Social

Psychologists call it "learned helplessness". People just call it "it is what it is". Both terms describe the same phenomenon: the exhaustion that comes from trying to maintain the belief that their efforts matter.

Even if our "relationship with work" is often a complicated one, about which we do not always have the best feelings, we should remember that our jobs are more than just sources of income.

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.

In 2016, I noticed advertising for a new quiz show called Hard Quiz coming to ABC TV in Australia.

Eskimos don't have the word "quarrel" in their vocabulary. They live in a particularly harsh climate, so no one wants to risk getting pneumonia (or dying) just to prove that they are right.

A man is about as big as the things that make him angry – Winston Churchill

Nobody likes to lose an argument. The feeling of being proven wrong is never a good one. At best, it might provide a slight dent to your ego or sense of self. At worst, it can be a thoroughly humiliating affair, or reveal that one of the foundations of your beliefs is invalid or misplaced. But no matter where it lands on the...

Looking back, I realize how the ferocious world beneath the heavens is tamed, at crucial moments, through communication on that biblical Ladder of Jacob.

I clearly remember the days following the Revolution of 1989 in Romania. Whoever you met would speak about freedom: “Now we can say what we think out loud. We no longer have to whisper. We are free!”

Imagine you’re addicted to Maltesers. You know, the small, round chocolates that when you eat one, you just can’t help but take another. Imagine for a moment that you’re hopelessly dependent on Maltesers. When you get up in the morning, you can’t help but eat one (or five). When you’re on your way to work: Maltesers. Whenever you take a break: Maltesers. Whenever...

In 1867, when Edson White was 18 years old and working at the Adventist type-room in Battle Creek, Michigan, he had a transformative conversation with Mr Bell.

"When things happen too fast, nobody can be certain about anything, about anything at all, not even about himself" (Milan Kundera).

There is no time like the end of the year that stirs our interest in self-improvement. Many of us are thinking of the new beginnings, lofty goals and big dreams we want to chase after, optimistic that the next year will be different to the last. Yet there is one thing we would do well to take in our stride before we enter...

Since the beginning, human life on Earth has been an assiduous battle with the unknown and a series of unprecedented risk-taking. Exposure to danger seems to be the price to pay for progress. This is the first lesson learned in childhood, when the need to move from dependence to independence pushes us beyond the limits of safety and personal comfort. It familiarises us...

Since 2020, the wealth of the world's five richest people has doubled. Over the same period, almost five billion people in the world have become poorer[1]. Such an absurd expression of equality is, sadly, not unique and shows once again where injustice has reached in a society that thinks it is on the cusp of progress.