1 . For most people traveling abroad, their first choice is probably to make a beeline for (直奔) tourist sights. For me, I find lots of joy in grocery (食品杂货店) shopping on holiday.

As a vegetarian (素食主义者), finding restaurants that meet my needs is not always easy abroad.     1     The first thing I do, after dropping my bags off, is to go to a grocery store. That enables me to cook breakfast in the morning without walking around for hours trying to find “vegan breakfast” near me.

The variety of foods attracts me every time I travel somewhere new. In Malta, I found the most delicious chocolate-filled cakes, a product I would struggle to find even in the UK.     2     I was so delighted that I could enjoy such an unexpected treat. Another surprise was their selection of ice cream available even in the smallest grocery stores.

    3     Looking for smoked tofu and corn pancakes turns into quite a mission whenever I visit Cluj-Napoca in Romania. There is usually only one variety of smoked tofu, sold in a very small tub (食品盒) and only in the cafeteria section.     4     That is because they are never available at the smaller ones.

Grocery shopping on holiday sounds unusual. But it means being involved in the day-to-day lives of a country’s citizens. I can pretend I am a local and put myself in their shoes. I can watch kids begging their parents for sweets, an international experience that needs no language, or watch couples pick up snacks and drinks for a party on a Friday night.     5    

2 . Stepping out of your comfort zone (区域) helps you to improve yourself and become a happy and fun person. You’ll experience greater enjoyment as you try out new experiences.     1    .

Unplug (拔掉插头)

Take a break from today's interconnected world.       2    .   You may feel a little uncomfortable at first, but you will know that is just part of the process to let you know better about yourself.

Go to another country

You will experience new cultures, different customs, unique landscapes and another language from travel.     3    . Additionally, the excitement of exploring different scenery and experiencing different cultures are lifelong treasure.

    4    

Try diving, skydiving or a roller coaster ride. If those are too frightening, try giving a speech or taking a dance class. Once you overcome your inner fear, you will have a sense of satisfaction that comes from overcoming it.

Talk with someone new

This doesn’t have to be a complete stranger. Start a conversation with someone new at work, the barista (咖啡师) in your local coffee shop, a neighbour or someone in the queue.     5    . By focusing on other people rather than your own internal thoughts, you can improve your own mental health.

3 . For making contact and communicating with a person, effective eye contact is essential to our everyday interaction with people, and also to those who want to be effective communicators in public places.     1    .

Generally in Western societies and many other cultures, eye contact with a person is expected to be regular but not overly persistent.     2    , causing the person who’s the object of a person’s stare to feel overly studied and uncomfortable.

    3    . The New Zealand Medical Journal reported that one reason so many young children fall victim to attacks by pet dogs is their overly-lasting eye contact with pets, which causes them to feel threatened and defensive.

Overly lasting eye contact is also a sign of a person’s over-awareness of the messages they are giving. In the case of people who try to lie to someone, they may distort (扭曲) their eye contact so that they’re not avoiding it.     4    . But on the contrary, evasive (逃避的) eye contact is a sign of discomfort. Why do we avoid looking at a person? It may be because we feel ashamed to be looking at them if we’re being dishonest of trying to take them in. Evasive eye contact may also a sign of dishonesty.

However, Scotland’s University of Stirling found that, in a question-and-answer study among children, those who maintained eye contact were less likely to come up with the correct answer to a question than those who looked away to consider their response.     5    , when this energy could be spent on deep thinking.

4 . Go on a 15-minute Tour

Didn’t someone say that life is about the journey, not the destination?     1     when you are focused only on getting to the next meeting, starting your next class period, or hurrying to send an email, you’re missing all of the people between Points A and B.

To commit some time to the journey, take some time to walk around where you work and notice your surroundings.     2     Also, some of the smaller yet critical social clues that exist right under your nose will be concentrated on again.

    3     Things to look for include the look and feel of people’s work spaces, the timing of when different people move around the office, and which people seek interaction versus those who stay at their desks all day.

After your first observation tour, select a different day to tour your workspace for moods. Other people’s moods can provide you with critical clues about how things are going.     4     Focus on what you see, hear, and pick up on in other people.

Schedule 15 minutes to tour your workplace twice a week for a month and be sure to avoid making too many assumptions or conclusions — just simply observe.     5    

5 . Growing up in a Southern family, big meals were the norm. Every meal for my nuclear family of four provided enough food for eight. Each Sunday, when we drove to my grandmother’s home for lunch, there was more than enough food.     1     Having more than enough was a generous and affectionate act; having too little conveyed almost a moral failing.

    2     When having only another couple over for dinner, I’d make more food than the four of us could finish. My wife always asked me to make less both to save money and because our tiny fridge could hold only so many leftovers.     3    

When I lost my job, though, my handling of extra food suddenly hit a barrier.     4     However, I then quickly went back to my former state of needing to cook much when I landed another job.

But instead of cooking a lot and then simply eating the leftovers, I had a new solution that worked well with my belief in showing love through food:     5     Several of my friends lived alone, didn’t like cooking or had lost jobs too, so bringing them food helped not only me but also them in a practical way.

Such a small act can bring large amounts of joy to anyone in these hard times. And in unfavorable situations, it’s an act that allows us to develop friendship and show love while we must, still, remain apart.

6 . Too much stuff, too much to do, too much stress.... These are weighing people down and breaking their spirit.     1     Here are several things to help you get started.

The first step is to sort out your possessions. To live a simple life, you need a simple living space. So take some time to tidy your living area. Focus on keeping things that you value deeply and throw away things that you don’t need any longer.     2     Finally, you will be shocked to see how few possessions you actually use in your daily life.

