Take Heart, and Take Risks

Recently, we carried out an interesting social experiment. The participants were asked to choose between two _______: throw a coin to win one billion dollars if the coin happens to land on heads, or get a 10-million-dollar cheque without even throwing the coin.

Our purpose was not to measure the participants’ craze for money but to _______ their risk appetite. It _______ that a clear majority chose to take home the 10 million dollars. Only 31% of the subjects were _______ enough to test the depths of the river. Another study, conducted by psychology professor Keith Simonton at the University of California Davis, shows that most famous scientific _______ are risk-takers. Albert Einstein, Charles Darwin and Isaac Newton all dared to chase ideas that were _______ the mainstream ideas of their times.

The willingness to take risks without fear of failure is what _______ individuals towards achieving their ambitions. It forms a very important part of the stories of many successful businessmen globally.

The journey of Mark Zuckerberg is a classic example of this. In his second year in college, Zuckerberg decided to quit Harvard University to manage his social application company. In the years that followed, quite a few tech giants expressed early interest in purchasing the company. Their offers were _______. At the time, the young CEO and his team were widely criticized and publicly laughed at.

Today, Zuckerberg is one of the richest men on earth. His company still owns the most widely used social networking site in the world, _______ together over 2.8 billion users globally.

The lesson from Zuckerberg’s story is his risk-taking ________. He’s exactly the kind of person who’s willing to ________ interests for more rewarding future gains.

Generally, ________ achievements are often realized once a person decides to get out of their comfort zone. People’s ability to ________ from their comfort zone is closely tied to their risk-taking strength. It is like the case of a person who wishes to get a piece of fruit from the tree but is not willing to risk climbing up the branches of the tree in order to do so. “If you are not willing to risk the unusual, you will have to ________ the ordinary,” said the American author Jim Rohn.

The willingness to take risks is the oxygen that drives success in every field. If a risk-taker succeeds, he can lead others. If he fails, he may ________ others to success.

There are about fifteen hundred languages in the world.

But only a few of them are very ___ . English is one of these. Many, many people use it, not only in England and the U.S.A., but in other parts of the world. About 200,000,000 speak it as their own language. It is difficult to say how many people are learning it as a ___   language. Many millions are trying to do so.

“Learn English in six month, or your _____ back ...” “Easy and funny? Our records and tapes _____ you master your English in a month. From the first day your _____ will be excellent. Just send...” Of course, it never _____ quite like this.

The only language that seems easy to learn is the mother tongue. We should remember that we all learned our own language well when we were _____. If we could learn English in the same way, it would not seem so difficult. _____ what a small child does. He listens to what people say. He tries what he hears. When he is using the language, talking in it, and ____ in it all the time, just imagine how much _____ that gets!

So it is hard to say that learning English is easy, because a good command of English _____ upon a lot of practice. And practice needs great effort and _____ much time. Good teachers, records, tapes, books, and dictionaries will ____. But they cannot do the student’s work for him.

Rainbow comes after a storm. For instance, here are things you've probably celebrated: an excellent grade, a team win, an _______ goal. Did you know that a past failure can _______ be a good thing too? The problem is that, according to a research, big embarrassing times can be _______ hard for girls. ''Many girls see _______ as something that can't be changed and something that will forever _______ them, '' says Rachel Simmons, a cofounder of the nonprofit Girls Leadership. Simmons _______ that by middle school, and continuing through _______ school and college, girls' confidence levels _______ while boys' stay the same or go _______. That confidence gap makes ________ an error much harder.

How can you change all this? You can ________ one fact: ''Failing is a huge part of ________, '' says Michael A. Freeman, M.D., a clinical ________ of psychiatry at the University of California San Francisco School of Medicine who has held workshops on failure. ''________ you're making mistakes, you're learning and getting ________. The people who know how to learn from failure are most ________ to succeed in the future. '' Plenty of research shows that failing actually helps you to grow as a person, ________ your boundaries, and build flexibility. (Some big companies even look for ________ employees who have experienced failures without allowing the failures to discourage them!) So it's time to get loud and ________ about your mistakes. They happen. Read on for all the tips, advice, and information you need to go forth and ________!