I’ve posted this quiz before, but because I think it’s such a very helpful thing to know about yourself, I’m posting it again. Recognizing this distinction has been one of the most important insights that I’ve had into my own nature — more helpful, say, than understanding that I’m an under-buyer, not an over-buyer.
A piece of advice I often see is, “Be moderate. Don’t have ice cream every night, but if you try to deny yourself altogether, you’ll fall off the wagon. Allow yourself to have the occasional treat, it will help you stick to your plan.”
I’ve come to believe that this is good advice for some people: the “moderators.” They do better when they try to make moderate changes, when they avoid absolutes and bright lines.
For a long time, I kept trying this strategy of moderation — and failing. Then I read a line from Samuel Johnson, who said, when someone offered him wine: “Abstinence is as easy to me as temperance would be difficult.”
The reality slap is a term that Harris uses to refer to life’s various lows, which include everything from losing a loved one to experiencing failure or envy.
According to Harris, after a reality slap strikes, we face another problem: “the reality gap.” The reality gap consists of two sides. One side is the reality we have; the other side is the reality we want.
The bigger the gap between these realities, the more painful our emotions.
You went on a first date with an amazing man. You thought you looked great in that dress. You’re pretty sure that he found the stories about your dog hilarious. You’re certain that he didn’t notice you got a little tipsy on all those cocktails.
The problem is that he doesn’t call. Or text. Or email. So, you decide to call your girlfriends to dissect every single thing he said and every single thing you did. Why didn’t he ask you out again?
According to the men in my life, here are the top ten reasons why your first date with him ended up being your last…
Relationships are rarely smooth sailing. Like life itself, relationships provide us with a lot of shelter during the storm, but sometimes they are the storm.
My wife and I recently celebrated our 36th wedding anniversary. As I reflected on this, I decided to share my list of the top ten things I have learned in 36 years, in no particular order.
Click through to read these tips, and hopefully you’ll find some wisdom you can apply to your own relationship.
While researching the history of psychology, I come across a lot of interesting information. Every month I share five pieces, podcasts or videos that you might find fascinating, too.
Last month we talked about Alan Turing, Carl Jung and the famous Robbers Cave Experiment.
This month we’ve got quite the array of topics and in various mediums, including a podcast and a few videos. You’ll learn about the first sport psychologist, the infamous Wolf Man, the history of treating depression, mental asylums and a recent film featuring psychology’s masterminds.
I’ve been thinking a lot lately about the importance of small treats, small pleasures. They’re fun to experience, of course, and I think they also have a very important role to play in happiness.
When we feel depleted and drained, and when we have no time or energy devoted to the things that give us pleasure, we start to feel exhausted, resentful, and angry. “All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy.”
But it can be surprisingly hard to think of what little treats you want to give yourself. So many pleasures come at a cost: cookies cost calories, movies and books take time and focus, a museum costs the price of a ticket. It’s good to have a list of treats and pleasures that have a very low cost in time, energy, or money.
It was my first year in middle school and I reeked of awkwardness in a very “Deb-from-Napoleon-Dynamite” sort of way. Side ponytail? Check. Fascination with weird homemade lanyards and keychains? Check.
All the older kids were wearing their grunge-inspired flannel shirts and Grateful Dead t-shirts. Most of my wardrobe came from either Kids R Us or a giant garbage bag of hand-me-down clothes that my mother had collected from her co-workers.
One day, while walking home from school, a eighth-grade boy started harassing me. He’d call me names, comment on my clothing, and taunt me nearly the entire ten-block walk. My entire repertoire of comebacks, unfortunately, came straight from Full House.
What is positivity, positive psychology and the Positivity Ratio?
Dr. Barbara Fredrickson discovered that experiencing positive emotions in a 3-to-1 ratio with negative ones leads people to a tipping point beyond which they naturally become more resilient to adversity and effortlessly achieve what they once could only imagine.
In this video, Psych Central’s Ask the Therapists Daniel J. Tomasulo, Ph.D. & Marie Hartwell-Walker, Ed.D. discuss the benefits of positivity and understanding how the positivity ratio might help you in your own life.
