It was an autumn morning shortly after my husband and I moved into our first house. Our children were upstairs unpacking, and I was looking out of the window at my father moving around mysteriously on the front lawn. “What are you doing out there?” I called to him.

    He looked up, smiling. “I'm making you a surprise.” I thought it could be just about anything. When we were kids, he always created something surprising for us. Today, however, Dad would say no more, and caught up in the busyness of our new life, I eventually forgot about his surprise.

    Until one gloomy day the next March when I glanced out of the window, I saw a dot of blue across the yard. I headed outside for a closer look. They were crocuses (番红花）throughout the front lawn — blue, yellow and my favorite pink, with little faces moving up and down in the cold wind. I remembered the things Dad secretly planted last autumn. He knew how the darkness and dullness of winter always got me down. What could have been more perfectly timely to my needs?

    My father's crocuses bloomed (开花） each spring for the next five seasons, always bringing the same assurance： Hard times are almost over. Hold on, keep going, and light is coming soon.

    Then a spring came with only half the usual blooms and the next spring there were none. I missed the crocuses, so I would ask Dad to come over and plant new bulbs. But I never did. He died suddenly one October day. My family were in deep sorrow, leaning on our faith.

    On a spring afternoon four years later, I was driving back when I felt depressed. It was Dad's birthday, and I found myself thinking about him. This was not unusual — my family often talked about him, remembering how he lived up to his faith. Suddenly I slowed as I turned into our driveway. I stopped and stared at the lawn. There on the muddy grass with small piles of melting snow, bravely waving in the wind, was one pink crocus.

    How could a flower bloom from a bulb more than 18 years ago, one that hadn't bloomed in over a decade? But there was the crocus. Tears filled my eyes as I realized its significance.

    Hold on, keep going, and light is coming soon. The pink crocus bloomed for only a day, but it built my faith for a lifetime.

Four Habits to Help You Succeed

We all want to succeed, whether it's in losing weight or learning the guitar. For those who have tried and failed, success seems difficult to understand. Why does one person succeed where another person fails?{#blank#}1{#/blank#}

1）Identify your core values.

    Finding your core values is in line with creating inner motivation.{#blank#}2{#/blank#}Pick a handful of things and actually write them down. Remind yourself of your values every day, and reflect on whether you are honoring those values through your work.

2）Pick a goal and focus on it.

    Choose one goal to start something large enough that will give you a sense of achievement, while adjusting well to your core values. Focus is key here.{#blank#}3{#/blank#}If you perform many tasks at a time, you might never complete your projects because they will take far too long.

3）Set a deadline for success.

    Set a date for success. Identify when you hope to achieve your goal.{#blank#}4{#/blank#}By setting a time limit, you are making the process more real.

4）{#blank#}5{#/blank#}

Failure can't be avoided when you take risks. By its very definition, the desire to succeed means you are risking failure. Many people tend to give up far too early. Don't fall into this trap! Remember your mindset earlier. Know it will happen. A failure is merely you working out the details, and learning what works and what doesn't. Use failure. Treat it as a good thing, and move on!

    Home to me means a sense of familiarity and nostalgia(怀旧). It's fun to come home. It looks the same. It smells the same. You'll realize what's changed is you. Home is where we ran remember pain, live, and some other experiences; We parted here; My parents met here; I won three championships here.

    If I close my eyes, I can still have a clear picture in mind of my first home. I walk in the door and see a brown sofa surrounding a low glass-top wooden table. To the right of the living room is my first bedroom. It's empty, but it's where my earliest memories are.

    There is the dining room table where I celebrated birthdays, and where I cried on Halloween-when I didn't want to wear the skirt my mother made for me. I always liked standing on that table because it made me feel tall and strong. If I sit at this table, I can see my favorite room in the house, my parents' room. It is simple: a brown wooden dresser lines the right side of the wall next to a television and a couple of photos of my grandparents on each side. Their bed is my safe zone. I can jump on it anytime - waking up my parents if I am scared or if I have an important announcement that cannot wait until the morning.

    I'm lucky because I know my first home still exists. It exists in my mind and heart, on a physical property(住宅) on West 64th street on the western edge of Los Angeles. It is proof I lived, I grew and I learned.

