What Your Ego is

Loneliness - The Beginning of Romance

Courage and Compassion: A Dedication to Yourself

Gratitude – A Positive Psychology Perspective
From the classical philosophers, to the ancient religions, all the way to the modern self-improvement industry – gratitude has been offered as a way of increasing our basic happiness and satisfaction with life. It is only in recent years, though, that positive psychologists have conducted scientific research on gratitude. Does it really work? In a word, yes. Although results are not universal, the practice of gratitude has been correlated with increased positive emotion and reduced symptoms of depression and anxiety. Given that the practice of gratitude is very popular in personal development, I thought it will be interesting to present the results of these studies – a

Reader Discussion: Ask Me Anything You Want
It’s been a long time since we’ve done something like this, so here goes! This post is plain and simple – ask me whatever you want in the comments: from the personal, to the silly, to the philosophical, to whatever. In fact, the sillier and fun-ner the better The only thing I request – please do not ask anything related to mental disorders. I tend to get quite a lot of such questions, and the answer is always the same – stuff like this cannot be fixed on the internet in general. There is no shame in finding professional help. A quick disclai

The Strangest Paradox – Parental Influences
There is a strange paradox that exists inside most of us. Most people will have a good idea of just how much our parents, and our upbringing, affect us as adults. But there is a strange twist to what we have come to expect. Below is a basic description, with all the content taken out of it, leaving behind only the structure: My parents said I was a bad boy/girl. I want to be good. To be good, I cannot contradict my parents. It is wrong to make them wrong. Therefore, to be good, I have to be bad. Of course, this “bad” can be anything – stupid, worthless, ugly, fat, a liar, angry, the list is endless. But the idea is the s

Booster Technique: Inauthentic and Authentic Emotions
When it comes to healing and understanding our negative emotions, there is one important thing to realise: Some of our feelings are inauthentic.They cover up other feelings, beliefs, and inner states. This might seem like a basic idea to understand, but the real difficulty comes in facing up to it – there is often a good reason we are covering them up in the first place. But there comes a time, when we are strong enough, to remove these defences and see what is underneath. What really needs to be healed?

How to Pursue Your Passion: Understand the Essence of Your Passion
Editor’s Note: This is a guest post by Celestine Chua of The Personal Excellence Blog. Thanks Celes! (If you haven’t discovered your passion yet, you might want to read Finding a Purpose and Passion in Life first.) Whenever my friends or my coachees talk to me about the topic of passion, they would