Uncertainty is all around us, never more so than today. Whether it concerns your health or relationships, much of what lies ahead in life remains uncertain.
We’re all different in how much uncertainty we can tolerate in life. Some people seem to enjoy taking risks and living unpredictable lives, while others find the randomness of life deeply annoying. But all of us have a limit. If you feel controlled by uncertainty and worry, it’s important to know that you’re not alone; many of us are in the same boat.
To cope with all this uncertainty, many of us use worrying as a tool for trying to predict the future and avoid unpleasant surprises. Worrying can make it seem like you have some control over uncertain circumstances. You may also believe that it will help you find a solution to your problems or prepare you for the worst. Unfortunately, long-term worrying just robs you of enjoyment in the present and weakens your energy. But there are healthier ways to cope with uncertainty.
Identify your uncertainty trigger (诱发因素). A lot of uncertainty tends to be self-generated. However, some can be generated by external sources, such as reading media stories that focus on bad news, or simply communicating with anxious friends. By recognizing your triggers, you can take action to avoid or reduce your exposure to them.
Shift your attention. Focus on solvable worries, taking action on those aspects of a problem that you can control, or simply go back to what you were doing. When the feelings of uncertainty return, refocus your mind on the present moment and your own breathing.
1. How are people different in tolerating uncertainty in life?2. Why do many people use worrying as a tool to deal with uncertainty?
3. Please decide which part is false in the following statement, then underline it and explain why.
▶ Knowing the triggers of your uncertainty, you can learn to expose yourself to them.
4. What are you most uncertain about right now? How will you deal with it? (In about 40 words)
2 . The Failed New Year’s Resolution: Three Tips to Get on Track
January is officially over, and many people are taking stock of their progress towards New Year’s resolutions. The fact is that you probably haven’t kept up with them as much as you hoped. But that’s not your fault.
Practice self-compassion
Many people talk to themselves in harsh ways when struggling with new habits, believing self-criticism will help them reach their goals. Research shows, however, that the opposite is true. Self-compassion is more effective for personal improvement, especially when facing failure.
Resolutions are often phrased as definitive goals. I will exercise daily. I will kick desserts.
Solve problems by overcoming barriers
If you are struggling to maintain your desired habits, there are evidence-based techniques available to help you.
| A．Set all-or-nothing goals |
| B．Change your resolutions into intentions |
| C．One such skill is called missing links analysis |
| D．Setting specific behavioral goals can be effective |
| E．If you’re persuaded to give up on your resolutions |
| F．Old habits tend to die hard, and new habits tend to die easy |
| G．When you are upset about yourself for not keeping resolutions |
3 . Libraries. They have that reassuring smell of well-read pages, are peaceful, have free Internet and, of course, abundant books.
But guess what? There’s a new kind of library sweeping the nation — a tool library — and it’s just as cool, but in all sorts of different ways.
It’s often said that the average electric drill is only used for 11 minutes in its entire lifetime. Granted, it doesn’t take that long to drill a hole, but still — that’s crazy. Yet the majority of households have one, even though DIY is actually a really infrequent activity for most people.
What if you could just borrow tools when you need them, and drop them back so that they can be used by someone else all the time you’re not DIY-ing? Well, in some parts of Scotland, you now can. Membership-based tool sharing services are popping up in Edinburgh, Glasgow, Stirling, Linlithgow and Cumbernauld. They work just like a normal library but instead of books, you can borrow a massive range of tools and equipment when you need them, then drop them back when you’re done.
Zero Waste Scotland’s Andrew Pankhurst recently renovated (翻新) his house using the Stirling Tool Library. He said, “It’s amazing. It had all the tools I was looking for, and some I didn’t even realize I needed.”
And that’s the beauty of a tool library. Borrow a tool, use it for one afternoon at a small amount of cost of buying it and instead of it cluttering up your house gathering dust, it’s back off to a busy life all across town, week in and week out.
The tools available to borrow are mainly received as donations. The tool library will then repair them if needed and PAT test for safety ready to be borrowed and saved from going to landfill.
So next time you have a job to do around the house, why not borrow rather than buy?
