1 . One of the cores of emotional intelligence is self-regulation, an important skill in the workplace. Like any skill, mastery of emotional self-control requires intentionality and practice.
Pause to Mentally Distance
When you notice your typical physiological experiences associated with strong negative emotion, what should you do? Mentally step out of your immediate experience. Asking yourself any question, or imagining what you might look like to others right now, will do the trick. At that point, although still physiologically keyed up, you will be able to ask yourself, “What is the best course of action right now?” or “What advice would I give someone else who is in my shoes?”
Take Control of Your Self-Talk
We’re frequently unaware of how much self-chatter is going on in the background of our minds. Such self-talk might not be in fully articulated (铰接式的) words or phrases, but instead little flashes of thought. Becoming aware of your self-talk can be difficult. Why is this an important skill to develop?
Seek Support from Partners
Ask others you trust to help you recognize when your emotions seem to be getting the best of you.
Cultivate (培养) Curiosity
Our brains are wired to draw conclusions and form judgments at lightning speed, and those are frequently the cause of our negative emotions.
| A．They are comfortable with all emotions |
| B．Those judgments are not necessarily accurate |
| C．Doing so provides you with choices as to how to act |
| D．Explain your developmental goals and sincerely ask for help |
| E．Stay focused on coming up with an answer and following through on it |
| F．Because it is those background beliefs that fuel our emotional responses |
| G．Here are four ways you can develop greater emotional self-management |
2 . How many different emotions do you think you can communicate to people with your face? Do you have the same facial expressions as the people from different cultures? Read this passage to find out what scientists have just discovered about this topic.
New research suggests that there are only four basic facial expressions of emotion. However, how these expressions are interpreted (解释) might depend on where you are from. Research by scientists from the Institute of Neuroscience and Psychology at the University of Glasgow has challenged the traditional view of how the face expresses emotions. It was widely believed that six basic emotions (happiness, sadness, fear, anger, surprise and disgust) were expressed and recognized across different cultures. However, the University of Glasgow’s work now suggests that the human face only has four basic expressions of emotion. This is because some pairs of emotions are impossible to distinguish(辨别). Fear and surprise, for example, both share wide open eyes. The facial expressions for anger and disgust also look the same.
So if our faces are only able to express four basic emotions, how do we communicate a much more complex kind of feeling? The study found that the way expressions are interpreted is different in different cultures. However, while looking at how people from the East and West look at different parts of the face during facial expression recognition, scientists found that although there are some common features across cultures, the six basic facial expressions of emotion are not recognized universally.
What interests people about the cross-cultural aspect of the research? This work leads to understanding which emotions we share and appreciating our differences.
1. What did the University of Glasgow find?| A．Six basic emotions greatly influence our character. |
| B．Six basic emotions can be recognized. |
| C．It is easy to tell from the basic facial expressions. |
| D．Some of the six facial expressions are similar. |
| A．Sadness, fear, anger and surprise. | B．Anger, sadness, fear and happiness. |
| C．Happiness, surprise, sadness and fear. | D．Disgust, happiness, anger and sadness. |
| A．Basic facial expressions are not universal. |
| B．Facial expressions can’t show complex feelings. |
| C．Western people have more kinds of facial expressions. |
| D．The way to express emotions changes with time. |
| A．What Does Your Face Say? | B．How Do We Communicate? |
| C．What Are the Six Basic Emotions? | D．Do We Have the Same Expressions? |
3 . Have you ever bought a new car and started noticing the exact color and model of car everywhere? Has that type of car just become popular in your city? Were they there before? Or are you just going crazy?
You’re not going crazy. The reason you are now just noticing them is what psychologists call “priming”. Basically, the cars were always there. You just didn’t recognize them consciously. However, when that certain model of car becomes part of your conscious thinking, you start “automatically” recognizing all of the other cars that are the same, because you are already “primed” to do so.
The priming effect takes many forms. In one study, students were asked to walk around a room for 5 minutes at a rate of 30 steps per minute, which was about one-third their normal pace. After this brief experience, the participants were much quicker to recognize words related to old age, such as forgetful, old, and lonely. Reciprocal priming effects tend to produce a coherent reaction: if you are primed to think of old age, you would tend to act old, and acting old would reinforce the thought of old age. This research shows that the way we think influences the way we act, and the way we act influences the way we think.
