Marty Nemko's Blog, page 194

Are You Usually Sad? Some thoughts

A small percentage of my coaching clients aren’t clinically depressed but are sad, not just situationally sad but have been sad, sober, serious most of their life.

If that describes you or someone you care about, you might find my Psychology Today article today of value.

Getting Dumped: Preventing and coping with losing your job or romantic partner

Losing your job or romantic partner is, of course, painful. My Psychology Today article today offers thoughts on how to prevent and to cope with such a loss.

“Mom, I’ll Do It Later:” Preventing your child from becoming a procrastinator

It’s hard to cure procrastitis—Perhaps you know from personal experience. Indeed, an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. So, as a parent, you can be invaluable in preventing your child from succumbing to that serious disease. My Psychology Today article today should be helpful.

Helping Your Child Be More Resourceful

“Mom, I can’t do this!”

How do you get your child to more often solve problems? The ideas in my Psychology Today article today should help.

On Meetings: Making them less frequent and more productive

My Psychology Today article today describes why you should call and attend fewer meetings and how to make the most of those you need to attend.

The Ignoring of Individual Differences: A metastasis that threatens us all

Considerable human happiness has derived from how we've responded to people’s individual differences

 Alas, increasingly, the recognition of individual differences is an endangered species. My Psychology Today article today argues that this threatens to undo much of the happiness that the responding to individual differences hath wrought. 

Fighting Fear: Career, marriage, public speaking, phobias, death, and dying

Recently, I described an approach to uncertainty that has worked well with my clients. Its acronym is RAD: Resolve, Accept, Distract: Do what you can to resolve the problem, accept the uncertainty of it working, and distract yourself to something productive.

My Psychology Today article today shows how RAD can be applied to six common fears.

Comfort for Atheists: 15 balms for non-believers

Religious people find comfort in their faith. What’s an atheist to do? My Psychology Today article today offers 15 possible sources of comfort. They’re of course, applicable to religious people as well.

Criticizing Criticism: The case against negative feedback

How do you feel when you get criticized?  Many people's first reaction is often defensiveness, demotivation, antipathy and even retribution.

I’ve had a number of clients say that on giving a supervisee a deservedly poor performance review, in addition to no improvement, the honest feedback was met with a formal complaint to HR.

Yet criticism, especially constructive criticism, is widely viewed as key to individual, organization, and societal progress.

My Psychology Today article today makes the case that while criticism is invaluable to self-teaching computers, people aren’t computers. They have feelings, which usually tip the scales toward minimizing criticism and maximizing earned praise.

The Case for Self-Deprecation

We’re often warned against self-deprecation, that we shouldn't put ourselves down. It’s argued that it lowers your credibility and that, internally, it harms your self-esteem.

But my clients, my wife, and I have often benefited from self-deprecation. I make the case for it in my Psychology Today article.