PsycHacks

Episode 157: Never talk to yourself in a way you wouldn’t speak to a close friend

This one is pretty straight forward. When working with clients to master their self-talk, I always begin by asking them to consider making a commitment not to talk to themselves in a way they wouldn't speak to a close friend. There's no need to fluff yourself up or practice affirmations in the mirror or discover your mantra. Just start here. The relationship with yourself is the most important relationship you have. So make sure you're good company.

 

#relationships #selftalk #selfimprovement

Episode 156: The right decision doesn’t exist

When people are at the crossroads of life, they can often agonize over making "the right decision." However, implicit in the idea of "the right decision" is the existence of many, many "wrong" decisions, and this significantly increases the felt experience of pressure on the decider. This is not how I see the world. Instead of "right" and "wrong," I see paths that go one way and paths that go another. The "rightness" of one's path is inseparable from the goals of the one who walks it. I'll speak more on this in this episode.

 

#right #wrong #choices

Episode 155: You can only get better

Whatever you do over and over again, you will get better at. It's not possible to do something repeatedly and get worse. This is just an attribute of the way we are constructed. However, this also means that we can get better at the wrong thing. So it's really important to be careful about what you do repeatedly. Strong, lasting habits are built out of small "worthless" or "harmless" behaviors.

#habit #selfimprovement #growth

Episode 154: Update your browser

Many of the beliefs in our heads aren't our own. They come from our parents, teachers, friends, and culture. And many of our own beliefs were derived many years ago from relatively small data sets. It's essential that you critically evaluate whether these beliefs are still valid and appropriate to your current life, from time to time. This is what I call "updating your browser." By extrapolating beliefs from larger data sets of relevant experiences, we can increase the likelihood that our mental models accord with reality.

 

#selfdevelopment #beliefs #browser

Episode 153: How to show your partner respect

It's important to show your partner respect when your partner does something respectable. This is because respect is highly reinforcing and will increase the likelihood that your partner will behave similarly in the future. And if you want to understand how to do this, you need to watch ESPN. ESPN has respect down cold. In this episode, I'll discuss what I mean by this with concrete examples.

 

#respect #relationships #ESPN

Episode 152: How to stop having panic attacks without medication (2 of 2)

Anyone who has had a panic attack knows how terrifying and upsetting the experience can be. Fortunately, there are ways of preventing panic attacks without the use of psychiatric medication. These methods have worked for me, personally, and dozens of my clients. In this video (the second of two), I'll discuss strategies for intervention: what you can do at each step of the way to disrupt the process that leads to a panic attack. Please share with others who might benefit from this information.

 

#panic #anxiety #treatment

Episode 151: You never really know what you give to others

Despite all of our intentional action, we never really know what we give to others. I learned this lesson in the context of my work as a private tutor. When I would cross paths with my students years later, they had always forgotten everything that I was paid to teach them -- but they would remember some throwaway comment I made one day. It took years for my students to teach me what I taught them. And that is because it is the taker who decides what is given.

 

#giving #taking #relationships

Episode 150: How to stop having panic attacks without medication (1 of 2)

Anyone who has had a panic attack knows how terrifying and upsetting the experience can be. Fortunately, there are ways of preventing panic attacks without the use of psychiatric medication. These methods have worked for me, personally, and dozens of my clients. In this video (the first of two), I'll discuss the anatomy of a panic attack: the sequence of events that conspires to create the experience "out of thin air." I hope you find it useful.

 

#panic #anxiety #attention

Episode 149: People are as happy as they choose to be

Happiness is a choice. It is based on a decision to turn toward the present moment and accept it as enough. On the other hand, when we choose to base our happiness on external conditions, three things happen: we disempower ourselves, we rob ourselves of the potential for joy in the present moment, and we enter into games of control. I'll discuss why each of these is true in turn in this episode.

 

#happiness #contentment #acceptance

Episode 148: Relationships and the concept of the game

If a game is anything with rules and a goal, then relationships are a game. We know there is a goal, because we want things from other people. And we know there are rules, because we can't act however we want to get whatever we want. In this episode, I'll respond to the most common negative reaction to the conceptualization of relationships as a game: that "game playing" is "immature" and "manipulative." My rebuttal is that you can't not play, and that "maturity" and "honesty" are as much "game playing" strategies as their opposites.

 

#game #relationships #attraction