A similar conclusion was reached by the American psychologist William James a century ago, but he emphasized the effect on feeling. “Actions seem to follow feeling, but really actions and feeling go together; and by regulating the action, which is under the more direct control of the will, we can indirectly regulate the feeling, which is not. Thus the path to cheerfulness, should our cheerfulness be lost, is to sit up cheerfully and to act and speak as if cheerfulness were already there.”
So, that’s it. If you want to be happy, just sit up and act happy. Based on these scientific findings, we can adopt certain priming effects to help make ourselves consistently happier.
One thing we have in common is our ability to think, and thus feel. Pleasant thoughts have been proven to produce the chemicals that make us feel happy, particularly thoughts and feelings of gratitude. When we purposefully go through and think about the things we’re grateful for and deliberately feel as much gratitude as we can, we are flooding our mind with the “happy chemicals”. Furthermore, by consciously thinking, feeling and expressing gratitude, we will not only be happier in the moment, we will be “primed” to recognize the things in our life to appreciate. Each time this happens, the “happy chemicals” will be produced. Do this every day and we will become consistently happier. This makes up for the momentary happiness we gain from eating chocolate or buying new clothes. More than that, combining thoughts of gratitude with happy acts like smiling and laughing will have a supplementary positive effect on our state of mind.
1. Which of the following is an example of the priming effect?| A．Walking much faster after attending a lecture about old age. |
| B．Donating money to the poor after seeing pictures of cute cats. |
| C．Learning about various types of cars after purchasing the first car. |
| D．Completing SO_P as SOUP rather than SOAP after seeing the word EAT. |
| A．Related. | B．Two-way. | C．Well-rounded. | D．Opposite. |
| A．Eating or shopping leads to consistent feelings of happiness. |
| B．Our will has greater control over emotions than over actions. |
| C．Happy chemicals make us think about the things we’re grateful for. |
| D．Practicing gratitude frequently prepares us for long-term happiness. |
| A．Prime Yourself to Be Happier |
| B．Share Happiness to Enhance Wellbeing |
| C．Why Gratitude Is Important in Psychology |
| D．How Happy Chemicals Affect People’s Thoughts |
4 . Back in 1964, in his book Games People Play, psychiatrist Eric Berne described a pattern of conversation he called “Why Don’t You — Yes But”, which remains one of the most annoying aspects of everyday social life. The person adopting the strategy is usually a chronic complainer. Something is terrible about their relationship, job, or other situation, and they complain about it endlessly, but find some excuse to dismiss any solution that’s proposed. The reason, of course, is that on some level they don’t want a solution; they want to be validated (认可) in their position that the world is out to get them. If they can “win” the game — dismissing every suggestion until interlocutor (对话者) gives up in annoyance — they get to feel pleasurably righteous (正当的) in their anger and excused from any obligation to change.
Part of the trouble here is the so-called responsibility/fault fallacy (谬误). When you’re feeling hard done by — taken for granted by your partner, say, or obliged to work for a stupid boss — it’s easy to become attached to the position that it’s not your job to address the matter, and that doing so would be an admission of fault. But there’s a confusion here. For example, if I were to discover a newborn at my front door, it wouldn’t be my fault, but it most certainly would be my responsibility. There would be choices to make, and no possibility of avoiding them, since trying to ignore the matter would be a choice. The point is that what goes for the baby on the doorstep is true in all cases: even if the other person is 100% in the wrong, there’s nothing to be gained, long-term, from using this as a justification to evade responsibility.
Should you find yourself on the receiving end of this kind of complaining, there’s a clever way to shut it down — which is to agree with it. Psychotherapist Lori Gottlieb describes this as “over-validation”. For one thing, you’ll be spared further complaining, since the other person’s motivation was to confirm her beliefs, and now you’re confirming them. But for another, as Gottlieb notes, people confronted with over-validation often hear their complaints afresh and start arguing back. The concept that they’re utterly powerless suddenly seems unrealistic, not to mention rather annoying — so they’re prompted instead to generate ideas about how they might change things.
“And then, sometimes, something magical might happen, ” Gotlieb writes. The other person “might realize she’s not as trapped as you are saying she is, or as she feels. ” Avoiding responsibility feels comfortable, but turns out to be a prison; whereas assuming responsibility feels unpleasant, but ends up being freeing.
