Pacing and Pausing

    Sara tried to befriend her old friend Steve's new wife, but Betty never seemed to have anything to say. While Sara felt Betty didn't hold up her end of the conversation, Betty complained to Steve that Sara never gave her a chance to talk. The problem had to do with expectations about pacing and pausing.

    Conversation is a turn-taking game. When our habits are similar, there's no problem. But if our habits are different, you may start to talk before I'm finished or fail to take your turn when I'm finished. That's what was happening with Betty and Sara.

    It may not be coincidental that Betty, who expected relatively longer pauses between turns, is British, and Sara, who expected relatively shorter pauses, is American. Betty often felt interrupted by Sara. But Betty herself became an interrupter and found herself doing most of the talking when she met a visitor from Finland. And Sara had a hard time cutting in on some speakers from Latin America or Israel.

    The general phenomenon, then, is that the small conversation techniques, like pacing and pausing, lead people to draw conclusions not about conversational style but about personality and abilities. These habitual differences are often the basis for dangerous stereotyping (思维定势). And these social phenomena can have very personal consequences. For example, a woman from the southwestern part of the US went to live in an eastern city to take up a job in personnel. When the Personnel Department got together for meetings, she kept searching for the right time to break in — and never found it. Although back home she was considered outgoing and confident, in Washington she was viewed as shy and retiring. When she was evaluated at the end of the year, she was told to take a training course because of her inability to speak up.

    That's why slight differences in conversational style — tiny little things like microseconds of pause — can have a great effect on one's life. The result in this cause was a judgment of psychological problems — even in the mind of the woman herself, who really wondered what was wrong with her and registered for assertiveness training.

    Almost all researches in sleep explain that nightmares are a reaction to negative experiences that happen during waking hours. However, some of them believe that nightmares do have some real benefits. One 2017 study, for example, found that frequent nightmare sufferers rated themselves as more empathetic (共鸣的). They also displayed more of a tendency to unconsciously mirror other people through things like yawning. People who have constant nightmares also tend to think further outside the box on psychoanalysis tasks. Some other researches have found support for the idea that nightmares might be linked to creativity.

    People seeking cure for nightmares were not necessarily more fearful or anxious, but rather had a general sensitivity to all emotional experience. Sensitivity is the driving force behind intense dreams. Heightened sensitivity to threats or fear during the day results in had dreams and nightmares, whereas heightened passion or excitement may result in more intense positive dream. And both these forms of dreams may feed back into waking life, perhaps increasing suffering after nightmares, or promoting social bonds and empathy after positive dreams.

    The effects go further still. This sensitivity overflows over into perceptions and thoughts: people who have a lot of nightmares experience a dreamlike quality to their waking thoughts. And this kind of thinking seems to give them a creative edge. For instance, studies show that such people tend to have greater creative talent and artistic express. And people who often have nightmares also tend to have more positive dreams than the average person.

    The evidence points towards the idea that, rather than disturbing normal activity, people who are unfortunate in having a lot of nightmares also have a dreaming life that is at least as creative, positive and vivid as it can be distressing and terrifying. What's more, this imaginative richness is unlikely to be limited to sleep, but also is filled with waking thought and daydreams. Even after people wake up and shake off the nightmare, in other words, a mark of it stays behind, possessing them throughout the day.

    My dad was in the Air Force. When I was a kid, we moved every few years. That meant a lot of good-byes. It also meant getting used to a whole new community and a whole new school each time we moved. I can still feel what it was like to have to walk into the new school—that sinking feeling in my belly, that heaviness in my throat. It would always take time for me to learn how everything worked, what was cool and what was not. It was always a struggle to find where I could fit in.

    Already shy, I didn't have much self-confidence in my friend-making abilities. I was the girl walking in the halls with her head down, panicking. When I spoke, you could hardly hear my soft voice. I was nervous and doubted myself a lot.

    It was very hard not having a history with everyone else. I was an outsider. But what I did have was soccer. Wherever I went, I knew that I could fit in with the soccer ball. The soccer team meant a familiar place and immediate friends for me. I could express myself and feel good about myself on the field. Playing hard helped to get rid of all my nervousness.

