The negative thoughts inside your head can hold you back from making new friends, connecting with colleagues or sharing your brilliant ideas in meetings. For some people, these negative thoughts become too powerful and require professional attention. 【小题1】 The following are some tips to quiet your inner critic.

Label the voice.

The voice does not define you. Just identify it as an independent entity (实体) and give it a name. Call it your unreliable speaker, your negative Nelly or your passive Bob. 【小题2】

【小题3】

Negative thinking can do a lot on your central nervous system, causing you to react physically. 【小题4】 Whatever your response ― shaky hands, trembling voice, sweaty brow — a slow breathing in and a slower breathing out will help comfort the central nervous system.

Trust that the thought will pass.

It’s just a thought, and ifs just not that important—it’s irrational after all! 【小题5】 You don’t realize you’re empowering those thoughts, getting into a tug of war with them. You can choose to accept its presence in the moment and trust that it will pass.

All in all, don’t let that voice in your head tell you what to do.

Useful Memory Strategies

Form associations between new and remembered information. If you can link new ideas with previously established ones, then you can increase the chance that new memories will be formed. Try coming up with a familiar picture, song, joke, or rhyme that you can associate with the new material. 【小题1】

Repeat new facts as soon as you come across them. It may be boring, but simply repeating new information over and over in different ways will help it stick in your brain better, especially if you space out the repetition over time.【小题2】 Then speak the definition out loud a couple times, and try writing it down once or twice.

Teach someone else the information you’re trying to learn. 【小题3】 Find a classmate or co-worker who needs to learn the same information, form a study group, and take turns teaching each other different concepts. Alternately, ask your friends if they’re willing to learn something new from you.

【小题4】 Simply re-reading the same information isn’t good enough. You have to actually practice finding the information form your memory in order to strengthen the connections within your brain. 【小题5】 If you answer something wrong, you will be more likely to remember it incorrectly in the future as well, so instantly correct yourself and repeat the right answer a few more times.

Advertisements are designed to persuade us, but which techniques are effective in talking us in to buy things?

【小题1】 Normalization can lead to higher sales of junk food as people start to see these habits as normal. This is like product placement—where products are shown or mentioned in TV shows and films. Beth, an assistant professor of marketing and advertisement, tells us that product placement is most effective when it is not too obvious. 【小题2】 It seems that a subtle (不易察觉的) approach can be more persuasive.

Appealing to our emotions is another strategy advertisers use. 【小题3】 Jannet, a senior lecturer in communication studies, explains that for fear to be an effective tool, we need to believe: when fears are raised, people tend to take action to make a difference, like buying something. But when fears are exaggerated (夸大) or we feel helpless, we are likely to switch off.

Advertisements often show perfect-looking people because marketers believe that we will desire to be like them and buy the products they support. 【小题4】 The research that she mentions shows these ads can make people feel bad and put them off products. These studies say that seeing a more human side of people can lead us to believe them. 【小题5】

So, it seems that the best technique advertisers can use to persuade people is to fully understand the people they are selling to.