“Idle hands are the Devil’s workshop.” You might have heard this saying, which summarizes well the downsides of boredom. Boredom is an emotional response to the lack of novelty, challenge, or engagement coming from a person’s surroundings, and it is a very important mechanism for keeping people and animals engaged in play and other activities tha...
Read MoreAfter talking about how desires are a good thing despite some philosophies pointing out that they can sometimes cause you to to feel negative emotions, I thought I’d provide a short overview of how desires evolve over time. Whereas in my previous post I discussed how the endless number of desires you’ll have in your life is not necessarily a signal...
Read MoreSetbacks can hit your psyche pretty hard. Major losses involve mourning and recovery processes. New roadblocks require resilience and new strategies. When success requires desire and belief, evidence to the contrary of your progress toward your goals can be difficult to look past so that you can retain your will to carry on.
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 MoreMany philosophical and analytical people love to talk about the nature of reality and our existence. Is any of this real, or are we living in a computer simulation? Did we come from nothing, or is there a non-physical realm we go to or come from. Did someone (ourselves or a creator) will us to be here?
Read MoreWhen people ask about their purpose, they often want a "greater" meaning or "higher" purpose in life. But what do they mean by this? Greater/Higher than what? Does this mean a divine meaning? And, if this exists, what is it for you, and is it the same for everyone? Well, while this sounds like an impossible question, it's actually fairly simpl...
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 MoreFreddie Mercury might have been born to love you, but you were not born to suffer. While I try to remain objective, analytical, and dispassionate in helping people find meaning in their lives, this mistaken conclusion that people come to is reinforced by popular philosophies...and so it irritates me to no end. Buddhism talks about dukkha, which is...
Read MoreIt was difficult mustering the courage to publish my book and put my ideas out there with the possibility that I could've made some serious mistakes. Sure, I had support from over 100 sources that provided substantive evidence in a growth-centric view of meaning, from Dr. Carol Dweck's Mindset on how the growth mindset leads to success to the fact...
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