Many people think that listening is a passive business. It is just the opposite. Listening well is an active exercise of our attention and hard work. It is because they do not realize this, or because they are not willing to do the work, that most people do not listen well.

    Listening well also requires total concentration upon someone else. An essential part of listening well is the rule known as 'bracketing'. Bracketing includes the temporary giving up or setting aside of your own prejudices and desires, to experience as far as possible someone else's world from the inside, stepping into his or her shoes. Moreover, since listening well involves bracketing, it also involves a temporary acceptance of the other person. Sensing this acceptance, the speaker will seem quite willing to open up the inner part of his or her mind to the listener. True communication is under way and the energy required for listening well is so great that it can be accomplished only by the will to extend oneself for mutual growth.

    Most of the time we lack this energy. Even though we may feel in our business dealings or social relationships that we are listening well, what we are usually doing is listening selectively. Often we have a prepared list in mind and wonder, as we listen, how we can achieve certain desired results to get the conversation over as quickly as possible or redirected in ways more satisfactory to us. Many of us are far more interested in talking than in listening, or we simply refuse to listen to what we don't want to hear.

    It wasn't until toward the end of my doctor career that I have found the knowledge that one is being truly listened to is frequently therapeutic(有疗效的) In about a quarter of the patients I saw, surprising improvement was shown during the first few months of psychotherapy(心理疗法), before any of the roots of problems had been uncovered or explained. There are several reasons for this phenomenon, but chief among them, I believe, was the patient's sense that he or she was being truly listened to, often for the first time in years, and for some, perhaps for the first time ever.

    Adding math talk to story time at home is a winning factor for children's math achievement, according to a new research from a university. The study from psychologists Sian Beilock and Susan Levine shows a marked increase in math achievement among children whose families used Bedtime Math, an iPad app that delivers engaging math story problems for parents and children to solve together.

    Even children who used the app with their parents as little as once a week saw gains in math achievement by the end of the school year. The app's effect was especially strong for children whose parents tend to be anxious or uncomfortable with math.

    Previous research from this group has demonstrated the importance of adults' attitudes about math for children's math success. For example, a recent study found that math-anxious parents who help their children with math homework actually weaken their children's math achievement.

    The new findings demonstrate that structured, positive interactions around math at home can cut the link between parents' uneasiness about math and children's low math achievement.

     “Many people experience high levels of anxiety when they have to solve a math problem, with a majority of adults feeling at least some worries about math,” said Beilock, professor in Psychology and author of Choke, a book about stress and performance. “These math-anxious parents are probably less likely to talk about math at home, which affects how competent their children are in math. Bedtime Math encourages a dialogue between parents and kids about math, and offers a way to engage in high-quality math interactions in a low-effort, high-impact way.”

    Study participants included 587 first-grade students and their parents. Families were given an iPad installed with a version of the Bedtime Math app, with which parents and their children read stories and answer questions involving math, including topics like counting, shapes and problem-solving. A control group received a reading app that had similar stories without the math content and questions related to reading comprehension instead. Children's math achievement was assessed at the beginning and end of the school year. Parents completed a questionnaire about their nervousness with math.

    The more times parents and children in the math group used the app, the higher children's achievement on a math assessment at the end of the school year. Indeed, children who frequently used the math app with their parents outperformed similar students in the reading group in math achievement at year's end.

    Exercise is known to benefit people's mental health, but scientists recently discovered that too much exercise may have a negative effect on it.

    The researchers studied about 1.2 million people in the United States in 2013, 2015 and 2017. The participants, on average, experienced 3, 4 days of poor mental health each month. Those who did exercise experienced 1, 5 fewer days of poor mental health per month, compared to those who didn't exercise at all. The team found that people who exercised for 30 to 60 minutes three to five times a week had the best mental health, but those who exercised for more than three hours had worse mental health than those who didn't exercise at all.

    The scientists think that people who exercise so much may experience poorer mental health because that much exercise can be a sign of obsessive (强迫症患者) behaviors that have been associated with poor emotional and psychological outcomes. However, the only mental health disorder that the researchers looked at was depression.

    Among those who had been diagnosed with depression, people who did exercise experienced 3.75 fewer negative mental health days than those who did not, showing an ever greater difference, According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. 7, 6 percent of people in the U.S. age 12 and over have depression. While all types of exercise appeared to help with mental health, cycling, gym-based exercise and team sports were the most beneficial.

    The team also looked at more specific factors, like education. People with a college education reported 17.8 percent fewer days of poor mental health than those without that level education Additionally, people in a healthy BMI (体重指数) range reported a 4 percent reduction in poor mental health days thin those whose BMIs were high. Even salary was a factor: compared to people with bower salaries, those with higher salaries experienced a 17 percent reduction in poor mental health days.

