With all of the wonderful things life brings us, it also brings us stress. It is for this reason that I am an active supporter of mental health days.

    Although it's never good to ignore(忽视) responsibilities, sometimes it is good to unplug(拔除) from the world for a day. We eat healthy and stay active to keep us from getting sick, but sometimes we forget to care for our minds. Our minds and bodies are connected, and when only one is being cared for, the other may be suffering. It is important to try to combine self care with our lives and spend time on activities we enjoy. This helps relieve stress on a daily day.

    So, what do you do on a mental health day? The answer is anything you want. Growing up, my brother and I were allowed a few mental health days a year. We would stay home from school and relax. For him, it was playing games on the computer, while my days were spent reading or watching TV. My mental health days now include picking things up around my apartment, cooking a tasty meal, and then reading for a few hours. I completely shut myself off from work or school. To me, this is relaxing. Organize the clutter(凌乱的东西) that piles up during the week, cook the meals I don't have time to cook, and read the books that I've bought but don't have time to read.

    A mental health day is great, but only if it's supplemented(增补) with self care through the week. From my experience, if self care is not regularly provided in your week, taking a mental health day is just going to stress you out even more. But when it's needed, try hard to recognize that and take care of yourself. It will help keep you happy and healthy. A mental health day is not a day to avoid life, it is a day to recoup(恢复).

Building Trust in a Relationship Again

    Trust is a learned behavior that we gain from past experiences. {#blank#}1{#/blank#} Trust is a risk. But you can't be successful when there's a lack of trust in a relationship that results from an action where the wrongdoer takes no responsibility to fix the mistake.

    Unfortunately，we've all been victims of betrayal. Whether we've been stolen from，lied to，misled，or cheated on，there are different levels of losing trust. Sometimes people simply can't trust anymore. {#blank#}2{#/blank#} It's understandable，but if you're willing to build trust in a relationship again，we have some steps you can take to get you there.

    {#blank#}3{#/blank#} Having confidence in yourself will help you make better choices because you can see what the best outcomewould be for your well-being.

    {#blank#}4{#/blank#} If you've been betrayed，you are the victim of your circumstance. But there's a difference between being a victim and living with a “victim mentality”. At some point in all of our lives，we'll have our trust tested or violated.

    You didn't lose “everything”. Once trust is lost，what is left? Instead of looking at the situation from this hopeless angle，look at everything you still have and be thankful for all of the good in your life. {#blank#}5{#/blank#} Instead，it's a healthy way to work through the experience to allow room余地 for positive growth and forgiveness.

A. Learn to really trust yourself.

B. It is putting confidence in someone .

C. Stop regarding yourself as the victim.

D. Remember that you can expect the best in return.

E. They've been too badly hurt and they can't bear to let it happen again. .

F. This knowledge carries over in their attitude toward their future relationships.

G. Seeing the positive side of things doesn't mean you're ignoring what happened.

    What would you say if we told you that you could learn to speak a new language in only 7 days? Pretty unbelievable right? But how could it be? To find out,we spoke to David-one of our brave Babbel learners—to see how the Babbel app successfully got him speaking Norwegian(挪威语)in just one week.

How much time did you learn each day?

    I didn't need to give my entire life over to learning Norwegian. Each Babbel lesson takes only 15 minutes, and I set myself the achievable aim of finishing three Babbel lessons daily.This took only 45minutes each day.

How did the Babbel app help you learn so quickly?

    The Babbel app has a course plan for beginners that taught me how to make sentences in Norwegian within the first few days. Then I was able to personalize my learning by selecting single-topic lessons on eating, drinking, music, culture, traveling and so on. This allowed me to quickly enlarge my vocabulary!

    This way of learning kept me highly active,and made sure I wasn't bored to tears with grammar practice that we all remember from school!

    “After 7 days I was able to introduce myself in Norwegian,talk about my hobbies and interests, and most importantly,communicating with a native Norwegian speaker in a real conversation and I could even play a joke or two!”

    Would you introduce this app to others?

    Certainly! Babbel has 14 languages to choose from so if you're thinking about brushing up on your German for a business trip, or learning a bit of Portuguese (葡萄牙语) for next year's summer vacation, you'll be happy to hear that you only need an app, 7 days of learning to get you conversational.

    In 2012, Kim Stemple, a special-education teacher, found herself in a Boston hospital being treated for one of several diseases she had been diagnosed(诊断) with, including lupus and lymphoma. The normally confident Stemple was naturally getting very depressed. And then a friend gave her a medal.

