" In English, this statement means “have a wonderful day.”   Passez is a conjugated form of the French verb "passer," meaning "pass" or "spend."  Merveilleuse translates into "wonderful."  Une journée means "a day." ” Use this phrase to express your "best wishes" to someone on his or her birthday.  Note that this is not an especially common birthday greeting, but it is acceptable to use.  Meilleurs translates into "best," and "vœux" translates into "wishes" or "greetings." " Use this greeting to congratulate someone on his or her birthday.  This is not an especially common way to wish someone "happy birthday," but it is slightly more common to congratulate someone on his or her birthday in France than in the United States.  Félicitations translates directly to "congratulations" in English. " This question is used to ask someone how old he or she is.  Only ask this if you know the person well and have already wished him or her a happy birthday. This can easily be misconstrued as rude. You wouldn't ask a stranger how old they are in English, after all!  Quel means "what" or "which." The French word "âge" means "age" in English.

Summary: Offer "Passez une merveilleuse journée! Tell someone "meilleurs vœux. State "félicitations. Ask "quel âge avez-vous?


Select a healthy, go-to distraction that requires your full attention. When you are hit with a wave of pain, pull out that item and concentrate on it until you feel the pain ebbing. In a workplace setting, a suitable distraction could be a good book, your iPad, some music and headphones, or even adult coloring. Picture your pain as an object in your mind, then open a box and place it inside. You can even visualize locking it up if that helps. Other pain management visualizations include placing your pain behind a wall or imagining your pain as a light bulb that you turn off or dim. . The goal here is to calm your mind and focus on a single sense, such as sight, hearing, smell, or feeling. Put all of your attention toward analyzing the sounds that you are hearing in your office and disregard everything else. You may find that your brain is so focused on this other task that the pain becomes secondary or nonexistent. Another option is to do a “body scan” where you consider each part of your body in turn until you identify the pain sources. Then, you concentrate on sending all of your healing energy to those spots. Close your eyes, put in some headphones with soothing music or nature sounds, and visualize yourself at a calming location. It should be somewhere specific to your interests, such as the beach or the mountains. Do this for a few minutes minimum at least three times a week. This is a great way to cut down on pain right before a stressful event, like an important meeting. If you are uncertain how to begin, a therapist can guide you through the imagery process by providing verbal cues. This is an experimental pain relief method, but increasing numbers of people swear by it. Get a portable green light machine (available for purchase online or through a medical or therapy supply store) and place it in your workspace, several feet away from your face. Then, turn and face your body towards it for about 45 minutes, four times a week.  This might be a good way to spend at least a few of your workplace lunches. Or, you can turn on the green light while you are reading or working on paperwork. Light therapy has been used to treat a variety of ailments, including seasonal affective disorder (SAD). The light waves enter your eyes and stimulate your nervous and endocrine system to release positive chemicals into your bloodstream.

Summary: Distract yourself. Visualize putting the pain away. Take a mindfulness meditation break Go into guided imagery. Install a green light in your workspace.


It's the button with an image of a pen drawing a curve line. You can draw anywhere on the image. You can adjust the curve after you draw by clicking and dragging the blue dots (handles) at the end of the line, or the green dot in the center of the curve. Click the button with three lines of different thicknesses and styles. You can also select different line styles, such as dotted lines, arrows, and textured lines.

Summary: Click . Draw a line or a shape. Adjust the curve. Change the line thickness.


Failure is a necessary part of the creative and learning experience. Embrace it as such, and commit yourself to learning from your failures and your mistakes. This way, you'll grow to see every failure as an opportunity for improvement and innovation rather than an obstacle or a limit on your success. Sometimes we get ideas that seem to vanish before we’ve committed them to paper. Many thoughts are seemingly random and disconnected. Try drawing a mind map on a piece of paper. Now, because you can see your ideas, you might be able to understand them and their relationships better.  List your seemingly random ideas. Pick some of your most intriguing ideas, and write them on various places on a sheet of paper. Place them according to how you think they are connected. Draw lines connecting ideas. Draw spur lines of important ideas and connect them to lesser ideas. Taking a little time to contemplate the world or to reflect on things will help expand your horizons. Spending time alone will also enable you to consider problems you’ve been trying to work through and find new solutions that you might not have thought about before. Having an open mind will enable you to think about problems that you might not have thought about before. You’ll also be able to engage ides and ways of doing things that you were previously hesitant about.  Part of this is accepting the position that there are often many ways to solve a problem or achieve a goal. Accept that there are many ways to view the world. Then you can see that there are many ways to be creative and solve problems. Understand that you don’t know everything, and every activity is a learning experience. Consider unpopular or even “weird” ways of viewing things or solving problems. These unconventional ideas or views might just give you a creative spark. Actual creating is the best practice to train your brain for creativity. There are a number of things you can do to train your brain in this way:  Drawing. If you enjoy drawing, draw. It does not really matter if you think you're good at it. Writing. If you enjoy writing, write. Actual writing (fiction or non-fiction) is the best way to hone and develop your thoughts and your creative impulse. Build. If you enjoy building things, whether it be abstract art or basic carpentry, you should build. This will stimulate your creative juices, and you might wind up building something really cool! Try to get outside of your comfort zone and the “box” you typically function within. Think about a problem you are trying to solve in different ways. Embrace different perspectives, and maybe try to view the problem as an opportunity. For example:  If your goal is to build a fence, think about the purpose of building a fence. Then focus on what you hope to achieve by building a fence. If you’re trying to keep deer from eating your prize flowers, maybe consider other options like spraying your flowers with organic soap to deter the deer. If you’re trying to solve the problem of fuel efficiency in car, perhaps think about it as a transportation problem instead. Instead of just trying to build a more fuel efficiency engine, you can scale down the size of a car or even identify alternate modes of transportation for people. Don’t fear starting all over if you think a line of inquiry or something you’ve been working on has failed you. Just start over and re-conceptualize. Remember, being productive and creative are different. You just need to judge for yourself when you need to be creative and when you need to achieve productivity, or both.  Someone can be highly productive while not being creative at all. Creativity entails finding new ways to solve problems and making or creating things that are unique. Productivity entails producing something, but can often be done in a non-creative and workman-like way.
Summary: Embrace your failures. Make a mind map that will help you visualize your thoughts. Reserve some time alone so that you can think about stuff. Dedicate yourself to having an open mind. Work with your hands and/or your head to create new things. Re-conceptualize problems. Differentiate between creativity and productivity.