Identifying Your Secret Desires. . . and using them to make plans for 2020

We may have desires that we won’t even let ourselves think about, let alone try to achieve. Does one of your unspoken desires appear on the list I offer in my PsychologyToday.com article today?

Family Dinner: An old-fashioned idea worth revisiting

“Dinner’s on the table!”

“Come on mom, just five more minutes!”

“So, what did you do in school today?”

“Nothing.”

“Eat your vegetables”

“I HATE vegetables.”

While troubling, such exchanges are more from an earlier era in which family dinner was virtually inviolate. Today, that glue of familial connection and problem solving is often but a memory from ancient Ozzie and Harriet TV shows. Families often graze individually, with one parent still at work, if only in the home-office. The exhortation to "eat your vegetables" is moot because the parent ordered in pizza, both because it’s easy and the kids prefer it to broiled chicken, broccoli, and quinoa. The kids pop open the pizza box (assuming they hadn’t earlier raided the fridge and are no longer hungry), grab their favorite slices, and abscond to their room so they can eat while chatting or texting on the phone, watching TV, playing video games, or just maybe doing their homework.

While there’s humor in all that, at the risk of being atavistic, I think individuals and families would be wise to try to make family dinner the norm. My PsychologyToday.com article today offers some thoughts on how to make family dinner work.

Is Luxury Worth It? A self-assessment: For you? For your holiday gift giving?

Some of my clients wonder whether the American Dream game is the game they should be playing. If you're asking that of yourself, perhaps a look at luxury life’s benefits and liabilities may help you assess. 
In my PsychologyToday.com article today, I've done my best to make the best case both for and against the luxury lifestyle.

Honest Reactions After a Spouse's Death: A top psychotherapist reacts to the loss of his wife.

Rational Emotive Behavior Therapist (REBT) and friend Michael R. Edelstein has just lost his wife of 27 years.

I found his reactions to her death remarkable in their honesty and usually unspoken universality. Many people may have such feelings but aren’t honest enough to voice them, especially in the face of well-wishers’ conventional, perhaps dutiful words.

I asked Michael if he wouldn’t mind sharing those thoughts. As my PsychologyToday.com article today, I present what he said. 

When Willpower Isn't Enough

You know you shouldn’t procrastinate but you do.

You know you should be more (or less) assertive but you aren't.

You know you shouldn’t overeat. But you do.

There is such a gap between what we know we should do and actually do.

The most realistic answer is to accept your basic self. Increasingly, scientists are learning that lack of discipline is heavily in our genes. According to a recent metaevaluation, which synthesized the results of 31 studies, 60 percent of the variance in self-control is genetic.

While we may need to accept that we’re unlikely to transform from procrastinator to superproducer, meek to magisterial, overeater to mousy eater, we can, ahem, nibble around the edges. The key is to identify a realistic baby step. I offer some likely candidates in my PsychologyToday.com article today.

Resume Fixes

In my PsychologyToday.com article today, I describe the most common flaws in my clients' resumes and how you can avoid them.

Want to Change Your Life?: Potentially quick routes to turning around your life

Five years ago, I wrote on a similar topic: Realistic Sources of Hope, but its focus was on incremental, the proverbial baby steps.

Many people would at least like to consider if there might be an even quasi-possible approach to a quick, dramatic life turnaround, of the type promised to contestants on America’s Got Talent, Survivor, Who Wants to Be a Millionaire, etc.

As usual and especially with such a huge challenge, there certainly no guarantees but my PsychologyToday.com article today offers my best shots at how to make a quick, dramatic life turnaround.