As a writer on TV shows like ER and Friends, Lori Gottlieb was a storyteller whose job was to find the drama in everyday situations. Then, in the midst of a wildly successful second career as a psychotherapist, Gottlieb had some drama of her own—a terrible breakup that landed her in counseling. With MAYBE YOU SHOULD TALK TO […]
Canine Wisdom
How do our pets feel about us? Bored with studying the way that humans make decisions, neuroscientist Gregory Berns decided to find out. He used functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to make the world’s first maps of the canine brain. One of the things Berns wanted to know is whether dogs have emotional lives, or […]
Three Ways To Get It Together
Have you been looking for ways to improve your life, either professionally or personally? You don’t have to reinvent the wheel. Successful professionals often borrow tactics and routines from one another to achieve their goals. By emulating the habits of effective people, you can make incremental changes to your life that add up to huge […]
Indulge Your Dark Side
There’s a fine line between self-improvement and being too hard on yourself. In living up to your potential, it’s all too easy to become locked in a cycle of questioning your own worth. Luckily, there’s an antidote: RADICAL ACCEPTANCE. This weekend, take a page from psychologist Tara Brach’s book and silence your inner critic. Radical acceptance […]
Free-range Expertise
You don’t need a head start. You don’t need 10,000 hours. And you certainly don’t need to specialize in anything while you’re still a kid. With RANGE, a treatise against the cult of deliberate practice, journalist and sportswriter David Epstein makes the case for how people who learn a little about a lot of things […]
Strength in Weakness
Good business isn’t just about buying and selling. It’s also about generosity—giving and taking. We often think of independence as a virtue, especially in the Western world. But the research on networking tells a different story, in which receiving help from others actually boosts your reputation. Here’s an interesting example: Allowing yourself to express vulnerability […]
Don’t Worry, Be Unhappy
Mark Manson says that the modern world is hopeless. Or, more accurately, he says EVERYTHING IS F*CKED. Believe it or not, that’s the good news! Too many self-help books focus on happiness as a goal, but suffering will always be a natural part of life. We can only find real fulfillment, Manson says, when we […]
No pain, no gain?
Most emotional pain, like its physical counterpart, serves a function. The pain of a broken arm discourages you from using it and deepening the damage. Similarly, emotional pain provides a signal that it’s time to stop and reflect, a process that promotes healing. According to spiritual teacher Marianne Williamson, emotional suffering carries important information. People […]
How to Fail Better
Everyone fails. And according to radio personality Bobby Bones, that’s good news. He says that failure is so common that most people are too preoccupied with their own mistakes to pay attention to yours. The lesson? Don’t waste your time or mental energy on spiraling into self-consciousness after a misstep. Instead, leverage that surge of self-awareness […]
Unzip Your Deepest Desires
Sigmund Freud’s influence in the field of psychology is perhaps only matched by his power over the popular imagination. But Freud’s theories have been around for so long that it’s hard to separate what he said from how it’s been interpreted over the last century. Is a cigar ever really a cigar? Get back to basics with […]
