Susan has the belief that’s its good to spend money enjoying herself now since there are no guarantees she won’t be run over by a bus tomorrow.
Her partner Patrick has the belief that its important to delay gratification to build wealth to have more options later.
Susan and Patrick argue about money.
What do Patrick and [...]
Extended travel (sabbaticals, Big OEs, moving overseas) is a common pursuit of happiness tactic.
How to Maximize the Psychological Benefits of Travel
I’m going to write more on this topic – this is part 1.
How to understand the emotional dreams that are fueling your travel dreams
Let’s say your travel dream is to travel in Europe for [...]
I’ve previously written (e.g., here and here) about how people generally understand that
their Thoughts/feelings impact their Behaviour
But often fail to recognize how
their Behaviour impacts their Thoughts/feelings
In my experience, even very smart people need a lot of guidance to understand how these concepts relate to their own problems and happiness.
Here’s an example I frequently [...]
This post is a long one because it contains instructions for one of the most important Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT) skills. You might want to print it – If you click on the blog post title you will find buttons for printing or emailing at the bottom of that page.
How to Use Disputing Questions to [...]
I’ve previously written about how people make mistakes in predicting how happy something will make them (The rate of divorces is a good example of this mis-prediction). Or to put it another way, people make errors in estimating the impact of their specific behaviors on their thoughts and feelings.
When you’re contemplating a behavior change [...]
Let’s say you’re trying to lose weight.
Its after dinner. You’re not exactly hungry but you really want some ice cream. You know you have some ice cream in the fridge and the urge to eat it is very strong.
My advice of what to do in these circumstances is to “urge surf”.
Ask yourself how strong [...]
One of the first things I do when I’m working with couples who want to have a happier relationship is to help them understand the following info.
Couples who are having problems are typically stuck in one or more (often all 3) of these three patterns of interaction.
The type of Couples Therapy I do in part [...]
Planning to do at least one thing each day you’ll look forward is an important part of treatment for depression, or for anyone who wants to be happier.
On most days your looked forward to activities aren’t likely to be “treat” type activities – more along the lines of la dolce vita (the sweet life) activities.
Happiness [...]
This quick and easy tip is applicable to struggling couples who need help to overcome problem patterns of interacting with each other AND to partnerships that are already in generally good shape for further enhancing happiness.
THE CHALLENGE:
Once a day for a week (it might be more realistic to aim for once a day for 5 [...]
When people start Cognitive Behavioural Therapy treatment for depression, low self esteem, or stress, they often start to feel better within the first few sessions. (It’s been widely shown in research studies that many people experience rapid improvement in their problems and feelings when they start CBT).
While people are experiencing this general improvement they usually [...]
I write a lot on this blog about balanced thinking skills.
The following is one easy experiment to try.
Step 1:
Think about something that causes you worry/anxiety. Pick a specific worry (e.g. how a particular other person might be thinking about you, or something specific you’re worried will go wrong). Pick something that you ruminate about [...]
Something EXTREMELY important (and reasonably simple) you can do to improve your psychological health and coping abilities is to improve your ability to correctly identify your negative emotions.
Identifying what specific emotions you’re feeling is a psychological skill that people often don’t learn how to do very well in the normal course of growing up.
For [...]
I wrote this for a local gym and thought I’d post it here too.
The examples are related to eating and exercising but the info is just as relevant for other types of goals.
How to Stick to Any Goal in 2010
1. Understand the emotional reasons your goal is important to you.
For example, your personal emotional reasons [...]
A.J. Jacobs is a journalist/author who does “life experiments” and writes about his experiences. His third book was published last month and he also has a day job as an editor at Esquire magazine in New York. I decided to blog about his experiments because they very nicely illustrate some extremely useful general psychological principles [...]
Most people understand that their thoughts and emotions influence their behavior.
Thoughts/Feelings -> Behavior
For example,
Jane believes “I have to be perfect for people to like and accept me” (thought), feels anxiety, shame and loneliness, and therefore strives to do everything perfectly (behavior).
Jane develops a problem with perfectionism.
1) She feels very anxious when she can’t [...]
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