I used to tell clients not to rush into a new relationship immediately after ending an old relationship. My thoughts were that people need time to heal and to figure out what went wrong. I’ve always thought that it takes time to understand the dynamics of the one you’ve just left so that you don’t make the same mistakes the next time. Over the years, I have seen the positive and negative effects of rebound relationships and they are heavily …
I once asked a young man if he would rather be smart or nice. I wasn’t asking him if he would rather be seen as smart or nice; I was asking him if he would rather be smart or nice. It was interesting to see him wrestle with this question. I specifically asked him because of his niceness factor and because of his intelligence. Perhaps one of the reasons I was so interested in his response is because I have …
The holidays tend to make us nostalgic, and many people make major decisions based on selective memories when they are feeling mellow, rather than on their true experiences of what really happened. It’s so easy to fall under the holiday spell of peace on earth, good will toward men, that you let the memories of your painful childhood and adulthood fade into the background. It’s at those times that, in a moment of weakness and longing for love and acceptance, …
One of the most fascinating things I’ve ever encountered is the creativity and productivity that a hobby engenders and, yet, so few people turn their hobbies into their career. I have asked many people why they don’t use their talent to earn a living and the answer I receive so often is that if they did that, they wouldn’t enjoy their hobby, it would just be another job. My thoughts are different. Turn your hobby, which is something you love …
I have always believed more in the power of rewards than the power of punishment. When you are constantly being punished, no matter what the punishment is, it loses its effect. Rewards, on the other hand, keep growing exponentially, often becoming a bargaining chip, either with yourself or with someone else. Someone I knew went into real estate and every time she sold a house, she bought herself an expensive piece of jewelry. In all the time I knew her, …
Ever since social media sites came into vogue, there have been numerous arguments, pro and con, about how these sites are the cause of the breakdown of relationships, and Facebook has been named as the number one perpetrator. As a Facebook newbie, it’s much too soon for me to evaluate the issue but it’s not too soon to give my overall first impressions based on the things I’ve seen. There’s no question in my mind that Facebook does attract the …
A couple of years ago, I saw an interview with a single man and a single woman who had decided to have a child together but they didn’t want to enter into a conventional relationship. They weren’t attracted to each other, nor did they want to have sex with one another or marry each other. What they wanted was to have a child together by IVF, and be totally committed to the child rather than being committed to one another. …
Stress was not a term we heard about in my day. We all had things we had to deal with but stress was not something people talked about or even acknowledged. We didn’t have the kinds of tests we have today to find out if there was anything physically wrong with a person, and very little was known about emotions being connected to illness. When people got sick and doctors couldn’t figure out what was wrong, they called it psychosomatic …
If you ask someone why they chose their career, more often than not you get to hear a variety of reasons, but very few of them tell you that they entered their career because they loved it. And, if you ask them, years later, why they stay in their career if they don’t love it, you will find very few of them who tell you that they grew to love it. Although we’d like to believe otherwise, most of our …
“For the first time ever, according to legal experts focused on the subject, a prosecutor who deliberately sent an innocent man to prison by withholding evidence is himself going to be jailed. The case surrounds Michael Morton, a Texas man convicted in 1987 of murdering his wife, and former prosecutor Ken Anderson, the state official responsible for Morton spending 25 years in prison. Anderson withheld crucial evidence in the case as district attorney that could have cleared Morton of the …