would all like to know how to be loved by everyone. In the end, who are our favorite people? Those who understand us and listen. Someone we can turn to and honestly say, "You get me." That really comes down to one skill: listening. And it's something most of us are awful at. In an age of sub-zero attention spans, focus is a superpower. And focusing on others is even more rare. When I asked the #1 love researcher, John Gottman, what the best thing…
ing married in the modern world can be difficult and confusing. What are the rules for a happy marriage? It doesn't seem like there are any easy answers. So I called an expert. Stephanie Coontz serves as Co-Chair and Director of Public Education at the Council on Contemporary Families and teaches at The Evergreen State College in Olympia, WA. She's the author of Marriage, a History: How Love Conquered Marriage and The Way We Never Were: American Families And The Nostalgia Trap. We hear a lot from…
all want an awesome life. And very often you know what you need to do to improve it... but you don't do it. I don't blame you. Hey, some of that stuff is hard. (I should know. I write about it all the time.) Isn’t there an easy, passive way where your flaws start correcting themselves, you gain respectable goals and become much, much happier? Well, at least in theory, there just might be. I called somebody to find out. Nicholas Christakis, MD, PhD, MPH,…
all deal with fear of rejection. Jia Jiang did too. But he overcame it... thanks to a box of donuts. He explains how this happened in his wonderful book, Rejection Proof: How I Beat Fear and Became Invincible Through 100 Days of Rejection. His dream was to be an entrepreneur -- and that means a lot of rejection. So how could he beat the fear? By turning it into a game. For 100 days he made ridiculous requests of strangers, expecting to get rejected.…
renting tips are everywhere but most have zero legitimate research behind them. So what does science have to say? And how can you remember what's important so you actually use it? Remember to WACC your kids. No, I'm not saying to hit your kids. "WACC" is a good acronym to help you keep in mind 4 things that come up in the research again and again: Work on yourself Autonomy Communicate Community These four things can make a big difference in whether…
search shows that first impressions are even more important than you think: The findings indicate that getting off on the wrong foot has devastating long-term consequences. And once first impressions are set, they're very hard to change. Via David McRaney’s You Are Not So Smart: A study in 1997 by Wilkielman, Zajonc, and Shwartz created first impressions in subjects with images of smiles and frowns. The people in the study saw a photo of either a happy or a sad…
hen do we really learn good conversation skills? Well, we don't. We're just kind of expected to pick them up... And we wonder why people aren't better communicators. How can you be that person people love to talk to? I've posted a lot of research and expert interviews on the…
meone is screaming in your face at the top of their lungs. Or ranting angrily and you can't get a word in edgewise. Or maybe they're sobbing so hard you can barely understand what they're saying. We've all been there. These situations don't happen a lot (thank god) but we all feel helpless when they do. And because they're rare we don't ever seem to get better at handling them. Problem is, these moments are often critical because they're usually with people…
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