People recommend that you should always be honest with and true to yourself. When referring to being the person you want to be and doing what you want to do with your life, this is important advice. However, there is a hidden interpretation that many people make from this that "honest" means being "real"--i.e., being realistic. Hence, the idea o...
Read MoreSuccess. It is what everyone talks about striving for. But what is success? Is it earning a lot of money or having a family? The American Dream, for example, was the secure job, the house with the white picket fence, the spouse, ~2 kids, and a dog. Is that success for you, though? And even if you could define what success was, how would you k...
Read MoreFiguring out what you want in life is difficult. You can spend hours agonizing over decisions. There’s a reason why ice cream shops offer free samples and many products and services offer trials: experience can be the best teacher regarding what you want or don’t want. So, how do you know when additional thought and discussion versus when more e...
Read MoreI know, I know—this headline is going to elicit groans from all of the memories of having to deal with an HR department when getting hired, promoted, or let go. I get the stigma associated with HR. But in my research and identifying the keys to success in life, I was looking for analogies that could best explain how it worked. When doing so, the...
Read MoreAhhh, life goals: the symbol that someone has direction and purpose...and also the source of stress and anxiety. How do you figure out your purpose? How do you know that you picked the right goals and have the right plan to move forward? What are the best goals to have? If you’re like many people, these questions are generating anxiety already.
Read MoreYou have a burning desire to accomplish a goal. Do you tell anyone? Good question; let’s explore the science behind socializing goals. First, it’s important to be clear about the misconceptions around whether socializing your goals is beneficial or harmful. If you have seen these studies, you may be aware that news organizations can grossly misi...
Read MoreAhhh, happiness. It's what people think the whole point of life is. But happiness seems to be so evasive. You don't always know what will make you happy, and even if you do then it seems so fleeting. What is going on here? Can you truly live happily ever after? Can you buy happiness? What even is happiness, and can you define it? Once you d...
Read MoreI am really sad to report that my highest-performing blog post of all time at the time of this post is 8 Types of People Who Don't Find Life Meaningful; another post that gets a lot of clicks via search engines is Eight Reasons Life Can Seem Insignificant and Meaningless. Unfortunately, it appears (for my work at least) that my posts that start wi...
Read MoreIn my 30 years of studying psychology, philosophy, religion, and how the world works, one thing always bothered me: every system that exists to give you a comprehensive view of how life works or how you should live always lays it all out as one complete package without explaining how the concepts relate to each other. For example, if you believe t...
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