Marty Nemko's Blog, page 186

Talking with Your Child About School or College

Do you have a hands-folded child, ever quietly engaged in school except when shooting their hand up in response to the teacher’s question? Does your child eagerly do homework, including the extra credit?

Then my article today in Psychology Today isn’t for you. It’s for parents whose child is more likely to say, “This homework is stupid,” or “I hate school!”

If offer two sample dialogues. The first embeds common complaints about school. The second dialogue addresses a common issue faced by parents of a college-bound teen. I Intersperse undergirding principles.

Thoughts at My 71st Birthday: Advice to myself and perhaps others

Birthdays can be a time for reflection, especially as we get older. My Psychology Today article today offers my thoughts that might be of value to you, my readers.

Talking With Your Child About Death and Dying

What should you say to your child about death and dying? For 3 situations, my Psychology Today article today offers sample wordings and underlying thoughts and principles.

Are You as Responsible as You Want to Be? Questions to consider

It’s tempting to be irresponsible. As Freud would term it, to let your id reign. For example, if you work as little as you can get away with, there’s more time for play, for example playing or watching sports or video games. And irresponsible play can be more fun: risky sex, mind-altering drugs, treating the highway like a speedway. Indeed, I’ve noticed an increase in the number of cars darting in and out of lanes at a zillion miles an hour.

Yet I want to risk being a spoil-sport, like the dour, finger-wagging father or cleric often portrayed in the media: from The Scarlet Letter’s Reverend Dimmesdale to the eponymous father in The Great Santini to Game of Thrones’ Tywin Lannister.

My Psychology Today article today makes the case for the primacy of responsibility and then asks you questions to help you decide if you're as responsible as you'd like to be.

The Value of Reconsidering

True, first impressions are often right. We’ve all said, “I wish I would have trusted my first instinct.” And then there’s the advice on taking multiple-choice tests: Trust your first answer.

But when should you reconsider? I explore in my Psychology Today article today.

In Search of Ecstasy: Bringing more peak moments into your life

Ecstasy is the pinnacle feeling. Perhaps the ideas I offer in my Psychology Today article today will help you foster more of those peak moments.

Try-and-Revise

Try-and-revise means replacing excess rumination with a low-risk trial, monitoring the results, and, as necessary, revising or scrapping in favor of a more promising approach. I offer examples in my Psychology Today article today.

Performing as a Tool for Personal Growth

You’re shy or bombastic, too laid-back or too fast paced.

Of course, it’s very difficult to change your core personality, but if you’d like to try tweaking it or adding a persona to your toolkit, one approach is to perform. Why? When we perform, the stakes feel high so we tend to get unusually engaged, as when taking a test compared with just studying the material.

My Psychology Today article today describes how you might use performing as a tool for personal growth:

Claiming Your Agency: We may have more control than we realize

Some people are frustrated at their lack of agency. For example, they might want more control over decisions at work, in a relationship, or over what other people believe or do.

Of course, you could try to be more assertive, more persuasive, change jobs, or change relationships, which may get you more agency. But the focus of my Psychology Today article today is on reminding you of the agency that everyone has and perhaps takes for granted or doesn’t make the most of.

4 Pieces of Standard Career Advice That Requires More Nuance

Yesterday, I gave a talk to young adults that explained why some conventional career advice requires more nuance. My Psychology Today article today outlines what I had planned to tell them. (I ended up mainly answering their questions.)