Do you find it hard to take a compliment, believing that you don’t deserve praise? Do you focus on minor mistakes you’ve made, rather than acknowledging all of the things you do well? If a friend compliments your smile, do you brush off the remark with a derogatory comment about yourself? If so, you may […]

How do you cope when you’re rejected by that college you’d pinned your hopes on attending? How do you pick yourself up off the floor when your marriage of 15 years falls apart? And how do you manage when you’re facing a grim medical diagnosis? Life can be challenging enough when we’re just dealing with […]

Ah, relationships. They run the gamut from exhilarating, passionate, and deeply intimate to combative, estranged, and hostile. For some of us, there are numerous and widely varying adjectives we would use to describe our current relationship. Since relationships  consist of two people who are continuing to learn and grow (preferably for the good), we are […]

“I never finish anything I start”. “He’s a complete loser.” “She always gets everything she wants.” At times, do you make extreme statements like these? Do you view things in all-or-nothing terms? If so, how does this habit affect your life? Do you have a hunch that it’s getting in the way of your happiness, […]

It’s usually pretty easy to feel good about ourselves when things are going our way, when we’ve been making significant progress on our personal and professional intentions, and when we’re in harmony with the important people in our lives. However, when we fall short of our own expectations, disappoint others, or fail to achieve a […]

Our minds are meaning-making machines. First and foremost, our minds try to protect us by figuring out how to avoid danger. Our minds are interpreters of our world and immediate circumstances. It’s a fact of nature – we are instinctively on high alert for danger, because first and foremost we want to survive.  After all, […]

It’s the beginning of July, and you may be wondering where all of those New Year’s resolutions went. You thought that you really meant it when you vowed to never again eat an entire chocolate cake at one sitting, drunk-dial your ex at 2 a.m., or fall behind on your credit card payments. Yet here […]

We can’t expect everyone to approve of us or our behavior at all times – it’s simply impossible, since different people prefer different things. Also, we are not in this world to live up to other people’s expectations. In addition, none of us are perfect. So, it’s inevitable that we’ll be on the receiving end […]

Into every life some rain must fall. As smug as this cliché may sound, it’s true. Even if we’ve been blessed with the “happy” gene, we cannot avoid feeling emotionally uncomfortable from time to time. We feel things for a reason. Our emotional pain carries a message. If someone close to us passes away, it’s […]

Do you consider yourself an “emotional” person? Or do you tend to rely more on your logic and intellect than on your feelings? What are your thoughts on the following concepts about emotions? We are primarily responsible for our emotions. There are certainly genetic components to how intensely we feel certain ways. Some people are […]