When I was nine years old, I loved to go fishing with my dad. But the only thing that wasn't very fun about it was that he could catch many fish while I couldn't catch anything. I usually got pretty upset and kept asking him why. He always answered, "Son, if you want to catch a fish, you have to think like a fish." I remember being even more upset then because, "I'm not a fish!" I didn't know how to think like a fish. Besides, I reasoned, how could what I think influence what a fish does?

    As I got a little older I began to understand what my dad really meant. So, I read some books on fish. And I even joined the local fishing club and started attending the monthly meetings. I learned that a fish is a cold-blooded animal and therefore is very sensitive to water temperature. That is why fish prefer shallow water to deep water because the former is warmer. Besides, water is usually warmer in direct sunlight than in the shade. Yet, fish don't have any eyelids(眼皮) and the sun hurts their eyes…The more I understood fish, the more I became effective at finding and catching them.

When I grew up and entered the business world, I remember hearing my first boss say, "We all need to think like salespeople." But it didn't completely make sense. My dad never once said, "If you want to catch a fish you need to think like a fisherman." What he said was, "You need to think like a fish." Years later, with great efforts to promote long-term services to people much older and richer than me, I gradually learned what we all need is to think more like customers. It is not an easy job. I will show you how in the following chapters.

    In 2004 ,when my daughter Becky was ten , she and my husband ,Joe, were united in their desire for a dog . As for me , I shared none of their canine lust.

    But why , they pleaded. “Because I don't have time to take care of a dog.” But we'll do it. ” Really? You're going to walk the dog? Feed the dog? Bathe the dog?” Yes, yes , and yes .”I don't believe you .” We will . We promise.

   They didn't . From day two (everyone wanted to walk the cute puppy that first day ) , neither thought to walk the dog . While I was slow to accept that I would be the one to keep track of her shots , to schedule her vet appointments , to feed and clean her , Misty knew this on day one . As she looked up at the three new humans in her life (small, medium, and large) , she calculated ,”The medium one is the sucker in the pack .”

    Quickly, she and I developed something very similar to a Vulcan mind meld (心灵融合) . She'd look at me with those sad brown eyes of hers , beam her need , and then wait , trusting I would understand — which , strangely , I almost always did . In no time , she became my feet as I read , and splaying across my stomach as I watched television .

    Even so , part of me continued to resent walking duty . Joe and Becky had promised. Not fair , I'd balk (不心甘情愿地做) silently as she and I walked . “Not fair , ” I' d loudly remind anyone within earshot upon our return home .

    Then one day — January 1, 2007 , to be exact — my husband ‘ s doctor uttered an unthinkable word : leukemia ( 白血病) .With that , I spent eight to ten hours a day with Joe in the hospital , doing anything and everything I could to ease his discomfort. During those six months of hospitalizations, Becky, 12 at the time, adjusted to other adults being in the house when she returned from school. My work colleagues adjusted to my taking off at a moment's notice for medical emergencies. Every part of my life changed; no part of my old routine remained.

    Save one: Misty still needed walking. At the beginning, when friends offered to take her through her paces, I declined because I knew they had their own households to deal with.

    As the months went by，I began to realize that I actually wanted to walk Misty. The walk in the morning before I headed to the hospital was a quiet, peaceful time to gather my thoughts or to just be before the day's medical drama unfolded. The evening walk was a time to shake off the day's upsets and let the worry tracks in my head go to white noise.

    When serious illness visits your household, it's , not just your daily routine and your assumptions about the future that are no longer familiar. Pretty much everyone you acts differently.

    Not Misty. Take her for a walk, and she had no interest in Joe's blood counts or 'one marrow test results. On the street or in the park, she had only one thing on her mind: squirrels! She Was so joyous that even on the worst days, she could make me smile. On a daily basis she reminded me that life goes on.

After Joe died in 2009，Misty slept on his pillow.

    I'm grateful一to a point. The truth is, after years of balking, I've come to enjoy m' walks with Misty. As I watch her chase after a squirrel, throwing her whole being into the here-and-now of an exercise that has never once ended in victory, she reminds me, too, that no matter how harsh the present or unpredictable the future , there's almost always some measure of joy to be extracted from the moment.

    “We haven't found anything that we can't recycle!”

    Cigarette ends are everywhere—littering our streets and beaches—and for decades they've been thought of as“unrecyclable”. But a New Jerseybased company, called TerraCycle, has taken on the challenge, and has come up with a way to recycle millions of cigarette ends and turn them into industrial plastic products. Its aim is to recycle things that people normally consider impossible to reuse.