1. What is the characteristic of a chronic complainer, according to Eric Berne?| A．They are angry about their ill treatment and feel bitter towards whoever tries to help. |
| B．They are habitually unhappy and endlessly find fault with people around them. |
| C．They constantly dismiss others’ proposals while taking no responsibility for dealing with the problem. |
| D．They lack the basic skills required for successful conversations with others. |
| A．People tend to think that one should not be held responsible for others’ mistakes. |
| B．It is easy to become attached to the position of overlooking one’s own fault. |
| C．People are often at a loss when confronted with a number of choices. |
| D．A distinction should be drawn between responsibility and fault. |
| A．Stop them from going further by agreeing with them. |
| B．Listen to their complaints attentively and sympathetically. |
| C．Ask them to validate their beliefs with further evidence. |
| D．Persuade them to clarify the confusion they caused. |
| A．What is the responsibility/fault fallacy for chronic complainers? |
| B．How can you avoid dangerous traps in everyday social life? |
| C．Who are chronic complainers and how to deal with them? |
| D．Why should we stop being a chronic complainer and assume responsibility? |
5 . About 50 years ago, the famous British band The Beatles sang that “money can’t buy me love”. Today, British economists are saying that it perhaps can’t buy you happiness cither. This is showed by the Happy Planet Index (HPI 快乐指数) published recently by the New Economics Foundation (NEF) in London.
The index is about how well countries are using their resources. It shows how well they provide people with better health and longer and happier lives, and at what cost to their environment.
It would seem to be common sense that people in richer countries live happier lives, while those in developing countries are having a harder time. But the results are surprising, even shocking. The numbers show that some of the so-called developed countries are performing very badly. The United States, for example, ranks number 150th. On the other hand, some little-known developing countries are doing a much better job. A tiny island in the Pacific, Vanuatu, comes in first. There are 178 countries and areas in the index. China ranks number 31.
Countries are graded on the basis of information supplied in response to the following questions. How do people feel about their lives? How long does an average person live? How greatly does a country need to use its natural resources to maintain its living standards? This is what the index calls the “ecological footprint”.
The NEF found that the people of island nations enjoy the highest HPI rankings. Their populations live happier and longer lives, and use fewer resources.
The results also seem to show that it is possible to live longer, happier lives with a much smaller environment impact. The index points out that people in the US and Germany enjoy similar lives.
“However, Germany’s ecological footprint is only about half that of the US. This means that Germany is around twice as efficient as the US at producing happy lives,” says Nic Marks, head of NEF’s Center for well-being.
So the Happy Planet Index (HPI) tells us a brand-new concept of understanding “being happy”. HPI figures out different countries or individuals’ HPI through their “Ecological Footprint” and “Life Satisfaction Level” or “Life Expectancy”. Clearly, people’s HPI is related to their consumption of the resources on the earth.
You can find out your own HPI by visiting http: //www, happyplanetindex.org.
1. The passage is mainly about __________.| A．in which country people feel the happiest |
| B．why money can’t buy you happiness |
| C．what index can influence people’s happiness |
| D．what Happy Planet Index is |
| A．the richness of natural resources |
| B．the efficiency of energy consumption |
| C．the development of economy |
| D．the life expectancy of the people |
| A．The happiest countries listed in the index are quite different from those expected. |
| B．Developing countries are having & hard time reaching the top of the index. |
| C．Countries that have high HPI rankings have a greater impact on the environment. |
| D．The less happy countries depend on the developed countries’ resources. |
| A．some developed countries are performing badly ecologically |
| B．it is possible to live a happy life with fewer resources |
| C．not all the people in developed countries enjoy happy lives |
| D．history and culture play an important role in people’s lives |
6 . Procrastination is the act of putting off tasks until the last minute, or past their deadline.
For many students, getting a task that is due in two months is a great thing. They have two months to slowly work on the task, making necessary improvements all along the way.
What is at the root of all of this procrastination? Some might say that it is laziness, but it is really just a problem with mindset (心态).
It is difficult to stop this terrible habit.
| A．That is how it is supposed to be done. |
| B．For many people, it has become a habit. |
| C．It takes a long time to truly change your ways. |
| D．Procrastination is a problem that usually affects students. |
| E．Procrastination can be found in the working world as well. |
| F．If it does, you probably have a problem with procrastination. |
| G．Many people don’t even consider hypnosis as a treatment option. |
7 . Being a young adult has got to be one of the most difficult times in a person’s life. You’re at a stage when you don’t feel like a child anymore and you aren’t ready to take up all the responsibilities that adulthood brings with it either.
Need to express
At this stage, there is a need for expression of thoughts and feelings. But they don’t understand that this need to express themselves can’t be used in whichever way they want, but has to be used with caution.
Need to be an independent adult
Need for acceptance
In addition, being part of a group and developing healthy relationships and getting acceptance from them are of prime importance to young adults.
