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.

3 . 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.

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.