Many people think that money brings happiness. However, according to Professor Michael Argyle, this   is not true. In Britain, we are    1     (rich) but unhappier than fifty years   ago. The     USA is the richest country in the world but Americans are not the happiest people in the world.

Professor Argyle has found that very poor people and very rich people are unhappier than those in between. For example, very poor people in    2    developing world live in overcrowded houses without any running water and    3    no electricity. However, there are many millionaires   (百万富翁) with    4     (person) problems. A lot of young people    5    get rich very quickly are at risk.

Because of this, a few young millionaires are changing their life styles. Richard Cross, a multi-millionaire computer analyst ( 分 析 师 ) from California is an example. His house    6     (show) no   signs of his wealth. There is a small garden   and there only two   cars    7     (park)     outside the house. “I want my kids    8     (live) a normal life,” says Richard.

So what can make    9     (we) happy? According to Professor Argyle, you should have one close relationship and some close    10     (friend). You should do a little sport and have   a lot of   contact (联系) with other people. Other people make you happy, not money!

2 . Negative emotions have a bad reputation: they’re often seen as dangerous or destructive.     1     But research reveals that negative emotions are useful for people and important for a successful and satisfying life.

In a recent study, we tested this idea for the case of anger. We designed a series of experiments with more than 1, 000 participants. We found that people who got mad first were more successful than the other participants.     2     When the goals were not challenging, getting angry did not improve outcomes.

    3     Here the story becomes more complicated. The findings do not mean that everyone should get angry in order to achieve their goals. But anger clearly can be useful in overcoming obstacles. Let us say, anger at a crashing computer could motivate someone to take it to a repair shop. But it could also motivate them to smash the computer on the floor.     4     Yet only one is truly beneficial. This complication in using our negative emotions contributes to their bad reputation. Fortunately, there is a lot of research on how to improve responses to negative emotions like anger. No doubt the best response is not to focus on what’s happening but to respond to achieve the desired outcome.

Negative emotions aren’t bad. They are incredibly important indicators that significant events are taking place.     5    

3 . Decoding Your Emotions

Almost all of us can remember a time when we were angry with a friend or anxious about going to a job interview. We experience such a wide range of emotions in everyday life, and these can influence the decisions we make — important decisions, such as whether we should quit a job, to the more trivial like what we’re going to have for dinner.     1     We have to figure out whether they’re feeling happy or sad, fearful or angry, jealous or amused, and determine how to respond while handling our own emotions.

Emotions are controlled by many different chemicals, or neurotransmitters and electrical impulses.     2     Between two nerves is a small gap called synapse, where neurotransmitters carry messages between the gaps. Depending on the neurotransmitters that are released and not released this chemical and electrical surge provides us with the capability of feeling emotions.

Emotions have been studied as far back as the 4 century BC. The Greek philosopher Aristotle attempted to identify the number of core human cmotions. During the 1970s, psychologist Paul Ekman identified six basic emotions — happiness, sadness, anger, fear, surprise and disgust-these provide the basis for more complicated emotional experiences we have.     3     Since then, the number of human emotions has continued to be a subject of debate, with some suggesting that there are only four emotions, while others suggesting 27, and some say there are infinite number as long as you can express them.

    4     For example, in Japanese culture it is considered offensive to display negative emotions in front of another person. Americans, however, are encouraged to express their emotions regardless of the person present. Despite the cultural differences, our emotions play a crucial role in guiding us through life, affecting the decisions we make and the ways we connect with others. Our emotions are what makes us human. By expressing our emotions-and comforting others in their of need — we strengthen our relationships, and provide a source of comfort to one another.

7 . The nature of compassion fatigue (同情疲劳) means that many working in traditional care-giving roles are likely to experience its symptoms. This includes first responders, medical professionals, social workers, journalists, and lawyers specializing in family law or criminal law.

Kelli Collins, a licensed family therapist, remarks “Think about muscle fatigue—if you work out too hard, your muscles might simply give out. In the same way, compassion fatigue means your ability to offer compassion to others is dramatically affected.”

