PsycHacks

When people are at the crossroads of life, they can often agonize over making "the right decision." However, implicit in the idea of "the right decision" is the existence of many, many "wrong" decisions, and this significantly increases the felt experience of pressure on the decider. This is not how I see the world. Instead of "right" and "wrong," I see paths that go one way and paths that go another. The "rightness" of one's path is inseparable from the goals of the one who walks it. I'll speak more on this in this episode.

#right #wrong #choices

Whatever you do over and over again, you will get better at. It's not possible to do something repeatedly and get worse. This is just an attribute of the way we are constructed. However, this also means that we can get better at the wrong thing. So it's really important to be careful about what you do repeatedly. Strong, lasting habits are built out of small "worthless" or "harmless" behaviors.

#habit #selfimprovement #growth

Many of the beliefs in our heads aren't our own. They come from our parents, teachers, friends, and culture. And many of our own beliefs were derived many years ago from relatively small data sets. It's essential that you critically evaluate whether these beliefs are still valid and appropriate to your current life, from time to time. This is what I call "updating your browser." By extrapolating beliefs from larger data sets of relevant experiences, we can increase the likelihood that our mental models accord with reality.

#selfdevelopment #beliefs #browser

It's important to show your partner respect when your partner does something respectable. This is because respect is highly reinforcing and will increase the likelihood that your partner will behave similarly in the future. And if you want to understand how to do this, you need to watch ESPN. ESPN has respect down cold. In this episode, I'll discuss what I mean by this with concrete examples.

#respect #relationships #ESPN

Anyone who has had a panic attack knows how terrifying and upsetting the experience can be. Fortunately, there are ways of preventing panic attacks without the use of psychiatric medication. These methods have worked for me, personally, and dozens of my clients. In this video (the second of two), I'll discuss strategies for intervention: what you can do at each step of the way to disrupt the process that leads to a panic attack. Please share with others who might benefit from this information.

#panic #anxiety #treatment

Despite all of our intentional action, we never really know what we give to others. I learned this lesson in the context of my work as a private tutor. When I would cross paths with my students years later, they had always forgotten everything that I was paid to teach them -- but they would remember some throwaway comment I made one day. It took years for my students to teach me what I taught them. And that is because it is the taker who decides what is given.

#giving #taking #relationships

Anyone who has had a panic attack knows how terrifying and upsetting the experience can be. Fortunately, there are ways of preventing panic attacks without the use of psychiatric medication. These methods have worked for me, personally, and dozens of my clients. In this video (the first of two), I'll discuss the anatomy of a panic attack: the sequence of events that conspires to create the experience "out of thin air." I hope you find it useful.

#panic #anxiety #attention

Happiness is a choice. It is based on a decision to turn toward the present moment and accept it as enough. On the other hand, when we choose to base our happiness on external conditions, three things happen: we disempower ourselves, we rob ourselves of the potential for joy in the present moment, and we enter into games of control. I'll discuss why each of these is true in turn in this episode.

#happiness #contentment #acceptance

If a game is anything with rules and a goal, then relationships are a game. We know there is a goal, because we want things from other people. And we know there are rules, because we can't act however we want to get whatever we want. In this episode, I'll respond to the most common negative reaction to the conceptualization of relationships as a game: that "game playing" is "immature" and "manipulative." My rebuttal is that you can't not play, and that "maturity" and "honesty" are as much "game playing" strategies as their opposites.

#game #relationships #attraction

It's good to care for others. However, in some cases, the way we care may inadvertently do more harm than good. As a therapist, my rule of thumb is to never want something for someone else more than they want it for themselves. If someone is not motivated to change, I'm even slightly less motivated than they are. This can help some folks to hold their own motivation and take greater responsibility for their lives. I'll discuss more in this episode.

#compassion #motivation #ennabling