10 Non-Secrets To Happiness

Happiness is not an exit off the freeway. The only way to reach this destination is to look within yourself. Here are a few tools that may help you find your way. Think of them as a Happiness GPS. 1.    Be easily amused. People who laugh and smile are happier and usually live longer than people who lack a sense of humor. 2.    Don’t dwell on the negative.  If…

Traits of the ‘Get It Done’ Personality: Laser Focus, Resilience, and True Grit

Traits of the ‘Get It Done’ Personality: Laser Focus, Resilience, and True Grit Angela L. Duckworth (left) of the U. of Pennsylvania studies personality traits, including grit, that help people succeed. The Successful Academic People who get things done and accomplish their goals often share these traits: Resilience The ability to recover from setbacks and cope effectively with stress Grit Perseverance and passion for challenging long-term…

What Colour Best Represents Who You are

THOUGHT EXPERIMENT Imagine you are an artist. You are asked to paint the dress of the girl in the illustration.     You have before you an array of colors: 1.            RED 2.            PINK 3.            YELLOW 4.            ORANGE 5.            BLUE 6.            PURPLE 7.            GREEN 8.            BROWN 9.            BLACK 10.         WHITE   You are asked to use a color to convey an emotion or feeling.  (Write…

How to Overcome Being Anxious About Being Anxious

Anxiety sensitivity is “the tendency to respond fearfully to bodily sensations associated with fear and anxiety.” Put simply, it’s “the fear of fear.” People who are prone to anxiety sensitivity tend to catastrophize, or automatically assume that the worst will happen. According to authors and clinical psychologists Margo C. Watt, Ph.D, and Sherry H. Stewart, Ph.D, in their excellent book Overcoming the Fear of Fear: How…

Five Things to Know About Anger

Anger is a frequently misunderstood emotion. People confuse it with aggression and violence, they think of it as mostly unhealthy, and they fail to recognize the times in their lives when their anger has been positive. To try and rectify those misunderstandings, here are five important things to know about anger. Anger is different from aggression Often, anger is confused with aggression. However, the two…

Making a Digital First Impression: Why You Can’t Fake Your Facebook Profile

The photos in your Facebook profile provided a very accurate reflection of your personality in real life. The Facebook study found that accuracy was strongest for judging extroversion and openness. The study on the role of physical appearance in creating first impression found that you can actually learn a great deal about a stranger’s personality from appearance alone. When people stood in a natural position,…

Coping With A Stressful Situation: Managing Your Emotions

When you’re dealing with a difficult situation, one of the first steps is to comfort yourself and manage your emotions.Even when you’re in the right about a situation, if you act impulsively and emotionally it’s unlikely others will listen. They’ll tell you to calm down and don’t get so upset. They also may find themselves reacting first and regretting later. Mindfulness is a skill that helps…

Why do we dream?

Freud said that on most nights, we dream. Dreams allow us to be what we cannot be, and to say what we do not say, in our more repressed daily lives.  Dreams are lot like poetry, we use images more than words; we combine incongruent elements to evoke emotion in a more efficient way than wordier descriptions can; and we use unconscious and tangential associations…

When Parents Disagree About Their Adolescent

The problem of parental disagreement starts from the child’s birth when diverging ideas about child rearing unexpectedly arise. As father, one parent will be influenced by his own male training growing up and this may bias his perception and approach to a son and daughter. So maybe he believes competing hard and performing well is what matters most. As mother, the other parent will be…