Aristotle once wrote that “happiness is a state of activity”. In other words, whether you're seeking life-long satisfaction or a few moments of good cheer, you've got to move forward. We've interviewed the experts and found five steps to take toward a sunny mood（心情）：

    Over a 30-year period, University of Illinois researchers asked nearly 120, 000 people how income, education, political participation volunteer activities and close relationships affected their happiness. Reported Newsweek, s Sharon Begley on the findings, “The highest levels of happiness are found with the most stable and satisfying relationships. ”

    Singing aloud, talking to a stranger, raising your hand: all may increase a feeling of happiness, according to a study from Wake Forest University. Participants（参与者）followed the development of their moods for two weeks and reported feeling happier when they were more outgoing and less happy when reserved or withdrawn.

    The editors of forbes. Com gave $5 or $20 to 46 strangers by chance. Half the group was told to spend the money on themselves, while the other half was told to spend it on others. Those who'd shared the wealth felt much happier at the end of the day than those who'd spent it on themselves. There was no difference in happiness between those who spent $5 or $20, suggesting that it's not how much money you spend, but how you spend it, that inspires the spirit.

    Studies from the Positive Psychology Center showed that discouraged people who wrote down three good things that happened to them each day for six months reported an improved attitude.

    Drinking water really can help keep you cheerful. A small 2012 study from the University of Connecticut suggested that even slight dehydration（脱水） affected the moods of its female participants.

    Bad days happens to many of us. Something makes us sad, angry, frustrated or disappointed. But you still have to get up and go to work. Everything others say to you sounds stupid.{#blank#}1{#/blank#} . Luckily, you can do something about it. Here are some ways to turn around a bad day.

    Accept your bad mood

    Being in a bad mood is not that hard. If you're mad, be mad.{#blank#}2{#/blank#} . This does not give you license to be rude and unpleasant to others. It just means that you need to recognize and accept your bad mood to be able to do something.

    Tell others

    You can try to keep your bad mood a secret and put on your happy mask. Guess what, you're fooling nobody.{#blank#}3{#/blank#} . Simply tell them “listen guys, I'm in a really sour mood today. I'm not sure why, but it's nothing to do with what you have done. If I bite your head off, I apologize in advance.”

    {#blank#}4{#/blank#} 

    Spend a few moments to try thinking of at least one or two things that aren't all bad: Something you look forward to, such as a person you like at work or something nice that happened recently.

    Take some quiet time

    And if you're having a really bad day, it may be a good idea to withdraw a little if you can. {#blank#}5{#/blank#} . Sit and work somewhere quiet. Take a long bathroom break. Consider going home early or taking the day off.

A. Remember the good

B. It's important to get along well with others

C. Everyone seems to annoy you

D. The best thing to do is to tell the people you work closely with

E. If you're sad, be sad

F. Ask for advice

G. Take a walk in your lunch break

    Recently, in the quest for a selfie (自拍), a woman climbed over the concrete barrier of a Jaguar (美洲虎) enclosure at Wildlife World Zoo, Arizona. The jaguar ripped into her arm. Bystanders pulled her away before the animal could injure her further. She's fine-so is the jaguar.

    This isn't the first time a story of a person acting rudely to get close to a wild animal made headlines. Last year, a man jumped into a lion enclosure at a zoo for a close-up photo. {#blank#}1{#/blank#} Multiple tourists in Yellowstone National Park have been attacked by bison (野牛) when they've gotten too close for a photo.

    It's common sense not to get close to wild animals that can hurt you. It's why zoos have barriers -sometimes multiple walls-to keep people separated from animals. Signs posted everywhere state the obvious warning. Keep your hands off the cage.

    "Yet animals have become less real to us," says an environmentalist. We see exotic animals most frequently in managed settings like zoos. {#blank#}2{#/blank#} People are trying to take advantage of their rarity to show off on social media and ignore their fierceness.

    Media often normalize interaction with dangerous animals. Seeing a man like "Lion Whisperer" Kevin Richardson regularly play-fight with lions on TV, may send the message that these animals aren't so dangerous after all.

    Social media are also perfectly positioned to contribute to the rise of animal selfies. Getting likes and comments provide instant satisfaction. Your self-esteem actually gets a temporary boost. To hold onto that feeling, people may go to more and more extremes to showcase the most exciting versions of themselves. It may not be enough to get a photo of a beautiful, dangerous animal from outside a cage. {#blank#}3{#/blank#}

    People's careless approach can put the animal's safety at risk as well. Zoo animals often must be killed to protect the person who's entered their space. In fact, thrill-seekers actively endanger the lives of animals. {#blank#}4{#/blank#} with the zoo environment, they take it for granted that animals are there for people, ignoring the fact that animals and humans are both equal existents in the nature.

