Here is an astonishing and significant fact: Mental work alone can't make us tire. It sounds absurd. But a years ago, scientists tried to find out how long the human brain could labor without reaching a stage of fatigue (疲劳). To the amazement of these scientists, they discovered that blood passing through the brain, when it is active, shows no fatigue at all! If we took a drop of blood from a day laborer, we would find it full of fatigue toxins(毒素) and fatigue products. But if we took blood from the brain of an Albert Einstein, it would show no fatigue toxins at the end of the day.

    So far as the brain is concerned, it can work as well and swiftly at the end of eight or even twelve hours of effort as at the beginning. The brain is totally tireless. So what makes us tired?

    Some scientists declare that most of our fatigue comes from our mental and emotional(情绪的) attitudes. One of England's most outstanding scientists, J.A. Hadfield, says, “The greater part of the fatigue from which we suffer is of mental origin. In fact, fatigue of purely physical origin is rare.” Dr. Brill, a famous American scientist, goes even further. He declares, “One hundred percent of the fatigue of sitting worker in good health is due to emotional problems.”

What kinds of emotions make sitting workers tired? Joy? Satisfaction? No! A feeling of being bored, anger, anxiety, tenseness, worry, a feeling of not being appreciated—those are the emotions that tire sitting workers. Hard work by itself seldom causes fatigue. We get tired because our emotions produce nervousness in the body.

    No personal success, achievement, or goal, can be realized without self-discipline. {#blank#}1{#/blank#} It is the ability to control one's impulses, emotions, desires and behavior. To possess it is to be able to make the decisions, take the actions, and carry out your plan regardless of the obstacles, discomfort, or difficulties, that may come your way.

    How to develop self-discipline? We'll explore it together.

· Start with baby steps. No process takes place overnight. {#blank#}2{#/blank#}So, begin by making the decision to go forward and learning what it takes to get there.

· Learn what motivates you and what your bad triggers are. {#blank#}3{#/blank#} Sometimes it is very difficult to fight off urges, so know the areas where your resistance is low and how to avoid those situations. Remove the temptations and surround yourself with encouraging items such as motivating slogans and pictures of what you want to achieve.

· Make certain behaviors a routine. Once you have decided what's important to you and which goals to strive for , establish a daily routine that will help you achieve them. {#blank#}4{#/blank#} They can put you in a negative frame of mind and hinder(阻碍)your self-discipline. A poor attitude can also be a bad habit.

    {#blank#}5{#/blank#} Michael Jordan has always maintained that his greatness as a basketball player came as much from his willingness to work hard at his craft, as it did his talent. It was his desire through discipline and focus that made him one of the best basketball players ever. If it worked for him, it could certainly work for the rest of us.

A．What is self-discipline?

B．Engage in sports or activities．

C．Get inspiration from those you admire．

D．You can begin by learning about yourself !

E．If you try to do too much at once , you could injure yourself and have a setback．

F．Meanwhile, get rid of some of your bad, self-defeating habits, whatever they may be．

G．It does mean learning how to focus your mind and energies on your goals until they are accomplished．

    The Boy Made It!

    One Sunday, Nicholas, a teenager, went skiing at Sugarloaf Mountain in Maine. In the early afternoon, when he was planning to go home, a fierce snowstorm swept into the area. Unable to see far, he accidentally turned off the path. Before he knew it, Nicholas was lost, all alone! He didn't have food, water, a phone, or other supplies. He was getting colder by the minute.

    Nicholas had no idea where he was. He tried not to panic. He thought about all the survival shows he had watched on TV. It was time to put the tips he had learned to use.

    He decided to stop skiing. There was a better chance of someone finding him if he stayed put. The first thing he did was to find shelter form the freezing wind and snow. If he didn't, his body temperature would get very low, which could quickly kill him.

    Using his skis, Nicholas built a snow cave. He gathered a huge mass of snow and dug out a hole in the middle. Then he piled branches on top of himself, like a blanket, to stay as warm as he could.

    By that evening, Nicholas was really hungry. He ate snow and drank water from a nearby stream so that his body wouldn't lose too much water. Not knowing how much longer he could last, Nicholas did the only thing he could- he huddled(蜷缩) in his cave and slept.

    The next day, Nicholas went out to look for help, but he couldn't find anyone. He followed his tracks and returned to the snow cave, because without shelter, he could die that night. On Tuesday, Nicholas went out to find help. He had walked for about a mile when a volunteer searcher found him. After two days stuck in the snow, Nicholas was saved.

