Question

If at the end I have lost every other friend on earth, I shall at least have one friend left, and that friend shall be down inside of me.

——Abraham Lincoln

    We often focus on building relationships with others that we ignore the essential first step: being friends of ourselves. That is the crucial first step if we are to have good relationships with others. How can we have good relationships with others if we don’t even have good relationship with ourselves?

The problem might be worse than we expect. Maybe we don’t like ourselves without realizing it. Here is a simple checklist; is there anything you don’t like about yourself from this list?

Your past

Maybe you have made mistakes in the past which you feel bad about. You might be disappointed with yourself on why you could make such mistakes. Even if that happened in distant past, your subconscious mind still has a reason not to like yourself.

Your background

You might wish that you were born in different family. Maybe you could not accept the fact that you are not as lucky as others, who seem to get whatever they want effortlessly because of their background.

Your personality

You might have some personality traits that you don’t like. For example, you may be an introvert and you don’t like it; you wish you are an extrovert, who are active in social life.

Your achievements relative to others

Others might have better achievements than you, and no matter how hard you tried,        

                 . You might then think that it’s because you are not smart enough or don’t have enough talents. All these give reasons to you not to like yourself. That in turn makes it difficult for you to be a good friend to yourself.

1．Which sentence in the passage is closest in meaning to the following one?

    The mistakes you made long ago will still influence your behavior even though you are not aware of it.

2．What do you think of the mistakes you made in the past? (within 30 words)

3．Fill in the blank in the last paragraph with a proper sentence. (within 10 words)

4．What will probably be discussed in the following part? (within 10 words)

5．Translate the underlined sentence in the first paragraph into Chinese.

Answer 1

1．Even if that happened in distant past, your subconscious mind still has a reason not to like yourself.

2．We human beings are not perfect, so it’s normal for us to make mistakes. We’d better forgive ourselves and learn from them, hence doing better in the future.

3．It might seem impossible for you to match them/ it might be hard for you to catch up with them/ you just couldn’t succeed / it is impossible for you to make it

4．How to be a good friend of yourself /Some tips (suggestions) for you to solve the problems / Things you can do to fix the situation

5．我们往往注重跟他人搞好关系因而忽略了必不可少的一步：首先要做自己的朋友。