1 . 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.

    1     Throughout the day, stop what you are doing to listen to music, play with a toy or doodle on a piece of paper. Stretching your brain in different ways and daydreaming can stimulate your imagination.

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.     2    

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.     3    

Listen. Really listen. When was the last time you remembered everything someone said to you?     4     Having a new-found curiosity and consideration for the other person might lead you to some surprising discoveries and take you outside of yourself.

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.     5     Even attempting a 5k when you are not quite ready for a marathon can really help.

Many common things around the house are very useful. For example, warm water can be used for cleaning. When salt is put     1     warm water, it can help ease a sore throat. Warm water can also be used to make an orange taste better. The secret is the warmth of the water. The fruit becomes sweeter,     2     the warm water lowers its level of sourness. Another example is     3     you can try a banana peel when your shoes look dirty. The tannin in the peel works like magic, making your shoes shiny and bright!

4 . I love my father. He’s the parent who I thought understood me. But when I was growing up, he was ______ home. He worked overtime as an accountant, late into the evening during the week, all day Saturday and most Sundays. Even if he was home, and wasn’t working at his desk, I had to ______ him, because I was one of three daughters. All those years in my childhood I longed for my father’s ______.

One day my father was working at his desk. I ______ him there and stood beside the desk. ______ in his writing, he didn’t notice me. To let him know I was there, I lifted my plastic water gun and shot him in the face. This frightened him and he roared like a tiger. I dashed out of the room and down the stairs. I was so _______ because I’d never seen him angry before.

Moments later, he appeared at the top of the stairs, ______ his arms and laughed; his arms and laugh invited me to run back up the stairs and into his huge hug. Comforting me softly, he ______ for scaring me. I kept replaying the _______ in my mind for a thousand times.

My sense that I couldn’t reach my father stayed with me even when I was grown. Well into adulthood, I felt that I could never ______ the father time I’d missed as a child. But it turned out that I could. And I did.

The ______ started when my father retired. One day, I called when my mother was out. My father answered the phone, and he couldn’t hand me over to my mother, ______ we started to talk. He told me he’d been thinking about his grandfather, and I asked about him. He began telling me. I ______ that when I asked him about his past, he stayed on the phone. And the older he got, the more ______   my father was to talk about his past, especially his childhood. In his detailed descriptions, I felt he was recreating the world of his childhood, and ______ me in. The stories he told became a world we inhabited together. He introduced me to the people he knew there, and to the child he was.

I really cherish my father’s stories and will pass them on to the next generation.

Humans like to live near rivers and they often find     1    (they) needing to cross them. The simplest way across a river is to ford it. Fording is to find     2     the river is shallow and cross it safely without using a boat. It means     3    (pretend) the river is not there, continuing to walk, and hoping for the best. But sometimes even water at shallow areas can be surprisingly dangerous,       4     is because it’s not always easy to tell how fast the water is moving. It only takes ankle-deep water to sweep a person off their feet.

What makes some people incapable of apologizing even when they’re clearly in the wrong?

People who cannot apologize often have deep feelings of low self-worth. When their delicate ego(自我) cannot absorb the blow of admitting they were wrong, their defense mechanisms kick in—they may place blame and even argue about basic facts to prevent the threat of having to lower themselves by offering an apology.

Unfortunately, many of us mistakenly interpret these people’s defensiveness as a sign of psychological strength. That’s because outwardly they appear to be tough individuals who refuse to back down. But this doesn’t show that they’re strong—it shows that they’re weak.

Admitting that we’re wrong is emotionally uncomfortable and painful to our sense of self. In order to take responsibility and apologize, our self-worth needs to be strong enough to absorb that discomfort. Indeed, if our self-worth is higher and more stable, we can tolerate the temporary discomfort that such an admission involves—without the walls around our ego falling down.

But if our self-worth is seemingly high but actually breakable, that discomfort can go through our defensive walls and score a direct hit to our ego. Indeed, the more fixed one’s defense mechanisms are, the more delicate the ego they’re protecting.

The mistake we often make when faced with someone who’s habitually incapable of apologizing is to become angry and try to win our argument with them. But the sad reality is that we can never win. In these situations, the best we can do is make our points as calmly and as convincingly as we can and then disengage from the argument when it becomes unproductive—like when they disagree with the facts, come up with silly excuses or turn to mean remarks.

Managing Star Performers in High-Pressure Situations

It is generally accepted that success produces confidence, and confidence increases the ability to handle pressure. While success can indeed produce confidence, it can also increase multiply expectations and raise pressure to unhealthy levels over time.

Even the greatest performers feel pressure more than you might think. Researcher Geir Jordet studied 366 kicks from 37 penalty shootouts held at the world’s three largest soccer tournaments. His unusual finding was that superstars scored only 65% of the time vs. the 74% overall average. Even more striking, they scored far less than players who would later go on to win the same awards. These “future stars” scored 89% of the time. In short, players who have the skill but not yet the status (地位) that comes with winning a major award performed far better than those who had both the skill and status. Status, as it turns out, can be a burden.

Leading or coaching highly successful performers through a high-pressure event requires reducing the overwhelming (压倒性的) baggage that they may attach to failure. You can start to accomplish this by asking one key question: What are the things that are most important to you—that are essential to your being—and won’t change regardless of the outcome?

On May 26, 2021, outstanding tennis player Naomi Osaka announced on Twitter that due to her mental health, she would not do any press interviews at the French Open. The volume (量) of tasks and distractions that surround performance can dramatically increase pressure. And as success and status build, so does volume. The requests for Osaka’s time at the French Open in 2021 were vastly greater than they were in 2016 during her first Grand Slam event.

In response to the increase in volume, Osaka—like all of us—had two choices: accommodate more or remove the volume that was creating the most pressure. She chose the latter, which is exactly the right response to pressure that comes from volume.

Few of us will ever know the pressure of carrying the expectations of 300 million people into a physically and mentally demanding environment. But, through thoughtful conversations that aim to keep importance in viewpoint and simplify volume, we can help our own stars carry the burden of success a little more lightly.