We all believe we listen well and yet many times we feel others are not listening to us. However, listening goes in both directions—you may believe you are listening well, but how often have you completely forgotten what was said to you? {#blank#}1{#/blank#}

Make eye contact.

    {#blank#}2{#/blank#} when People talk, they put out visual clues that add to the conversation and meaning of their words.

Stop talking.

    You can't listen, talk and at the same time completely receive the meaning of the other person's words. {#blank#}3{#/blank#}

React without words.

    Let the other person know you are listening through physical reactions, such as head nods, smiles, frowns and eye movement.{#blank#}4{#/blank#}

Concentrate.

    Concentrate on what the other person is saying. Clear your mind of other thoughts and emotions and focus on the conversation at hand. Be in the moment of that conversation, and don't think about what you want to say back.

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    Behave as an effective listener. The more you continue to behave as a listener, the more you will be an effective listener.

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    Sleep, as we know, is important to us because it helps restore tired organs and tissues in our body. But how much sleep do we actually need?

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    For most of us, eight hours seems to be about the right amount. Yet we know that there are a great many people who get along perfectly with less sleep and some who may even need more. A great deal depends on the way we live. But a good general rule to follow is to sleep as long as we have to in order to feel happy and be able to work at our best when we are awake.

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    There are actually different levels of sleep. There is a deep sleep and a shallow sleep. In a shallow sleep our body does not get the same kind of rest as it gets in a deep sleep, so that after eight hours of a shallow sleep we may still feel tired. But a short deep sleep can be very restful.

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    Alexander the Great was able to get a deep sleep whenever he needed it. Once, during the night before an important battle, he remained awake longer than anyone else. Then he wrapped himself in a cloak and lay down on the earth. He slept so deeply that his generals had to wake him three times to give command to attack!

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    Normally when we go to sleep, our “ sleep center” blocks off nerves so that both our brain and our body go to sleep. One prevents us form wanting to do anything and the other makes our internal organs and limbs go to sleep. But someone will fall asleep (brain sleep) and keep on marching, because his body is not asleep!

    Age has its privileges in America, and one of the most important of them is the senior citizen discount. Eligibility(资格) is determined not by one's need but by the date on one's birth certificate. The discounts have become a routine part of many businesses—as common as color televisions in motel rooms and free coffee on airliners.

    People with gray hair often are given the discounts without even asking for them; yet, millions of Americans above age 60 are healthy and solvent (有支付能力的). Businesses that would never dare offer discounts to college students or anyone under 30 freely offer them to older Americans. The practice is acceptable because of the widespread belief that ＂elderly＂ means ＂needy＂. Perhaps that once was true, but today elderly Americans as a group have a lower poverty rate than the rest of the population. To be sure, there is economic diversity within the elderly, and many older Americans are poor. But most of them aren't.

    It is impossible to determine the impact of the discounts on individual companies. For many firms, they are a stimulus to revenue. But in other cases, the discounts are given at the expense, directly or indirectly, of younger Americans. Moreover, they are a direct irritant(刺激物) in what some politicians and scholars see as a coming conflict between the generations.

    Generational tensions are being fueled by continuing debate over Social Security benefits, which mostly involve a transfer of resources from the young to the old. Employment is another sore point. Supported by laws and court decisions, more and more older Americans are declining the retirement dinner in favor of staying on the job—thereby lessening employment and promotion opportunities for younger workers.

    Far from a kind of charity they once were, senior citizen discounts have become a privilege to a group with millions of members who don't need them.

It no longer makes sense to treat the elderly as a single group whose economic needs deserve priority over those of others. Senior citizen discounts only enhance the myth that older people can't take care of themselves and need special treatment; and they threaten the creation of a new myth, that the elderly are ungrateful and taking for themselves at the expense of children and other age groups. Senior citizen discounts are the essence of the very thing older Americans are fighting against—discrimination by age.

    CUCAS, known as China's University and College Admission System, is an official online suitable for international students applying to China's universities.

    {#blank#}1{#/blank#}By using its service, including university application, accommodation（住宿） booking, airport pick-up and money transfer, you will be able to easily apply for top universities in China and find the most suitable programs.

    At present, nearly 200 Chinese public universities and 10 language schools are making use of CUCAS's online admission system. {#blank#}2{#/blank#} We suggest that you consider the following aspects:

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    Do you have a favorite Chinese city or university? If there is, why not apply for it now? If you're not very familiar with China's cities, take a look at our City Guide.

    Budget

    In comparison to Beijing, Shanghai, and large coastal cities, the cost of living in China's inland regions is relatively low. For example, Chengdu, Xi'an,Chongqing, Changsha, Wuhan, Zhengzhou, and other cities are all well-developed with beautiful scenery and many excellent universities. If you don't have a large budget, you may wish to consider these cities.

    Rank

    {#blank#}4{#/blank#} Or you can also refer to the list of "Project 985" universities and the list of "Project 211" universities. They are regarded as China's top universities.

