Hello friends,

    This is Christmas Week, when you may have any emotions of happiness or sadness, pain or panic, fears or frustrations. Put the negative emotions aside and focus on building better relationships with our tips below.

    Relationship Tips for Getting Along at the Holidays

    1). Speak Your Love in Words. The best gift you can give another person is words of praise, thankfulness, and appreciation from your lips.

    2). Hear What Your Friends and Family are Voicing Their Stress. Listen carefully to those around you -- a gift that will lower their stress.

    3). Center Your Heart. Focus on the true, deeper meaning of the holiday season. This will help everyone become easier to get along with because the heart of Christmas will remain whole.

    4). Ask those who are celebrating with you what their expectations are. Communicate the plans clearly so people feel informed.

    5). Be prepared for changes. Don't be a Christmas Scrooge ordering family around. Instead slow the pace, be agreeable, and give choices so that you create an environment of connecting and sharing.

    6). Take Time for being Romantic. The greatest gift you can give your husband or wife, children, and friends is harmony at home.

    7). Express Your Joy. Make memories (and take lots of pictures) by making the most of all your relationships. Capture the best moments with your camera.

    Get the rest of the10 Holiday Tips from each of 14 Experts like this in Simplify Your Holiday Season, available HERE. Get one of the 50 free copies on a first-come, first-served basis or a 50% discount off $30 by Jan 1.2017.

    Mark Your Calendar（日历） for January 4 & 5 our free next online workshop "New Year, New You: Maximize Your Time, Minimize Your Weight."

    Have a very lovely Christmas and Happy New Year! I hope I prepared you well for Christmas, since over 1,000 people downloaded my 8 week Holiday Plan. I hope you were one of them and are peaceful and ready.

Warmly,

Marcia Ramsland, The Holiday Coach

www.OrganizingPro.com/Holidays

"Coaching Busy People to Make Every Day Count!"

    It's important to prepare for rainy days. Similarly, it's important to save money.{#blank#}1{#/blank#}Why? It's because they've got used to spending all the money they make. Sometimes, the hardest thing about saving money is just getting started. Here are some tips to help you save money.

    {#blank#}2{#/blank#}The first step in saving money is to know how much you're spending. For one month, keep a record of everything you spend money on. Once you have your data, organize these numbers by category(类别) and get the total amount for each.

    You can make a budget(预算). Now that you have a good idea of how much you spend in a month, what can you do now?{#blank#}3{#/blank#}To plan your spending, you can build a budget. In this way, you can limit over-spending and make sure that you put money away for unexpected situations.

    {#blank#}4{#/blank#}Doing so make it much easier to get started. Begin by deciding how long it will take to reach each goal. Some short-term goals include starting a fund to cover 6 months to a year of living costs and saving money for a vacation. Long-term saving goals are often several years or even decades away and can include saving for retirement and putting money away for a child's college education.

    Make saving money easier with automatic transfers (自动转帐). Automatic transfers to your savings account are very helpful.{#blank#}5{#/blank#}By moving money out of your checking account, you'll be less likely to spend money you plan to use for savings.

A. You can set savings goals.

B. You can record your costs.

C. You can plan your spending.

D. You can keep a record of what you do.

E. They can make saving money much easier.

F. However, some people find it hard to save money.

G. You can move money out of your savings account.

    Last week the electricity in my flat went out.{#blank#}1{#/blank#} My typical evening is spent watching TV and scrolling (滚动) through social media. Tonight this wasn't possible. My roommate and I weren't prepared with candles and matches. We just rely on electricity.

    So for me it was an early night.{#blank#}2{#/blank#} That night, losing our electricity felt like losing a basic necessity, as basic as running water. But really, electricity is a luxury that we've grown to take for granted. I use electricity all the time, even when it's not really necessary.

    {#blank#}3{#/blank#} And as I'm writing this, I have my lights on, even in the middle of the day when I don't really need them.

    {#blank#}4{#/blank#}It contributes to global warming. It is harming our environment and we need to do what we can to stop it. Not only that, but if we continue to use the same large amount of energy, we will soon run out of it.

    How would we survive in a world without electricity? Our daily lives go around it. We wouldn't be able to function.{#blank#}5{#/blank#}So, shouldn't we start preparing for it now? Cutting down on our use of electricity would save energy resources so that they could last for longer. And if everyone does it, we can make a big difference.

A. Yet we know one day we will run out of it.

B. Our over-use of electricity is a big problem.

C. This left me in complete darkness the whole night.

D. It is a real problem to cut down on the use of electricity.

E. I know for sure I could cut down on my use of electricity.

F. I couldn't help but think, do we rely too much on electricity?

G. I turn on the TV in the background even when Tm not watching it.

    We all know cameras. But have you heard of Google's new camera? It is a small, smart device, called Clips. It comes with a case that has a clip (夹子), but it's not designed to be worn on your clothing. Most interestingly, it uses artificial intelligence to take photography out of your hands so it can capture moments on its own.

