Psychology

Up until she was 49 years old, Sue Shellenbarger had been happy with her life. She had a nice home in Oregon, USA, and a good job as the Wall Street Journal's work and family columnist. However, in the space of just two years, she had divorced her husband, emptied out her bank account, and developed a real passion for adventure that landed...

“You are always afraid people will judge you or know your weakness. It’s like being totally naked in front of a huge crowd,” says Bruno Feldeisen about the hidden struggle he had with anxiety.

When life takes a bad turn, we are often tempted to console ourselves with nostalgia. We begin to look at the past in a different light. We realise that we had been too demanding of ourselves, of others, of the world. That even though we had everything we needed we still wanted more. That we were always looking for something else, without paying...

We cannot sustain our motivation if we don't connect daily to its source and what generates it, or if we don't constantly strive to remind ourselves why we are moving in a certain direction and how to get there, willingly and unforced, exercising free will, despite the inevitable limitations.

When it was close, when I first saw its truly hideous face, I realised that I would never get used to it. And, no matter how hard I tried, no matter how much hope I tried to gather, I found nothing bright or inspiring about death. I know I will never find such a brightness, because it doesn't exist. But I saw the...

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.

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...

"Loneliness irritates me like a broken nail," says a line in a Romanian poem. The truth is, loneliness stings, pulls apart, and resembles the coffee dregs left at the bottom of the pot in which joy and love once brewed. Although the fear of loneliness is natural, we can choose to see solitude as something more than a "flowering wilderness" and embrace it...

"There is a time for everything, and a season for every activity under the heavens" (Ecclesiastes 3:1).

Let him that would move the world first move himself. – Socrates

Among the greatest disappointments of life is having our expectations unfulfilled; not by politicians, or publications that promote false news or weather forecasts, but by those close to us—people in whom we have invested our confidence.

Five seconds. And everything smells of heaven, wet grass and happiness.

Even in difficult times there are many things we can do at home to help children as well as teenagers to feel less worried.

Albert Einstein didn't speak until he was 4 years old, and didn't read until he was 7. His parents thought he was mentally disabled, and one of the teachers described him as "mentally slow, unsociable, and adrift forever in his foolish dreams." He was expelled from school and denied admission to the Zurich Polytechnic.

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.