    Fellow citizens

    Applicants may choose to apply to a university where you have more fellow citizens. This may help you settle in more quickly to a new environment.{#blank#}5{#/blank#}This may reduce the opportunities for you to speak your own language and in turn improve your Chinese fluency.

A. Your Preference.

B. How do you choose your ideal（完美的）university?

C. You can check the annual ranking of all the universities in China.

D. What can you do to figure out the suitable programs?

E. Or you can do the opposite.

F. It is always intended to provide top service for Chinese University appliers.

G. Your Familiarity.

    Theme park getaways are popular with families, but they sure aren't cheap. Happily, there are some golden rules of ticket-buying that apply to pretty much every theme park, and they can help you chip away at the cost of tickets. {#blank#}1{#/blank#}

    Buy tickets online.

    Never ever pay the walk-up ticket price at a theme park. {#blank#}2{#/blank#} You're guaranteed to save a significant sum-sometimes as much as $ 20 per ticket-even for same-day tickets.

    Buy in advance.

    {#blank#}3{#/blank#} For instance, Knott's Berry Farm in Buena Park, California, slices off $25 per ticket when you make your purchase at least three days ahead.

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    This one is a universal no-brainer. Single-day ticket prices at Cedar Point in Sandusky, Ohio, are about 30 percent less than admission on Saturdays and Sundays. But the big bonus is that lines will be much shorter, allowing you to spend less time waiting in lines and more time having fun.

    Go in the afternoon.

    {#blank#}5{#/blank#} For example, Hersheypark's sunset tickets allow entry after 4 pm or 5 pm, depending on the day. You'll still get between four to six hours of fun before the park closes, and you'll pay up to 50 percent less than the full-day ticket price.

A. Avoid weekends.

B. Buy more tickets than you need.

C. Here are some ways to lower your theme park spending.

D. At larger parks, you'll save money when you buy a package.

E. Instead, visit the theme park website and print out your tickets before you go.

F. Some parks offer deeply discounted tickets for visitors arriving later in the day.

G. Most theme parks offer a price cut if you buy tickets at least a few days before you arrive.

    Pretending you're someone else can make you creative

    One great irony(讽刺) about our collective fascination with creativity is that we tend to frame it in uncreative ways. That is to say, most of us marry creativity to our concept of self: We are either "creative" people or we aren't, without much of a middle ground.

    Pillay, a tech businessman and Harvard professor has spent a good part of his career destroying these ideas. Pillay believes that the key to unlocking your creative potential is to dismiss the conventional advice that urges you to "believe in yourself". In fact, you should do the exact opposite: believe you are someone else.

    In a recent column for Harvard Business Review, Pillay pointed to a 2016 study showing the impact of stereotypes(刻板印象)on one's behavior. The authors, education psychologists Denis Dumas and Kevin Dunbar, divided their college student subjects into three categories, instructing the members of one group to think of themselves as "eccentric(古怪的) poets" and the members of another to imagine they were "rigid librarians" (people in the third category, the control group, were left alone for this part). The researchers then presented participants with 10 ordinary objects, including a fork, a carrot, and a pair of pants, and asked them to come up with as many different uses as possible for each one. Those who were asked to imagine themselves as "eccentric poets" came up with the widest range of ideas for the objects, while those in the "rigid librarian" group had the fewest. Meanwhile, the researchers found only small differences in students' creativity levels across academic majors—in fact, the physics majors inhabiting(寄生) the personas(伪装的外表) of "eccentric poets" came up with more ideas than the art majors did.

    These results, write Dumas and Dunbar, suggest that creativity is not an individual quality, but a "malleable(可塑的) product of context and perspective." Everyone can be creative, as long as they feel like creative people.

    Pillay's work takes this a step further: He argues that identifying yourself with creativity is less powerful than the creative act of imagining you're somebody else. This exercise, which he calls "psychological halloweenism", refers to the conscious action of inhabiting another persona—an inner costuming of the self. It works because it is an act of "conscious unfocus", a way of positively stimulating the default mode(默认模式) network, a collection of brain regions that spring into action when you're not focused on a specific task or thought.

    Most of us spend too much time worrying about two things: How successful/unsuccessful we are, and how little we're focusing on the task at hand. The former feeds the latter—an unfocused person is an unsuccessful one, we believe. Thus, we force ourselves into quiet areas, buy noise canceling headphones, and hate ourselves for taking breaks.

    What makes Pillay's argument stand out is its healthy, forgiving realism: According to him, most people spend nearly half of their days in a state of "unfocus". This doesn't make us lazy people—it makes us human. The idea behind psychological halloweenism is: What if we stopped judging ourselves for our mental down time, and instead started using it? Putting this new idea on daydreaming means addressing two problems at once: You're making yourself more creative, and you're giving yourself permission to do something you'd otherwise feel guilty about. Imagining yourself in a new situation, or an entirely new identity, never felt so productive.

Title: Pretending you're someone else can make you creative