    The study showed that exercise can help with mental health, but that in some cases, limiting it may be necessary.

    Some of the best research on daily experience is rooted in rates of positive and negative interactions, which has proved that being blindly positive or negative can cause others to be frustrated or annoyed or to simply tune out.

    Over the last two decades, scientists have made remarkable predictions simply by watching people interact with one another and then scoring the conversations based on the rate of positive and negative interactions. Researchers have used the findings to predict everything from the likelihood that a couple will divorce to the chances of a work team with high customer satisfaction and productivity levels.

More recent research helps explain why these brief exchanges matter so much. When you experience negative emotions as a result of criticism or rejection, for example, your body produces higher levels of the stress hormone, which shuts down much of your thinking and activates(激活) conflict and defense mechanisms(机制). You assume that situations are worse than they actually are.

    When you experience a positive interaction, it activates a very different response. Positive exchanges increase your body's production of oxytocin, a feel-good that increases your ability to communicate with, cooperate with and trust others. But the effects of a positive occurrence are less dramatic and lasting than they are for a negative one.

    We need at least three to five positive interactions to outweigh every one negative exchange. Bad moments simply outweigh good ones. Whether you're having a conversation, keep this simple short cut in mind: At least 80 percent of your conversations should be focused on what's going right.

    Workplaces, for example, often see this. During performance reviews, managers routinely spend 80 percent of their time on weaknesses and "areas for improvement". They spend roughly 20 percent of the time on strengths and positive aspects. Any time you have discussions with a person or group, spend the vast majority of the time talking about what is working, and use the remaining time to address weaknesses.

                              Sworkit

Do want to stay fit in cold winter? Sworkit is here to help. It's good for people new to fitness, as well as those who don't have enough time to do other exercises. Once you download the app, you'll be asked to do a quiz so Sworkit can work out the best program and fitness plan for you. The app is free to download, but you'll need to pay a monthly fee to access most workouts. 

Peak

This app is all about keeping your mind sharp. It has over 45 short, interactive games and puzzles .When you open Peak for the first time, you'll get to set personal goals and choose what brain-related aspects you'd like to improve on. The app is free to download, but unless you buy the paid version.

Canva

This graphic(绘画的)design app, used by more than 150 million people, has 250,000 patterns and 1 million pictures for you to create posters, logos, and more. It can even make videos, and even websites. All you need to give is a written tip, and a design is created for you in seconds. The free version of the app offers more than enough for the average person. 

Bookly

Would you like something to track your reading progress in real time? Here comes Bookly, you can get not only detailed statistics, but also many personalized reading suggestions. It's much more convenient than manually (手动地) writing down. However, what really makes this app shine is its another distinctive function which enables users to add their own comments, quotes, or thoughts while reading. 

Sugar-free cookies, sugar-free candy, and diet soda – are these better for you? After sugar became a no-no in the nutrition and wellness world, sugar-free food and drinks acted as a replacement for once beloved sweet drinks and snacks. Being claimed to be ZERO sugar means the food and drinks are healthier, better for diabetics, and help you slim down… Right? Wrong. Sugar-free products aren't better for you. In fact, they are worse. For most sugar-free products, it means that artificial sweeteners (甜味剂) are used instead of real sugar. The problem is that these sweeteners do not come from natural sources and they can do you more harm than good.

Let's get into what these artificial sweeteners actually are. Sugar-free sugar sounds wrong because there is no such thing as sugar-free sugar. Some of these sugar-free alternatives even contain sugar and the ones that have chemicals your body often does not know how to process. Most artificial sweeteners are a lot sweeter than sugar so only a small quantity of them are needed. That's why they can market sugar-free alternatives as "low-calorie" or "no-calorie". It also means that you get no nutritional value from consuming them, which is why so many sugar-free replacements are classified as "non-nutritive". These artificial sweeteners tend to hide under some names. Actually, they are 200-600 times sweeter than sugar.

When you eat sweet stuff, your body continues to desire it and, even though your body cannot metabolize (代谢) these sugar-free alternatives, your brain does not know the difference. In turn sugar-free alternatives relate to weight gain and Type-2 diabetes. Besides, artificial sweeteners also damage your gut's ability to break down sugar which impacts everything you eat. In other words, your body doesn't know how to handle artificial sweeteners because they have nothing real to process.

Here is a good rule of thumb: stay away from artificial sweeteners and look for non-sugar, natural sweeteners like stevia (甜叶菊) or date sugar. In the war against artificial sweeteners and real sugar, both lose. Satisfy your sweet tooth with natural sugar that comes from fruits and stay away from products claimed to be sugar-free.