6 Rules to Live By When You Discipline Your Child

Anyone can tell you that discipline is a messy business. Not even the best of parents could possibly get it right all the time. However, part of what complicates the process of teaching our kids to behave is that parents bring a lot of their own baggage to the table. Kids can be a big…

 

The Scientific Approach to Changing Your Life

Last year, a poll indicated that only one in three Americans is reportedly “very happy.” Maybe this surprises you or maybe it doesn’t, but what it likely tells us is that the majority of the population is looking for a change. Whether it’s their job, their relationship, their city or themselves, most people have something…

 

5 Most Important Relationship Resolutions

No matter what stage we’re in in a relationship, we tend to wonder what the future holds. No two people, or two couples for that matter, are the same, so how can we predict where the road will take us?  The truth is we can’t. Relationships are complicated and uncertain territory. Yet, in my years…

 

The Simple Truth about Anger

Feeling angry is a universal human phenomenon. It is as basic as feeling hungry, lonely, loving, or tired. -Theodore Rubin “A thought murder a day keeps the doctor away.”  What this quote emphasizes is that feeling one’s angry thoughts is a healthy manifestation, whereas the denial or suppression of angry feelings has a pathological effect….

 

Change Your Attachment Style to Have a Better Life

What if we could identify the filter that shapes our perception of the world and change it so as to have a better life?  We are born into the social context of our families and quickly need to /develop strategies to get our needs met by our caretakers. Depending on our early emotional environment, we…

 

Breaking the Fantasy Bond with Our Mothers

The other day, I was reminded of reading Nancy Friday’s book, My Mother/My Self many years ago; so I took Friday’s book down from a shelf in my office and opened it, quite by chance, to page 388, where I found this heavily underlined quote: “As we get older and the tie to mother is…

 

How to Make Your Life More Meaningful

How to Make Your Life More Meaningful When author Bronnie Ware published The Top Five Regrets of the Dying, the inspiring book based on her years as a nurse, the world had quite a reaction. So many of us who get caught up in the go-go-go of daily life screeched to a halt to read about…

 

5 Things to Try Before You Give Up on Your Relationship

It’s a pretty common consensus that love takes work. Yet, 80 percent of Americans under 30 believe in a soulmate, the idea that there is one perfect person out there just waiting to be found. Even the expression “falling in love” makes it sound like love is out of our hands — that it just happens…

 

How to Break the Cycle of Child Abuse

At this point, I shouldn’t have to list off all the reasons spanking your child doesn’t work. It’s science, it’s proven, and we may as well be revisiting a discussion of whether the world is flat. If the damage it does to children’s spirits (not to mention their actual brains) isn’t enough to convince you, maybe it should…

 

Is There a Cure for Narcissism

Are today’s youth really a more narcissistic generation? It’s a question parents, educators, researchers and media seem to be strongly affirming. And let’s face it, the barrage of status updates and “selfie” streams probably aren’t helping.  Recent studies have shown that students today “score higher on assertiveness, self-liking, narcissistic traits and high expectations.” However, they also score higher on…