Analysis

A smooth sea never gave a skilled sailor, said Franklin D. Roosevelt, suggesting that without hardship, challenges and even failures, we cannot become our best selves.

Whether we see ourselves or not as living collections of our habits, we know from experience that, once formed, our habits are not as malleable as we would like them to be.

My first Bible was given to me by Pastor Damian Zamfir in the winter of 1972. Pastor Zamfir, the man who led my first steps on the path to Christ, invited me to visit him in the parish house of the Adventist church on Rodnei Street in Targoviste.

What can you do in the face of a terrible diagnosis, which condemns you to life in a wheelchair? What can you choose besides despair or resignation? Kayla chose to run.

Courage is not the opposite of fear, nor of caution. True courage is what you do right in the midst of fear.

I was a young student looking for a good paying job to support my family and my studies. On that day, I found myself in the head nurse’s office at the nearby nursing home for the elderly.

Several simple experiments have shown that certain neural processes that are activated when performing an action increase in intensity with fractions of a second or even whole seconds before conscious thinking is informed about the performance of that action.

We walk into a room full of people and from the first second, we draw a conclusion about how we will feel in their company. And often what we intuited happens. How is this possible?

For many people, the New Year is the catalyst for making changes they didn't have time or energy for in the previous year. On 1 January, the list of resolutions grows promisingly long, but keeping them can become a real ordeal in the tangle of daily problems and deadlines. Statistics show that even before the month of snowdrops, many of the commitments made...

When we consider that a conclusion is founded only if a lot of people consider it true, we fall into the trap of the argumentum ad populum or the appeal to popularity.

In 1991, authors William Strauss and Neil Howe published Generations, theorising that every 80 years (one generation cycle) would consist of four “turnings”. Beginning after a crisis, the first turning would involve a feeling of recovery, or “high”. The second would be a spiritual awakening, while the third would see the dissolution of institutions and the rise of individualism. And finally, a crisis...

The portrait of a good listener contains skills that are formed over time, through an honest interaction with others, motivated by the desire to understand and help them.

Many families struggle with broken relationships and domestic violence. Because of this, some people are tempted to wonder whether marriage is still a worthwhile option. But the important aspects of family life still remain valid after thousands of years and these, if practised, can help our families to flourish, even in the twenty-first century.

Family conflict? The fact that not only milk and honey flow within our families, and conflicts crop up more often than we would like, is not new to anyone. Experience teaches us that people who share a roof as well as a last name clash in their opinions or behaviours in direct proportion to the number of hours they spend together.

Let me paint you a picture of Esther Moo’s life, one of approximately 1959 Karen refugees who migrated to Australia between 2009 and 2010.