PsycHacks

Self-improvement is less about creating ten new, good habits as it is about stopping the one or two behaviors that are significantly obstructing your progress. In many cases, blocking these behaviors is sufficient to create real growth: no other action is required. This will also help to rule out potential confounds, saving you time and money if you decide to enlist the help of a professional. You...

Human beings seem to have a need for recognition and acknowledgement. I have it. You have it. We all have it. However, the fact of the matter is that we can can't reasonably expect recognition. And this is because recognition requires some degree of mastery. Without it, brilliance could be staring you in the face and you would lack the ability to see it. Pearls before swine. I'll discuss further i...

If you have a habit that seems to cause you a lot of harm or difficulty, but that you still have trouble getting rid of, ask yourself this question: how is it good? How does it help you? It has to serve a function, or else it still wouldn't be there. Most likely, on some level, you believe that the habit is still a net positive, despite the suffering it causes you. To really change a behavior, you...

By the time clients contact me, the issue they would like to discuss has generally become fairly well-established. The image I like to use is that of walking the same path through a field for 20 years. It will take some time to carve a new path through the meadow, and to allow the old path to return to nature. And if it's going to take a while, you might as well get started. It will never be easie...

In an auction house, the lot goes to the highest bidder. In a very real sense, the highest bidder wins because no one else in the room believed the lot was worth that much. This means that the highest bidder almost certainly overpaid, and could have secured the same lot with fewer resources. The auction house is a useful analogy for work. In what ways might you be overpaying in your own life? In t...

"Have to" is a phrase that I have tried to eliminate from my vocabulary. Irrespective of what I'm doing, whenever I think that I "have" to do something, that something becomes onerous, aversive, and unpleasant. Instead, I try to replace the phrase "have to" with the phrase "choose to," and to connect the duty, responsibility, or assignment with one of my personally-relevant goals. It's a small cha...

If my episode "Bet on yourself," I spoke on the game-changing importance of unshakable self-confidence. But what if you feel -- justified or not -- that you have no legitimate basis for authentic confidence? What are you supposed to do then? The answer to this question is to think of yourself as a high school football coach whose team is down at halftime. Learn about the three tasks of the coach i...

This is the third in a series of short discussions on some of the lesser-known truths about romantic love. Do you think it was only a strange coincidence that the families of Romeo and Juliet hated each other? In this episode, I'll explain why romance thrives on obstruction. It goes all the way back to the original romantic myth, the tragedy of Tristan and Isolde, and it goes a long way toward exp...

This is the second in a series of short discussions on some of the lesser-known truths about romantic love. In this episode, I'll explain why romance so often ends in tragedy and heartbreak. Spoiler alert: it's orchestrated that way by design. By prioritizing the purity of spiritual union over the banality of everyday relationships, romantics doom themselves to unhappiness and loss. But that suffe...

This the first in a series of short discussions on some of the lesser-known truths about romantic love. In this episode, I'll explain why the unobtainability of the adored is actually a core component of the experience of romantic love. It goes all the way back to the code of the chivalric knights of old, and it goes a long way toward explaining one of the more bewildering facets of romance, namel...

"Catastrophic thought cascade" is a term I coined to described the cognitive phenomena that generally precede any immediate and intense emotional reaction. It's a series of imagined events linked by an apparent causality that only holds true when viewed through the lens of the emotion that created it. The trick to overcoming these events is to practice mindful awareness to slow down the subjective...

As its name suggests, a covert contract is a quid pro quo agreement that is not disclosed to the other party. At first blush, it seems absurd that anyone would engage in this practice. After all, if you don't explicitly negotiate terms, how can you reasonably expect to get what you hope to receive from the transaction? However, people engage in covert contracts in their personal and professional r...

Everything has an origin, and that includes romantic love. While people have apparently been falling in love since the beginning of recorded history, the notion that this is a desirable state is actually fairly recent. In this episode, I'll discuss the origin of romantic love as it emerged in the South of France in the 11th or 12th Century AD. This origin story might be surprising, but it helps to...

