Travis is the manager of G&G where he is responsible for forty employees (雇员)and profits (利润) of over $2 million per year. He's never late to work. He does not get upset on the job. When one of his employees started crying after a customer screamed at her, Travis took her away. "Your working uniform is your shelter," he told her. "Nothing anyone says will ever hurt you. You will always be as strong as you want to be."

    Travis picked up that lecture in one of his G&G training courses, an education program that began on his first day and continues throughout an employee's occupation. The training has, Travis says, changed his life. G&G has taught him how to live, how to focus, how to get to work on time, and how to master his emotions (情绪). Most importantly, it taught him willpower.

    At the center of that education is an extreme focus on an all-important habit; willpower. Dozens of cases show that willpower is the single most important habit for a person's success.

    And the best way to strengthen willpower is to make it into a habit. "Sometimes it looks like people with great self-control aren't working hard—but that's because they've made it automatic," Angela Duckworth, one of the University of Pennsylvania researchers said. "Their willpower occurs without them having to think about it."

    The company spent millions of dollars developing programs of study to train employees on self-control. Managers wrote workbooks that serve as guides to how to make willpower a habit in workers' lives. Those courses arc, in part, why G&G has grown from a sleepy company into a large one with more than seventeen thousand stores and profits of more than $10 billion a year.

C

    Fat and shy, Ben Saunders was the last kid in his class picked for any sports team. “Foothall, tennis, cricket-anything with a round ball, I was useless,” he says now with a laugh. But back then he was the one always made fun of in school gym classes in Devonshire, England.

    It was a mountain bike he received for his 15th birthday that changed him. At first he went biking alone in a nearby forest. Then he began to-ride the bike along with a runner friend. Gradually, Saunders set up his mind on building up his body, increasing his speed and strength. At the age of 18, he ran his first marathon.

    The following year he met John Ridgway and was hired as an instructor at Ridgway's school of adventure in Scotland, where he learnt about Ridgway's cold-water exploits. Greatly interested, Saunders read all he could about North Pole explorers and adventures, then decided that this would be his future.

    In 2001, after becoming a skillful skier, Saunders started his first long-distance expedition towards the North Pole. It took unbelievable energy. He suffered frostbite, ran into a polar bear and pushed his body to the limit, pulling his supply-loaded sled（雪橇）up and over rocky ice.

    Saunders has since become the youngest person to ski alone to the North Pole, and he's skied more of the North Pole by himself than any other British man. His old playmates would not believe the change.

    Next October, Saunder, 27, heads south from the coast of Antarctica to the South Pole and back, a 2900-kilometer journey that has never been completed on skis.

    If you've been diagnosed with high blood pressure, you might be worried about taking medication to bring your numbers down. Chronic（慢性的） stress may contribute to high blood pressure. More research is needed to determine the effects of chronic stress on blood pressure. Occasional stress also can contribute to high blood pressure if you react to stress by eating unhealthy food, drinking alcohol or smoking.

    Take some time to think about what causes you to feel stressed, such as work, family, finances or illness. Once you know what's causing your stress, consider how you can rid or reduce stress. If you can't rid all of your stressors, you can at least handle them in a healthier way. Try to:

    Change your expectations. For example, plan your day and focus on your strengths. Avoid trying to do too much and learn to say no. Understand there are some things you can't change or control, but you can focus on how you react to them.

    Focus on issues you can control and make plans to solve them. If you are having an issue at work, try talking to your manager. If you are having a conflict with your kids or spouse, take steps to resolve it.

    Avoid stress triggers（诱因）. Try to avoid triggers when you can. For example, if rush-hour traffic on the way to work causes stress, try leaving earlier in the morning, or take public transportation. Avoid people who cause you stress if possible.

    Make time to relax and to do activities you enjoy. Take time each day to sit quietly and breathe deeply. Make time for enjoyable activities or hobbies in your schedule, such as taking a walk, cooking or volunteering.

    Practice gratitude. Expressing gratitude to others can help reduce your stress.

    If you successfully control your blood pressure with reducing stress, you might avoid, delay or reduce the need for medication.

    British children used to play conkers (板栗游戏) in the autumn when the horse-chestnut trees started to drop their shiny brown nuts. They would select a suitable chestnut, drill a hole in it and thread it onto a string, then swing their conker at that of an opponent until one of them broke. But the game has fallen out of favour. Children spend less time outdoors and rarely have access to chestnut trees. Besides, many schools have banned conkers games, worried that they might cause injuries or nut allergies.

    That sort of risk-averseness(规避风险) now spreads through every aspect of childhood. Playgrounds have all the excitement designed out of them to make them safe. Many governments, particularly in societies such as America, have tightened up their rules, requiring parents to supervise(监管) young children far more closely than in the past. Frank Furedi of the University of Kent, a critic on modern parenting, argues that allowing children to play unsupervised or leaving them at home alone is increasingly described as a symptom of irresponsible parenting.

