PsycHacks

Self-improvement is less about creating ten new, good habits as it is about stopping the one or two behaviors that are significantly obstructing your progress. In many cases, blocking these behaviors is sufficient to create real growth: no other action is required. This will also help to rule out potential confounds, saving you time and money if you decide to enlist the help of a professional. You need to put out the fire before doing construction on your house. Otherwise all your hard work will go up in flames.

#healing #growth #selfimprovement

Human beings seem to have a need for recognition and acknowledgement. I have it. You have it. We all have it. However, the fact of the matter is that we can can't reasonably expect recognition. And this is because recognition requires some degree of mastery. Without it, brilliance could be staring you in the face and you would lack the ability to see it. Pearls before swine. I'll discuss further in this episode.

#recognition #mastery #truth

If you have a habit that seems to cause you a lot of harm or difficulty, but that you still have trouble getting rid of, ask yourself this question: how is it good? How does it help you? It has to serve a function, or else it still wouldn't be there. Most likely, on some level, you believe that the habit is still a net positive, despite the suffering it causes you. To really change a behavior, you need to find other, more adaptive ways to provide the same benefit as your bad habit.

#habit #selfdevelopment #selfimprovement

By the time clients contact me, the issue they would like to discuss has generally become fairly well-established. The image I like to use is that of walking the same path through a field for 20 years. It will take some time to carve a new path through the meadow, and to allow the old path to return to nature. And if it's going to take a while, you might as well get started. It will never be easier than it is today.

In an auction house, the lot goes to the highest bidder. In a very real sense, the highest bidder wins because no one else in the room believed the lot was worth that much. This means that the highest bidder almost certainly overpaid, and could have secured the same lot with fewer resources. The auction house is a useful analogy for work. In what ways might you be overpaying in your own life? In this episode, I'll discuss how to increase your return on investment through the strategic allocation of resources.

#work #investment #money

"Have to" is a phrase that I have tried to eliminate from my vocabulary. Irrespective of what I'm doing, whenever I think that I "have" to do something, that something becomes onerous, aversive, and unpleasant. Instead, I try to replace the phrase "have to" with the phrase "choose to," and to connect the duty, responsibility, or assignment with one of my personally-relevant goals. It's a small change that makes a big difference.

If my episode "Bet on yourself," I spoke on the game-changing importance of unshakable self-confidence. But what if you feel -- justified or not -- that you have no legitimate basis for authentic confidence? What are you supposed to do then? The answer to this question is to think of yourself as a high school football coach whose team is down at halftime. Learn about the three tasks of the coach in this episode.

This is the third in a series of short discussions on some of the lesser-known truths about romantic love. Do you think it was only a strange coincidence that the families of Romeo and Juliet hated each other? In this episode, I'll explain why romance thrives on obstruction. It goes all the way back to the original romantic myth, the tragedy of Tristan and Isolde, and it goes a long way toward explaining why it feels so good to be bad. After all, nothing tastes better than forbidden fruit...

This is the second in a series of short discussions on some of the lesser-known truths about romantic love. In this episode, I'll explain why romance so often ends in tragedy and heartbreak. Spoiler alert: it's orchestrated that way by design. By prioritizing the purity of spiritual union over the banality of everyday relationships, romantics doom themselves to unhappiness and loss. But that suffering -- that sweet suffering -- attests to the purity of their love, right?

This the first in a series of short discussions on some of the lesser-known truths about romantic love. In this episode, I'll explain why the unobtainability of the adored is actually a core component of the experience of romantic love. It goes all the way back to the code of the chivalric knights of old, and it goes a long way toward explaining one of the more bewildering facets of romance, namely: why we seem to want what we can't have.