EMOTIONAL INTELLIGENCE: How does Yours Stack up? Like mental intelligence, emotional intelligence is a combination between inborn giftedness (temperament) and learned abilities (acquired skill sets). It is easier to learn if we didn’t inherit an extreme emotional disposition, and if we have had healthy role models, or chosen them for ourselves. The theory and […]
TEN GREAT HOLIDAY GIFTS IN YOUR BUDGET There’s one contagious infection we’re all trying to catch this year—the Christmas Spirit. If you do catch it, be careful you don’t lose it in all the rush to find, buy, decorate, and deliver the kind of presents you wrap. Too many of those gifts can wrap […]
HOW GOOD ARE YOUR PERSONAL BOUNDARIES? The food, drink and pills you take in through your mouth determine more than anything else how healthy your body is. Likewise the beliefs, expectations and responsibilities you take in through your relationships mostly determine the health of your heart, mind and soul. Your happiness depends even […]
A CHALLENGE FOR INTROVERTS TO CELEBRATE WHO THEY ARE In 2014 a powerful and introverted New York lawyer Susan Cain wrote an influential and popular book, Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World that can’t Stop Talking. She documents conclusively that in the last ninety years America has been developing a clear bias […]
Game Players, Team Players, and Game Changers As a psychologist, I’m not much on typologies. They assume all people fit nicely into one of several personality types, and I keep seeing bell curves from the research. Nevertheless, I am going to give you here three approaches to life that I see, three mindsets if you […]
Making Important Decisions When difficult, important decisions have to be made, it’s good to have a clear view of our priorities. We need to know the goals we have set and the principles we believe in to help us reach those goals. We look for confirmation of our decisions in our moral reasoning, gut-level feelings, […]
THE LOST ART OF THE EFFECTIVE APOLOGY Imagine that you have messed up big time—physically abused your child, cheated on your wife, stole money at work, or lied to your husband about where you were. And let’s say you really want to make sure that both you and the people you’ve hurt can trust that […]