10 Reasons to Stop Blaming Parents Blaming parents is a favorite mind game — and not just with teens. The media and other professionals often find it fun to blame parents for everything that they think is “wrong” with the younger generation. As the fall semester comes to a close, here are my Top 10 […]
Resilience
I’ve been thinking a lot about how we pay attention — and how we often miss what’s best in our kids because we have our attention trained on what we think they should be doing. Now don’t start blaming yourself… our whole approach to education teaches us to believe our kids should be other than […]
What would you guess are the four strengths found in people with the highest life satisfaction? One is enthusiasm, according to research by Chris Peterson and Marty Seligman, and colleagues. This was inspiring news to me because “Enthusiasm Makes the Difference” is the book I read at 17 that sparked my lifelong passion for positive psychology. With all the hype and stress about […]
Yesterday, we talked about the fact that most people strive to get others to love them. Happier people know it feels even better to give love than to receive — for them, every day can be a Valentine’s Day. Love Week is all about finding reasons to flow love to others — even if you […]
What do most people do when they want to feel more valued, appreciated or at peace with people who work for them? Most people ask (or wish for) the other person to give them more love– in the form of effort, respect, or appreciation. What do happier people do? Instead of searching for how to […]
“‘I was an aspiring astrophysicist and that’s how I defined myself, not by my skin color…’” — Neil deGrasse Tyson in Parade Magazine today. It’s so freeing to stop viewing yourself through other-people’s-eyes. Too often, we allow ourselves to be defined by other people’s opinions — by what they think about our behavior, our performance, […]
There are times when it doesn’t feel as if I have control of my thoughts– it’s more like my thoughts are the inmates running the asylum. That’s when I remind myself that the only thing that imprisons us is our own thinking. And when I remember that I control what matters most — my own […]
Even though I know better, it’s easy to forget that where I put my attention is a choice. My choice. Sometimes I get caught in the trap of feeling stressed and I keep thinking about the stressful thing… I may even talk about it, which keeps it front and center…. and it’s like a whirlpool, […]
“I am optimistic about some things in my life, but you also have to be realistic,” writes an astute reader in response to Saturday’s Love Notes. This belief in a trade-off between being optimistic and being realistic is something I hear often. In the “real” world of investments, most are aware of the psychological factors […]
You may have heard people say, “you’re only as happy as your unhappiest child…” I try to remind myself: that’s only true when I choose to let it be. I try to remember this when my child is going through a tough time. It can feel more painful to see her suffer than to […]