    In part, such increased caution is a response to the huge wave of changes. Large-scale urbanization, smaller and more mobile families, the move of women into the labor market and the digitization of many aspects of life have unavoidably changed the way that people bring up their children. There is little chance that any of these trends will be changed, so today's more intensive(精细化 ) parenting style is likely to go on.

    Such parenting practices now embraced by wealthy parents in many parts of the rich world, particularly in America, go far beyond an adjustment to changes in external conditions. They mean a strong bid to ensure that the advantages enjoyed by the parents' generation are passed on to their children. Since success in life now turns mainly on education, such parents will do their best to provide their children with the schooling, the character training and the social skills that will secure access to the best universities and later the most attractive jobs.

    To some extent that has always been the case. But there are more such parents now, and they are competing with each other for what economists call positional goods. This competition starts even before the children are born. The wealthy classes will take their time to select a suitable spouse and get married, and will start a family only when they feel ready for it.

    Children from less advantaged backgrounds, by contrast, often appear before their parents are ready for them. In America 60% of births to single women under 30 are unplanned, and over 40% of children are born outside marriage. The result, certainly in America, has been to widen already massive social inequalities yet further.

    All the evidence suggests that children from poorer backgrounds are at a disadvantage almost as soon as they are born. By the age of five or six they are far less "school-ready" than their better-off peers, so any attempts to help them catch up have to start long before they get to school. America has had some success with various schemes involving regular home visits by nurses or social workers to low-income families with new babies. It also has long experience with programmes for young children from poor families that combine support for parents with good-quality child care. Such programmes do seem to make a difference. Without extra effort, children from low-income families in most countries are much less likely than their better-off peers to attend preschool education, even though they are more likely to benefit from it. And data from the OECD's PISA programme suggest that children need at least two years of preschool education to perform at their best when they are 15.

    So the most promising way to ensure greater equality may be to make early-years education and care for more widely available and more affordable, as it is in the Nordics. Some governments are already rethinking their educational priorities, shifting some of their spending to the early years.

    Most rich countries decided more than a century ago that free, compulsory education for all children was a worthwhile investment for society. There is now an argument for starting preschool education earlier, as some countries have already done. In the face of crushing new inequalities, a modern version of that approach is worth trying.

    Breakfast is not only the most important meal of the day, but also the most neglected. Common reasons for not eating breakfast include lack of time, not feeling hungry, traditional dislike for breakfast, and dieting.

    Breakfast simply means "break the fast". Your body spends at least 6 to 12 hours each night in a fasting state. In the morning your body needs energy for the day's work ahead.

    A good breakfast should provide up to 1/3 of your total calories needs for the day. On average(平均)we eat 400 less calories for breakfast than for dinner. If breakfast doesn't attract you in the morning, try eating a lighter for the breakfast in the morning.

    If you aren't hungry in the morning, start with something small like juice or toast or have a nutritious mid-morning snack alter when you are hungry.

    So, you say you're on a diet. Some people fear eating breakfast will make them hungrier during the day and they will eat more. It is true that eating breakfast is likely to make you eat more. That's because your body is working all day long, in fact, you are probably not.

    Not eating breakfast can also cause you to overeat, since a fall in blood sugar often makes you feel very hungry later. To make matters worse, since your body is in a slowed state it will not be able to burn those extra calories very quickly. If you feed your body healthy snacks and meals through the day, you are less likely to become hungry and fill yourself as soon as you begin to eat. Since breakfast is the first and most important meal of the day, choosing the right fuel is important. The best breakfast foods are fruits, juice, lean meat, and grain products such as bread, rice, noodles and cereals(谷物).

    Many people like travelling, but they cannot take their dogs wherever they go. Some people let their dogs stay alone at home while others ask someone else to take care of their pets. If you're leaving your beloved pet at home for a holiday, it can turn into a bad experience. Luckily, you don't have to worry about your dogs any more because Rover can cover for you while you are on leave. Rover is the latest service to offer at­home dog boarding. It's a good alternative (替代物) to boarding your dog at a dog boarding kennel (狗舍) or your neighbour's house.

    The way Rover works is sort of like Airbnb. Dog owners browse the "search" section of the site or app for pet sitters, which can be organized by zip code and available dates. Information of pet sitters is provided, complete with many reviews, specific services and rates. Now Rover has over 25,000 pet sitters in more than 5,000 US cities. And they're all experienced pet sitters.

    After finding someone that meets your needs, just send messages to the pet sitter to arrange a meeting. Then, like Rover says, all that is left to do is relax! Rover's pet sitters are encouraged to send text and picture information throughout the day, and if there's a medical emergency, the site will send a vet. Besides, don't worry about a pet sitter who falls through, because someone else will soon take his or her place.

    Happy doggie, happy travels — that sounds good to us. To learn more about Rover, click here.