Ways to Increase Your Confidence

There are some ways you can use to increase your self-confidence. Some of them you'll need to practice a lot before they start to work. It's like playing the guitar or soccer. {#blank#}1{#/blank#} But as you do them, you build a deeper confidence in yourself.
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Exercise will improve your confidence and your way of looking at life. Plus, being healthy and looking better can also help you feel more confident.
Create something
Everyone is a creative(有创造力的) person, Rediscovering your creativity is a good way to improve your confidence in yourself. Creating something is a wonderful but not always easy experience. But when you're done, you not only feel good about yourself. {#blank#}3{#/blank#}
Use your body.
If you start to walk fast you'll soon start to feel nervous. If you start to walk slower you'll soon start to feel more relaxed. To feel more confident, use your body in more confident way. {#blank#}4{#/blank#} Learn how confident people around you or on the TV use their bodies.
Compare yourself to yourself.
This will take away a lot of unnecessary pain in your life. {#blank#}5{#/blank#}Compare yourself to yourself. Improve yourself and see how you grow and become a more successful, more confident and happier person.

A. Take exercise
B. Take it into the future
C. This makes you more active
D. Walk, sit, stand and move in a more confident way
E. Sometimes you will also discover new parts of yourself
F. Pay attention to yourself, not the other people around you.
G. They might not work too well the first or second time you try them

    Today we eat on the go,at our desks and even in front of computers.We eat takeout,delivered and packaged meals.{#blank#}1{#/blank#}

    "Over the past three decades,people have started eating out more than ever before and purchasing more prepared foods at the grocery store,which tend to contain more fat,salt and sugar than their home-made foods,"noted US healthy living website Spark People.

    {#blank#}2{#/blank#}It encourages us to value the time we spend preparing,sharing and consuming food,as a recent USA today article put it.It all started in 1986 with the efforts of Slow Food's founding father,Italian activist Carlo Petrini,who wanted to bring back food varieties and flavors that had gone dark in the face of industrialization{#blank#}3{#/blank#}Now his idea is almost the mainstream.

    Starting at the table,the movement promotes an unhurried way of life founded on the idea that everyone has a right to cooking pleasure,and that everyone must also take responsibility to "protect the heritage（遗产）of food, tradition and culture that make this celebration of the senses possible",wrote The Phnom Penh Post.

    "{#blank#}4{#/blank#}.It means turning down the speed at which we eat and increasing the amount of time we spend dining together with other people,"Althea Zanecosky,spokeswoman for the American Dietetic Association,told The Huf fington Post."{#blank#}5{#/blank#}Dinner table conversations keep families together,"noted the Belgian non-profit organization Greenfudge.

A.It is a way to bring back the social togetherness of yesterday.

B.It seems that we have adapted our foods to our fast-paced lives.

C.So the Slow Food Movement has occurred against this fast-food trend.

D.Slow Food doesn't necessarily mean food that takes a long time to cook.

E.It is based on the idea that we should spend as much time as possible on cooking.

F.It's not only the food itself but also the time we spend dining together that matters.

G.At that time,he asked people to follow a more sustainable（可持续的）living model.

    Are you suffering from FOMO—that is, Fear Of Missing Out? Research shows that a growing number of young people are, with worrying consequences for their sleep and schoolwork.

    {#blank#}1{#/blank#}You aren't able to do your best unless you sleep well. Most experts agree that the optimum(最适宜) number of hours is eight, and this has been accepted as common sense for as long as I can remember. However, I was young once and know most of you get much less sleep than that.

    I read an interesting article in a teachers' magazine recently.{#blank#}2{#/blank#}Worryingly, the results showed that teenagers are facing a new problem. They may go to bed and get up at appropriate times, but a growing number are waking up in the middle of the night, not to use the bathroom or have a snack, but because of FOMO.

    According to the article, the number of students waking up during the night to check social media is growing. Afraid of missing a comment or opportunity to take part in a chat, teenagers are waking at all times of the night, going online and getting involved.{#blank#}3{#/blank#}

    Experts are worried about this growing trend and the report reveals some worrying statistics: 23% of 12-to 15-year-olds wake up nearly every night to use social media.{#blank#}4{#/blank#}One in third of the students are constantly tired and unable to function to their full capacity.

    So I'd like to ask you to be responsible when it comes to social media. Switch off your devices at night. The world won't end and your social media will be waiting to greet you in the morning!{#blank#}5{#/blank#}

A.But things are getting out of hand.

