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    Whenever you do things you don't like, you will start to hate yourself a bit more. You will hate yourself for not being consistent. For doing things you know that you don't want to do, another stress is right there.

Do less

    This is one of the hardest things, especially for me. I'm doing too many things at the same time. In itself, doing many different things to figure out what works and what doesn't isn't that hard. {#blank#}2{#/blank#} .But at some point you need to

     let go of the things that don't work and focus on the things that work. And that's the hardest part, at least for me.

    {#blank#}3{#/blank#} .And if you always try to make everything work, you'll usually end up with nothing working at all.

Get rid of complicated things

    There are many complicated（复杂的）things in life. Complicated relationships, complicated jobs, complicated whatever. what all of these things do is that they steal our focus. {#blank#}4{#/blank#} 

Read books, not blogs

    Blogs consist of too much information for our brains to process. Blogs usually leave out the story our brains need. {#blank#}5{#/blank#} Don't believe me? Try it. What parts of this blog post do you remember? Probably none.

A. It's actually quite good.

B. Never hate to be yourself

C. Don't do things you don't like.

D. I always try to make everything work.

E. Our brains can make up a good story.

F. They also add an extra stress to our lives.

G. Our brains need a story to remember things.

     To me, inspirations mean to put my thoughts, heart, and creations into my jewelry. Sometimes I become so inspired with what I'm working on that I can finish one or more sets in less than an hour. Because of that feeling, I have named my jewelry collection “Inspirations”.

     I am a 17-year-old student with sickle-cell anemia. With this, I am in and out of the hospital a lot. So I started making jewelry a year ago when I was in the hospital. I really needed something to do, so I was introduced to jewelry making by a child life expert.

     One day while lying in my hospital bed, I decided to get up and go to the patient's playroom ,and look through the craft designs. That was when I became inspired to design my jewelry collection, and named it “Inspirations”.

     When I'm  not sick, I try to keep a positive attitude through reading, schoolwork and craft activities. Even though there is a lot of work, I try to stay focused all the time. When I need a break or just to be free I turn to my craft activities. This is a way to ease my mind and it always helps me to especially get through those stressful times.

     I am getting very excited about graduating next year and preparing myself for college. Who knows my collection of “Inspirations” would take me to the places I always dreamed of? I may see celebrities I admire and even sell them some of my beautiful “Inspirations”. If they wear my “Inspirations”, it will be well known and in great demand. What a great way to make some extra money for college! I never thought being sick would bring me “Inspirations”. I want people to look beyond my illness and see the creations I've made in my collection called “Inspirations”.

    For those who make journeys across the world, the speed of travel today has turned the countries into a series of villages．Distances between them appear no greater to a modern traveler than those which once faced men as they walked from village to village. Jet planes fly people from one end of the earth to the other, allowing them a freedom of movement undreamt of a hundred years ago.

    Yet some people wonder if the revolution in travel has gone too far. A price has been paid, they say, for the conquest (征服) of time and distance. Travel is something to be enjoyed, not endured (忍受).  The boat offers leisure and time enough to appreciate the ever-changing sights and sounds of a journey. A journey by train also has a special charm about it. Lakes and forests and wild, open plains sweeping past your carriage window create a grand view in which time and distance mean nothing. On board a plane, however, there is just the blank blue of the sky filling the narrow window of the airplane. The soft lighting, in-flight films and gentle music make up the only world you know, and the hours progress slowly.

    Then there is the time spent being “processed” at a modern airport. People are conveyed like robots along walkways; baggage is weighed, tickets produced, examined and produced yet again before the passengers move to another waiting area. Journeys by rail and sea take longer, yes, but the hours devoted to being “processed” at departure and arrival in airports are luckily absent. No wonder, then, that the modern high-speed trains are winning back passengers from the airlines.

    Man, however, is now a world traveler and cannot turn his back on the airplane. The working lives of too many people depend upon it; whole new industries have been built around its design and operation. The holiday maker, too, with limited time to spend, patiently endures the busy airports and limited space of the flight to gain those extra hours and even days, relaxing in the sun. speed controls people's lives; time saved, in work or play, is the important thing—or so we are told. Perhaps those first horsemen, riding free across the wild, open plains, were enjoying a better world than the one we know today. They could travel at will, and the clock was not their master.

