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There is a huge volume of literature, in bookstores and online, which contain recommendations for a more enjoyable life, in accordance with the hidden skills of each one of us. One of the great secrets put forward is freeing the mind from all negative thoughts.

One night, thousands of miles apart, two young women of the same age made a decision—a seemingly trivial one, but one that would seal the fate of one of them.

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.

Although poverty remains a part of our world, love still works wonders.

One night while checking on his patients in a palliative care centre, the therapist risked asking a confusing question to a person whose universe had shrunk to the size of his sickbed: “What brought you joy today?” The answer was immediate: “Being alive.”

On 17 March 2018, the world felt naked thanks to social media giant Facebook. It was confirmed that 87 million users’ personal information had been shared through an app developed by British consulting firm Cambridge Analytica.

I remember precisely the moment and the place where I realized that I was free to choose what kind of person I want to be. However, this construction requires courage, suitable materials and the perseverance of not leaving the project in ruins when there are deviations from the plan.

While most of us have been staying inside for several weeks, many leave the safety of their homes every day to help us live our lives as normally as possible.

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.

"What is the point of anger and where do you feel it in your body?" I was in my early 20s and looked at anger with wide eyes and few answers about emotions. I knew too little about the sensations it caused in my body, or how to identify and use them.

Plato may have been one of the first to think this way, but in modern sociology it was Walter Lippmann who made history with the idea that people do not have access to reality in all its complexity, but operate on images of that reality that they construct for themselves.

On the morning of the 15 November 2016, I awoke in a hospital bed, with no memory of how I got there. My favourite pyjamas had been torn from my body, and I lay in a hospital gown, a piercing pain in my head, impaling my brain. I was barely able to think and incapable of speech. I was scared, though this was...

An experimenter is like a hunter who, instead of waiting quietly for game, tries to make it rise, by beating up the locality where he assumes it is. – Francis Bacon, 17th-century English philosopher

Well, yes, we are, according to Rutger Bregman, author of Human Kind. Early in his book he introduces us to Tom Postmes, professor of social psychology at the University of Groningen who, every year, asks students the same question. “Imagine an aeroplane makes an emergency landing and breaks into three parts. As the cabin fills with smoke, everybody inside realises: We’ve got to...

We love stories, and Hollywood knows how to dramatise them. However, we should not lose sight of the fact that Hollywood is first and foremost an industry driven by ratings and profits. Children are more vulnerable and more likely than adults to pick up identity models from the film world.