Whatever is most important to you will become your belief, or, as I like to call it, your life-center.

Sometimes we see the world through the lens of possessions or stuff. We live in a material world that teaches us that “He who dies with the most toys wins.” We feel as if we are supposed to have the fastest car, the nicest clothes, the latest smartphone, the best hairstyle, and the many other things that apparently bring happiness. Possessions also come in the form of titles and accomplishments, such as head cheerleader, star of the play, student body officer, editor in chief, or MVP.

There is nothing wrong with achieving success and enjoying our stuff, but things should never become the center of our lives. In the end they have no lasting value. Our confidence needs to come from within, not from without, from the quality of our hearts, not the quantity of things we own. After all, he who dies with the most toys…still dies.

I knew a girl who had the most beautiful and expensive clothes I’d ever seen. She never wore the same outfit twice. After getting to know her better, I started to notice that she had a bad case of “elevator eyes”. It seemed that whenever she talked with another girl, she’d eye her from head to foot to see if her outfit was as nice as her own, which usually gave her a superiority complex (优越感). Her self-confidence depended on owning stuff. It wasn’t based on her own personality, smartness, or kindness. It was a real turn-off to me.

I read a saying that says it better than I can: “If who I am is what I have and what I have is lost, then who am I?”

Even smart people can make terrible decisions. Generally, it’s not because they spent time deliberating and somehow arrived at the wrong answer. 【小题1】 Below, we’ve listed some of the easiest traps to fall into, at the office and at home.

【小题2】

The siren call of your inbox can be hard to resist. Yet research suggests that switching between tasks — say, doing research and checking for new email — takes up to 40 percent longer than doing one at a time. Even when you think you’re being more productive by multitasking, you’re probably not.

Staying seated all day

Office jobs doesn’t contribute to getting a lot of physical activity. 【小题3】. A growing body of research suggests that even if you get up and move around for a few minutes several times a day, you’re improving your overall health.

Listening to music while you work

You might feel more productive when you listen to music while doing focused work — but you’re probably not really. In 2015, neuroscientist and musician Daniel Levitin, who cited a growing body of research suggesting that, in almost every case, your performance on intellectual tasks (thinking, reading or writing) suffers considerably when you listen to music.

Choosing foods that seem nutritious — but aren’t really

Don’t believe the hype — know the facts about your food. 【小题4】. For example, bottled juices and fast-casual smoothies might seem nutritious, when in fact they’re generally loaded with sugar and calories.

Staying up too late

Scientists have identified a common phenomenon they call “bedtime procrastination”: Failing to go to bed at the intended time, while no external circumstances prevent a person from doing so. For example, you keep watching one episode after another of a not-that-interesting TV show. 【小题5】. As Business Insider previously reported, in some cases sleep loss can be just as deadly as smoking. Turn off the TV and get ready for bed. You’ll be grateful tomorrow, and years later.

Traveling with kids is 90 percent reminding yourself to live in the moment and 10 percent making up your mind to never again leave your house.

I have an uncanny ability to forget this as soon as we return home from a trip and I’ve finished washing piles of dirty clothes in our luggage and cleaning all the messy caused by the kids. Extremely tired and annoyed, I would actually begin to miss the place we just left!

Family travel is like childbirth, I suppose. Painful, loud, messy, sort of awful, actually, but also wonderful. And you remember only the wonderful until you’re back on a plane and your kids are fighting over who gets the aisle seat. Then you remember the bad stuff.

Last weekend, my kids and I flew to Texas for a trip. we would have nothing to complain about big hotel, wonderful view. And yet we found things to complain about. The pool was bigger in that other hotel! Why do you get to shower first? They call this coffee! Luckily, I’ve learned to put my metaphorical coat of armor on as soon as we land somewhere, and it forces complaints to bounce off me and land in a pile at my feet. For three days, genuine fun was had and annoying complaints were heard and ignored. Until it was time to catch a plane and fly home.

Unfortunately, our flight was cancelled. We spent hours finding a hotel room. We hit the hotel pool before bed and swam well into the night, my kids making up songs and laughing so hard at their silly lyrics and their crazy good fortune to be swimming at 10:30 on a school night.

And that was when it hit me that family travel is all those things I said before but it’s also a lot more. It’s taking your kids to parts of the world that will open their eyes and finding that actually, yours need opening too. It’s remembering that joy and memories are where you make them, not where you find them.