    This roughly 2-inch by 2-inch camera, with a three-hour battery life and Gorilla Glass for toughness, is intended for candid moments, like when a child does something cute that may happen too quickly for you to pull out your smart phone.

    Onboard the Clips device, it uses machine learning algorithms (计算程序) to help capture scenes. Those algorithms include face recognition. “Once it learns that there's a face you see frequently, it'll try to get nice photos of those faces,” said Juston Payne, the device's product manager. And they also want it to recognize facial expressions, which involved “training it to know what happiness looks like”. The Google team also trained it to recognize what not to shoot—like when a child's hand is over the lens, or if it is tossed in a dark purse.

    The only way to see the images is by connecting the camera with your phone, as it has no screen for viewing or editing.

    Did people think it was strange? Yes, Payne admitted. But they said they addressed that by making it obvious what it is. A green light on the front signals that the device is on. Besides, unlike a camera meant to monitor your home, it is not connected to the Internet.

    “This product is only possible because of the way that technology has advanced,” Payne said. It was only in the past year or so that they could squeeze the technology down into a device this size. Going forward, we're likely to get more assistance from the artificial intelligence packed into our apps and gadgets.

    A study examining the children of people evacuated(撤离) during the WWII showed the daughters of female evacuees were up to four times more likely to suffer from serious mental health conditions compared to those whose parents stayed at home.

    In the largest enquiry ever of its kind, researchers examined the health records of 3000 children of Finnish people evacuated to Sweden during the 1941-1945 conflict with Soviet Russia. The evacuees, many of whom were at a pre-school age, were placed with foster families in Sweden and were forced to learn Swedish, later returning to Finland. The study found that the female children of these girls had an increased risk of being hospitalized for conditions such as depression. However, this was not the case with children of boys evacuated during the war.

    The study could not determine why. One possibility is that the stress of the evacuees' experience affected their psychological development in ways that influenced their parenting style. Another possibility is that the evacuees' experience resulted in epigenetic changes—changed in the way genes are expressed. For example, the researchers mentioned an earlier finding that Holocaust survivors have higher levels of methyl groups bound to the FKBP5 gene and have passed his change on to their children. This higher level of methyl groups appears to change the production of cortisol, a hormone(荷尔蒙) that controls the stress response.

    "The Finnish evacuation was intended to protect children from the harm associated with the country's wars with the Soviet Union", said study co-author Dr Torsten Santavirta, from Uppsala University.

    "Our observation of the long-term psychiatric(精神病的) risk that reached into the next generation is concerning and stresses the need to weigh benefits as well as potential risks when designing policies for child protection".

Britain appears to be in a mental-health crisis. In the past decade no European country has seen a greater increase in the use of antidepressants(抗抑郁药); now only the Portuguese and Icelanders are popping more of the {#blank#}1{#/blank#}. Around 4.5m Britons were in contact with mental-health services in 2021-22, a rise of almost l m in five years.

There are a few reasons why Britons might be unhappier than their {#blank#}2{#/blank#}. One global poll found that teenagers in Britain were some of the loneliest in the world, with few supportive relationships and a low sense of purpose and meaning: all risk factors for poor mental health. Britain's poorest households are also {#blank#}3{#/blank#} off than their equivalents in France and Germany, for example, which makes them more vulnerable to conditions such as anxiety and depression. And Britain's health system can seem more {#blank#}4{#/blank#} than those in most other rich countries. In England alone, some 3.8 m are waiting for mental-health treatment.

Those factors might explain why more people are {#blank#}5{#/blank#} to medication. Another reason is increased awareness. Campaigns around depression and anxiety have been particularly successful in Britain. That is {#blank#}6{#/blank#} a good thing. A reduction in humiliation (蒙羞) has encouraged more people to seek help. Taking antidepressants – or using mental-health services — has become much more acceptable.

But there is a {#blank#}7{#/blank#} to this, as The Economist recently reported. Surveys suggest that Britons are increasingly {#blank#}8{#/blank#} common human emotions, such as stress and grief, as mental illnesses. "You're going to lose any sense of what mental illness is if you start to {#blank#}9{#/blank#} it to 30%, 50% of the population," says Adrian Massey, author of a book called "Sick-Note Britain".

For all the focus on anxiety and depression in campaigns, severe mental illnesses still receive too little attention. This is a problem: according to the GBD, Britain has the highest rates of severe mental illness in Europe. The causes of such conditions are unclear, but seem to involve a {#blank#}10{#/blank#} interplay of genetic and environmental factors. Illegal drug misuse, for which Britain has among the highest rates in the region, also plays a role.