The balance of attraction is a concept I developed to help explain certain emotional dynamics in romantic relationships. It's based on a fundamental axiom, which is: no two people can like each other exactly the same amount. One of the most important corollaries of this axiom is that, in any relationship, one person will like the other more and one person will like the other less. Who occupies whi...

Can you imagine a basketball team could remain competitive in the NBA if it made an organizational commitment never to commit a foul? They would be decimated by teams of comparable talent and ability that didn't restrict themselves so unnecessarily. The truth is that the top players both know the rules of their game intimately and know when to break those rules strategically. Too much obedience ca...

The fundamental law of attraction is very straightforward. In fact, it's so obvious that many people just gloss over it. Are you ready? The fundamental law is: people want what they want, not what wants them. And this comes with a few important corollaries. Most notable among them is the fact that you can't make someone want you more by wanting them more. However, you might be able to make someone...

The Zen master Charlotte Joko Beck talks about the empty canoe in her book, "Everyday Zen." It's a simple metaphor that reveals a profound truth about the human experience of anger: it requires the imputation of agency in order to flourish. If you remove the imputation of agency -- picture an empty canoe drifting mysteriously through the fog -- then the experience of anger will vanish shortly ther...

Imagine an elementary school bully: a big, dopey boy that picks on other kids using the threat of violence. Do you think that one day that bully will wake up and say to himself: "you know, I've made some good money from this gig, but I don't think I need to do this anymore. I have enough lunch money"? That will never, ever, ever happen. You cannot comply your way out of bullying. And it's always e...

When I was younger, I used to believe that my mind was a laboratory sealed off from the rest of the world. As long as I didn't speak or act on my thoughts, I believed that I was at liberty to think whatever I wanted within the privacy of my own mind. However, I've come to understand that thoughts aren't nearly as private as I believed. In this episode, I'll discuss two ways our thoughts tend to be...

Many of you are probably aware that in several Romance languages the verb "esperar" means both "to hope" and "to wait" -- which always seemed a bit odd to me. However, the more I thought about it, the more I realized that the two concepts have more in common than first appears. In this episode, I'll discuss how all real hoping involves waiting, but not all waiting involves real hoping. If you're n...

Right now, I'm playing through the surprising excellent "Guardians of the Galaxy" video game for the PlayStation 5. Among all of the first rate performances, I've been particularly charmed by Jason Cavalier's portrayal of Drax the Destroyer. In this pop psychology episode of PsycHacks, I'm going to offer a brief character analysis of Drax, focusing on two of his more admirable traits: his relation...

I experience anger as a voice in my head that tells me things. And those things that it tells me are lies. Anger is a deceiver. It offers the feeling of power in exchange for my self-control -- which actually renders me powerless in the face of my provoker. Anger is a useful servant, but a terrible master. The trick is to learn to yoke the power of anger to constructive, intentional action. Do thi...

The title of this episode is the last line in a poem by Percy Shelley, called "Ode to the West Wind." The question is obviously rhetorical, as Spring has followed Winter as an inevitability since the dawn of time. I like to keep this line in mind when I'm moving through challenging times. The darker it gets, the closer I approach the return of the light. There is no need for fear or panic: when Wi...

What is love? I've developed my own unique answer to this question. I call it my parts of speech model of love, and I'd like share it with you today. Basically, with greater awareness and understanding, the nature of love evolves: from noun to verb to adverb. In this episode, I'll briefly discuss each stage, emphasizing the characteristics of its highest form: adverbial love. Happy Valentine's Day...

One of my all-time favorite writers is Haruki Murakami, and my personal favorite among his many excellent works is the imaginative and underrated "Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World." In this book is a fantastic line, which just so happens to be the title of this episode: a good craftsman has one scar. Why might this be the case? In this episode, I'll break down the surprising wisdom...