    Throughout our lives, our self-respect goes down when we feel like a failure, and it goes up when we feel successful. Doing something well, being praised, and feeling loved goes a long way. We all need to explore opportunities where we can be good at something and feel good about ourselves. Physical activity and sport participation is a terrific way to build up our sense of self-confidence and self-worth.

    Not all think laughter is the best medicine, but it seems to help. So scientists carried on a new study of diabetes (糖尿病) patients who were given a good dose of humor for a year to prove it.

    Researchers divided 20 high­risk diabetic patients into two groups. Both groups were given standard diabetes medicine. Group L viewed 30 minutes of humor of their choice, while Group C. the control group. did not. This went on for a year of treatments.

    By two months into the study. the patients in the laughter group had lower level of the hormones epinephrine (肾上腺素), considered to cause stress. which is known to be deadly. After the 12 months. HDL cholesterol rises 26 percent in Group L but only 3 percent in Group C. In another measure. C­reactive proteins, a maker of heart disease. drop 66 percent in the laughter group but only 26 percent in the control group.

    “The best doctors believe that there is a physical good brought about by the positive emotion, happy laughter. ”said study leader Lee Berk of Loma Linda University. And other research has found that humor makes us more hopeful. Still, more study is needed, Berk said. The research by Berk found that humor can bring about similar changes in body chemistry. which was proved in the new study. The research result will be presented this month at the meeting in the US. Research at the University of Maryland School of Medicine shows that laughter causes the inner lining of blood vessels to expand. increasing blood flow in a way thought to be healthy.

    “Lifestyle choices have an important effect on health and these are choices which we and patients should pay attention to. rather than prevention and treatment,”Berk said in a statement this week.

I was shocked when my socially awkward sister, who had suffered from Asperger Syndrome (阿斯伯格综合症), decided to sing in front of the school. I knew she would 1 me in some way, so I protested. However, my parents insisted that she 2 and I would have to be part of the audience. I silently hoped that something would happen to 3 me from watching her losing face.

As I waited in the hall, sweat 4 my forehead. I comforted myself that no one knew she was my sister and tried to persuade myself that it would be 5 . The lights darkened and the 6 opened to reveal (使露面) my sister standing alone on stage. She seemed 7 , taking a minute to stammer (结结巴巴地说) her name and class. 8 began to be heard in the audience.

I shifted nervously in my seat, afraid what was about to happen. But as my sister started to sing, I was 9 . Her voice flowed effortlessly and melodiously, filling the hall with its 10 . I watched in wonder, realizing I had never known she could sing so 11 . I listened carefully to the lyric (歌词) she had written herself, feeling ashamed for doubting her 12 . My heart gave way as I heard the heartfelt words.

 In that moment, guilt and shame flooded my heart. 13 my unwillingness to support her, she had never taken anything that I had done to her to heart. It was then that I determined to love her 14 . It was as if a veil (面纱) had been 15 from my eyes, and my heart was full.

No one is born a winner. People make themselves into winners by their own 1 .  

I learned this lesson from a(n) 2 many years ago. I took the head coaching job at a school in Baxley, Georgia. It was a small school with a weak football programme.  

 It was a tradition for the school's old team to play against the new team at the end of spring practice. The old team had no coach, and they didn't even practice to 3 the game. Being the coach of the new team, I was excited because I knew we were going to win, but to my disappointment, we were defeated. I couldn't 4 I had got into such a situation. Thinking hard about it, I came to 5 that my team might not be the number one team in Georgia, but they were depending on me. I had to change my 6 about their ability and potential.  

I started doing anything I could to help them build a little 7 . Most importantly, I began to treat them like 8 . That summer, when the other teams enjoyed their vacations, we met every day and 9

passing and kicking the football.  

Six months after suffering our 10 on the spring practice field, we won our first game and our second, and continued to improve. Finally, we faced the number one team in the state. I felt that it would be a

11 for us even if we lost the game. But that wasn't what happened. My boys beat the best team in Georgia, giving me one of the greatest

12 of my life! 

From the experience I learned a lot about how the attitude of the leader can 13 the members of a team. Instead of seeing my boys as losers, I pushed and 14 them. I helped them to see themselves15 , and they built themselves into winners.  

Winners are made, not born.