Happiness Precedes Success and Achievement
Our cultural institutions have the story backwards. Focus on well-being instead of achievement, and success will follow.
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Psychology
Interoception Can Enhance the Depth of Our Emotions
Interoception offers us insights into “gut feelings,” revealing how bodily signals can guide emotion and cognition—to help us feel intensely.
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Honeybees and Zen During Ecological Collapse
Honeybees don’t only inform us of further ecological collapse but invite us into being more mindful: present and compassionate.
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‘Follow Your Passion’ Is Actually Good Advice (Sort of)
Here are five recent research findings worth considering when weighing the wisdom of “follow your passion” or pursuing a calling in life.
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Anxiety Due to Absence of Exposure to Real Danger
To better understand how anxiety works in us, we have to see fear in the context where it evolved—with hunter-gatherers thousands of years ago.
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Psychological Studies Overlook 85 Percent of People on Earth
We can’t make claims about human nature when studies only represent a narrow slice of humanity: mostly college students, middle-class respondents living near universities, and highly educated residents of wealthy, industrialized and democratic nations.
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You’re Unhappy Because You Focus on What You Can’t Control
If you succeed in shifting your goals internally, you’ll be happier, because what other people do is largely beyond your control.
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How CBT Strengthens Political Life and Untruths Which Weaken It
Many in the US are experiencing emotional unwellness, while our foundational institutions are rattling. CBT can help with both.
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Hallucinations Shouldn’t Be Stigmatized, Can Lead to Growth
Consider how a one’s life would be changed by starting to hear or see things others can’t—but what if hallucinations could offer something good?
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Why Losing a Dog Can Be Harder than Losing a Loved One
The dog is the only animal that has evolved specifically to be our companion—and has a unique ability to meet our needs.
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Depression Isn’t Caused by a Chemical Imbalance
The prevailing theory for depression focuses on an alleged chemical imbalance in the brain—meta-researchers are now dispelling this narrative.
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True Happiness Means Embracing Sadness and Pain
We are often sent messages that we shouldn’t feel negative emotions, so people are highly conditioned to want to change or get rid of their emotions, which leads to suppression, rumination, and/or avoidance—thus impeding our happiness.
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Comfort with Solitude Comes Before the Ability to Think
Freedom entails the capacity to think and to judge in private, where solitude empowers the individual to contemplate their actions and develop their conscience, to escape the cacophony of the crowd. Solitude precedes moral thinking.
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Self-Esteem, Self-Compassion, or Self-Indifference? Which is Best?
Millennials are the generation who came of age during the self-esteem movement. The concept of self-esteem is losing it’s currency, but are self-compassion or self-indifference better frameworks for emotional health?
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Is Jordan Peterson an Antidote Against the Pitfalls of Postmodernism?
Berated by the progressive-left and criticized by academics for his imprecise conceptualization of postmodernism, Jordan Peterson attempts to counter the excesses he sees rampant in an age of grievance hysteria.
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We Can Never Know Whether Something Is Good or Bad, and That’s Okay
This Taoist parable highlights how our obsession with evaluating outcomes can be a deceiving diversion that distracts us from action and inner peace.
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Overcoming Childhood Trauma and Other Heroic Lessons from The Dark Knight
Not only is the Dark Knight Trilogy a cinematic masterpiece, but it’s also a plat du jour of insight into the consequences of empathy and emotional resiliency.
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Should Parents Admit Having a Favorite Child?
Whether parents admit it or not, most have a favorite child, though they should heavily consider whether admitting it would be in any child’s best interest.
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‘Why So Serious?’ Child Abuse in the Dark Knight
The actions, nonetheless, of our parents and the mentors of our youth bear heavily on our psychological, social, and neurological development.
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