Site Contributions: Joel F. Wade

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	02/22/13 - The Pause Button When you're in a situation and you feel like reacting with anger, or fear, or hurt feelings – anything that feels like it's an automatic, purely emotional response ...

	02/13/13 - Practice Works One of the principles of living a happy life is that it takes willpower, it takes discipline and it takes practice in order to live well. This may seem strange if your vision ...

	01/30/13 - What is the Reputation You'd Like to Earn With Yourself? When you get to know people, you are, in part, building a reputation with each other. "What kind of person is he?" "How does she handle a difficult situation?" "What kind of ...

	01/25/13 - Virtue's Reflection The reflection that you provide for others has a greater impact than you might know. When a person looks inward, exploring his or her thoughts, feelings, motivations, or ...

	01/11/13 - Phony vs. Earned Self-Esteem A study by Jean Twenge of San Diego State University, published in the current issue of Social Psychological and Personality Science , is getting a lot of news this week. ...

	01/04/13 - Culture, Integrity and Questioning Authority If you want to have your strongest and most positive impact on your culture, the way to do it is to live with integrity – meaning that you know your principles and you ...

	12/19/12 - Internalized Oppression Over the summer, my family and I went for a walk in the nearby woods. There is a shallow creek winding its way through a beautiful redwood forest and we thought it would be fun ...

	12/05/12 - Envy and the Fixed Trait Mindset Envy is passive greed. It is also the result of a particular way of thinking of yourself. Greed, as the word is commonly used, refers to an "excessive or rapacious desire, ...

	11/30/12 - Don't Let Your Dreams Be a Clothes Tree Have you ever tried to start an exercise program on your own? The world is full of home exercise equipment displayed as modern art forms like Duchamp's famous and ridiculous ...

	11/23/12 - Rat Brain Some years back, some scientists were experimenting with rats and electrodes. They thought they were going to administer a shock to a particular rat and watch how it behaved in ...

	11/07/12 - Training for What You Want Last week I asked you to define three things: Something you want to stop doing, something you want to start doing – or do more of and a longer-term goal that you want to ...

	11/02/12 - What Do You Want? Sometimes we can have a sense that things aren't working well or we'd like something to be different in our lives, and we can try to take steps to change. But without an idea ...

	10/17/12 - Love and Visibility Years ago, somebody asked Nathaniel Branden how you know when you love somebody. His answer was something to the effect that, "When they enter a room, for you, the room gets a ...

	09/27/12 - Familiarity and Renewal When life is unusually stressful or when you've been through something that has taken a lot out of you – like surgery, a concussion or another trauma of some kind – ...

	09/18/12 - A Simple Piece of Advice Blow up your TV, throw away your paper Go to the country, build you a home Plant a little garden, eat a lot of peaches Try and find Jesus on your own. – John Prine ...

	09/05/12 - Your Brain Needs Your Heart Needs Your Mind There has been a lot of research that connects the healthy function of your heart with the healthy functioning of your brain. Today I want to talk about how you can use that ...

	08/22/12 - Happiness and Success in Business Much as we are often motivated by what we think will bring us happiness, happiness is still seen as something of a trivial side issue; not a bottom line kind of thing at all. ...

	08/17/12 - Better Relationships, Better Health and Real Honesty Americans lie an average of 11 times per week. This can take a toll on one's relationships, physical health and mental health. A study by Anita Kelly and Lijuan Wang of the ...

	08/15/12 - Psychology and Fascism "[Fascism] takes responsibility for all aspects of life, including our health and well being, and seeks to impose uniformity of thought and action, whether by force or through ...

	08/10/12 - Mastering Emotions Sometimes what you feel is what makes life worth living: love, joy, ecstasy, delight, curiosity... Your emotions bring you these experiences and fill you with the meaning and ...

	08/08/12 - Decision Points Psychology has always had an air of mystery to it. From its root word psyche , meaning soul, and drawn from the Greek myth of psyche and cupid, to Anton Mesmer's introduction ...

	08/01/12 - We've Been Aiming at the Wrong Adversary We often think of Karl Marx or the progressive movement as the main source of our political troubles; but the more fundamental source of America's political conflicts goes back ...

	07/25/12 - Change Your Brain with Your Mind: Overcome Obsessions and Compulsions Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD) is a painful, debilitating and embarrassing psychological condition. Howard Hughes is a famous sufferer of OCD, and because he had the means ...

