Dopamine is a natural chemical associated with feelings of pleasure. It’s closely connected with the experience of falling in love, because dopamine is released in reaction to promising surprises and unexpected events. But there’s a downside. As you get to know your partner better, the dopamine doesn’t flow quite so easily. It may seem like […]
What Kind of Leader Will You Be?
Some people just seem born to lead. A leader might be someone who’s able to build a company that creates breakthrough technology, or someone who provides an example of how others can overcome marginalization and hardship. For example, Jeff Bezos’s passion for entrepreneurship and his ability to foresee the boom in online shopping helped him […]
Were Your Parents Emotionally Immature?
When you were a kid, were your parents impulsive, insecure, or narcissistic? These personality problems can have an outsized impact on kids, who are programmed to look to their parents for security and care. There are four types of emotionally immature parents: emotional, driven, passive, and rejecting. Emotional parents are easily upset and expect others […]
How to Raise a Happy Kid
Did your parents ever force you to participate in an activity you dreaded as a kid? Whether it was music lessons, a team sport, or something else, most of us were required to spend time doing something we didn’t want to do. Many people have false assumptions about success, especially when it comes to their children. They […]
Better Decisions, Starting Now
There’s a common misunderstanding regarding the relationship between reason and emotion. People think that, in forming a worldview or making a decision, you can be motivated either by deep feeling or cold, emotionless rationality. In fact, reason and emotion are intertwined on a neurobiological level. For example, if you think about something terrifying that happened to […]
How to Overcome Stage Fright
Giving a presentation or delivering a talk is an acquired skill. That means anyone can learn it—even you. A good talk requires two components: a speaker and an audience. Both parties need to be engaged for the event to be a success. Speakers who don’t work to engage the audience may come across as self-involved, […]
How to Hit Reset
How can you minimize distractions? By building them into your schedule. The Pomodoro Technique is a time-management method based on the idea that frequent breaks improve mental agility. By breaking down your work into 25-minute chunks, you can procrastinate less and concentrate better. Here’s how the technique works: set a timer for 25 minutes. Work […]
How to Avoid Burnout
With many people still working from home, the line between work and leisure has grown increasingly blurry. But the human brain and body aren’t built to work at full power for long stretches of time. We work much better when we oscillate between effort and rest. “Rest” doesn’t just mean sleep, by the way. Rest […]
When Is Growth a Problem?
The pandemic has been hard on many businesses’ bottom lines. But some lucky companies have grown so much that they had to quickly expand operations. The problem? Colossal growth without financial health can kill your business fast. Growth is only half the equation in running a business. The other half, profit, must be happening at all […]
Is Shame a Silent Epidemic?
Shame is a universal emotion, but no one likes to talk about it. This reluctance keeps us from telling our own stories and prevents us from listening to others share their experiences. One reason shame is so powerful is its ability to make us feel alone. Bad feelings thrive in silence and secrecy. But when […]
