Abracadabra!: Conjuring the practical from watching magic

It would seem that magic is antithetical to practicality. Yet even practical me loves magic, both for entertainment but also some practicalities. I explain in my PsychologyToday.com article today.

The Case for Chucking it All

I told a client, who is Director of Economic Development for a county about another client who decided to chuck it all and live an ultra-simple life. I tell about them and the case for chucking it all in my PsychologyToday.com article today.

The Know-it-All: Dealing with one, being one

My PsychologyToday.com article today attempts to explain why know-it-alls do what they do . . .and why they deserve more respect and kindness rather than the typical antipathy and even retribution.

Mindful Eating: An internview with Susan Albers

Fellow Psychology Today blogger, Susan Albers is a psychologist at the Cleveland Clinic who specializes in mindfulness and eating. Her new book is Hanger Management: Master Your Hunger and Improve Your Mood, Mind, and Relationships. 

In my Psychologytoday.com article today, I interview her.

A Promise is a Promise...Usually: An inventory of promises that too often are maybes

My PsychologyToday.com article today offers a list of promises that too often are really meant as maybes.

Evaluating Your Current or Prospective Job

Sometimes, it’s hard to get clear on what’s truly important in a job. So, many people default to money and status. 

The list I offer in my PsychologyToday.com article today may be more helpful in deciding whether, when today, when unemployment is at a 50-year low, to stay in your current job or to seek greener pastures. And if you're a less-than-ideal employer, perhaps it will give you a gentle nudge.

A Fast Way to Identify Your Strengths

Self-report is a valuable way for you to identify our strengths and weaknesses. Not only does that enable you to consider the full range of your life’s past experiences, it allows you to project forward: what are your latent attributes—those that life hasn’t yet afforded you sufficient opportunity to express but that you might like to. Plus, self-report is free.

To keep concise the self-report strengths inventory in my PsychologyToday.com article today, it isn't universally applicable. It focuses on the Psychology Today readership—people who are well educated and/or with above-average intelligence. So, for example, it doesn’t ask about physical strength or ability to do repetitive tasks.

24 Rules of Thumb for a Better Life

Many people are more likely to benefit from simple than complex advice, for example, one-liners that are easy to keep top-of-mind. Rules of thumb are particularly helpful because they’re more flexible than rules — They’re guidelines: usually but not always wise. 

My PsychologyToday.com article today offers some rules of thumb that have been particularly helpful to my clients.

Distractions: 14 ways to distract yourself from worry or to spend time when you're bored.

Sometimes, there’s reason for worry and nothing we can do about it, at least for now. Then, distraction may be a good alternative. Perhaps you’ll find something sufficiently compelling in the list below.

Or you find yourself bored, perhaps after work or on the weekend. Sure, if you could motivate yourself, you’d get out and exercise, see a friend, work on your novel, but you’re not motivated—You’re in the no-win of feeling bored yet not energized enough to do much.

Worry and/or boredom too often results in drugs or alcohol. It’s so easy—Just open the bottle or pull out the vape pen and you’re not bored anymore; you're blitzed. And if you want some weed, endless billboards tell us to just click and it will materialize at your door.

What to do? Often in writing self-help advice, I feel the need to issue the disclaimer that there are no, ahem, magic pills, but might any of the ideas in my PsychologyToday.com article today be helpful?

My Most Potent Dating Tips

Many of my clients have wanted help in meeting their special someone. The tips I offer in today's PsychologyToday.com article have been the most potent.

How to Be a Good Parent of a Student Athlete

We’re mid basketball and football season, and parents of student athletes from elementary school through college are trying to be good sports parents: encouraging and teaching life lessons without overinvesting.

Like most potentially fraught human interactions, threading the needle isn’t so easy. Perhaps the thoughts I offer in my PsychologyToday.com article today will help.

Pruning Your Life: What to cut out so you flower more in 2020.

When we think of improving our lives, we tend to think of adding or replacing, but pruning your life’s weak wood often helps more. My PsychologyToday.com article today offers a checklist--Should you prune any of these from your life?

My Seven Most Potent How-to-Do-Life Tips: Career, relationships, money, mental health, physical health, and the life well-led

Amid the information overload, it may help, even at the risk of reductionism, to offer a super-distillation of the advice on how to live life.

So, as a thought experiment, I reflected on my 1,538 How To Do Life posts here on PsychologyToday.com to identify what, for each of life’s seven core components, is the single idea that has been most helpful across the 5,700 career and personal advising clients I’ve had the privilege of serving. I offer them as my PsychologyToday.com article today.

Do You Look for Reasons to be Angry or Sad?

Some people tend to seek a reason to be happy, others to be angry, still others to be sad.

It’s easy to understand happiness seekers, but what could motivate people to want to be angry or sad?   

My PsychologyToday.com article today offers my hypothesis, the pros and cons of trying to change, and if you want to change, some baby steps that can help.

Anatomy of an Epiphany: Toward better solutions

Sometimes, epiphanies, brilliant solutions, just pop into a person’s head out of nowhere.
Those may be beyond our control, but we may be able to generate epiphanies. I offer a four-step process for doing that in my PsychologyToday.com article today.

