Psychology
-
Write a memoir to make sense of your life
•
1 min read
“Why write? To write. To make something.” Claude Simon Most people think of writing as a creative outlet. But it’s also an instrument for coping. According to recent studies, writing your own memoir has various psychological benefits. Whether for private eyes or for public viewing, writing extensively about traumatic events helps you break free from the cage…
-
Pursuing boredom for boredom’s sake
•
2 min read
If you can’t stand boredom for boredom’s sake, take on a mundane task to put your mind in a wandering state. Doing the dishes, organizing your vinyl collection, mowing the lawn, and taking a shower are all triggers that help release you from the grip of now. Your brain needs time to chew over all that it…
-
How design dictates behavior
•
1 min read
Left, right, top, and bottom… Designers make decisions every day that dictate human behavior. The social media notification–in Instagram aesthetics the heart–is what keeps users opening the app more than a dozen times a day. How many likes did we get on our last post? Any new followers? We crave the variable reward, chasing persistent…
-
Thinking through the repetition
•
1 min read
Doing the dishes, sweeping the leaves, shooting free throws, organizing your records—repetitive tasks can also be mindful experiences. There’s something about the fluidity of motion that jogs the brain into a presence on par with meditation. You’d think that boredom would set in and condemn our brains to seek dopamine-hitting pleasures. But some of the…
-
Evaluating self-growth
•
1 min read
Resolving a problem creates new challenges, not in the immediate front but in the long-term as we learn new things and the issues become more transparent. This is why most people prefer to live in the comfort of the status quo. Why change a lifestyle that throws us off the pedestal of satisfaction? Life is…
-
What introverts do at parties
•
1 min read
If you read Susan Cain’s Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can’t Stop Talking, you’d realize introversion is not a disease nor does it make poor leaders. The opposite is true. Introverts are often more sociable in intimate settings although they like to “recharge at parties,” with a preference on listening, thinking,…
-
In a state, trying every space
•
1 min read
Browsing online is really being nowhere. In a sedentary position, we traverse the world through bits and bytes. Web pages and apps flash in the blink of an eye. Of course, the same is true for books and cell phones—they take us places beyond our immediate sensory experience. What is reality but severe closeupness? It’s…
-
Art as psychoanalysis
•
1 min read
Salvador Dalí’s ‘Metamorphosis of Narcissus’ (1937) is a nod to his relationship with Sigmund Freud, the originator of the Narcissism Theory. Dali told Freud that it was “the first painting obtained entirely through the integral application of the paranoid-critical method.” Meanwhile, Freud read more about archaeology than psychology with a keen interest in sculpture. The…
-
Placebos: the lies we make true
•
1 min read
What the mind believes, the body can achieve. Look no further than a placebo who’s sole power is in its real effects. If it’s broken, only then do you fix it. But placebos work just as an app’s colors dupe the brain into submission. The slightest taste of sugar helps the medicine go down. The…
-
Hopium
•
1 min read
Hope is not a strategy. Hope is a selfish emotion — we look it to bolster our well-being. Hope, it is convenient. It’s the nearest dopamine hit in a crowd of external placebos. But hope is sometimes all we have. It never capitulates. The reality is that good things happen — they just take time…
-
Avoid the suck
•
1 min read
The carrot dangles, tempting a response. But the incentive is not always worthy. What we need more is a beautiful constraint, to cease ourselves from the pursuit of vices. To follow unconsciously is another person’s business opportunity. Once we investigate the soul, the rest follows, and we can avoid the trap. art via giphy
-
The mind’s sense-door
•
1 min read
There’s always a mismatch, between the fresh coffee and the taste, between the selfie and the mirror, and between the practice and the work. Our emotions and senses often dupe our realities. We expect to be satisfied up to the point of experience. But the war between expectation and matter simmers down to ambivalence. The…