I walked down a beautiful beach. I could see a woman bending down（弯腰）, picking something up and throwing it out into the sea. As I got closer, I noticed that the woman picked up starfish that were left on the beach and, one at a time, she threw them back into the water.

I was puzzled. I walked up to the woman and said, “Good evening. I am wondering what you are doing.”

“I’m throwing these starfish back into the sea. You see, it’s low tide（潮汐）right now and all of these starfish have been washed up onto the beach. If I don’t throw them back into the sea, they’ll die （死亡） up here from lack of water.”

“I understand,” I said, “but there must be quite a lot of starfish on this beach. You can’t possibly get all of them. There are simply too many. And this is probably happening on the beaches. Can’t you see that you can’t possibly make a difference（有影响）?”

The woman smiled, bent down and picked up another starfish, and as she threw it back into the sea, she replied, “Made a difference to that one!”

“I’ll finish my homework before playing video games.”

“Your dress looks beautiful.”

“I won’t spend all the money on snacks.”

All lies! Most of us have told a lie at one time or another. However, scientists found that lying can harm your brain (大脑). It may stop you from doing other important tasks.

When you tell the truth, your brain doesn’t have to do any extra (额外的) work. But lying takes much more work.

Imagine you’re late to class. The teacher asks why and you decide to lie. So you say: “I picked up a book from the library.” Your teacher asks, “The book I assigned (布置) last time?” Then you must decide how to answer the question. If you say yes, the teacher might ask to see the book. So you might say: “No.” Now you have to think of a book title. You need to make sure it’s a book the library actually has. See? When you lie, your brain works a lot more to keep the lie from falling apart.

You just gave your brain a lot of extra work. An area called the prefrontal cortex (前额皮质) does the work. It’s the part in charge of short memory. That area also takes care of planning, problem-solving and self-control.

Using too much brainpower to lie means there’s less available for other things-like solve math problems. Lying is even harder for young people. The prefrontal cortex is not fully developed until age 25. So when young people are busy with lying, they’ll have a harder time doing other things, like making study plans or eating a healthy diet. So think twice before lying next time!

Making mistakes is unavoidable, but you will not be forgiven if some mistakes happen. Careless mistakes can make you feel worse than big mistakes. 【小题1】 And that’s very common. However, there are some ways to get yourself back on track after you make mistakes.

【小题2】 Usually, someone will do the following after making mistakes — considering what happened and why or shutting down the brain and noticing the inactive feedback, and then avoiding thinking about it completely. Smart people are good at finding out what caused these careless mistakes. Ask yourself why you have made a certain type of mistakes. 【小题3】 Allow more time to do that, start that earlier, and stay more focused on what you are doing, etc.

Next, stick to a regular sleeping and eating time. It’s amazing how fast lack of sleep can make people forgetful and cause them to feel stressed, which easily leads to careless mistakes. 【小题4】 last but not least, tell yourself you will do better next time. Don’t let a mistake wear you down. Everyone makes mistakes. 【小题5】 But don’t make excuses for your mistakes. It’s how you deal with mistakes that is important. Simply think about how you can solve the problem and move on.