Sparks: 10 Triggers That Have Made People Drop Bad Habits or Make Other Major Changes

It seems almost mystical. A person has long suffered, for example, from overeating, substance abuse, anger issues, laziness, or spending too much. And then suddenly, poof, the person changes, not incrementally, not in baby steps, but all at once.

With my clients, it's tempting to credit my advising but rarely does that have much to do with it. More often, it’s one of the occurrences that I list in my PsychologyToday.com article today. Perhaps my describing them will help you drop that bad habit or make that major change you want to make.

The 20-40 Rule: The case for talking less than your share.

The 20-40 Rule: Speak a little less than your share. My PsychologyToday.com article today makes the case for why that's wise.

A Writer's Life: and lessons learned

You wouldn't think I could become a professional writer, with lots of well-published books and articles. Yet I did. I tell how in my PsychologyToday.com article today. It also embeds lessons for non-writers.

The Joy of Rushing: A counterpoint to the gurus' urgings

The gurus, motivation or spiritual, tell us to slow down, to do less to accomplish more, or simply to enjoy the joy of chillin’.

As I am wont to do, I like to advocate for contrarian practices that I believe in. One such is rushing. I make the case in my PsychologyToday.com article today.

Facing the Apocalypse: A thought experiment that can help us live more wisely

While the chances of an apocalyptic even such as an all-out nuclear war are tiny, a thought experiment in which that were imminent can help us gain clarity about how we want to live our life. I explore that in my PsychologyToday.com article today.

Money and Private Practice

Many helping professionals worry about going into private practice: All the motivation, all the expenses, all the structuring are on you. And it can be lonely. From a practical standpoint, particularly worrisome is the money: Will I earn enough? 

My PsychologyToday.com article today offers some thoughts on making that happen.

Family Business Succession Planning

Imagine that you’ve run your family business for decades. You’re still doing it well but are getting nagging feelings that the time is coming when someone else should run the show. You’re sad, relieved, worried.

Or maybe you’re a family member who thinks it’s time for the mantle to be passed but are scared to broach the subject.
Rather than provide a prescription, I’ve found that readers may benefit more from a sample dialogue. I intersperse possibly generalizable principles. That's my PsychologyToday.com article today.

If You’re a Falling Leaf: Ideas for the autumn, even winter of life.

A leaf starts as a bud, swells, billows, then dries yellow or red like traffic light warnings, then drifts down, molds into the earth, mother’s milk for a new plant.
Many people as they drift downward, close the shades, watch TV, and wait. 

But some people, even those clearly in decline, may want to do more, especially something that will enhance their legacy.
Sometimes, it helps to come up with a sufficiently motivating idea. Do any of the ideas in my PsychologyToday.com article today intrigue you?

Live on the Straight and Narrow or On the Edge? A debate

Most of us live life in the middle, but occasionally, wisps of wonder enter consciousness: "Should I tiptoe off-center?"

Perhaps this debate I present as my PsychologyToday.com article today will help you clarify.

The Power of Acceptance: How a basketball player, writer, and pianist dealt with losing three fingers

A while back, three of my fingers became pretty much unusable. I had been a basketball player my whole life and had to stop. I write a lot and so now type with just seven fingers, making many more errors. I’m a professional-level pianist and have had to scale back how I play, and even so, I make more mistakes.

My PsychologyToday.com article today describes how I've dealt with them, and without undue sadness, moved forward.

Throwing a Holiday Party? 10 mistakes that can gobble up your holiday cheer.

Thanksgiving as well as Christmas and New Year’s tend to be filled with hope for fun and connection, but sometimes those high expectations are far from met. 

If you're throwing a Holiday party,  avoiding the 10 “turkeys” should help. My PsychologyToday.com article today calls them out.

Opportunity Cost: An under-considered key to wise decision-making

In making an important decision, most people consider pros and cons but are less likely to consider another key factor: opportunity cost. 

My PsychologyToday.com article today describes opportunity cost with examples.

Marty Nemko plays piano at the Marsh Cabaret in Berkeley

I play beautiful old standards and show tunes on the piano this Weds at The Marsh: 2120 Allston Way, Berkeley. THIS Weds 7:30. I'm opening for a fun blues, jazz, and rock band: The Craig & McGregor Band. Would you believe, it's just $10 including a yummy buffet dinner?!

How Important is it to Live Ethically?

A previous post offered a self-assessment on how ethical you are.  Another post offered tips on identifying and living your principles.

But neither article addressed a foundational issue: How important is it to live ethically? Perhaps you’ll find your answer in a debate between a highly and a minimally ethical person. That's my PsychologyToday.com article today.

CONDITIONAL Self-Acceptance: Baby steps toward growth without beating yourself up

Unconditional self-acceptance means that we and perhaps our long-term romantic partner are wise to accept ourselves pretty-much as-is: We may want to tweak ourselves around the edges, but with regard to the big things, the watchword is acceptance.

But my PsychologyToday.com article today argues that a wiser goal is conditional self-acceptance.

Online Dating

"Attractive, professional SWF seeks similar SWM.” 

That sort of dating pitch squanders online dating’s biggest advantage: rigorous screening to find the best few matches from among millions. The game is not “S/he-with the most responses wins.” It’s “S/he who meets the right love wins.”

My PsychologyToday.com article today describes how to win that game.