Collins herself experienced compassion fatigue as a young therapist working in a community mental health setting, where she “had the strong desire to help” but quickly realized some things were out of her “rang of influence”. She felt herself becoming easily annoyed with loved ones, sleeping very little, and fantasizing about changing careers. It was an overwhelming time, during which she felt she was failing her clients.

“I thought that by giving endless compassion to my clients, I was ‘leaving it all on the field’. In fact, bearing the responsibility for my clients’ pain without consideration for my own needs and limits meant that I wasn’t a particularly effective therapist,” she says.

Lynne Hughes, who founded Comfort Zone in 1999 and now serves as CEO, lost both her parents as a child, experiencing first-hand the lack of resources and support for grieving children. Hughes expresses similar feelings about the challenge of compassion fatigue, stressing the importance of looking inward.

“Suffering from compassion fatigue does not mean you’re bad at helping or caring, it only means the scale between caring for others and caring for yourself is no longer balanced,” she says. “When you’re in a role where you’re nurturing and caring for others — it’s crucial to extend that nurture and care to yourself so that ‘your well’ does not run dry.”

But both Hughes and Collins emphasize that it’s not only traditional caregivers who experience compassion fatigue. “It is applicable to anyone in a caring role,” says Hughes, while Collins believes it is a uniquely human condition, occupational or not.

9 . A happy-sad state can be as confusing to people as to psychologists. This is not about “smiling depression” where someone feels emotional pain, but_________those feelings with a happy face. Rather, it’s _________ experiencing those two _________ emotions at once.

When Jeff Larsen, a psychology professor, simply asks people if it’s_________to feel such mixed emotions, most people immediately say “yes” showing how_________the experience is. But Larsen takes a more_________approach.In his experiments, he asked people to watch a clip (电影片段) from a bittersweet movie and press one button if they felt_________another if they felt happy,or_________at the same time if they felt both emotions at once.It_________about half pressed both happy and sad buttons at once, __________not for very long.Larsen__________the experience is rare, but possible.

Yale University psychology professor Laurie Santos__________it’s possible for people to feel both positive and negative emotions at once. Situations that often__________a happy-sad state include bittersweet events like__________or a move to a new city for a job--situations when you’re sad about__________, but happy about new opportunities, she noted. Endings that are also beginnings make these emotionally-rich events, Larsen added.

10 . “Anxiety.” The very word invites discomfort. Its effects—shortness of breath, pounding heart, muscle tension—are outright upsetting. But, as a clinician, I find that we tend to miss out on many valuable opportunities presented by this human emotion. In and of itself, anxiety is not deadly, nor is it a disease. Quite the contrary: it is an indicator of brain and sensory health. Once we accept that it is a normal, though uncomfortable, part of life, we can use it to help us.

We all know working out at the gym is hard. By nature, a “good workout” is uncomfortable, since it involves pushing our physical strength past what we can easily do. The sweet spot of exercise is always a somewhat challenging experience. Similarly, if you want to be emotionally stronger, you need to face some tension. For example, one effective treatment for fear is exposure therapy (疗法), which involves gradually encountering things that make one anxious, reducing fear over time.

Humans are social creatures. When my patients learn to open up to their partners about their anxieties, they almost always report a greater sense of emotional closeness. Also, as international relationship expert Sue Johnson teaches, when we express our need for connection during challenging moments (e.g., “I’m having a hard time right now and could really use your support”), it creates greater connection and turns our anxiety into love.

From time to time, we find ourselves at the end of our rope. Our responsibilities pile up, our resources break down, and we feel uncomfortably anxious—what we’re experiencing is called stress. Simply put, the demands placed upon us outweigh our available resources, just like a set of scales (天平) going out of balance. Focusing on work and pretending everything is OK only leads to disastrous results. Medical treatment for stress may function for a while, but it tends to make things worse in the long run. The only solution to deal with stress is to do the mathematics to balance the scales.