Life can be so wonderful, full of adventure and joy. It can also be full of challenges, setbacks and heartbreaks. Whatever our circumstances, we generally still have dreams, hopes and desires—that little something more we want for ourselves and our loved ones. Yet knowing we can have more can also create a problem, because when we go to change the way we do things, up come the old patterns and pitfalls  that stopped us from seeking what we wanted in the first place.

    This tension between what we feel we can have and "what were seemingly able to have is the niggling  suffering, the anxiety we feel. This is where we usually think it's easier to just give up. But we're never meant to let go of the part of us that knows we can have more. The intelligence behind that knowing is us—the real us. It's the part that believes in life and its possibilities. If you drop that, you begin to feel a little "dead" inside because you're dropping "you".

    So, if we have this capability but somehow life seems to keep us stuck, how do we break these patterns?

    Decide on a new course and make one decision at a time. This is good advice for a new adventure or just getting through today's challenges.

While, deep down, we know we can do it, our mind—or the minds of those close to us—usually says we can't.

    That isn't a reason to stop, it's just the mind, that little man or woman on your shoulder, trying to talk you out of something again. It has done it many times before. It's all about starting simple and doing it now.

    Decide and act before overthinking. When you do this you may feel a little, or large, release from the jail of your mind and you'll be on your way.

    Suppose you become a leader in an organization. It's very likely that you'll want to have volunteers to help with the organization's activities. To do so, it should help to understand why people undertake volunteer work and what keeps their interest in the work.

    S Let's begin with the question of why people volunteer. Researchers have identified several factors that motivate people to get involved. For example, people volunteer to express personal values related to unselfishness, to expand their range of experiences, and to strengthen social relationships. If volunteer positions do not meet these needs, people may not wish to participate. To select volunteers, you may need to understand the motivations of the people you wish to attract.

    S People also volunteer because they are required to do so. To increase levels of community service, some schools have launched compulsory volunteer programs. Unfortunately, these programs can shift people's wish of participation from an internal factor (e.g. “I volunteer because it's important to me”) to an external factor (e.g. “I volunteer because I'm required to do so”). When that happens, people become less likely to volunteer in the future. People must be sensitive to this possibility when they make volunteer activities a must.

    S Once people begin to volunteer, what leads them to remain in their positions over time? To answer this question, researchers have conducted follow-up studies in which they track volunteers over time. For instance, one study followed 238 volunteers in Florida over a year. One of the most important factors that influenced their satisfaction as volunteers was the amount of suffering they experienced in their volunteer positions. Although this result may not surprise you, it leads to important practical advice. The researchers note that attention should be given to “training methods that would prepare volunteers for troublesome situations or provide them with strategies for coping with the problem they do experience”.

    S Another study of 302 volunteers at hospitals in Chicago focused on individual differences in the degree to which people view “volunteer” as an important social role. It was assumed that those people for whom the role of volunteer was most part of their personal identity would also be most likely to continue volunteer work. Participants indicated the degree to which the social role mattered by responding to statements such as “Volunteering in Hospital is an important part of who I am.” Consistent with the researchers' expectations, they found a positive correlation(正相关) between the strength of role identity and the length of time people continued to volunteer. These results, once again, lead to concrete advice: “Once an individual begins volunteering, continued efforts might focus on developing a volunteer role identity....Items like T-shirts that allow volunteers to be recognized publicly for their contributions can help strengthen role identity”.

    Feifei, an 11-year-old boy from Xuzhou, Jiangsu Province, suffered from a sudden acute eye disease which has almost led to blindness. The disease was caused by excessive(过度的)eye fatigue(疲劳)during the winter vacation, during which he played computer games for continuous 10 days and nights.

    Many youngsters in China nowadays are increasingly addicted to computer games and other electronic products. This is followed by a series of health problems, with the most typical case being myopia, or nearsightedness.

