Marty Nemko's Blog, page 286

What's Up with Jordan Peterson?

Some Positives: Antidotes to Our Worry-Filled Mindset

It's easy to succumb to negativity: nuclear rumblings, hollowing middle class, ever more choking traffic, hateful political roiling.  We can’t even take solace in Steven Pinker’s famous assertion that the world is getting more peaceful. More recent data is agnostic.

Perhaps because those worries are legitimate, it may be all the more important that we remember some big positives, not pollyannish positives but legitimate bases for gratitude and hope. I offer some as my PsychologyToday.com article today.

Why You Should Be a Liberal. Why You Should be a Conservative.

All sides agree that the country is more polarized than ever. I’ve written a few pieces here on PsychologyToday.com to encourage more open exchange between the poles, for example, Ten Question in the Time of Trump.

As my PsychologyToday.com article today, I offer another such effort at encouraging liberals and conservatives to at least be more respectful of the other side and maybe even to moderate their views. Aristotle’s Golden Mean has been invoked to great success for millennia. It may well be what's needed now.

A Last Conversation: A composite of deathbed confessions

Sometimes, deathbed confessions offer a legacy for all of us. 

My PsychologyToday.com article today offers a composite of revelations I’ve heard from my career and personal coaching clients within the confidentiality of our sessions.

The Self-Made Man (and Woman)

Academics and the media have deemed the self-made man a myth. But is it? I explore in my PsychologyToday.com article today.

Real Acting: Tips for acting on- and especially off-stage

We tend to think of acting as something done on stage, in the movies, or on TV.
But we’re all acting, all the time: at work, in relationships.

Off-stage acting is viewed as unseemly, phony but, framed more accurately, it’s the appropriate adapting to your counterpart's needs, the opposite of the narcissism so often written about these days.

Of course, acting can be used for nefarious as well as benevolent purposes but that’s true of most tools--from intelligence to a pocket knife. That doesn’t obviate the value of learning how to be a better actor. To that end, as my PsychologyToday.com article today, I offer tips for how to act without being discovered as acting

A Review of a Restaurant That Has Been Closed for 15 Years

A Review of a Restaurant That Has Been Closed for 15 Years

I write this in memory of the long-closed  Economy Cafe.

 In today's era of frou-frou, overpriced, not that tasty restaurants, the uncommercially named Economy Cafe made fabulous food, right in front of you, with fresh ingredients, and one of two true master chefs+with "Wok Hei"--infusing the taste of the wok.

The place had absolutely no ambiance--It let the food speak for itself, and because no money was spent on ambiance, the price was, yes, economical.  It was a monument to integrity in a world now being rapidly taken over by restaurant consultants designed to milk every dollar per hour and square inch.

Patronize the declining number of such restaurants. Alas, I have a hard time thinking of any. Even the many hole-in-the-walls in Oakland Chinatown lack one or more of the attributes above. But I'd certainly rather go to one of them than, for example, the ridiculous restaurants on College Ave, where professed uber-liberals act like the worst of the bourgeosie--overspending and preening on image, not substance. 

One non-Chinese such restaurant comes to mind: Old Weang Ping, a Thai restaurant in a tough neighborhood in East Oakland.

 If you know of such restaurants, I encourage you to write Yelp and Google reviews of them. 

As I get older and as the Bay Area gets ever angrier and intolerant, often reflecting merely a transient zeitgeist inflamed by a so-short-sighted media, I feel the need to write such things.

The Case for Preschoolers Having More Screen Time

No less than the American Academy of Pediatrics recommends that children between two and five years old spend a maximum of one hour a day in front of a TV or video screen.

However, a reasonable argument can be made, that many kids should spend double or even triple the recommended maximum amount. I make that argument in my PsychologyToday.com article today.

The World's Shortest Course in Hiring, Training, and Managing People

As my PsychologyToday.com article today, I offer the tactics my clients have found most helpful in hiring, training, and managing people.