Marty Nemko's Blog, page 196

5 Questions About Friends: Toward having a true BFF

Thomas Aquinas wrote, "There is nothing on this earth more to be prized than true friendship."

It may not be so black-and-white.

My Psychology Today article today asks you five questions that may help you have a true BFF. 

5 questions to help you decide how ambitious to be

How ambitious do you want to be? It may help to answer the five questions I ask in my Psychology Today article today.

The Case for Adding Psychology to the Nobel Prize Categories

The Nobel Prize is awarded in six categories: physics, chemistry, physiology, peace, economics, and literature.

My Psychology Today article today makes the case that psychology should be added to the list of categories.

7 Keys to Making the Most of Your Recreation

If you're aware of where you’d like to be on seven continua, you may well increase how much you enjoy your recreation. I describe them in my Psychology Today article today.

The Psychology in Spending and Saving

Like most of our important behaviors, how we deal with money has a psychological component. My Psychology Today article today offers thoughts on how to use that in your favor.

7 Suggestions for Becoming More Diligent

Imagine that your counselor emailed you between sessions to ask how you’re doing. Or that your friend promised to help you on Saturday at 9 and, voila, there s/he was. Or that your romantic partner remembered that you dislike cilantro and when phoning for takeout, made sure that nothing had cilantro.

Diligence is one of those virtues that seem to have gone a bit out of fashion, along with duty, discipline, responsibility, and restraint. Yet diligence has always been and always will be at the hub of accomplishment and, among the discerning, of respectability.

But how to get more diligent? Ay, there’s the rub. My Psychology Today article today offers my best but I fear inadequate suggestions:

Cleaning Your Stress House: A potent way to reduce your life's anxieties

Too often, recommendations for reducing stress are for after you're already stressed:  take deep breaths, exercise, talk with a friend or counselor.

But many people can prevent the problem by cleaning your House of Stress. That is, inventory your life to see if there are people, activities, and things you should sweep out.

My Psychology Today article today offers a self-inventory which should help.

Combining Your Interests: A way to become more special, professionally and personally

Former TIME editor-in-chief and head of the Aspen Institute, Walter Isaacson, has written a series of biographies and wrote that a criterion he uses for choosing his subjects is whether they have combined disparate interests. For example, Da Vinci merged art and science. Ben Franklin excelled in invention and politics. Steve Jobs described Apple’s philosophy as the intersection of technology and the liberal arts. When Einstein was stuck on a physics problem, he often pulled out his violin.

Few people will rise to such accomplishment, but the concept of combining interests and expertise remains useful to us all. It can build a personal identity that differentiates you from the crowd, and it can facilitate your having an unusual career niche, making it easier to brand and market yourself.

My Psychology Today article today offers examples from my clients as well as from my own life.

3 Approaches to Public Speaking

A talk, even if it’s just a one-minute report at a staff meeting can catapult a career.or hurt it. So the stakes are high. No surprise that public speaking tops the list of fears.

The good news is that public speaking is learnable and it's made easier because there are three ways to prepare a talk, so you can choose one that fits you and the occasion. I describe them in my Psychology Today article today.

Tips for Aspiring Leaders: Landing and succeeding in your first management job

The Fellows in a leadership training program at two top universities will be reading the following article that | wrote for that program. I thought it might be of value to others who are aspiring to management or leadership. So, it's my Psychology Today article today.