    Nicholas might not have survived this snowstorm had it not been for TV. He had often watched Grylls' survival show. Man vs. Wild. That's where he learned the tips that saved his life, In each episode(一期节目)of Man vs. Wild, Grylls is abandoned in a wild area and has to find his way out.

    When Grylls heard about Nicholas' amazing deeds, he was super impressed that Nicholas had made it since he knew better than anyone how hard Nicholas had to work to stay alive.

    You know eating fruit and vegetables is helpful. But did you know it can also make you look good?

    People who increased their intake over just six weeks developed a healthy glow and appeared more attractive, researchers found.

    Scientists at St Andrews University found eating them subtly increased yellow and red pigments in the volunteers' skin.

    They monitored the food intake of 35 people and took pictures of their faces, arms and hands using a sensitive camera at the start, and after three and six weeks.

    Increasing their intake of greens by 2.9 portions a day was found to make the person look healthier and an extra 3.3 portion could enhance their attractiveness, when their photographs were rated by others.

    Fruit and vegetables are rich in carotenoids（类胡萝卜素）, which are known to protect against cell damage from pollution and UV rays, and can also prevent age-related diseases including heart disease and cancer.

    But while it was known eating extreme amounts of certain vegetables such as carrots could turn skin orange, it was not known a small increase was perceptible to others and was seen as appealing.

    A camera measured changes to the skin's redness, yellowness and lightness, and found it significantly changed in people who naturally increased their intake. These changes were not evident at three weeks.

    Using light sensors, the researchers showed these red and yellow hues(色调，色相) were linked with the levels of carotenoids in their skin.

    There are hundreds of carotenoids but those thought to have the most dramatic effect are lycopene（番茄红素）which gives tomatoes and red peppers their red color - and beta-carotene found in carrots as well as broccoli, squash, and spinach.

    Skin color is also affected by chemicals called polyphenols(多酚), found in apples, blueberries and cherries, which cause blood rush to the skin surface.

    David Brown and Anne are two patients in the Adult Day Care Program at Mercy Hospitals. David Brown is seventy-two years old. He's friendly and likes to talk. He lives with his wife in the city. But David is becoming forgetful. His wife says, “He'll heat up some soup, then forget to turn off the gas.” She is sixty-one and still works. She is worried about leaving her husband alone.

    Anne is eighty and lives with her 60-year old daughter. Her daughter says that she needs a rest. “Mom follows me everywhere. She follows me when I read newspapers. I need a rest and she does, too.”

    And so, several times a week, David and Anne's families take them to the Adult Day Care Center. Many hospitals have this program, Patients come to the Center for a full or half day, from one to five days a week. All the patients live with their families and most are old people.

    Mrs. Carol Johnson is the director of the Center. She says, “We help the patients learn many things here. Patients have the chance to get out of their houses. Husbands, wives or grown children can work or have a rest. Most important of all, families are able to stay together.”

    Many of us listen to music while we work, thinking that it will help us to concentrate on the task at hand. And in fact, recent research has found that music can have beneficial effects on creativity. When it comes to other areas of performance, however, the impact of background music is more complicated.

    The idea that listening to music when working is beneficial to output probably has its roots in the so-called “Mozart effect”. Put simply, this is the finding that spatial rotation performance(空间旋转能力) is increased immediately after listening to the music of Mozart, compared to no sound at all.

    How sound affects performance has been the topic of research for over 40 years, and is observed through a phenomenon called the irrelevant sound effect. To study irrelevant sound effect, participants in the research are asked to complete a simple task which requires them to recall a series of numbers or letters in the exact order in which they saw them. The tricky thing is being able to do this while ignoring any background noise.

    Two key characteristics of the irrelevant sound effect are required for its observation. First, the task must require the person to use their rehearsal abilities(复述能力), and second, the sound must contain acoustical variation(声学变化). Where the sound does not vary much acoustically, the performance of the task is much closer to that observed in quiet conditions.

    The irrelevant sound effect itself comes from attempting to process two sources of ordered information at the same time—one from the task and one from the sound. Unfortunately, only the former is required to successfully perform the  recall task, and the effort in ensuring that irrelevant order information from the sound is not processed actually hinders(阻碍) this ability.

    A similar conflict is also seen when reading while in the presence of lyrical music. In this situation, the two sources of words—from the task and the sound—are in conflict. The cost is poorer performance of the task in the presence of music with lyrics.

    What this all means is that whether having music playing in the background helps or hinders performance depends on the task and on the type of music, and only understanding this relationship will help people maximize their productivity levels.