    According to the latest research report released by the World Health Organization (WHO), the myopia   rate among Chinese teenagers ranks first in the world—70 percent of high school and college students. The rate is nearly 40 percent in primary school students, while it is only 10 percent for their peers in the United States.

    There are at least 10 million people in China with severe myopia, and they are likely to get pathological(病理性的)myopia in middle age. Pathological myopia can't be treated with glasses or surgery, and it is one of the biggest factors that lead to blindness, Xu Xun, director of the ophthalmology(眼科学) department at Shanghai General Hospital, pointed out.

    Experts explain that two major factors lead to the high rate of myopia among Chinese people. One is high academic pressure, and the other one is excessive use of electronic devices over a long period of time. Genetics, on the other hand, are not the main reason, as only 20 percent of Chinese people had myopia in the 1960s.

    "Teenagers are now faced with severe academic pressure, which means they often study without natural light. This increases their risk of becoming nearsighted," Xu said.

    Experts suggest that youngsters maintain a proper balance between study and rest so as to protect their eyesight, and parents should play an active role in the process.

B

    These days, young people in some English-speaking countries are speaking a strange language, especially when communicating on social media.

    Look at these words chosen by The Washington Post: “David Bowie dying is totes tradge,” and “When Cookie hugged Jamal it made me totes emosh.” Or this sentence: “BAE, let me know if you stay in tonight.”

    What on earth do they mean? Well, “totes” is a short form of “totally”. Similarly, “tradge” means “tragic” and “emosh” means “emotional”. It seems that, for millennials（千禧一代）, typing in this form is not only time-saving but fashionable.

    As you can see, many millennial slangs（俚语）are formed by so-called “totesing”—the systematic abbreviation（缩写）of words. The trend might have started with “totally” becoming “totes”, but it now has spread to many other English words.

    The origins of other millennial slangs are more complex than “totesing”.“Bae”, for example, has been widely used by African-Americans for years. It can be an expression of closeness with one's romantic partner or, like “sweetheart”, for someone without romantic connection. After pop singer Pharrell used the word in his work, “bae” became mainstream.

    Some people might think millennial slangs lower the value of the English language, but Melbourne University linguist（语言学家）Rosey Billington doesn't agree. She says when people are able to use a language in a creative way, they show that they know the language rules well enough to use words differently. Two other linguists, Lauren Spradlin and Taylor Jones, share the same view. The two analysed hundreds of examples of totes-speak and discovered totesing has complex roots.

    It isn't simply an adult version of baby talk, nor a clever way to minimize your word count. Rather, it is a highly organized system that relies on a speaker's mastery of English pronunciation. It is about sounds, follows sound system of English and has strict rules.

    Your teenage best friend could be good for your long-term mental health, according to a new study published in the journal Child Development According to the findings, teenagers aged 15 to 16 who had a close friendship rather than a larger group of friends they were less close to had a greater sense of self-worth by the time they were 25 years old. Those people with a very close best friend were also less likely to experience depression and social anxiety, the study found.

    "Close friendship strength in mid-adolescence predicted relative increases in self-worth and decreases in anxiety and depressive symptoms by early adulthood, "the authors, led by Rachel K, Narr, a postdoctoral student focused on clinical psychology at the University of Virginia, wrote.

    A past research has suggested that adolescent friendships are important. Friendships during the teenage years predict academic success and improved mental health. But the new research further explores the type of friendships teenagers have. "My hunch(预感)was that close friendships compared to broader friendship groups and popularity may not function the same way," Narr told Quartz. "Being successful in one is not the same as being successful in the other."

    Many study participants did not continue to have a close relationship with their high-school best friend, leading the researchers to wonder what exactly was responsible for the mental health benefits. They suspected that the skills and ability to build such a friendship may be more important than the friendship itself.

    And as the researchers point out, those skills are not necessarily brought to bear in the world of social media. "As technology makes it increasingly easy to build a social network of shallow friends, focusing time and attention on developing close connections with a few individuals should be a priority," study co-author Joseph Allen said in a statement.