	07/20/12 - Who is Responsible for What You Do? "He didn't invent iron ore and blast furnaces, did he?" "Who?" "Rearden. He didn't invent smelting and chemistry and air compression. He couldn't have invented his Metal but ...

	07/18/12 - Stress and Happiness The Merriam-Webster Dictionary defines stress as: "1) A force exerted when one body or body part presses on, pulls on, pushes against, or tends to compress or twist another ...

	07/06/12 - Build a Growth Mindset When you think of what you do in your life, how do you think of yourself? If you think thoughts such as, "I'm intelligent," or "I'm talented," or "I'm a failure," you're ...

	06/27/12 - No Risk, No Fun, No Freedom Those of us over about age 30 can remember the days before America was (at least less of) a Nanny State. Some friends of ours just got back from a mission trip to Tijuana, ...

	06/20/12 - A Market Alternative to Psychotherapy Psychotherapy, done well, can be a great help to people who need it. For a wide range of psychological symptoms and troubles, or for dealing with a certain range of ...

	06/13/12 - Worry Less Have you spent more time worrying over the last few years? I know I have. There is plenty to worry about, what with fascism growing, the economy shrinking, the world becoming ...

	06/06/12 - Life Lived in the Active Voice If you are a writer and you want to write boring passages that are meaningless to your readers, the best way to go about this is to write in the passive voice: sentences with ...

	05/30/12 - Psychiatry's Hammer You know the adage: When the only tool you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail. Psychiatry has one big hammer, psychiatric medications, with which to address a nail: ...

	05/25/12 - Adversity and Excellence Nobody wants adversity. It is, after all, adverse – antagonistic to what you want. But adversity is also often what makes us who we are, in the best sense. My first year ...

	05/23/12 - Choosing the Golden Rule There are several qualities that define our humanity. Today I want to talk about two of them: our capacity for conscious empathy and our ability to consciously redirect our ...

	05/16/12 - Mastering Happiness is Mastering Life I study, speak about and write about happiness. I do this all the time. It's my life's work. I coach people to help them to live a happier life and I teach groups of people how ...

	05/09/12 - Resilience and Success A happy, successful life does more than make you feel good. It also serves to strengthen you, and to open your mind to options and opportunities that you would otherwise not ...

	05/04/12 - The Physical Case for Happiness We are all familiar with the basic guidelines for good health: exercise, eat right − more fruits and veggies, less red meat, more fish, fewer calories, more ...

	04/27/12 - The Banality of Tyranny German-Jewish (and eventually naturalized American) philosopher Hannah Arendt (1906-1975) outraged the Left with her definitive account of modern tyranny, The Origins of ...

	04/16/12 - Panic Panic: 'of Pan,' the god of woods and fields who was the source of mysterious sounds that caused contagious, groundless fear in herds and crowds, or in people in lonely spots ...

	04/04/12 - Sleep Like a Hobbit: Calming a Mistaken Anxiety Hobbits, as you know, are the adorable and heroic creatures of J.R.R. Tolkien's books, and "The Lord of the Rings" movie trilogy. When it comes to sleep, we may be more like ...

	03/28/12 - The Progressive Mistake "A year from now, ten? They'll swing back to the belief that they can make people... better. And I do not hold to that. So no more runnin'. I aim to misbehave." – Captain ...

	03/24/12 - There are No Magic Shortcuts to Genuine Human Love and Caring When I was a boy, I was very impressed by an old 1936 movie based on an H.G. Wells short story called "The Man Who Could Work Miracles." I am about to spoil the movie for you. ...

	03/07/12 - Culture and Envy We have a genuine problem. Envy, fear of envy and deflecting envy may be the most dangerous and difficult aspects of human nature for us to wrestle with as we seek to progress ...

	03/01/12 - Delegitimizing Government Power Al Gore excoriates us on how we need to restrict our wasteful lifestyles and limit our "carbon footprint" while flying around the world in private jets, using orders of ...

	02/15/12 - Willful Happiness "The best way to use your willpower is to stop screwing up!" – Roy Baumeister Willpower, the capacity to regulate your own behavior, is one of the changeable elements of ...