    Before she got too sick to exercise, Stemple had been a marathon runner. The medal came from a racing partner who had just finished a half marathon in Las Vegas and hoped the souvenir would act as a kind of feeling pick-me-up. It worked like a charm­and then some.

    After Stemple hung the medal near her hospital bed, other patients said they wanted medals too. That got Stemple thinking. "A medal is a simple way to give a positive message," she told pilotonline.com. And so was born her charity, We Finish Together, which collects medals from strangers­runners, dancers, swimmers, singers, and even spelling bee winners-and donates them to all sorts of people in need.

    Those who received the medals have included hospital patients, residents of homeless shelters, and veterans. Part of the process involves the donor writing a personalized note on the ribbon. "This gives them a connection to someone," says Stemple. "If they receive a medal, they know someone cares."

    Can a simple medal really make a difference? Yes, says Joan Musarra, who suffers from pulmonary fibrosis. "I opened my package containing my new medal and the notes of positive, warm thoughts, I was overwhelmed," she wrote to Stemple. "At that moment, I was sitting on my couch breathing through life-support machine because my lungs have been worsening so badly. It means so much to me to feel that I am not alone."

Babies are surrounded by human language, always listening and processing. Eventually, they put sounds together to produce a "Daddy" or a "Mama". But what still confuses neuroscientists is exactly how the brain works to put it all together.

To figure it out, a team of researchers turned to a frequent stand-in (代替) for babies when it comes to language learning: the song-learning zebra finch. "We've known songbirds learn their song by first forming a memory of their father's song or another adult's song. Then they use that memory to guide their song learning," said Neuroscientist Todd Roberts. "It's been a long-term goal of the field to figure out how or where in the brain this memory is. This type of imitative learning that birds do is very similar to the type of learning that we engage in regularly—particularly when we're young, we use it to guide our speech learning."

Roberts and his team had a feeling that the interface (交叉区域) between sensory areas and motor areas in the brain was critical for this process, and they focused on a group of brain cells called the NIf.

"In order to prove that we could identify these circuits, we thought if we could implant a false memory." First, they used a virus to cause the neurons (神经元) in the birds' NIf to become sensitive to light. Then, using a tiny electrode as a flashlight, they activated (激活) the neurons. The length of each pulse of light corresponded with the amount of time the neurons would fire. And the birds' brains interpreted that time period as the length of each note.

Soon enough, the birds began to practice the notes they had learned, even though they never really heard the sounds. Amazingly, the birds produced them in the correct social situations. The researchers say this is the first time anybody has found exactly a part of the brain necessary for generating the sorts of memories needed to copy sounds.

"This line of research is going to help us identify where in the brain we encode memories of relevant social experiences that we use to guide learning. We know that there are several neurodevelopmental disorders in people that have really far-reaching effects on this type of learning."

Every New Year, thousands decide they're going to change their lives. Fewer than 10 percent actually stick with their plans, and that figure is being generous. {#blank#}1{#/blank#}.

Not aiming high enough. While it's easy to think setting easy goals will keep you motivated, it may harm your long-term motivation. If you make goals that are too achievable, you'll get bored and lose interest. {#blank#}2{#/blank#}. If you're used to staying within your comfort zone, you'll be missing out on the satisfaction of achieving a life-changing goal. When you push yourself, you'll be able to build unshakable confidence as you achieve goal after goal.

{#blank#}3{#/blank#}. This is a fear many of us deal with. Instead of taking action, we start worrying about " What if?" "What if it doesn't work out? What if my dream isn't truly my dream? What if I don't succeed?" If you have trouble creating a vision , then you're at the risk of being aimless through life. {#blank#}4{#/blank#}. You can start the process of discovering your life purpose by asking yourself, " What would my ideal life look like?"

Letting fear control your mind and actions. Fear can prevent you from achieving your dreams. You'll miss out on opportunities in life if you don't learn how to manage your fears. {#blank#}5{#/blank#}. One way to manage fear is to look for the root cause of your fear. With deep introspection (反省), you can uncover the exact moment when those fears are holding you back from growing. This will give you a window of opportunity to communicate with your inner being and find release.

A. Lacking self-confidence

B. Being uncertain about the future

C. Fortunately, fear can be overcome

D. Below you'll find some common reasons why you're losing motivation

E. Many of us are motivated not by a desire to achieve, but by fear of failure

F. Ideally, you want to strike a balance between pushing yourself and creating realistic goals

G. However, when you find your purpose and passion, you'll be driven to struggle for excellence