B.They did a study of 848 students in Wales.

C.Another 15% wake up at night once a week for the same reason.

D.I give you my word that you won't have missed anything important.

E.All happens when they should be sound asleep.

F.FOMO is the fear that everyone else is having more fun and more excitement than you.

G.Everybody knows how important it is for students to get a good night's sleep every night.

    Vacations are important. We need to take time out from work to relax, and just be ourselves. {#blank#}1{#/blank#} We should all be allowed to leave our jobs behind us—at least for a few weeks each year—and just have fun. This might be something as simple as reading a good book in front of a warm fireplace and travelling to the most interesting places on our planet. Whatever we fancy doing is worth taking time out for.

    Workplace stress is on the rise. {#blank#}2{#/blank#} These include disease, depression and even death. We all seem to be running from one place to the next, never finding out where we want to go in the first place. I intend to break that trend in the coming days.

    {#blank#}3{#/blank#} I will sleep late, write, watch movies, drink the occasional glass of wine, and eat to my heart's content ignoring calorie counting. My plan is to just enjoy the fleeting moments of being alive.

    {#blank#}4{#/blank#} Spend your next vacation the way you want. Do what will restore your mental health. You're very valuable to the people who are close to you, and to those who depend on you. Like it or not, we are all interdependent in this great life of ours.

    You are valuable. Just remember that the next time you look at the mirror and take a deep breath. Remind yourself that there will never be anyone like you ever on this earth again.

    {#blank#}5{#/blank#} All you have to do is just ask yourself what you want to do.

    Futurologists (未来学家) predict that life will probably be very different in 2050.

    TV channels will have disappeared. {#blank#}1{#/blank#} Today, we can use the World Wide Web to read newspaper stories and see pictures on a computer thousands of kilometers away. By 2050, music, films, programs, newspapers and books will come to us by computer.

    {#blank#}2{#/blank#} Cars will have computers to control the speed and there won't be any accidents. Today, many cars have computers that tell drivers exactly where they are. By 2050, the computer will control the car and drive it to your destination.

    {#blank#}3{#/blank#} Many factories already use robots. Big companies prefer robots—they don't ask for pay rises or go on strike, and they work 24 hours a day. By 2050, we will see robots everywhere—in factories, schools, offices, hospitals, shops and homes.

    {#blank#}4{#/blank#} Today, there are devices (设备) that connect directly to the brain to help people hear. By 2050, we will be able to help blind and deaf people to see and hear again with the help of new technology.

    Scientists will have discovered how to control genes. {#blank#}5{#/blank#} By 2050, scientists will be able to produce clones of people, and decide how they look, how they behave and how clever they are. Scientists will be able to do these things, but should they?

Every animal sleeps, but the reason for this has remained foggy. When lab rats are not allowed to sleep, they die within a month. {#blank#}1{#/blank#}

One idea is that sleep helps us strengthen new memories. {#blank#}2{#/blank#} We know that, while awake, fresh memories are recorded by reinforcing (加强) connections between brain cells, but the memory processes that take place while we sleep have been unclear.

Support is growing for a theory that sleep evolved so that connections between neurons(神经元) in the brain can be weakened overnight, making room for fresh memories to form the next day. {#blank#}3{#/blank#}

Now we have the most direct evidence yet that he is right. {#blank#}4{#/blank#}The synapses in the mice taken at the end of a period of sleep were 18 per cent smaller than those taken before sleep, showing that the connections between neurons weaken while sleeping.

If Tononi's theory is right, it would explain why, when we miss a night's, we find it harder the next day to concentrate and learn new information — our brains may have smaller room for new experiences.

Their research also suggests how we may build lasting memories over time even though the synapses become thinner. The team discovered that some synapses seem to be protected and stayed the same size. {#blank#}5{#/blank#}"You keep what matters," Tononi says.

A. We should also try to sleep well the night before.

B. It's as if the brain is preserving its most important memories.

C. Similarly, when people go for a few days without sleeping, they get sick.

D. The processes take place to stop our brains becoming loaded with memories.

E. That's why students do better in tests if they get a chance to sleep after learning.

F. "Sleep is the price we pay for learning," says Giulio Tononi, who developed the idea.

G. Tononi's team measured the size of these connections, or synapses, in the brains of 12 mice.