Get comfortable with your truth — In psychology, learned helplessness is a common affliction that we all experience occasionally. It refers to the inability to take control over external events and a tendency to accept one’s fate as inevitable. When something bad happens to us (a failure, rejection, loss), we tend to assume that it is…

In the age of distractions, attention is a luxury — Modern life is an endless cycle of distractions and meaningless tasks. The demands on our time can quickly overwhelm us and leave us feeling depleted and disoriented. Joe Kraus, the founder of Excite, JotSpot, and DigitalConsumer.org, explains: “We are creating and encouraging a culture of distraction where we are increasingly…

Hints that you’re a person who gets high not on drugs, but on your own excellent thought process. — High-level thinking is an experience like no other. It’s when several unique ideas coalesce to form extraordinary insights giving rise to epiphanies — just like colours mix to form new colours. Such epiphanies — borne in the brilliant minds of high-level thinkers —carry the capacity to influence the world.

Be careful of the stories you tell yourself about anything — The world is constantly buzzing with activity. From the minute you get up in the morning until you go to bed, it’s a never-ending series of information, tasks, sounds and sights. When we are exposed to so many stimuli, our brains must simultaneously process them to keep us calm and…

WHO’s 5-Step measure tells you what you need to know first. And the missing link. — How are you feeling? It’s the archetypal psychology question. All therapists ask it, although we have many different ways of going about it. Personally, I shy away from saying “tell me how you feel.” Maybe I’ve just seen too many movies where the therapist — always the cringey one with…

And why it doesn’t bother me (much) — When I first dove into the online autistic community, one phrase kept popping up as other people’s typical response to being diagnosed as autistic later in life: “ You don’t seem autistic.” Well, I didn’t get this response very often. True, I got some awkward pauses or a mention of…

“Whoever thinks a lot of money will make them happy never had a lot of money” — Mike Tyson *Soul Sunday Edition I. Best Things in Life “Happiness is the meaning and the purpose of life, the whole aim and end of human existence” — Aristotle Recently I caught up with a few old college…

Filling the human need for significance can redeem work and revitalize organizations. — Last month, the U.S. Surgeon General named “mattering at work” a top priority for improving mental health. The announcement reaffirms what we’ve known for many years: Mattering and well-being are inseparable, especially where humans spend 35% of their waking lives. The official call to prioritize mattering at work is the…

“The only good is knowledge and the only evil is ignorance” — Socrates I. Ignorance is Expensive Rewind the clock to roughly a decade ago… …There I sat, on the edge of my seat. The biggest boxing match of the year was live and in living color. Floyd “Money” Mayweather vs. “Sugar” Shane Mosley. …

Consistency is more important to me than how much progress I make — Several years ago, I landed on a documentary on TV. I can’t recall much about it, but I remember an important scene. The documentary was about hidden ailments that people often walk around with for years. …

Credit: Chevanon Photography When you ask high achievers why they succeed where others fail, they often reply with what psychologists call “self-efficacy” — a belief in their ability to achieve their goals. Therapists are not much different. …

These clues aren’t obvious, but they stand out when you know what to look for. — Recently, I was talking to someone who I’ve known for a while. We were kind of just comparing childhoods, and we both got quiet for a moment. One of us piped up, “Our childhoods were fucked, weren’t they?” “Yep.” Most of the time, conversations like this don’t happen. It’s a…

How to be yourself in a world full of clones. — You do you, the saying goes. It sounds good in theory, but what does it actually mean? And how do we go about it in a world that demands that we fit in, entices us to follow the same path as everyone else? From the time we are born, expectations…

Most people don’t realize when they are being an as*hole. — I’ve had all kinds of friends. People with whom I felt peace just being close to them, people I know I can trust anything, people I laugh with all the time I am around them, and also people who love to play the victim or are not as good as…

“Be yourself … everyone else is already taken” — Oscar Wilde — I. Why Not Want to be Yourself? Rewind the clock… …There I sat in my dorm room, along with several other teammates. Our Madden tournament played on TV; my eclectic mix played on radio. Indeed, the guys played while I — the DJ — played 2Pac. Then Jay-Z played. And the playlist served as a perfect soundtrack…

Stop chasing this fleeting emotional state — If I spend a day with this person I love, I’ll feel happy. If I write something I’m truly proud of, I’ll feel happy. …