Psychology

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

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?

One of the best-known stories told by ambitious entrepreneurs today is that if you work hard, you will have a lot.

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

Sexual abuse follows a predictable pattern, but unfortunately this pattern is not widely known. It is essential to recognise its early signs and profound effects for both protection and healing.

A word is dead when it is said, some say. I say it just begins to live that day. – Emily Dickinson

Problem gambling in Australia and New Zealand is an issue seldom talked about, but we ignore it at our peril.

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.

Some say that of all the opinions we can have in life, the most important is the opinion about ourselves.

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...

More and more people are choosing cohabitation over marriage. Many young people believe that cohabiting helps them to make better decisions about marriage by giving the couple a chance to "practise" before making a lifelong commitment. There is also a belief that cohabiting before marriage reduces the likelihood of marital problems or divorce.

At the age of 27, for the first time in my life, I worried that time was passing too fast. For the next few years, the speed with which most of my friends were getting married was the next source of concern.

“No doubt equality of goods is just; but, being unable to cause might to obey justice, men have made it just to obey might. Unable to strengthen justice, they have justified might; so that the just and the strong should unite, and there should be peace, which is the sovereign good....” (Blaise Pascal, Thoughts)

Because life in developed societies follows a more or less regular pattern, sociologists have managed to identify the age at which conditions are most conducive to forming a friendship. It's not that people who are not of this age are unable to form meaningful connections with other people, but at other ages, life takes us on different paths, without asking for our permission.

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.