High school life, especially in the senior year, is a rollercoaster of emotions filled with challenges and pressures. The constant demand for academic excellence, combined with the expections of college applications, and managing extracurricular (课外的) activities can lead even the best students to feel the weight of stress. However, it’s not only possible but essential to find moments of joy and strategies to reduce the pressure efficiently.

Understanding the nature of stress is the primary step. Stress isn’t just a state of mental unrest; it’s a physiological response. 【小题1】 The body notices any form of demand, challenge, or threat and reacts by preparing for a “fight-or-flight” response. This is an ancient survival process that equips us to deal with threats, whether they’re a challenging exam or a physical danger.

Interestingly, not all stress is harmful. We often overlook the distinction of different stress. Acute (急性的) stress, in contrast to the chronic (长期的), can act as a force. 【小题2】 It pushes us to our limits, motivates us to meet deadlines, and often results in that rewarding feeling of accomplishment.

However, long exposure to stress leads to chronic stress. This kind of stress, if left unchecked, can cause various health issues ranging from mental health problems like anxiety and depression to physical ailments like high blood pressure and even heart diseases.

To reduce the effects of stress, mindfulness and meditation have proven effective. Even on a busy day, sparing just a few moments to focus on one’s breathing or practicing guided meditation can significantly reduce stress levels. 【小题3】 These practices help in grounding an individual, bringing a momentary escape from the chaos (混乱).

Pursuing hobbies or activities that one is passionate about can also be a good way. Whether it’s painting, reading, playing a musical instrument, or engaging in sports, these activities not only divert the mind but also release endorphins, the body’s natural mood lifters.

Another aspect is communication. 【小题4】 Sharing burdens, discussing worries, or just talking about one’s day can offer a fresh perspective and often lightens the load. Schools offer services, and there are numerous helplines available to assist students in distress.

So, with the weight of expectations, deadlines, and too many responsibilities, remember to prioritize mental well-being. 【小题5】 Every individual deserves moments of relaxation and happiness.

We all fail, all the time. We might miss a call with a client because of an emergency work meeting, or miss that meeting because another project has suddenly become urgent. And then we (or our families) get sick, and we have to shift priorities around again.

These unsystematic failures are benign, though. They reflect that all of us have limited resources. There simply is not enough time, energy, or money, to do everything you want to do all the time. Part of being a responsible adult is learning to make trade offs: balancing your conflicting goals and trying to get as much done as you can in the time you have.

The thing you really need to watch out for is the systematic failure. The systematic failure happens when there’s a particular goal you want to achieve, but never get to. The causes of systematic failures usually boil down to some combination of these three factors:

1. Short-term pressures versus long-term goals. Most of us prefer to achieve pressing short-term goals rather than put time into long-term projects. Lots of research suggests that our brains are wired to prefer tasks that pay off in the short term rather than those whose benefit is long-term. The people who do manage to accomplish their long-term goals create regular space to make progress on them.

2. _________Without even realizing it, we often do what is easiest to accomplish rather than what we say is most important. Email is a great example. If you are like most people, you keep your email program open at work all day. Consequently, each new message is an invitation to drop what you are working on to check it. It feels like work and it’s much easier than finishing that 100-slide presentation. Simply shutting off email for a few hours a day can remove this source of distraction from the environment.

3. Working for too long. Many workplaces create pressure to stay at the office for more and more hours, which (paradoxically) creates opportunities for systematic failures. Work is not an iron man competition where the last person there wins. Most people have an optimal(最佳的) number of hours they can work each day. For example, I can be productive at work for about 8-9 hours a day. If I spend any more time at work than that, then at some point, I start doing "fake work."

The next time you run into trouble, assess whether it’s an unsystematic failure or a systematic one. When you notice a systematic failure in your life, you need to make a change in your behavior. If you don’t make a change, you will continue to fail.

Finally, if you experience a lot of unsystematic failures, it might be worth rethinking the number of tasks you are taking on. Perhaps you need to offload some responsibilities onto someone else, before you start experiencing more systematic failures.