Choosing your life partner is one of the most important decisions you’ll ever make. When you find the man who’ll be beside you every day, it impacts every aspect of your life. So, when I see women who approach finding their “soulmate” with so little concern about it’s true importance, I feel overwhelming frustration.
They meet and date perfectly good men, men who want to be in a committed relationship; but then they treat these men as if they were nothing special, as if there were plenty more where they came from. They make the same mistakes with men over and over again, get the same results, and are in complete denial about their own behavior. This tells me they don’t take themselves or dating seriously enough.
I’ve also seen women transform into adolescent girls when they date; they have no regard for consequences. When they do this they diminish themselves and of course get less than spectacular results with men. How can you stop sabotaging your dates and give looking for love the importance it needs?
Here are the three most common mistakes you may be making…
From the seeds planted yesterday, hope grows. It grows from the conflicts we dealt with not avoided, the courage to look at our problems not from a distance, but face-to-face, and the steps we took to better ourselves instead of trying to deny them and put on a happy face.
It’s not easy to live life with even an ounce of happiness. It’s not easy to grow instead of wither away in self-doubt, negativity and hopelessness. It is especially difficult to seek help when you feel embarrassed or ashamed to do so.
Perhaps you were on your way to recovery, when you had a relapse or you are a therapist who feels burnout or an adult who is being bullied. Sometimes it takes reading how others have survived what you’re going through to know that there is nothing shameful about your experience.
This week’s wrap-up will remind that you’re far from being alone. From tips on how to better deal with adult bullies to facing emotional burnout when you’re a professional therapists, we’re giving you the resources you need to help you grow, minimize shame and discover ways to make positive changes in your life and feel better about yourself.
Change takes time. It can be a long, difficult process. But start reading these now and they’ll be the seeds for that brighter, more hopeful tomorrow.
All romantic relationships have challenges and require some work. Being in a relationship with someone who has Asperger’s syndrome (AS) can create an additional challenge, according to psychologist Cindy Ariel, Ph.D, in her valuable book, Loving Someone with Asperger’s Syndrome.
That’s because you and your partner think and feel very differently, she says. And that leaves a lot of room for misunderstanding and miscommunication.
In her book, Ariel provides wise advice and practical exercises to help you improve your relationship and overcome common obstacles. (She suggests keeping a journal to record your responses.) Here are five ideas you might find helpful.
Each summer I pick a project. A few years ago mine was to develop my self-esteem. According to David Burns, that should only take ten days. But nine months later, I’m still not there.
From June to August last year, this was the routine: load up the double stroller with any floatable object in our house (wings, inner-tubes, noodles, life vests), drag them (and two sinkable kids) to the pool, score some beach towels from the lost and found, and plant ourselves under one of the few coveted umbrellas.
As soon as we hit the snack bar and caught up on the daily gossip from Mr. Snow Cone, I pulled out Burns’ book, Ten Days to Self-Esteem, which is about the size of a floating raft, the word “self-esteem” taller than a fruit freeze pop. But the woman under the next umbrella was reading ADD and ADHD for Dummies, so I didn’t feel so bad.
My mind wandered back to my first session with my therapist, almost two years ago. “Why are you here?” my therapist asked me.
I’ve posted this quiz before, but because I think it’s such a very helpful thing to know about yourself, I’m posting it again. Recognizing this distinction has been one of the most important insights that I’ve had into my own nature — more helpful, say, than understanding that I’m an under-buyer, not an over-buyer.
Life is hard for everyone. That’s why it helps to have an assortment of tools to navigate life’s inevitable lows.
This guest article from 
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While researching the history of psychology, I come across a lot of interesting information. Every month I share five pieces, podcasts or videos that you might find fascinating, too.
I’ve been thinking a lot lately about the importance of small treats, small pleasures. They’re fun to experience, of course, and I think they also have a very important role to play in happiness.
This guest article from 
All romantic relationships have challenges and require some work. Being in a relationship with someone who has Asperger’s syndrome (AS) can create an additional challenge, according to psychologist Cindy Ariel, Ph.D, in her valuable book, 
Each summer I pick a project. A few years ago mine was to develop my self-esteem. According to 
