Anyone in the world, big or small, fat or thin, black or white, can feel somewhat inferior (自卑的) to someone else at times during their lives. 【小题1】 But these comments are in no way based on facts. Luckily, there are lots of simple steps you can take to overcome the feeling of inferiority.

Stop wanting to be like others. Inferiority is rooted in the desire to be just like someone else. If you try to be someone else, you aren’t being true to yourself. 【小题2】 That means you take some of their traits and put them into yourself. But the important difference is that you are still you.

Try not to worry about what others think. Inferiority arises from your constant concern about what others think about you. You often find problems with yourselves based on if others find you good enough. This isn’t healthy thinking.【小题3】 It is only your own opinions that matter.

【小题4】 People with inferiority spend too much time on that. If you do that, you will come up with a never-ending list of ways people are better than you. However, it’s not fair because everything about your life and circumstances are different — from the family you were born in, to your genetics, to your opportunities.

Build self-confidence. As you work through your inferiority, you need to start building self-confidence. Start by fixing your mental image of yourself. Inferiority is based on false ideas about oneself. Try to remind yourself that this image is false and doesn’t reflect the reality. Remove labels you have attached to yourself. Don’t think of yourself as a stupid, ugly, unsuccessful man, a failure, or anything else. 【小题5】

“A lie can travel halfway around the world before the truth can get its boots (靴子) on.” said Mark Twain. In today’s Internet world of “fake (假的) news,” lies spread even faster and the truth is having trouble finding its boots.

To make matters worse, most young people get news from social media sites where facts are mixed with rumors (谣言), half-truths and complete lies. This has led to young people becoming confused. In the latest PISA, which tested 15-year-olds worldwide on academic subjects, fewer than one in ten of the examinees were reported to be able to recognize fact from opinion. A Stanford University study showed that students at all levels of education could not tell teal news from fake news. In one instance, 80 percent thought that a paid advertisement was a real news story.

Fake news is spread by people who have a prejudice (偏见). They want to influence public opinion either for or against something or someone. It is important, then, for young people to recognize when they are being used and to be doubtful about online information.

Traditional media, such as newspapers and television, are still the more credible sources of information. Reporters are professional trained to look for facts, and editors have the job of making sure those facts are correct. However, if you are getting most of your information online, you have to be your own editor. In that case, the first thing to do is to look at the writer of a post. Is this person known to be objective? Does the site where you read the post have a prejudice? Next, look for other sources from mainstream media to make sure the information. In other words, by putting on your truth boots you won’t be fooled into chasing lies.

“That sounds great,” a producer for a television show said to me backstage. “We will be live in 30 minutes. And I need you to say exactly what you just said.”

I started rehearsing(排练) immediately. I had ten minutes before he came to me to talk about another series he was developing. I almost asked him if we could postpone that conversation, but I figured since I had already run through my speech twice in a row, I’d be fine.

Unfortunately, I was right. I was fine. Not outstanding. Not exceptional. Just...fine. My transitions were weak, and I totally forgot one of the major points I wanted to make, which, according to Hermann Ebbinghaus, the pioneer of quantitative memory research, should have come as no surprise.

Ebbinghaus is best known for discovering the forgetting curve, which describes how new information fades away. Once you’ve learned something new, nearly half of that information “disappears” in just 20 minutes; after a day, the curve levels off.

According to Benedict Carey, author of How We Learn, what we learn doesn’t necessarily fade; it just becomes less accessible. In my case, I hadn’t forgotten a key point; otherwise I wouldn’t have realized, minutes after, that I left it out. I just didn’t access that information when I needed it.

Ebbinghaus would have given Carey a like if he were still alive today: he determined that even when we think we’ve forgotten something, some portion of it is still filed away, which makes the process of relearning a lot more efficient.

That’s where spaced repetition comes in. Wherever learning is concerned, time is everything. Not large blocks of time, though. But time to forget and then relearn, time to lose and then strengthen, access, time to let memories and connections become disorganized and then tidy them back up again.

This is important—to make your emotions work for you, not against you. Forgive yourself for forgetting. Accept that forgetting—the feeling that you aren’t making much progress—is actually a key to the learning process.