    After two years of careful consideration, Robert McCrum has reached a conclusion on his selection of the 100 greatest novels written in English. Take a look at a few in his list.

    The Pilgrim's Progress by John Bunyan (1678)

    A story of a man in search of truth told with the simple clarity and beauty of Bunyan's prose makes this an English classic.

    Robinson Crusoe by Daniel Defoe (1719)

    By the end of the 19th century, no book in English literary history had enjoyed more editions and translations. This world-famous novel is a complex literature that one cannot resist.

    Gulliver s Travels by Jonathan Swift (1726)

    A great work that s been repeatedly printed, Jonathan Swift's Gulliver's Travels comes third in our list of the best novels written in English.

    Clarissa by Samuel Richardson (1748)

    Clarissa is a tragic heroine, pressured by her dishonorable family to marry a wealthy man she dislikes, in the book that Samuel Johnson described as “the first book in the world that shows the knowledge about the human heart”.

Tom Jones by Henry Fielding (1749)

    Tom Jones is a classic English novel that gets the spirit of its age and whose characters are well-known since they have come to represent the society at that time.

    Emma by Jane Austen (1816)

    Jane Austen's Emma is her most outstanding work, mixing the best parts of her early books with a deep sense of feelings.

    The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket by Edgar Allan Poe (1838)

    Edgar Allan Poe's only novel－a classic adventure story with supernatural elements－has fascinated and influenced generations of writers.

    A ten-year-old from Howell, Michigan is being praised as a hero thanks to his persistence (坚持) that led to saving the life of an elderly neighbor. The event happened late in an evening when Danny DiPietro was being driven home from hockey practice by his mom.

    That's when the young boy noticed an open garage (车库) and a figure that he believed was a dog outside an apartment building near his house. Given the freezing cold weather, the young boy got a feeling that something was not right. But instead of dismissing it like most kids his age would have, he insisted that his mother, Dawn, find out what was going on. Dawn tried to make Danny believe that no one would leave a dog out in such cold weather, but he refused to take no for an answer.

    Dawn finally gave in and decided to drive to the area with the family dog and see if there was any truth to Danny's hunch (直觉). Sure enough, as she got closer to the apartment building she noticed a garage that was wide open and someone waving madly for help. Upon getting there, she realized that it was not a dog the young boy had seen, but Kathleen St. Onge. The 80-year-old had fallen down on some ice in her garage and had been lying there for two hours, unable to get up.

    Dawn rushed home to get her husband to help and called 911. The two then returned with some blankets to cover Ms. St. Onge, while they waited for the ambulance (救护车) to arrive. Though still in hospital, the elderly woman is recovering well and forever grateful to Danny, for following up on his hunch!

    After moving to the United States, immigrant groups trying to fit in tend to choose high calorie fatty foods in an attempt to appear more American, a new study finds. That's one reason why immigrants approach US levels of obesity within 15 years of moving to America.

The researchers also did an experiment that measured whether or not the threat of appearing un-American influenced respondents' food choices. After being questioned about their ability to speak English 75 percent of Asian-Americans identified a typical American food as their favorite. Only 25 percent of Asian-Americans who had not been asked if they spoke English did the same.

    When their American identity was called into question during a follow-up study, Asian-American participants also tended to choose typical American dishes, such as hamburgers and cheese sandwiches.  In that experiment, 55 Asian-Americans were asked to choose a meal from a local Asian or American restaurant. Some participants were told that only Americans could participate in the study. Those who chose the more typical American fare ended up consuming an extra 182 calories,  including 12 grams of fat and 7 grams of saturated fat (饱和脂肪).

    "People who feel like they need to prove they belong to a culture will change their habits in an attempt to fit in," said Sauna Cheryan, an author of the study and assistant professor of psychology at the University of Washington.

    "If immigrants and their children choose unhealthy American foods over healthier traditional foods across their lives, this process of fitting in could lead to poorer health." Cheryan added.

    Social pressures, the study concluded, are at the heart of the problem.  "In American society today, being American is associated with being white. Americans, who don't fit this image even if they were born here and speak English, feel that pressure to prove that they're American," said Cheryan.