1. What can we learn from paragraph 3?| A．The electric drill is worth buying. |
| B．People dislike to use out-of-date tools. |
| C．Most of the tools aren’t often used at home. |
| D．DIY is a really frequent activity for most people. |
| A．Familiar. | B．Practical. |
| C．Essential. | D．Disappointing. |
| A．Clearing up. | B．Piling up. | C．Throwing out. | D．Breaking up. |
| A．Borrowing Is the New Buying |
| B．Please Make a Donation Today |
| C．When in Doubt, Go to the Library |
| D．Today a Reader, Tomorrow a Leader |
4 . When was the last time you looked at something or felt something and said, “Wow”? Recent studies found that a lot of people are in emotional distress. So how can you rediscover the joys in your day-to-day life and recapture that sense of childhood wonder? Here’s how you can find them.
Get creative. Whether it is playing a musical instrument, sketching, painting, modeling with clay, dancing, or writing in a journal, creative pursuits are a great place to find joy.
Turn off your phone and enjoy the silence. Technology can be a good thing and provide us with many opportunities, but it can also numb (使迟钝) us to the wows around us and be an ongoing distraction. Turn your phone off for one hour, a whole day or even an entire weekend. You could also try turning off the television, music or radio for a few minutes to give yourself some total silence.
Listen. Really listen. When was the last time you remembered everything someone said to you?
Get out of your comfort zone. Finding opportunities where you can push yourself out of your comfort zone will also give you a better chance of finding a wow experience.
| A．Take a play break. |
| B．Change your routine. |
| C．This doesn’t have to mean a big, life-changing activity. |
| D．This can help take you back to a childlike state, in a world of wonder. |
| E．When talking to other people, try to be present with whoever you are with. |
| F．Take a minute to notice and really pay attention to where you are, what you’re doing and what’s going on around you. |
| G．What’s more, when you find flow in a creative activity, you might find inspiration for other areas of your life. |
Jokes and humor are often considered unimportant. This is understandable: they are, by definition, not serious. Yet jokes and humor are beneficial for health through their stress-relieving properties. For example, they can stimulate blood circulation and aid muscle relaxation, both of which can help reduce stress.
But why do we respond, in powerful and rewarding ways, to things that are objectively meaningless? Scientists have spent years studying how humor works in the brain and on the various types of jokes that produce it.
Puns, the most familiar type of jokes, are where specific elements of language convey different meanings at once. For example, “Why did the golfer wear two pairs of trousers? In case he got a hole in one.” “Here” hole in one has two possible interpretations: one pair is damaged or someone’s ball goes into the hole the first time he hit it. We may not actually laugh at them, but their simplicity and familiarity make most people recognize the humor in puns. Therefore, the brain’s humor processes are still engaged.
How does humor arise from the brain? Our brains have developed a system to recognize when things don’t match expectations. If normality is overturned, it means we don’t know what’s going to happen, which creates tension. However, the system that recognizes incongruity (不一致) also resolves it, by providing an explanation, or at least a confirmation that the incongruity has no negative consequences. This removes the uncertainty, easing the tension. After that, we learn something new and expand our mental model, experiencing a rewarding feeling.
Basically, thanks to these complex systems in our brains, humor comes from something being surprising, unexpected or wrong in some way, as long as the incongruity is resolved without negative consequences. If the incongruity is not resolved, humor is absent. If the answer to “Why did the golfer wear two pairs of trousers?” is “in case the metal eagle that lives in his gold bag attacks him”, that’s not funny. This would explain why unreal humor is often hard to get right.
1. What is the benefit of jokes and humor?2. Why can people recognize the humor in puns?
3. Please decide which part is false in the following statement, then underline it and explain why.
>People can work out humor from something being surprising, unexpected or wrong in some way, as long as the incongruity remains unsolved.
4. Apart from the benefit mentioned in the passage, what other benefit(s)can you get from humor? (In about 40 words)
I was born with a pronounced facial problem. Because of that, I have undergone many cruel comments. One day, while
7 . “Find your passion!” is an appeal well-intended and meant to inspire. But is it good advice?
