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 [...]
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 [...]
How do you know when you are fully grown up as an adult? Some psychologists use the term, “fully self-actualized” to describe this achievement. I take a different approach to the problem. I don’t think we are ever fully actualized, or fully grown-up. I think there is always something [...]
