Psychology

Our daily habits and actions constitute our state of mind. However, few people know that we hold great power over our own thoughts. Developing this power could pave the way for happiness.

I was a young student looking for a good paying job to support my family and my studies. On that day, I found myself in the head nurse’s office at the nearby nursing home for the elderly.

“Words are, of course, the most powerful drug used by mankind.” (Rudyard Kipling)

We’d been married only a few weeks when we discovered that growing our spirituality as a couple was going to be much more complicated than the instructions on the packet suggested.

Detecting an introvert is not as easy as we may think, because sometimes introverts are not shy or silent at all, they take responsibility, work extraordinarily in teams, and can even be skilled public speakers. Yet several traits can unveil the introverted character of an individual.

Two groups of participants in an experiment received a set of eight questions similar to those found in IQ tests.[1] One of the groups was provided with the correct answers, which they could use to calculate their final score. Thus, for them, the conditions for cheating were favourable, and the test results showed that the members of this group obtained, on average, a...

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

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.

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...

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.

Almost all bookstores today have a section dedicated to books on change, except that the generic name given to this category is "personal development", or "self-help".

"Did you hear what he did?" "Guess what we found out about our new colleague!" In spite of their apparent enthusiasm, gossips—people who laugh loudly and try to capture the attention of others through the tantalising information they have to share—are often not as happy as they seem.

Paul was imprisoned by the Roman Emperor. He was on Death Row. Every morning, when he opened his eyes, he didn’t know if this day would be his last, and whether he would be thrown to the lions or burned.

I sat slouched on the edge of my bed, blue light illuminating my face in the dark. It was the tenth time I’d checked my phone in the space of five minutes. I grimaced. Was something wrong with me?

The importance of humour, including in the workplace, is often undervalued, as a series of studies suggest.