    3     As humans we tend to think what we are used to as naturally right. However, there could be problems in the million little things that bother us as we go about our day. The best skill you can develop in your life is the ability to take a step back and look at things objectively by raising doubts about what is seemingly the way it is supposed to be.

We should always stay mindful and live with intention. If there is something in your life that you don’t love, change it! Cut out the things that aren’t serving you. You can write down what an ideal day would look like for you in five years’ time. Then outline what things you want more in your life and what things you want less.     4    

Managing your time wisely counts.     5     Instead, take some time to think about whether it’s something that you are excited about attending. Be intentional with how you spend your time and take control of what you do. This is how you can guarantee yourself a flexible schedule and do everything in an unhurried way.

7 . People have tried everything to get more sleep. But unlike almost every other area of life, effort is not rewarded.    1    The more you try, the less you are likely to succeed. Here are some ways to improve your sleep that might just work.

    2    There is nothing you can do between now and bedtime to guarantee that you will sleep tonight. There is, however, plenty you can start doing to improve your chances of sleeping well next month. So instead of worrying about the night ahead, make sleeping well a long-term goal and expect to see progress in a few weeks rather than tomorrow.

Have a late night. Adults need to be awake for at least 16 hours to generate enough sleep-drive to sleep for eight hours at night. Having an early night can mean you won’t be sleepy enough to fall asleep quickly and easily. Don’t pay too much attention to the exact times or he hours of sleep you are getting — the details don’t matter. And don’t take naps (小睡) in the day.    3    

Smile more. Smiling can reduce tension and promote relaxation. As you turn the light out at night, try to think of something funny and smile lo yourself in the dark.    4    Even a fake smile is enough to send a message to the brain to change your mood and retrain the brain to be comfortable with being awake, thus reducing tension and allowing sleep to follow.

Stop reading articles about sleep. None of the researching, monitoring or analyzing actually leads to better sleep. In fact, constantly looking for a solution is undoubtedly making things worse.    5    Make this the last article you read on the subject, then go and find something more interesting to think about.

8 . Like it or love it, social media is a major part of life. Teens spend more than half of their waking hours online. They use some of that time to post pictures and create profiles on social media accounts.     1    

Clicking on a thumbs-up or a heart icon is an easy way to stay in touch.     2     Some social media sites use those likes to determine how many people eventually see a post. One with many likes is more likely to be seen-and to get even more likes.

What’s more, viewing posts with a lot of likes activates the reward system in our brain.     3     For example, posts related to alcohol may encourage teens to drink. That means that what you like online has the power to influence not just what others like, but even what they do.

    4     And not always in a good way. For example, in one 2011 study, teens doing a driving task in a lab took more risks when their friends were around. Researchers also looked at the teens’ brains during this task. They saw activity in a part of the brain that’s involved in rewards, which suggests the teens were changing their behavior to try to get social approval.

Joining social media can give people a sense of being in the know. But posts may exaggerate (夸大) how well our friends and others are feeling, making them appear much happier than we are.     5    

9 . Soothe the Sunday scaries

Most of us look forward to the weekend as a time to relax, connect with friends and family, and deal with tasks from a to-do list that gets neglected during the workweek. But as the weekend comes to an end, many are missing out on Sunday Funday and instead experiencing an overwhelming sense of anxiety and even dread about the upcoming week.     1     Some people describe it as a heaviness they can feel in their body, while others feel so unsettled that they could jump out of their skin.

Even though the Sunday scaries are common, they are manageable. Here’s how experts say you can ease your end-of-weekend anxiety.

Structure your Sunday.     2     You might still go through that sense of dread, but that feeling is harder to hold on to when you’ re engaging in something that makes you feel good.

Don’t forget to relax. If you’re feeling more stress, it’s important to make space for relaxing activities to ground yourself. Maybe a midafternoon shower or bath, maybe an engaging movie or show, whatever feels like a helpful distraction to reground from the scaries.

Identify your anxiety sources. Try to figure out what’s really causing you to dread the week.     3     Even if there’s not a single reason behind your Sunday anxiety, organizing the stress into small parts can help make it all more manageable.

    4     Getting rid of the Sunday scaries isn’t just about minimizing the gloom of the week ahead. Have something to look forward to. This gives you the opportunity to shift your thoughts to fun and will help improve your mood.

End your Sunday with the right energy. Sunday night is a proper wind-down time. Maybe you want to journal, do a face mask, read a few pages of a good book. Do your best to honor this time and make Sunday night all about you.     5    

10 . Have you ever complained that there just aren’t enough hours in a day? Do you usually find yourself falling short on time in completing assigned tasks?     1     No matter how hard I tried, tasks just kept piling up towards the end every day and it became extremely difficult to stay productive. In spite of trying all kinds of free and paid to-do apps, nothing helped.

That didn’t change until I discovered the time management technique called Time Blocking. Since then, I have been able to transform my daily schedule for the better with the help of Time Blocking.     2    

It is a simple time management technique where you schedule your day such that it is divided into time blocks that are dedicated to specific tasks or groups of tasks.     3     Imagine that you have a dozen or so tasks that you want to finish working on tomorrow. You open your to-do app of choice and neatly list down everything that you plan to do, and then plot some important meetings and reminders in your calendar app,     4     The more specific you are about the task, the more focused and productive you will be and thus, more productive.

    5     It not only makes your to-do list more manageable, but also it gives you more control over your day and helps you prioritize your tasks. It also improves your focus and helps get rid of procrastination(拖延症), as it allows you to focus on one project at a time.