in the hope that house prices eventually ______. The risks to the economy are higher after commercial property bursts than for corporate debt where lenders mainly have their eyes on firm's cash flows. This is one reason why the property-related debt depression in China are potentially disturbing.

In much of the rich world, there are reasons to be ______ optimistic. The largest lenders are in much better health than in 2008. All of the major ______ authorities, carried out stress tests during 2020, using macroeconomic scenarios much more severe than have actually came out, but their banking systems were able to absorb large corporate losses and carry on lending. And the parts of the economy that have had the toughest time during the pandemic only account for a relatively small share of corporate debt. For example, the BIS projects that ______ will increase in the hospitality industry (酒店餐饮业) over the coming years, but they note that the sector only accounts for between 1.5% and 8% of corporate credit in the nine major economies they model.

There will be a mountain of corporate debt in many countries for some time. But that dos not mean the recovery will necessarily falter (衰退).

Jane Goodall

Sixty years after the start of her groundbreaking study of chimpanzces in the wild, the primatologist looks for a silver lining in the pandemic.

Chimpanzees have no     1     of deadly foes. Logging, mining, deforestation, human population growth,the bush-meat trade, the exotic pet trade,medical research, bad zoos: All have helped     2     the global chimp population from more than a million in 1900 to less than 300,000 today,   according to the international Union for Conservation of Nature. Now, add COVID-19, “The pandemic is a nightmare.” says Jane Goodall over the phone from her family home in Bournemouth. U. K. where she has been     3     in place since March. Because chimps share nearly 99% of human DNA, they are     4     to human-borne diseases. Human respiratory viruses are already the leading cause of death in some chimp communities. and while there have been no reports of COVID-19 outbreaks vet. all great apes are believed to be susceptible to the coronavirus that causes it.

To prevent transmission, scientists have     5     great-ape research across Africa, including at the center Dr. Goodall founded in Tanzania's Gombe Stream National Park. The     6     of a deadly virus wiping out vet more of this endangered species is “terrifying,” she says. This was supposed to be a festive time for Dr Goodall. 86. Galas around the world were meant to celebrate the anniversary of her     7     study of chimpanzees in the wild. which began 60 years ago on July 14. 1960. Instead， Dr. Goodall, who usually spends 300 days a year trotting the globe to give talks and meet leaders as an environmental activist, has been putting in long hours trying to     8     masks for local Tanzanians, raise funds for conservation projects run by the Jane Goodall Institute and cheer up staffers over Skype and Zoom.

But the new's isn't all bad. she hastily adds. Befitting someone who used the word “hope” in the titles of three of her past four books. Dr. Goodall isn't above squinting（斜视）to find a silver lining. “I think people are seeing that we brought this pandemic upon ourselves by     9     the warning of scientists.” she says. She hopes that policy makers recognize that raising animals in unhygienic factory farms or trafficking and selling them in     10     markets makes it easier for viruses to jump from animals to humans.

“I think this is waking people up,” she says.

10 . The most important day I remember in all my life is the one on which my teacher, Anne Mansfield Sullivan, came to me. I am filled with wonder when I consider the immeasurable contrasts between the two lives which it connects. It was the third of March, 1887, three months before I was seven years old.

On the afternoon of that eventful day, I stood on the porch, dumb, ________. I guessed vaguely from my mother's signs and from the hurrying to and from in the house that something unusual was about to happen, so I went to the door and waited on the steps. The afternoon sun penetrated the mass of honeysuckle that covered the porch, and fell on my upturned face. My fingers lingered almost ________ on the familiar leaves and blossoms which had just ________ to greet the sweet southern spring. I did not know what the future held of ________ or surprise for me. Anger and bitterness had preyed upon me continually for weeks and a deep languor(倦怠)had ________ this passionate struggle.

Have you ever been at sea in a dense fog, when it seemed as if a tangible white darkness shut you in, and the great ship, tense and anxious, groped her way toward the shore with plummet(铅锤) and sounding-line(测深索), and you waited with beating heart for something to happen? I was like that ________ before my education began, only I was without   ________ or sounding-line, and had no way of knowing how near the ________ was. "Light! Give me light!" was the wordless cry of my soul, and the light of love shone on me in that very hour.

I felt approaching footsteps. I stretched out my hand as I would to my mother. Someone ________ it, and I was caught up and held close in the arms of her who had come to ________ all things to me, and more than all things else, to love me.

The morning after my teacher came she led me into her room and gave me a doll. The little blind children at the Perkins Institution had sent it and Laura Bridgman had dressed it; but I did not know this until ________. When I had played with it a little while, Miss Sullivan slowly spelled into my hand the word "d—o—l—l." I was at once interested in this finger play and tried to ________ it. When I finally succeeded in making the letters correctly I ________ with childish pleasure and pride. Running downstairs to my mother I held up my hand and made the letters for doll. I did not know that I was spelling a word or even that words existed; I was simply making my fingers go in monkey-like imitation. In the days that followed I learned to spell in this ________ way a great many words, among them pin, hat, cup and a few verbs like sit, stand and walk. But my teacher had been with me several weeks before I understood that everything has a ________.