Psychology

Facebook is dead! Long live Metaverse! So proclaimed Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg to thousands of followers who tuned in to a livestream last Friday announcing the company’s rebrand.

If optimism helps us get rid of problems more easily, too much optimism does the exact opposite: it amplifies them. Pushed to the extreme, positive thinking prescribed as an antidote to suffering prevents us from accepting reality as it is and starting to look for solutions that can make our lives easier.

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...

The epidemic of false information in this worldwide pandemic is even more infectious than the virus itself. Fortunately, there is a vaccine for this epidemic of fake news: quality information and information filters. However, not everyone has been vaccinated. Here is an immunization effort.

Sometimes I think I was born with a magnifying glass in my hand, one through which I critically scrutinize everything I do and say and which relentlessly magnifies every imperfection.

It has been more than ten years since my first job interview ended with the classic: You did a great job, but we have chosen someone else. Since this memorable moment, other closed doors have followed: employers rejecting my application, people not sharing my interests, groups giving me the feeling of not being accepted.

Live the questions now. Perhaps you will then gradually, without noticing it, live along some distant day into the answer. – Rainer Maria Rilke

The refrain: “I’m booored…” is “the worst song on the parenting soundtrack,” says journalist Kat Patrick humorously. Chanted in the most inconvenient moments, this complaint often triggers the parent’s guilt or concern. But there’s nothing wrong with letting your child get bored sometimes.

I was there, I saw him. He was coming towards me mechanically, impassively, coldly. He suddenly stopped in front of me and waited for me to speak. For a moment, I froze. He was tall, thin, his face oval and his eyes blue, slightly sunken under his eyelids. I had met such people before, but there was something special about him.

After a chance meeting of mutual friends, I was introduced to Tim and Sonia in a restaurant in central Toowoomba, Queensland, eight days before their home was washed away.

I open the window and breathe in the air, trying to guess the weather. Floating around, mixed, are scents and miasms alike; it's hard to decipher these intricate clues.

I consider myself a fairly honest person. But when someone asks that innocent question, “How are you?” I’m often tempted to twist the truth.

I am 33 years old, married and have a two-year-old daughter. It is great to be a mother and see how beautifully we were created. I was fascinated by pregnancy, I am still interested in the subject of natural births and I try to research as thoroughly as possible each stage we are going through.

“Mister Watson, come here, I want to see you.” With this message, Alexander Graham Bell and his assistant, Thomas Watson, launched the telephone. The door had opened to distant, personal and instant contact.

Would you rather “achieve great things or be happy?” That question was asked in a YouGov survey (United States): 81 per cent said they would rather be happy; 13 per cent wanted to achieve great things; 6 per cent were uncertain.