“Finding” a passion implies that it already exists and is simply waiting to be discovered. Unfortunately, this idea doesn’t square with what science tells us. Instead, passions are developed. They often begin with a spark (火花) of curiosity caused by something in one’s environment, such as a fascinating physics lecture. Through a process involving repeated engagement and-positive experiences, people can come to personally value that content or activity and internalize it. What was at first interesting becomes an interest. If these qualities continue to intensify, a passion can emerge.
Actually, assuming passion as inborn tend to cause people to be less open, less courageous in the face of challenges and less creative in pursuit of new interests. Thus, encouraging people to “find” their passion may cause them to eventually believe that interests and passions are unchangeable. People who think this have a fixed mindset of interest. By contrast, some people, whom we refer to as having a growth mindset of interest, view their interests and passions as developed.
People with a fixed mindset of interest, for example, may fall into the trap of thinking, “If I have already found my passion, why keep exploring?” In recent studies, after engaging in a new science task, arts students with a fixed mindset expressed less interest in a scientific topic than arts students with a growth mindset. Meanwhile, science students with a fixed mindset responded similarly to an art-related task. For those with a growth mindset, having a strong pre-existing interest in the arts or sciences did not get in the way of them viewing a new area as interesting.
Worse still, people with a fixed mindset of interest tend to expect their passions to provide limitless motivation, such that their favorite topics should never feel too difficult or demanding. Such a mindset can also limit creativity and innovation. If people believe they are restricted to only a few inborn interests and, in consequence, do not explore other areas, they may miss seeing important connections across different fields. That loss is especially unfortunate considering how leaders at innovative companies have long prized problem-solving that draw ideas from diverse disciplines.
Of course, not every activity will become a burning passion. But a growth mindset of interest will help you remain open and curious. The old saying “find something you love to do, and you’ll never have to work a day in your life” needs to be updated.
1. The author uses the sentence underlined in Paragraph 1 to ________.| A．set a target for criticism | B．point out the fact |
| C．confirm people’s finding | D．voice his opinion |
| A．Any interesting activity can spark a passion. |
| B．Companies prefer those who specialize in one field. |
| C．People with a fixed mindset of interest are hard to be motivated. |
| D．A growth mindset of interest promotes creativity and innovation. |
| A．One should count on luck to excite a burning passion. |
| B．Reinforced positive experiences contribute to passion. |
| C．Those already interested in a field find new areas boring. |
| D．We’d better cherish the existing passion and look for more. |
| A．Studying late at night. |
| B．Using up all the milk. |
| C．Leaving the milk out. |
9 . Upgrade your problems
In 2017, I spent all my money buying my first flat — which meant I had no money to fix my first homeowner’s problem. I was sleeping on an air mattress because I couldn’t afford furniture. Then I noticed a leaky pipe under the bath, which created a wet puddle (水坑). I couldn’t afford a plumber (水管工) but I didn’t want to introduce myself to the neighbour by crashing through their wet ceiling.
The only option left for me was that I had to solve the problem on my own. I took the bus to a nearby store and talked with the nice guy behind the counter. He explained how to fix it and sold me a pipe cutter and a bit of pipework. I went back home, pushed my head under the bath, and got the job done.
It taught me a lesson that has since become a bit of motto for me: Upgrade your problems.
Having a wet bathroom floor is a problem — and the day before I bought the place, I would have had a landlord to call. But once the place was mine, this became my problem. I saw this as progress: You must own your own property to take care of this sort of situation.
Years later, when I founded my professional services company with my business partner, Adam, this motto became core to how we approach the business. There have been many problems, and there will continue to be new ones. However, we remember the reason we have these problems — it’s because we run our own business! A late-paying customer is a problem, but it’s one we encounter only if we have paying customers.
That is why I still keep the pipe cutter on my desk today. It reminds me that, no matter my level of frustration (挫败), I am fortunate to face the problems I do. The more I solve them, the more I upgrade to even better ones.
1. What did the author notice in his first flat?2. How did the author solve his problem with the bath?
3. Please decide which part is false in the following statement, then underline it and explain why.
The author still keeps the pipe cutter on his desk today because it reminds him of his success in business.
4. What else would you do when you encounter problems in life? (In about 40 words)
Many common things around the house are very useful. For example, warm water can be used for cleaning. When salt is put
