You and many others may be using a very primitive model to understand yourself and not even know it. People for thousands of years have used character traits to explain why people do what they do, especially attributing good or evil to any behavior. If the person is obedient [...]
John was a 45-year-old stockbroker who seemed to be living the American dream. He had a $600,000 house in the suburbs, an attractive and athletic wife, two good-looking and healthy children, and a dog. The only thing missing was the white picket fence – and a heart. If you [...]
Despite all the advances of modern science, man’s knowledge of himself hasn’t come very far in the last two thousand years. While we think of modern society as being so progressive, we are still grappling with the same questions that the Greeks debated as far back at the 14th [...]
Anger is positive. Here's why. People aren't born afraid of their anger. They learn it. As children, yelling, screaming, or hitting lands you in the time out chair or, in the old days, gets you a spanking. Religious education reinforces the fear. Wrath is listed as one of the seven deadly [...]
Mental health professionals have not done a very good job of helping people to understand themselves. People find it convenient and easy to use personality traits to explain what they do and what others do. All too often, personality traits (like being selfish, lazy, immature, mean-spirited, or showing poor [...]
Without realizing it, you have been trained to see yourself and others in a very destructive way. You were given a looking glass that reduces the patterns in human behavior to character traits. This understanding is not only limited but also it is destructive to your belief in yourself and [...]
Children today are under more pressure than ever before. A recent book, “IGen: Why today’s super-connected kids are growing up less rebellious, more tolerant, less happy – and completely unprepared for adulthood – and what that means for the rest of us” (Twenge, J.M. Simon and Schuster, 2017) has [...]
The two best decisions I made in my life were decisions that were the opposite of what everyone told me to do. The first one was the decision to get married when I was 20 years old. I had taken a year off from college. My girlfriend who was [...]
Making decisions is easy if there is only one option on the table. Try doing it when you have multiple choices and at least two that make sense. In that case, decision making is never easy. The jumble inside your mind is hard to sort out. The mind freely [...]
The idea of learning how to trust your gut is an appealing idea. It smacks of internal strength, telling right from wrong and not being unduly influenced by the opinions of others. If you can trust your gut, you can believe in your self and stand up to others [...]
