When I feel overloaded and overwhelmed and a sense of loss of control over important parts of my life, I can usually look at my desktop to help me regain a sense of control. As much as we have come to rely on electronics for communicating, banking, and other activities, I still get a lot…
In working with individual patients, I’m often intrigued by the fact that individuals with low self-esteem can be quite critical about others with whom they interact. It’s actually quite paradoxical but frequently observed that a person with low self-esteem is bothered by the fact that some of their peers choose to act in ways or…
Do you ever take a meeting with yourself? At the risk of sounding weirder than usual, I believe that most people don’t spend enough time talking with themselves. As a result, we may take too many actions without pre-planning or without fully researching our options. The best way to get around that is to have…
I’m old enough to remember when meditation wasn’t much of a thing – at least not outside of Asia. I never learned about it during my Bachelors, Masters, or Doctoral programs. When meditation began to gain some prominence in the last third of the 20th century, it was initially kind of a fringe practice before…
Whenever people discuss potential calamitous events of the future – like destruction of the planet due to global warming or an intentional or inadvertent nuclear event or the total collapse of the Social Security System or robots who start controlling humans rather than the other way around, you will often get at least one person…
A true measure of emotional strength is the ability to stay calm at a time of crisis or chaos or turmoil. The ability to stay calm is such an empowering skill. Staying calm at a time when others seem unable to do so is such a powerful emotional tool. It permits rational decision-making as well…
Exercise is in fashion these days. When I was growing up, the only gyms that I knew about were in schools or community centers. They tended to be large rooms with very little equipment, no weights, and generally designed for team sports such a basketball, volleyball, or dodgeball. Nowadays, if you live in a city…
When psychologists speak of assertiveness, they typically are referring to being able to express your thoughts and feelings honestly while not impacting on the rights of others. Unassertive people are easily taken advantage of because they don’t stand up for their own rights – and they may make purchases that they don’t need or work…
It’s been said that the best way to earn $2,000,000 is to take $1,000,000 and invest it safely and wisely – and in a few years you will have $2,000,000. The only problem with that idea is that you must have $1,000,000 in order to implement it. Similar advice might apply when it comes to…
A friend or mine recently advised me that she was going to be seeing a new medical specialist. Since I knew the physician’s reputation for both diagnostic skill and “efficiency,” I encouraged her to mark down her questions and concerns…
Willingly or unwillingly, most of us have had the experience of taking a geometry class and learning about such things a circles, trapezoids, and tangents. They are necessary components of the subject and help to build a foundation for advanced math and science applications. The tangent is a particularly interesting concept. It is a straight…