Need to succeed
There is an innate need to stand on their own feet.
These are some of young adults’ emotional problems. If you’ve been faced with them, seek help and treat them.
| A．This is where the problems of discipline arise. |
| B．Therefore, don’t ignore these emotional needs. |
| C．And they want to prove themselves to the world. |
| D．But there are also misunderstandings and conflicts in a group. |
| E．So there will be varied emotional issues that can trouble a young adult. |
| F．They therefore find it difficult to deal with the pressures of mincing their words (婉转地说). |
| G．Now that you know what some problems of young adults can be, it’ll help you be prepared. |
8 . Perhaps you’ve stopped doing what you want because you’re afraid of what others think of you. You feel that you must do what they expect and that you must meet their expectations, otherwise you’ll lose their approval.
Think about yourself, about what you really like and are interested in. You must lead your life independently.
By surrounding yourself with people who think like you, you’ll realize that you don’t feel judged. Then, you’ll start doing what you really want.
To overcome your fear of what others think and of their non-approval, you should start talking about your plans, For instance, you might want to tell a handful of friends about your wishes and dreams.
It’s unavoidable that not everything will be plain sailing, and you’ll find obstacles along your way.
| A．There is no need to think about what you want. |
| B．You don’t have to change your circle of friends. |
| C．Your life belongs to you, as well as your actions. |
| D．By talking to them, you’ll be able to organize your plans and ideas. |
| E．If this is the case, it’s time to start working on your self-esteem (自尊). |
| F．You must do what you want without being affected by what others think. |
| G．However, you must trust in yourself and seek the necessary strength to move forward. |
9 . The popularity of Facebook has caused a shift in how people realize themselves: the “like” button has become nothing more than a self-esteem (自尊) booster.
Do you socialize with negative people?
There are a lot of people who aren’t aware they have a negative voice in their head.
Celebrating your successes is another good way. We’re often so busy in life that we seldom take the time to stop and really reflect on what we’ve achieved. Take the time once a day to ask yourself what you’re proud of having achieved that day.
| A．Learn to love yourself. |
| B．Catch your negative self-talk. |
| C．Appreciate how far you’ve come. |
| D．If so, consider finding new friends. |
| E．When self-esteem is high, we lose our fear of envy. |
| F．Of course not, few people like socializing with negative people. |
| G．But what’s important is to develop high self-esteem from inner. |
10 . It’s nice to feel like a hero or to be the centre of attention every once in a while. Walking barefoot down the worm road, cheered on by the villagers of Bradstone, one would have thought that I should feel full of pride and joy. Those feelings might have been nice, except for this one tiny fact: I had no idea where I was heading, even when I heard my name being shouted out upon entering the village.
Earlier, after painfully recovering consciousness beside the road, the only important things I could remember were my name, Jonathan Grey, and a horribly uncomfortable feeling that I had forgotten something which could result in life or death. So I had followed the road. Shortly I noticed that I had somehow also lost track of my shoes.
I had ended up in Bradstone. Many villagers hurried over and screamed my name. One older woman particularly threw her arms around my waist. “ You made it! I knew you were special,” she cried, “My baby is finally home! ” At a loss for words, with no idea what to do, the best I could offer the crying woman was to put my arms around her, too. When she settled down, she pulled back to look at me properly. “How are you? Really? Oh, you will have to report to Mr. Fredrick first… ”
I was not sure how to answer the woman’s — my mother’s? — questions, so I decided to be honest. “I’m sorry, but I’m not sure who Mr. Freddrick is, or what I must report to him. ”
My mother took a deep breath, then took my hand to lead me into the house. “ Your father will be home soon, so get settled in. I’ll be outside if you need me. ” Taking one last look around, my mother let out a sigh. For the time being, home this would have to be. Breathing deeply, I gathered my courage and mentally prepared myself for what was now my new life.
1. What can we know about Jonathan?| A．He enjoyed the welcome he received. | B．The villagers were very sorry for him. |
| C．He had never been the centre of attention. | D．The villagers knew who he was. |
| A．He felt relieved. | B．He was in pain. |
| C．He forgot his name. | D．He regained his memories. |
| A．He would not let her go. | B．He recognized his mother. |
| C．He didn’t know how to reply. | D．He was glad to have found her. |
| A．He tried to make his mother pleased. |
| B．He was worried about meeting his father. |
| C．He was uncertain if he had the courage for a new life. |
| D．He decided to temporarily accept the present situation. |
