全新开始:2020年情绪健康的6个建议

全新开始:2020年情绪健康的6个建议

As a college student, Katy Milkman played tennis and loved going to the gym. But when she started graduate school, her exercise routine started to flunk.

凯蒂·米尔克曼上大学时打网球，喜欢去健身房。但当她开始读研时，她的日常锻炼开始失败。

"At the end of a long day of classes, I was exhausted," Milkman says. "Frankly, the last thing I wanted to do was drag myself to the gym. What I really wanted to do was watch TV or read Harry Potter."

“在一天漫长的课程结束后，我筋疲力尽，”米尔克曼说。“坦率地说，我最不愿意做的事情就是把自己拖到健身房去。我真正想做的事情是看电视或读《哈利·波特》。”

What got her back to regular workouts was something she calls "temptation bundling." She resolved to indulge in her love of wizard-lit only while at the gym, by listening to audiobooks with earbuds.

让她重新开始定期锻炼的是她称之为“诱惑捆绑”的东西。她决定只在健身房里戴着耳机听有声读物，沉浸在对魔法文学的热爱中。

Milkman, now a professor at the Wharton School of Business who specializes in human decision-making, says that when it comes to making a behavioral change, the trick is to pair the thing you dread with something you love.

米尔克曼现在是沃顿商学院教授，专门研究人类决策。他说，在做出行为改变时，关键是要把你害怕的事情和你喜欢的事情结合起来。

Looking for more tips like these to make your New Year's resolution stick? Whatever your goals, we have insights that can make it a little easier for you to achieve them. Here are six "life recipes" for good mental health from research that NPR reporters covered this year:

想知道更多类似的方法来坚持你的新年决心吗?无论你的目标是什么，我们的洞察力可以让你更容易实现它们。以下是美国国家公共广播电台(NPR)记者今年报道的六种有益心理健康的“生活食谱”:

Cultivate joy

培养快乐

Feeling stressed? Just eight techniques — a "buffet of life skills" — can make a significant improvement in well-being, say scientists who taught the techniques to caregivers of people with dementia. After learning techniques such as how to keep a gratitude journal, for example, and how to quickly reframe negative experiences in a positive light — these family caregivers reported impressive decreases in both stress and anxiety.

感觉有压力吗?科学家们将这八项技能传授给痴呆症患者的护理人员，他们表示，这八项技能——“生活技能的自助餐”——可以显著改善患者的健康状况。在学习了一些技巧之后，比如如何写感恩日记，如何快速地从积极的角度重新审视消极的经历，这些家庭照顾者报告说他们的压力和焦虑都有了显著的减轻。

Prepare to fail. It's part of succeeding

为失败做准备。这是成功的一部分

If you're trying to get a new routine to stick — whether it's getting more exercise, eating less sugar or learning to play the ukulele — scholars who study human behavior say the key is to accept failure as a part of the process. Expect that at some point you will mess up. And when that happens, don't give in to the "what-the-heck" effect — the feeling that since you've missed one session, your whole plan is a bust. Just get back to taking steps toward your goal, and don't beat yourself up.

研究人类行为的学者们说，如果你想要养成一种新的习惯，不管是多做运动、少吃糖还是学弹尤克里里琴，关键是要接受失败是这个过程的一部分。预料你会在某个时候把事情搞糟。当这种情况发生的时候，不要屈服于“管他呢”的效果——就像因为你已经错过了一个会议，所以你的整个计划都失败了。只要朝着你的目标继续前进，不要打击自己。

Help an anxious partner the right way

正确地帮助焦虑的伴侣

You can support a partner who has an anxiety disorder without sinking yourself, say therapists: First, don't try to fix things immediately. Instead, acknowledge your loved one's perspective. "You can move to logic, but not before the person feels like they're not being judged and ... misunderstood," says licensed psychologist Carolyn Daitch. Learning how to gently maintain boundaries is important, too.

治疗师说，你可以支持患有焦虑症的伴侣，而不会让自己陷入困境：首先，不要试图立即解决问题。相反，承认你所爱的人的观点。执业心理学家卡罗琳·戴奇说：“你可以转向逻辑，但在这个人感觉自己没有被评判和误解之前，你不能这样做。”学习如何温和地维护边界也很重要。

Feeling extra angry? Get checked out for depression

感觉特别生气吗?去检查一下是否患有抑郁症

Many patients — and doctors — associate depression with feelings of hopelessness, sadness and lack of motivation. But a growing number of psychiatrists say depression is also behind some hypercritical tendencies and outbursts of anger. The good news: This sort of irritability is responsive to counseling and medication.

许多病人和医生都把抑郁与绝望、悲伤和缺乏动力联系在一起。但越来越多的精神科医生表示，抑郁也是某些吹毛求疵倾向和愤怒爆发的原因。好消息是:这种易怒对咨询和药物治疗是有反应的。

Redefine exercise: Move a little bit, often

重新定义运动:经常动一动

Maria Godoy, one of NPR's editors, learned to love exercise when she realized every little bit counts. "I reframed what I thought of as exercise," she says. Vacuuming with gusto, taking the stairs — these little bursts of movement throughout the day add up, like pennies in a piggy bank.

美国国家公共电台(NPR)的编辑玛丽亚·戈多伊在意识到锻炼的重要性后，开始爱上锻炼。“我重新定义了我所认为的锻炼，”她说。兴致勃勃地吸尘、爬楼梯——一天中这些突发的小运动累积起来，就像存钱罐里的硬币一样。

Take a minute today to consider your life's purpose

今天花一分钟思考一下你的人生目标

Having a purpose in life seems to have a more powerful impact on decreasing a person's risk of premature death than exercising regularly, quitting smoking or curbing your alcohol intake, research suggests. Maybe you find greatest meaning in guarding the environment, raising good children, making music or touching lives through your volunteer work. It doesn't seem to matter what your life's purpose is, a growing body of research suggests. What matters is that you feel you have one.

研究表明，与定期锻炼、戒烟或控制酒精摄入相比，拥有一个人生目标似乎能更有效地降低一个人过早死亡的风险。也许你会发现保护环境、养育好孩子、创作音乐或通过志愿工作感动他人是最有意义的。越来越多的研究表明，你的生活目标似乎并不重要。重要的是你觉得你有一个。