Stress - Causes and Effects

Stress - Causes and Effects

"Nothing gives one person so much advantage over another as to remain always cool and unruffled under all circumstances."

—Thomas Jefferson

Do you feel satisfied with your daily life all the time? Are you always full of energy for your work and family? Is it the true that you have never experience any boredom and tiredness in this modern world? If the answers for these questions are “Yes”, I am sure that you will be considered as a “hanh tinh”. According to World Health Organization, an estimated 98% of adults living in big cities all over the world currently suffer from depression. Do you find enough confidence to be one of 2% left who are very lucky not to have been in that confused situation?

In this hustle and bustle life, being stressed seems to be the tendency of city-dwellers. To some extent, it has made itself to become an unevitable aspect in the life of each person. Knowing the causes and its effects can help you not only minimize harmful impacts it gives you, but also protect your family and even yourself from trouble unworthy of having.

Stress is defined as a feeling of tension or strain that can be caused by many different things. People differ from one another in many aspects; so do problems causing stress for each one. It's quite hard to identify exactly what are the causes of stress, because what can make this person stressed might not cause stress in another one. However, psychologists in Harvard Medical School divided the causes of stress into 2 main fields: personal and social–job causes.

Personal causes are those which connect with your own, not from something outside. Emotional matter is one of them. You can observe it very easily in real situations since it obtains the chance to appear frequently. It is the major cause and rather hard to avoid. Each of you has a close friend to share your feeling, to be happy and upset with each other. But how many of you have a friend who can understand thoughts and confidences even when you cannot expose? Do they always be by your sides whenever you feel sad, or despair? At that time, you cannot express yourself directly, you feel as if everyone is out of your reach. The anger, depression or guilt you cannot confide are firmly sticked in your mind. It’s just the time for you to “explode”, in the same way that a dormant volcano begins to erupt.

The relationships in your daily lives that cause stress also are a part of personal matters. Sometimes a conflict with another person is inevitable. The other person may even have a conflicting agenda against your own objective. Breaking with your girl friend, having quarrels with your friends, or being lack of support from family appear to be the most frequent things that throw you into stress. The more isolated you feel, the more stress you have to bear. Perhaps no one can overcome those stresses easily.

Contrary to personal causes are social causes. Social problems relate to quite a large number of smaller problems. Job affair used to be considered as the biggest threat to mental illnesses, including stress. In this developing era where talent is equal to gold, many companies and employers require their employees facilitated with skills and qualifications as many as possible. Also, society is believed to be very competitive. Being a citizen in it means that you have to try a lot to catch up with your colleagues, finish all the tasks assigned, and cope with unpredicted difficulties. You must make decision yourself what to be the most effective way to deal with problems and how to solve subtly. It needs you to exert yourself to make ends efficiently. The feeling of being exhausive and overloaded becomes a haunt to you. In some cases, you like to bang your head against brick wall. Moreover delicated tasks add to you stress very much. The pressure of work takes you into the tunnel you don’t know the way to get out of.

When you are too ambitious, stress finds it easy to come in your mind. To fulfil your own dreams, there is a need for you to plan and fix the goals beforehand. Nothing seems to be bad. However, if you fail to achieve what you have scheduled, it will be very dangerous. The most hazardous enemy of yours apparently does be yourself. And it’s you, not someone else, causes you stressful.

Nonetheless, stresses are not all negative. Some scientists said that “The words 'positive' and 'stress' may not often go together”. But, there is still surprise in real life where stress plays a key factor to the success of people. To be under stress sometimes stimulates you to do work better. A considerable number of achievements have been obtained throughout the pressure of stress. Scientists put themselves in high stressed level to bring mysterious phenomena into light. Business men work together with stress to produce the profit for their companies. Even students like us, although we dislike doing jobs piled up, feel that stress can inspire us to do our best and perform better.

Sudha Chandran, an Indian danseus, lost both of her legs in an accident. But, the physical and social inadequacies gave her more impetus to carry on with her dance performances with the help of prosthetic legs rather than deter her spirits.

According to stress researcher Hans Selye, stress in moderate doses, are necessary in life. He claimed that stress responses are one of the body's best defense systems against outer and inner dangers. “In a risky situation (in case of accidents or a sudden attack on life at all), body releases stress hormones that instantly make you more alert and your senses become more focused. The body is also prepared to act with increased strength and speed in a pressure situation. It is supposed to keep you sharp and ready for action”. Many people believed that the faster speed of stress can motivate and support the health to have much better mental and physical ability to confront obstacles in life. In addition, it is able to wake up latent power, if it reaches the suitable level.

Stress is not a trivial matter to face up to. In other words, it takes time, much time to deal with. Even though stress influences your lives very much, and you can imagine its causes in your mind, it is still a major hindrance to predict and avoid. Once you cannot make changes of it, the only thing you should do is to adjust yourselves to unforeseeable matters. Hope you to be strong enough to experience and overcome stress happily and less distressingly.

What is your definition of True Love ?