    Pretending you're someone else can make you creative

    One great irony(讽刺) about our collective fascination with creativity is that we tend to frame it in uncreative ways. That is to say, most of us marry creativity to our concept of self: We are either "creative" people or we aren't, without much of a middle ground.

    Pillay, a tech businessman and Harvard professor has spent a good part of his career destroying these ideas. Pillay believes that the key to unlocking your creative potential is to dismiss the conventional advice that urges you to "believe in yourself". In fact, you should do the exact opposite: believe you are someone else.

    In a recent column for Harvard Business Review, Pillay pointed to a 2016 study showing the impact of stereotypes(刻板印象)on one's behavior. The authors, education psychologists Denis Dumas and Kevin Dunbar, divided their college student subjects into three categories, instructing the members of one group to think of themselves as "eccentric(古怪的) poets" and the members of another to imagine they were "rigid librarians" (people in the third category, the control group, were left alone for this part). The researchers then presented participants with 10 ordinary objects, including a fork, a carrot, and a pair of pants, and asked them to come up with as many different uses as possible for each one. Those who were asked to imagine themselves as "eccentric poets" came up with the widest range of ideas for the objects, while those in the "rigid librarian" group had the fewest. Meanwhile, the researchers found only small differences in students' creativity levels across academic majors—in fact, the physics majors inhabiting(寄生) the personas(伪装的外表) of "eccentric poets" came up with more ideas than the art majors did.

    These results, write Dumas and Dunbar, suggest that creativity is not an individual quality, but a "malleable(可塑的) product of context and perspective." Everyone can be creative, as long as they feel like creative people.

    Pillay's work takes this a step further: He argues that identifying yourself with creativity is less powerful than the creative act of imagining you're somebody else. This exercise, which he calls "psychological halloweenism", refers to the conscious action of inhabiting another persona—an inner costuming of the self. It works because it is an act of "conscious unfocus", a way of positively stimulating the default mode(默认模式) network, a collection of brain regions that spring into action when you're not focused on a specific task or thought.

    Most of us spend too much time worrying about two things: How successful/unsuccessful we are, and how little we're focusing on the task at hand. The former feeds the latter—an unfocused person is an unsuccessful one, we believe. Thus, we force ourselves into quiet areas, buy noise canceling headphones, and hate ourselves for taking breaks.

    What makes Pillay's argument stand out is its healthy, forgiving realism: According to him, most people spend nearly half of their days in a state of "unfocus". This doesn't make us lazy people—it makes us human. The idea behind psychological halloweenism is: What if we stopped judging ourselves for our mental down time, and instead started using it? Putting this new idea on daydreaming means addressing two problems at once: You're making yourself more creative, and you're giving yourself permission to do something you'd otherwise feel guilty about. Imagining yourself in a new situation, or an entirely new identity, never felt so productive.

Title: Pretending you're someone else can make you creative

    Regret is as common an emotion as love or fear, and it can be nearly as powerful. We feel it when we either blame ourselves for things that turned out badly, or hope to get rid of the bad effects of a choice we made in the past. The effect regret has on our lives and how we deal with regret are equally important.

    In some cases, regret can be disastrous. In 1995, a British man who regularly played one set of lottery (彩票) numbers forgot to renew his ticket during the week that his numbers came up. He was so filled with regret and self-blame that he killed himself. While this is an extreme result of regret, it can have many other lesser effects on the mind and body that can still seriously affect our lives.

    According to recent research, women have more regrets about romantic relationships than men do—not surprising, since women "value social relationships more than men". In collectivist (集体的) culture where many aspects of life are arranged, people feel less regret, since many choices were made for them. There was an even split between regrets about inaction (not doing something) and action (do something you wish you didn't). The research found that some regrets are more likely than others to stay over time: people tend to hold on longer to the regret of inaction or the chances they have missed; meanwhile, regrets of action tend to be more recent.

    Held inside for too long, regret can affect people's physical health. If one fails to learn and grow from past mistakes, deep feeling of regret can stay locked inside, having a negative effect on his life. This can be harmful to relationships, careers, and many other aspects of life. Besides, too many regrets can lead to sadness, which may require doctors' help. Therefore, it is important that we understand what regret is and how we can learn to deal with it.

    To cope with regret, be aware that it is there for a reason. Our brain is telling us to take another look at our choices because they may be having negative results. Take "I can't believe I crashed my car. I'm so stupid." and turn it into "I'm so lucky I didn't die in the accident. How wonderful!" However, when the situation can't be changed, and there is nothing left for us to do, we have to let go of the situation and forgive ourselves.

    We have to see the mistakes we make as necessary lessons in life. If we can learn from them and make changes, we can turn our regrets into passive actions. We can use them to improve, guide, and shape our lives for the better.