1 . The biggest misconception that I've ever heard of is that in order for us to find success in anything, we must be willing to give up something else.    1    .

Over the years, I've come to realize that isn't true. As I grow, I find several things are truly stopping us from living a more fulfilling life. Below are some.

Place limitations on yourself

On the surface, limitations are the things that stop you from achieving something.    2    . You'll keep facing the same problems, forced to make the same choices, and perform the same actions repeatedly. They define your current circumstances and to that extent define your quality of life.

Lack self-control

We all have some aspect about ourselves that we don't like.    3    Maybe you have a large sweet tooth and can't help yourself from eating sweet things. When you have a lack of self-control, those habits are going to remain with you until you find some way to remove them.

    4    

Our ability to come up with creative solutions for our problems comes from our ability to learn and adapt. If you're not learning anything, you're not progressing. Leonardo da Vinci once said, "Learning never exhausts the mind." And I believe it.

Final thoughts

When you get stuck on something, you are never truly stuck    5    . You don't have to be working hard to overcome that barrier, rather change your thinking in how you're approaching the problem. Give it time and keep working at it.

2 . A young man came across his old teacher. “I became a teacher because you inspired me to be like you,” said the young man and told him the following story:

One day, a friend of mine _________ the classroom with a nice new watch. I loved it so much that I _________ it from him. As soon as my friend _________ he had lost his watch, he reported it to our teacher, who was you, _________. You went to the class, “This student’s watch was missing during classes today. Whoever has taken it, please _________ it.” At that time, I was _________ to raise my hand.

Then you shut the door and told us all to get up and began to _________ our pockets one by one. But you _________ us to close our eyes.

You went from pocket to pocket, and when my _________ came, you found the watch and took it. You __________ searching everyone's pockets until you finished, you asked us to open our eyes. It was the most __________ day of my life. But this was also the day my __________ was saved. You never __________ anything about the incident later, nor even gave me a right or wrong lesson, but I received your __________ clearly. I understood what a real educator needs to do.

If an educator must make students lose the __________ of other people, he doesn’t know how to teach.

3 . With age, and the experience of achieving great success, it has become clear that physical wealth, power, fame and possessions（财产）do not add anything significant to the actually happy life. I find having ________ is nice and allows me to do many ________ things like travelling a lot.

I always buy many things, but I find things that make a life worth living cannot be ________. They can only be found in the ________ I have. They can be what I give to others, what I accept, and the way I ________ to view the world. It's many small steps that ________ the journey that determines the true importance of the destination, not the ________ itself.

In my opinion, if the destination is great wealth, I think we will feel happier after ________ that wealth if we struggle hard, and ________ our small successes along the way. As for those lottery（彩票）winners, there is no journey, no sense of success, and no memories that make up the path to their wealth. The money just becomes a condition of their life, not something that ________ them the sense of personal achievement.

I enjoy the wonderful ________ of giving to others. ________ and kind acts will fill my life with the kind of treasures（珍宝）that I could never buy—they can only be attained through giving help to others. In fact, when you give, you'll often ________ that even more is given back to you. So please do remember to be ________ on the way to wealth, and always keep up the kindness, and you will ________ a happy life you want.

During last year's summer holiday, I finally realized my dream. I travelled to Europe. What a(n)_________ experience!

After getting to Germany by plane, it took me four hours to get to France on a bus._________ Paris, I could see the Notre Dame de Paris Cathedral （巴黎圣母院） from my seat. Although it was _________ earlier this year, it's still an amazing _________. I hope it can be _________ as it was before.

After getting off the bus, I saw many people enjoying afternoon tea outside of cafes,_________ enjoying the sunlight. _________, we reached the Louvre Museum, which is _________ its collection of paintings and sculptures. There are hundreds of showcase in its halls, with fine murals （壁画） on the walls and ceilings. Among its impressive _________ are the paintings Venus, the Goddess of Victory and Mona Lisa.

The next day, we got up early for a boat ride on the Seine River. It was wonderful to appreciate the city's scenery from a boat.

Paris is also considered a(n)__________ heaven. The variety of goods __________ me. Yet, nothing is more __________ to me than eating delicious food. We __________ on the streets of Paris, having dinner and enjoying the sunset. We enjoyed steaks and chicken chops.

Travel not only lets me know how big and beautiful the world is, but also lets me know that there are a lot of things to __________ in the world. As the saying goes, “If you don't go out for a walk, you will think this is the __________.”

5 . Peer pressure is the phenomenon where we tend to get influenced by the lifestyles and the ways of thinking of our peers. Peer pressure can prove beneficial but it is often observed to have negative effects on society.     1     How does it affect us?

We tend to get influenced by the lifestyles of our peer group. The changing ways of life of our peers often force us to change our ways of looking at life and leading it. It's a human tendency to do what the crowd does.     2    

When you do not like a particular idea, it is obvious that you won't like to follow it. For sure, you won't like to go that way. But it is your peer group that may force you to do something you hate. In such cases, there are chances that you won't do well in those things.     3     You cannot become successful in something you have never liked doing. So, it is important that you should not lose happiness of your life by giving in to peer pressure.

There are many teenagers who experience great pressure from their peer group that forces them to take to drinking.     4     In such cases, being overly pressurized by their peers can be harmful to their living. Some teenagers actually ruin their lives by giving in to peer pressure.

    5     Extreme peer pressure may force you to go through everything they think right. You adopt their tastes of fashion, clothing, hair, music and general living. Then you lose your tastes of life and begin liking what they like.

6 . For humans, ignorance (无知) is inevitable (不可避免的) : It's our natural state. There's too much complexity in the world for any individual to master. Ignorance can be frustrating, but the problem is not ignorance itself.    1     .

According to David Dunning, ignorant people don't know how ignorant they are. If you give a group of people a task to do and then ask them how well they think they've done on the task. Poor performers overestimate how well they've done; strong performers often underestimate their performance: This is because those who lack skills also lack the knowledge of what skills they're missing.     2     Those who have skills know what skills they could improve on.

Our ignorance, in general, shapes our lives in ways we do not know about. Put simply, people tend to do what they know and fail to do what they don't know.     3     People fail to reach their potential simply because they are not aware of the possible.

This is a fact of life.     4     We won't miss Disneyland if we don't know it's there. For many expensive things, the less you know about them, the less you'll miss them and the happier you'll be.

    5     If we don't know about birth control, then we won't use it. If we remain ignorant about the horrors that are going on next door, we won't do what's necessary to stop them. And if we are ignorant about the dangerous things our children are getting into, disaster can follow.