Topic: WHAT IS YOUR DEFINITION OF TRUE LOVE ?

A true thing is something touchable that you can clearly see and feel. How about something intangible whose reality you can never touch but only believe and feel to the deepest of your breath ?

Love is hard to define. According to dictionary’s definition, Love is a strong passionate affection for another person. According to Biblical definition, “Love is patient and kind; Love is not jealous or boastful; it is not arrogant or rude. Love does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice at wrong, but rejoices in the right. Love bears all things; believes all things; hopes all things; endures all things.”

Only three words “I love you” seem to be able to help one express his feeling for the one he loves, but just a few words can never be enough to help one define what Love really is. Therefore, people always try to reach for the meaning of True Love although they may need to spend several time, or even all the time of their whole life on searching.

Few days ago, while surfing the internet in hope of figuring out a quite satisfactory definition of Love, I accidentally came across a short story which really touched my heart. It is a true story that did happen in Japan...

A man was tearing down his wooden wall in a plan to renovate his 10-year-old house while he suddenly found a lizard stuck in the hollow space between the wall layers because the nail from outside was hammered into one of its feet. Then when he checked the nail, it turned out to be nailed 10 years ago when the house was first built.

At that moment, the man was quite confused. He wondered how this lizard could survive in such a position for 10 years, in a dark wall partition without moving a single step, so he decided to pause his work and observed the lizard. Later, not knowing from where it came, he saw another lizard appear with food in its mouth.

He was stunned and at the same time, touched deeply. Another lizard had been feeding the stuck one untiringly for 10 years long without giving up hope on its partner.

As people always say, Love can perform miracles!

Even a small creature like a lizard, which surely doesn’t know the definition of Love, and will never do, can love like that. Then why people always waste their time wondering about and searching for the answer to their question about Love without noticing that sometimes Love is just hiding underneath simplest and littlest things they do to or make for others? And Love itself does not have a particular definition, each person will have their own one.

Frankly speaking, at the age of 20, I myself have never ever experienced the taste of Love before. However, for what I have got through reading novels, or watching films, or observing people around me, I believe that “Love doesn't make the world go around. Love is what makes the ride worthwhile.” [Franklin P. Jones ].

In my own opinion, my parents' love for each other is a real example of a True Love. Since they were together, they have learned to look beyond the problems and doubts and realize that no matter what task may come to hand, their love can find a way through it. Together they have given me a happy family, a happy life. The Love that my parents keep for each other is not too enthusiastic like it usually is in novels that I read, there are not too many sweet-covered words either. Their Love is merely gentle but unshakable. And I strongly believe that nothing out there will be able to separate them. And the Love like this, to me, is a real True Love.

However, Love is not always sweet and easy, it is not for the hearts which are afraid of breaking, nor for the souls which fear for dying, as Marc Levy once said “There are some pains of love that time cannot erase, they leave deep in smile such scars that will never be healed.” [Vous revoir – 2005]. Love sometimes needs to be challenged before coming to the happy ending. Even so, no matter how hard it is, just to love and to be loved is a great happiness in one’s life.

After all, although there is still no really satisfactory definition for True Love, one will surely be able to acknowledge it when it comes to him, because True Love is something intangible whose reality one can never touch but only believe and feel to the deepest of his breath.

Love story - Taylor Swift

We were both young when I first saw you
I close my eyes
And the flashback starts
I'm standing there
On a balcony in summer air

See the lights
See the party, the ball gowns
I see you make your way through the crowd
And say hello, little did I know

That you were Romeo, you were throwing pebbles
And my daddy said stay away from Juliet
And I was crying on the staircase
Begging you please don't go, and I said

Romeo take me somewhere we can be alone
I'll be waiting all there's left to do is run
You'll be the prince and I'll be the princess
It's a love story baby just say yes

So I sneak out to the garden to see you
We keep quiet 'cause we're dead if they knew
So close your eyes
Escape this town for a little while

'Cause you were Romeo, I was a scarlet letter
And my daddy said stay away from Juliet
But you were everything to me
I was begging you please don't go and I said

Romeo take me somewhere we can be alone
I'll be waiting all there's left to do is run
You'll be the prince and I'll be the princess
It's a love story baby just say yes

Romeo save me, they try to tell me how to feel
This love is difficult, but it's real
Don't be afraid, we'll make it out of this mess
It's a love story baby just say yes
Oh oh

I got tired of waiting
Wondering if you were ever coming around
My faith in you is fading
When I met you on the outskirts of town, and I said

Romeo save me I've been feeling so alone
I keep waiting for you but you never come
Is this in my head? I don't know what to think
He knelt to the ground and pulled out a ring

And said, marry me Juliet
You'll never have to be alone
I love you and that's all I really know
I talked to your dad, go pick out a white dress
It's a love story baby just say yes

Oh, oh, oh, oh
'Cause we were both young when I first saw you

The Girl who played Go

The Girl who played Go – Shan Sa

To choose a novel, which I have to admit that I love the most, among many other impressive novels available in my bookshelf, is really difficult. And more difficult than that is to write about this one in order to express my own feeling just within 500 words. In fact, I myself love reading happy-ending novels which are like the fairy tales: eventually the prince and the princess will be able to live happily forever with each other. And frankly speaking, I intended to write about this kind of books when I received this assignment. But after quite a long time considering, I decided to write about a novel written by a Chinese author, which actually doesn't have any happy ends for any characters at all. This novel is The girl who played Go, written by Shan Sa.

