psychology

Dabrowski argued that fear and anxiety and sadness are not necessarily always undesirable or unhelpful states of mind; rather, they are often representative of the necessary pain of psychological growth.

Remember, the rule of thumb is simple when making friends: be socially optimistic. Assume other people will like you and they probably will.

n a less tragic setting, this dynamic is also why marketers often use advertisements featuring (mostly fake) interviews with “regular people on the street” who endorse a product. “Ordinary people” comprise the largest potential market for any product, and they value an endorsement by a person who seems similar to themselves.

To avoid falling for

We now know that dopamine is actually the brain’s way of encouraging us to act—meaning the chemical doesn’t show up after we take a risk, to reward our risk-taking. Rather it arrives right before we take that risk, to encourage our risk-taking. In other words, dopamine is the biological basis of exploration and innovation.

Game theory can explain these outcomes. While the best outcome for everyone would be to cool the spiral, for any individual actor in the game the personal best outcome is to demand a price rise as the environment allows them to make this demand, and this leaves everyone worse off in the end.

A helpful exercise is to describe the situation from the beginning, either out loud or in writing, as if to a stranger who isn’t aware of any of the specifics—much like Holmes talks his theories through out loud to Watson. When Holmes states his observations in this way, gaps and inconsistencies that weren’t apparent before come to the surface.

We can’t be expected to recognize and analyze all the aspects of each person, event, and situation we encounter in even one day. We haven’t the time, energy, or capacity for it. Instead, we must often use our stereotypes, our rules of thumb, to classify things according to a few key features and then respond without thinking when one or another of

Attention is a limited resource. Paying attention to one thing necessarily comes at the expense of another.

Learning with a purpose increases your attention, comprehension, and retention; it also helps organize your thoughts.