Realizing this can be disappointing, depressing, and anxiety-inducing for someone whose expectations had skyrocketed in the pink cloud phase.Bahji, A.,| PsychMechanics
Yes, it’s possible to love someone without trusting them. Love and trust are separate psychological systems with separate functions. Love evolved so mammals| PsychMechanics
If you’ve been reading my newsletter for a long time, you know I advocate motivating yourself by values, not threats. In the simplest cases, this just requires introspecting your obvious emotions to identify the values landscape, meaning the values around you and the obstacles in your way to gaining and keeping them. (See my article […]| Thinking Directions
In the most recent article in this series on happiness, I mentioned that the next topic would be embracing causality. To be happy, you need to understand the causal factors that contribute to your present emotional state so that you can enact the causes that will create your future happiness. First and foremost, this means […]| Thinking Directions
Guilt is the emotion that you feel when you believe you have failed to live up to your own moral standards. It is perhaps the most enervating emotion. It makes you want to curl up in a little ball to block it out and avoid it. But that is the worst thing you can do. […]| Thinking Directions
It happens to all of us. You decide your priority, you sit down to work on the project, and for one reason or another you go nowhere. Maybe you’re not doing the work — you’re resisting it. Or maybe you’re doing it, but slogging along without much to show for your effort. When a general-purpose tactic like […]| Thinking Directions
“Emotional resilience” is the ability to bounce back from emotional upheaval. You may have a moment of despair, but you recover quickly. Your buttons may be pushed, but you are able to be curious about your reaction and refocus on values. The key to emotional resilience is the ability to suspend action on an emotional […]| Thinking Directions