    Sometimes when I feel lost, I lie down and shut my eyes, and I go home. I know it's where I'll find my family, my dogs, and my belongings. I purposely leave the window open at night because I know I'll be blamed by Mom. But I don't mind, because I want to hear her say my name, which reminds me I'm home.

    Whether you have a piece of land or a few pots on a balcony, plant a family garden: You'll all live healthier! Gardening is an easy activity to share and you'll harvest benefits along with your fresh vegetables, colorful flowers, and aromatic herbs. Even better, you don't have to wait for your plants to bloom to see those benefits.

    When parents and kids work together to plant and care for a garden, they can all enjoy these benefits:

    Physical activity: Gardening and yard work are mild exercise, which we all need every day (for at least 30 minutes). While tending your family garden doesn't require the intense activity of running or playing singles tennis, it's still beneficial to your health. For one thing, research shows that once you start gardening, you usually continue for more than 30 minutes. And gardening combines delicate skill strengthening and stretching.

    Lower stress, better mood: Gardening is excellent stress relief for good reasons: enjoying fresh air and sunlight, performance of relaxing tasks, and even contact with harmless bacteria in the soil that helps release serotonin (血清素) in the brain.

    Outdoor time: Children prefer spending a lot of time indoors, which can negatively affect their behavior and health. A family garden gets them outside enjoying and experiencing the natural world.

    “An apple a day keeps the doctor away.” Similarly, if we drink a little more water every day, we may find that we need to go to the doctor a lot less often. A healthy diet is made up of water and a great many different kinds of foods. We know that healthy foods like fruits, vegetables and fish, are important as they provide us with energy and fiber, without giving us too much fat and sugar. But why is water important?

    The human body needs water to survive. Water is important as it carries poisons and waste out of our bodies. However, doctors advise us to drink plenty of water, much more than the small amount we need to stay alive.

    Some doctors believe that water is important for our health in all kinds of ways. They believe that a great many illnesses and health problems start as a result of dehydration(脱水)—a lack of water in the body. Most people are dehydrated at least some of time, although they probably don't know it. It is surprising to learn that if we feel thirsty, we are already in the first stage of dehydration. In fact, we are advised to drink water before we feel thirsty.

    These doctors think that health problems such as headaches, high blood pressure and asthma(哮喘) could be helped if people drink more water. They also believe that drinking more water can help people who are overweight. Water contains no calories so it will not make us put on weight. If we drink water, we will probably drink less sugary soft drinks such as Coca-cola. Doctors also believe that drinking more water may stop people from overeating. They say that many people think that they are hungry when they are, in fact, thirsty. Doctors suggest, therefore, that we eat less food and drink more water. There are still many health problems that cannot be solved by drinking water, so we should not stop going to seeing the doctor completely. However, if we make a decision to drink water every day, we may find that we need to go to the doctor a lot less often.

    "A bird with a broken wing will never fly as high. " I'm sure T. J, Ware was made to feel this way almost every day in school.

    By high school, T, J. was the most celebrated troublemaker in his town. Teachers literally cringed when they saw his name posted on their classroom lists.

    I met T. J. for the first time when all the students at school were attending ACE training. At first, he showed no interest in the discussion. But slowly, the interactive games drew him in. T. J. had some brilliant thoughts on those situations, which were welcomed by his group. By the end of the activity, the other students on the team were impressed with his concern and ideas and elected T. J. co-chairman of the team.

    When T. J. showed up at school on Monday morning, a group of teachers were expressing their disagreements to the school principal about his being elected co-chairman. The principal reminded them that the purpose of the program was to uncover any positive feeling and strengthen its practice until true change can take place. The teachers left the meeting, firmly convinced that failure was unavoidable.

    Two weeks later, T. J. and his friends led a group of 70 students to collect food They collected a school record: 2,854 cans of food in just two hours. The local newspaper covered the event with a full-page article the next day. That newspaper story was posted on the main bulletin board at school, where everyone could see it. 

    T. J. ,s picture was up there for doing something great.

    T. J. started showing up at school every day and answered questions from teachers for the first time.  The event he started now yields 9,000 cans of food in one day, taking care of 70 percent of the need for food for one year.

    T, J. reminds us that a bird with a broken wing only needs mending.  But once it has healed, it can fly higher than the rest. T. J. got a job. He became productive. He is flying quite nicely these days.