    Obviously it would be even better for the environment if everyone just stopped smoking, but the statistics show that although there has been an increase in anti-smoking ads and messaging, between 2000 and 2014, global sales of cigarettes increased by 8 percent, and a whole lot of those cigarette ends are ending up as trash. Since most of our litter eventually ends up in waterways, cigarette ends can surely pollute the surrounding environment. “It only takes a single cigarette end to pollute a liter of water, ” TerraCycle founder, Tom Szaky, said. “Animals can also mistake littered cigarette ends for food.”

    So how do you go about turning all those poisonous ends into something useful? TerraCycle does this by first breaking them down into separate parts. They mix the remaining materials, such as the tobacco and the paper, with other kinds of rubbish; and use it on non-agricultural land, such as golf courses. The filters (过滤嘴) are a little harder. To recycle these, TerraCycle first makes them clean and cuts them into small pieces, and then combines them with other recycled materials, making them into liquid for industrial plastic products.

    They're now also expanding their recycling offerings to the rest of the 80 percent of household waste that currently can't be recycled, such as chocolate packaging, pens, and mobile phones. The goal is to use the latest research to find a way to stop so much waste ending up in landfill (垃圾填埋), and then get companies to provide money for the process. And so far, it's working.

    “We haven't found anything that we can't recycle,”communications director of Terra Cycle, Albe Zakes, said. “But with the amount and variety of packaging and litter in the world, we are always looking for new waste streams to address.”

    When Boris left school, he could not find a job. He tried hard and he wrote letters to many companies until he could not afford to buy any more stamps. Boris began to lose his confidence, then depressed. Still he went on trying and still he failed. He began to think that he had no future at all.

    “Why don't you start your own business?” one of his uncles told him. “The world is a money-locker. You'd better find a way of opening it.”

    “But what can I do?”

    “Get out and have a look round.” advised his uncle. “See what people want; then give it to them, and they will pay for it.”

    Boris began to cycle around the town and found a suitable piece of waste ground in the end. Then he set up his business as a cycle repairer. He worked hard, made friends with his customers and gradually managed to win his good fame. A few months later, he found that he had more work than he could deal with by himself. He found a number of empty shops but they were all no good: in the wrong position, too expensive or with some other problems. But at long last, he managed to find an empty shop in a new place where there were plenty of customers but no competition.

    Boris and his assistant taught themselves how to repair motor-cycles. Slowly but surely the profits increased and the business developed. At last, Boris had managed to open the money-locker and found bank notes and gold coins inside.

    Next time you're planning to go out for a relaxing walk with your MP3 player, be sure to check the weather forecast first. Summer is the prime time for lightning strikes, a fact that Jason Bunch, a teen from Castle Rock, Colo, learned in a hard way. A couple of summers ago, he was mowing (割草) grass while listening to some Metallica on his iPod. Although there wasn't any rain falling on Bunch, he did hear distant thunder. Bunch was then struck by lightning, which seemed to travel through his music player, blowing out his eardrums and leaving him with burns where the device and its power lines were close to his body.

    Devices such as MP3 players don't attract lightning, says Dr. Mary Ann Cooper, an emergency room physician at the University of Illinois Medical Center in Chicago. However, they may change the pathway that lightning's energy follows in the human body. Lightning that might have passed rather harmlessly over the skin may react differently to the metal of these devices and cause damage.

    Rather than leaving your tunes at home, your best bet is watching out for lightning before it hits. Though people have been injured while using MP3 players in storms, Cooper says, “The devices' main task is keeping you from paying attention to thunder and the sky.” If you're caught in a storm, seek shelter.

    Gardening is popular in many parts of the world. This outdoor activity gives us beautiful plants, pleasant smelling flowers and fresh fruits and vegetables. But it also does a lot of good to our health.

    Gardening connects people. When you are gardening, you are outdoors. So it is a perfect chance to meet and spend time with your neighbors. Most people love to talk about their hobbies, and gardeners are no different. They usually enjoy showing people what they are growing. And most enjoy sharing advice and stories about their gardens almost as much as sharing flowers and vegetables from their gardens.

    Gardening is a great activity for children. It gets them outdoors and off computers, televisions and cell phones. Gardening is also a great teacher. It can teach a child about where food comes from and healthy eating. It also helps them to understand that the natural resources (资源) are not inexhaustible and the importance of using them carefully.

    Then, when you garden, you must move around. All the different movements needed for gardening, like bending and lifting, work small muscles (肌肉) in the body. And you can easily get good exercise when you are digging holes or pulling grasses.

    In a study, researches looked at more than 2,800 people over the age of 60. They studied their lifestyle habits, activities and health over a 16-year period. They found that gardening could lower the risk of future dementia (痴呆) by 36%. Gardening requires people do many repeated actions, such as picking off dying flowers. These actions have a calming influence on the brain. The brain is still active but not in the same way when we use computers.

    You'll feel wonderful when what you grow in a garden looks, smells, feels and tastes good.