What Franklin is describing is something that social psychologists would stumble upon centuries later: the finding that when we do something nice for someone we tend to like that person even more afterward—and this may lead to another favor down the line. This phenomenon is called “the Ben Franklin effect.”

This gives millions of young people unfettered access to the internet—and to comparisons and distractions and porn and online shopping and hate speech and fake news and the list goes on—with little information about, or maybe even regard for, the consequences. No one really knows what the effects of all this will be. As the first generations of dig

We spent even more sessions helping her shift from being wanted to wanting. Cathy had never thought about what she wanted or needed in a partner. She never thought she could do the wanting.

Literally, confidence means “with trust.” Confidence is trusting yourself to get the job done—whether that job is public speaking or sales or teaching or being an assistant—and that trust only comes from having gotten the job done many times before. As was the case for every other twentysomething I’d worked with, Danielle’s confidence on the job co

The frontal lobe is where we move beyond the futile search for black-and-white solutions as we learn to tolerate—and act on—shades of gray.

say it again: The best time to work on your marriage is before you have one, so maybe the best time to talk about some of these issues is when they do not yet loom so large.

“I want to be reaching my potential.”

What I most notice about spending less time on social media is that I finally get to think my own thoughts.

Identity capital is our stock of personal assets. It is how we add value to who we are, and it is what we have to show for how we have spent our time. These are the investments we make in ourselves, or the things we do well enough or long enough that they become a part of who we are.