	02/08/12 - Ideas That (We are Told) are Too Urgent for Science It's a familiar and effective marketing technique: You make an offer and then you add, "Hurry. Spaces are limited, so sign up now!" or "These models won't last, so act fast!" ...

	02/01/12 - Bedrock of a Free Society Living with integrity is a bedrock skill for living well that requires the use of reason and is always an ongoing work in progress. It is also the primary quality of character ...

	01/21/12 - Accepting Human Nature One of the basic truths of human psychological growth is this: If you want to change something about your life, you must first acknowledge and accept what's true about your ...

	01/05/12 - Dealing with Life Life's been pretty tough for most of humankind's existence. War, torture and genocide were much more common to primitive man than even during the severe bloodlettings of the ...

	01/02/12 - Don't Make New Year's Resolutions New Year's resolutions are usually a list of things that you want to do differently, skills that you want to learn, bad habits that you want to stop, good habits that you want ...

	12/23/11 - Lotophagian Greed In book nine of Homer's Odyssey , Odysseus tells of how he and his men came upon an island populated by the Lotophagians – people who do nothing but eat the Lotus plant, ...

	12/07/11 - Statism and Snobbery Satisfaction and happiness in life is significantly dependent upon an individual's ability to make things happen effectively in his or her life. Having activities that you can ...

	11/28/11 - Just Because You Hurt Doesn't Mean You're Broken Sometimes you can think that a problem you are having or the emotional pain you're experiencing is a symptom of some kind of psychological problem. But more often than not, ...

	11/24/11 - Look for the Best in People and You'll Find It Look for the best in people and you'll find it; look for the worst and you'll find that, too. How we view others can generate a self-fulfilling prophecy: you believe that they ...

	11/18/11 - Liberty and Willpower "We're just showing the rich people that we can do what we want." – London rioter, in August This quote, and the people who acted it out – and who are acting it out ...

	11/14/11 - Government Power Undermines Empathy Empathy: The action of understanding, being aware of, being sensitive to, and vicariously experiencing the feelings, thoughts, and experience of another of either the past or ...

	11/09/11 - The Moral Virtue of Self-Interested Work People are appreciated when they give to others through charity, volunteer work, or other acts of kindness, and rightly so. When you can help another person in some way that ...

	11/02/11 - Where Do Things Come From? We all know where babies come from: The stork, right? Ha ha. That, of course, is a tale told to young children by uncomfortable parents. How ridiculous would it be if millions ...

	10/21/11 - Trust and Freedom "I just don't trust that people are smart enough to make the right choices. Do you really think that there are enough intelligent people to have this kind of freedom?" This is ...

	09/12/11 - A Moral Steam Engine There are times in a life, or in a world, where a single idea, conceived, committed to, and followed through, can bring about the most breathtaking change. I want to recommend ...

	09/08/11 - Helping People Versus Fixing People People on the left talk incessantly about helping people, but it is not helping people that they are interested in; they are interested in fixing people. That profound ...

	08/31/11 - Two Simple Secrets to a Great Relationship There are two related things that you can do to make your relationships – not just your marriage, but all of your relationships – happier, stronger and more fun. ...

	08/24/11 - There Is No Virtue in the Selflessness of the Left 'Every interest,' says the Marquis d'Agenson, 'has its different principles. Harmony between two interests is created by opposition to that of a third.' He might have added ...

	08/16/11 - Cynicism Versus Happiness The other day, my wife and I were having lunch, and an acquaintance from our kid's school came by. The first words out of her mouth were: "How unusual, a husband and wife ...

	08/12/11 - The Myth of Noble Madness College freshman year abnormal psychology – at least as I remember it from some 30 years ago – can be something of a dark and frightening experience. In it the ...

	08/10/11 - Two Opposite World Views: Agency or Victimhood What causes poverty and hardship? Is it scarcity – not enough stuff to go around? Or is it a result of violence and enslavement of one class of people by another? Your ...

	08/08/11 - The Moral Defense of Capitalism One reason that our founding principles are in such deep trouble today is that many years ago our parents and grandparents... and great grandparents, conceded to the enemies of ...

	08/05/11 - The Cost of Liberty Is the Acceptance of Human Nature Self-acceptance involves accepting personal limitations and possibilities. It is a crucial step in any personal development – you first have to be aware of and accept ...

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Site Contributions: Joel F. Wade

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