The Girl who Played Go is told in alternating chapters, by a sixteen-year-old Chinese girl living in a Manchurian town in the late 1930s and a Japanese soldier who eventually comes to be posted there. It seems that they have nothing in common. The girl, at the age of an adolescent, is more concerned with intimations of her own womanhood than the escalating hostilities between her countrymen and their Japanese occupiers. The soldier, who is bound by his family-esteem, is busy following his desire to devote all his life for his beloved country. However, because of the fate, when the Japanese soldier is sent there undercover, dressed up like a Chinese man, they meet each other. They spend their time playing the Go with each other in the Square of a Thousand Winds, they observe each other, and they note the changes each other is going through. Through the Go, they can understand each other, they can read the mind buried deep down inside each other, but they never get into any sort of conversation, even just exchange their names.

During their time enjoying the game of Go, they seem to forget about the cruel world outside with a lot of problems and misery they have to face up to, as the soldier says: "[...] when I am in the middle of a game of Go, I am completely intoxicated and cut off from the outside world.". They seem to be like that forever. They may keep returning day after day to continue their game if the Japanese do not capture many of the insurgents, which affects both of the go-players. The girl is worried about her fate and eventually, she moves to action. She leaves her hometown, and also leaves her youth there. At this moment in time, the two are separated. They are separated to prepare for a miserable meeting in the future, which is surely unexpected.

To me, this book is not an easy one to read. It reveals a horrible and disordered period which is full of conflicts: the conflicts between the two different people yearning to belong to each other but cannot, the conflicts between China and Japan, the conflicts that progresses locally in those same small moves as a game of Go does, which all make my mind occupied after reading. But there is one truth that cannot be denied: Shan Sa has succeeded in creating such a beautiful story like this.

It is beautiful in the way Shan Sa describes the ideal, the iron will of a soldier who strives for devoting all his life to his beloved country without any fear of dying.

It is beautiful in a normal-but-not-peaceful life of a girl who is in the middle of adolescent and adult.

It is beautiful in the way the Mother of the soldier sacrifices her own happiness for her country [ her husband and her sons all leave the family to join the army ]. She must be the symbol of the typical Japanese women.

It is beautiful in many other characters such as Man, Kinh, Duong, who are full of enthusiasm. They love with all their hearts, and they never hesitate to devote their youth to protect their own country. They pass away but their deaths will forever remain in the minds of readers.

And there still have more and more people who make this story so beautiful. It is so beautiful that even I don't understand why I cannot breathe while reading some last pages of this novel. It is not until the end that I can realize that the two main characters haven't had their names mentioned yet. To the girl, the soldier is just " a Stranger ", and to the soldier, the girl is just simply " a Chinese Girl ". This small detail seems to be so big when it makes me feel lost, just like they will disappear for ever and I can never find these two persons once again. And due to this fact, it hurts me a lot when the two of them meet each other again, but the first time with their real conditions.

"Do you realize me?" says the soldier.

"Don't be afraid, I will follow you. I will protect you in the Neverland." says the soldier.

"I know that we will continue playing our game in that place far far away." says the soldier.

"In order to see my beloved one, I did try to keep my eyes opened." says the soldier. And these are his last words. Till then, they haven’t been able to exchange their names yet.

Frankly speaking, up till now, I myself don't really know whether this is a happy end or not. Anyway, eventually, they can live happily with each other in the Neverland. And as the soldiers says, I believe that they will be able to continue their incomplete game there, and to begin playing many other ones, forever and ever.

Đề cương ôn thi HK1 môn Tiếng Việt

Phần nhấn mạnh môn Tiếng Việt

1. Đặc điểm loại hình tiếng Việt. So sánh với tiếng Anh.

2. Ngữ âm: Tính đơn lập của âm tiết tiếng Việt.

3. Từ vựng:
a) Các phương thức cấu tạo từ. Phân loại từ tiếng Việt.
b) Ngữ cố định. Phân biệt nó với các đơn vị lận cận.
c) Hiện tượng chuyển nghĩa. Hiện tượng nhiều nghĩa và hiện tượng đồng âm.

4. Ngữ pháp:
a) Tiêu chuẩn phân định từ loại. Hệ thống từ loại tiếng Việt.
b) Cụm danh từ. Cụm động từ.
c) Câu.

Phần b), c) của câu 4 giải quyết bài tập: vẽ sơ đồ câu, xác định cụm và trung tâm của cụm.


Source: Blog lớp 2B.07