Psychology

The stakes are high when it comes to identifying the one to whom we should pray, and we can discover who by answering an apparently simple question: Can we expect prayers to be heard no matter who we address them to?

To have willpower does not mean saying you want to do something, it means to actually be doing it—André Maurois

In Europe, few people know Gwyneth Paltrow as anything other than an American actress. In the United States, however, her "modern lifestyle" wellness brand called goop is growing her reputation—in a negative way.

Hope can be palpable and elusive at the same time, both reasonable and independent of logic. Yet this independence from logic is not synonymous with indifference to reason, but a victory over it. Hope has its own logic, one that changes lives for the better.

We see it in movies, read it in modern children’s stories, and hear it in romantic songs: love is the most beautiful, most desirable, and most precious asset of humanity. Many argue that if there is anything that can save the world from itself, it is love. But how is it that love itself has led to profound systemic issues, by dissolving the...

When a closed window shade becomes an SOS sent by those used to living on their own but afraid of dying alone, something has fundamentally changed in a society that not long ago valued human relationships.

When we think about the many tasks of a new day, each morning can be a challenge to mobilise our resources—a combined test of speed and endurance, or a race against the clock with not only known obstacles but also surprising challenges that sometimes overwhelm us.

It’s strange how popular the saying What doesn’t kill you, makes you stronger is, when it’s obvious that it is not what hits you that makes you stronger, but the way you take the hit.

Graeme Frauenfelder, 56, didn’t realise until he was an adult that he was the victim of a mental health problem that affects 1.8 per cent of Australian males and 1.7 per cent of females. He’d assumed that his feelings were typical of any kid. But Graeme’s problem has a name. It’s bipolar disorder, which used to be called manic depression. Bipolar disorder is...

A cold flash, like the strange, icy feeling after a burn, runs through his body with every breath. He feels his heart racing. It feels like it is counting down to the moment when it will explode—or, mercifully, to the moment when he will turn his pillow to the cooler side, and finally fall asleep.

Courage is a special virtue: unlike other virtues that can be formed and polished over time, courage only makes itself known spontaneously and fully in situations where one is required to act, proving its existence.

He had played the lottery for years, using the same numbers every time. But on the one day that he forgot to buy a ticket, the draw revealed the winning numbers to be exactly his "lucky" numbers.

Procrastination is self-harm, psychologist Piers Steel says. A kind of self-harm that we can become addicted to if we do not detect the reasons behind it and especially the effective strategies to counter it.

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.

Next to family and health, friends are among the top reasons that make us happy. But what if we are solitary, recluse or shy?