PsycHacks

It's hard to keep your cool when things don't go your way. As someone who used to get angry a lot, I've had to work hard to overcome my tendency to lose my temper. In this episode, I'll discuss one strategy that has helped me to stay frosty in provocative situations. I call it the price of peace. By quantifying the amount of money you would need to receive in order to abide in anger against your w...

There's a Jewish parable that I love. A family goes to temple to make offerings to God by placing objects of value on the altar. However, the youngest child is distraught because he has nothing -- and so has nothing to give. So he decides to recite the alphabet, as it's all that he knows. According to the parable, this was the offering that was prized most highly by God. In this episode, I'll disc...

I like this phrase: "wanting is free." And I'm going to explain why in this episode. When others want things from you, it's important to remember that "wanting is free." That is, it cost them absolutely nothing to want those things. So there's no harm or loss that results from turning them down. And when you yourself want something, it's important to remember the same thing. That is, wanting is fr...

Speech is magic. By uttering the appropriate sequence of sounds you can literally conjure things into existence within others' consciousness. In light of this, you can refine your capacity to speak what you want into being. In this episode, I'll discuss two tricks to doing this effectively. The first is to use your words to trap yourself successfully, and the second is to refrain from speaking wha...

Over the course of my clinical experience, I've helped many people -- including those who were actively in the process of dying -- with their death anxiety. Among other things, I've discovered that death anxiety tends to be more prevalent among younger people than older people. In this episode, I'll discuss why that might be the case and propose a method for coping with this type of anxiety by dra...

The beginning of a new year is a time for people to set goals for the next twelve months. Unfortunately, many good-intentioned resolutions fail, often due to a lack of discipline. In this episode, I will discuss an easy and surefire way to ensure your own compliance with any new habit you're attempting to cultivate. The catch? No one likes doing it. However, it's precisely this aversion that funct...

The baseball great Pete Rose has been permanently banned from the sport for betting on the outcome of his team's games while he was a manager. However, his defense is -- and has always been -- that he only bet on his team to win. Therefore, his incentives as an individual gambler and team manager were aligned. Controversy aside, I love the idea of betting on yourself. Not only does it exhibit the...

Over the past two years, there have been wide-spread, systematic attempts to restrict, suppress, and censor misinformation and lies. Unfortunately, this approach is problematic, because the suppression of dialogue that reveals truth is actually much more dangerous than the dissemination of lies. While circulating lies can certainly cause harm, it's not really possible for them to gain a foothold i...

In a scarcity mentality, we lose what we cling to in fear because we believe it to be preferable to the nothingness we assume would take its place. Developing an abundance mentality necessitates that we cultivate greater trust in the universe to provide opportunities to fulfill our needs and desires. In this episode, I discuss an example of scarcity mentality in my own history and how I learned to...

The town liar lies. That what the town liar does. If you go to the town liar to hear the truth, it's your own fault if your feelings get hurt over being lied to. Much of the frustration and disappointment we're subject to experiencing with respect to the behavior of others boils down to our refusal to accept certain aspects of reality. In this episode, I'll discuss tactics for dismantling the cogn...

One of my personal pet peeves is indirect communication. This is because, as a communication strategy, it often seeks to protect the indirect communicator at the expense of the other party. After all, if you never actually ask for something, you can never be rejected, can you? In this episode, I'll discuss a simple, practical tactic you can use to retrain your indirectly communicating partner: the...

The general conceptualization of heaven is that it is a place of unremitting pleasure and comfort. However, it doesn't take much effort to understand that such an arrangement would likely prove unsatisfactory in the long run. In this episode, I discuss a personal conceptualization of heaven: as a series of challenges which we are pre-destined to overcome, but which present the plausible possibilit...

Occasionally, I'm confronted with the reality of needing to have a conversation with someone that I don't particularly want to have. And this can contribute to feelings of anxiety and dread. A tactic that I've developed to get through these situations is to simply "say my line." I pretend that I'm an actor who simply needs to say his line on cue in order for the plot to progress forward. I don't n...

All other things being equal, the older you get, the harder it becomes to make new friends. So how do you go about forming new friendships as an adult? I'll examine this question through the lens of "Persona 5," and excellent JRPG. In turns out this game has a fairly accurate blueprint on how to progress from casual acquaintance to intimate confidant. The keys are time, shared interests, and recip...

Control isn't the basis of a loving, long-term relationship, because control is ultimately disrespectful and unsustainable. The key to a respectful and enduring relationship is to hold the other like sand: not too loose, but definitely not too tight. Like sand, the tighter you attempt to hold others, the more they will slip through your fingers. Gentle support keeps more sand in your hands for lon...

It's often the case that the solution to some of our most long-standing and intractable problems is incredibly simple. However, we are subject to creating unnecessary complexity as a defense mechanism in order to embed the problem in our lives. Much of my work as a therapist is the gradual and systematic dismantling of such unnecessary complexity to arrive at greater simplicity. This reveals two t...

One of the paradoxes of the human experience is that we are all both very, very big and very, very small at the same time. Humility is knowing one's proper size. This means that it is not simply an attitude to be cultivated in those who are more self-important than they really are. Humility must also be nurtured in those who -- in believing they are smaller than they really are -- withdraw from li...

In a previous episode, "Be a ruthless gardener," I spoke on the importance of pulling up the negative thoughts that can proliferate in your consciousness like weeds without pity or remorse. However, if you do not attend to the soil -- the conditions from which the thoughts emerge -- you will likely be doing a lot of gardening in your life. By attending to your well-being and surrounding yourself w...

The most popular belief concerning the origin of mental illness is that it is caused by imbalances in individual brain chemistry. However, there is actually little empirical evidence to support this hypothesis. A theory with more robust support is the stress-diathesis model, which basically states that psychological issues emerge when sufficient stressors converge on an individual to diminish thei...

If someone in your life has become unjustifiably critical, disrespectful, or unappreciative, it might be time -- at least for a little while -- to give them the gift of your absence. The key to doing this is to leave the relationship before you feel no longer capable of giving your best. When you do this, people might actually miss you and remember why they were in a relationship with you to begin...

The key to doing something you fear is cultivating a larger fear of not doing it. In this episode, I'll discuss this principle using an anecdote from my personal life about overcoming my approach anxiety. By remembering how badly I would feel after avoiding my goal, I was finally able to move forward in spite of my fear. This is a tactic that is widely generalizable.

In the course of my clinical practice, I often talk with folks who struggle with discipline. They know what they "should" do, but -- when the time comes to act -- they find it difficult to resist the pull of learned behavior. In this episode, I briefly discuss the key to discipline, which I call "channeling your inner postman." See your commitment as a duty imposed upon you with the full force of...

I speak to many stressed-out, burned-out folks in my clinical practice. And a common refrain from them all is that they're "too busy to rest." Supporting this statement is an underlying proposition that rest is a waste of time. However, this is a false and ineffective belief. Rather than view rest as "unproductive," I would like you to consider that it is an essential component of long-term succes...

Nowadays, it's very common for people to seek after passion in their work. Its absence is considered problematic and troubling. However, the origin of this word reveals the absurdity of this search: "passion" means "suffering." Consequently, those who seek after passion are not only inadvertently chasing after pain, but they are subject to discarding "passion-less" opportunities for stability and...

Most of us are in a process of becoming with respect to our professional development, as a career can take decades to construct. Therefore, it's extremely important that you examine whether you're on the right path to success before investing years of your life toward a given end-goal. And the easiest way for most people to do this is to ask: "do I want my boss's job?" Does the person occupying th...