Thinking errors: What do we do with destructive thought patterns?

What we think about ourselves, over time, becomes our reality. This is a good enough reason to identify thinking errors left running in the background and to seek out strategies for healthier thinking.

The illusion of equality and other failures of reason

"Cultural trends now fashionable in the West favour an egalitarian approach to life. People like to think of human beings as the output of a perfectly engineered mass production machine. Geneticists and sociologists especially go out of their way to prove, with an impressive apparatus of scientific data and formulations, that all men are naturally equal and if some are more equal than...

The “men’s shed” solution for male loneliness

Enter the The Woodwork and Craft Club in southeast Queensland and you’ll see piles upon piles of wood and wooden goods—finished, unfinished and not even started. Everything from chests, dollhouses, stools, chessboards, lamps, birdhouses and much more.

The bilingual child’s advantages

The child’s linguistic appetite must be stimulated from an early age, experts say, highlighting that the benefits the bilingual child reaps extend beyond the linguistic sphere.

Forgiveness heals the one who forgives

Everyone thinks forgiveness is a lovely idea until he has something to forgive. – C.S. Lewis

Four women. One bike. 4000km for life.

If you had to guess, how many Australians would you say die from suicide every day? A handful, maybe three or four? Try nine. On average, seven Australian men and two women pass away every single day through suicide. That’s 63 each week, or 252 each month. In 2022 alone, 3,249 Australians died by suicide. In New Zealand during the same year, 538...

Staring death in the eye

"In films you often get dying words – someone gasping out things like 'Please tell Jim I love him', which sort of makes me laugh. I've never seen that happen," says psychologist Lesley Fallowfield, highlighting the discrepancy between how people usually die and our misperception of how life ends. Not only is the transition from life to death usually slow, involving a period...

Great expectations in friendship 

How can we protect ourselves against expecting too much of our friendships? Can we do something to prepare for the disappointment? And what does one do to deal with it?

Clash of sexual cultures (I)

More than half a century has passed since the beginning of the sexual revolution, which was characterized by a period of suspension of conventional boundaries, in order to experience a deeper sexual freedom. Fifty years of experimentation, however, do not seem to have been enough to dispel the persisting suffering and confusion present in romantic relationships.

How to be a good listener

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.

Before ending a relationship

What do you do when a relationship no longer feels right or doesn’t meet your expectations? Do you try to fix it, or are you more inclined to walk away? Here are a few things worth considering before making the decision to end a relationship.

Working from home: how do we find a work-life balance?

When it comes to working remotely, many benefits come to mind. In practice, however, working from home can be so all-consuming that we don't know where work ends and personal life begins, and we need strategies to balance the relationship between the two.

Is it monotonous to be monogamous?

The possibility of completely rewriting the rules by which we organise our lives has always captured people's imagination. However, such a reorganisation has materialised, at best, in the pages of a philosophical book and has remained, for the most part, a utopia. But there are exceptions, of course.

Space will not save us

When I was young, I wanted to be the first person to set foot on Mars.

Relationships for a happy life

She is an old age pensioner living across the street from my house. But I very rarely meet her. For years she has stayed in her house because of the many serious health problems she has been struggling with.