“Nothing in this world is harder than speaking the truth, nothing easier than flattery,” Fyodor Dostoyevsky, a Russian novelist, once said. And so, this is how millions of people feel and behave every single day. It’s hard to speak our truth or to reveal our true feelings to someone, especially when we have an unnerving [read more]
Take a Deep Breath: How to Detect and Cope with Lies
Lying is believing or knowing one thing while intending to communicate another. As painful as it is to be lied to, a certain amount of empathy is important when dealing with liars who typically are acting out of fear or low self-esteem. Often, fear and low self-image are also responsible for the very actions about [read more]
Speak Up—The Truth is in There
All the giving-in, all the compromising in her relationship with Tom came from Jane. Pretty soon, no matter how absurd Tom’s whims, or how uncomfortable for her, Jane was saying “yes” to everything. Her fear that he’d walk out made her want to buy his loyalty with silence and acquiescence. In other words, since Jane [read more]
Finding the Right Person—Four Truths
You’re not 20 anymore. You are long out of college and maybe long out of your last serious relationship. Unattached people are not milling about in every building you enter, and when you stand at the check-out line, the people within a decade of your age all have wedding rings, babies, or both. But do [read more]
Are you passively participating in your relationships?
Bill’s wife made it clear that he would have to change his longstanding plans to play tennis with his brother. Why? She had been invited to a brunch party at the last minute and it was “very important to her” and she’d meet some “key players in her field” who could help her career. He [read more]
Choose Your Thoughts—and Kick Self-Sabotaging Behaviors to the Curb
William James, American philosopher and the father of American psychology, once wrote: “The greatest weapon against stress is our ability to choose one thought over another.” It is no longer a mystery that thought has creative power. Not just in its ability to generate great ideas, but as a manifester of belief, action, truth…in a [read more]
Start with Loving You: New Year’s Love Intentions
When you are born, you learn to love yourself in the mirror of mother. She loves you, you love her. The love reflects, one to the other. For a brief time, you and she are as one. In other words, the love that flows back and forth so effortlessly is indistinguishable from self-love, simply because [read more]