Personal Growth

The roots of the word “Christmas” involve two kinds of liberation (of and from the masses).

Create more effective resolutions by assessing places in your life for growth while not striving to put unwieldy expectation upon yourself. 

Educators hold up scientists like Neil deGrasse Tyson and Marie Curie as heroes in order to encourage minorities to pursue studies in STEM fields. But portraying these figures as larger-than-life may intimidate students.

A propensity to worry indicates a strong ability to consider the past and future in precise detail, perhaps explaining why worriers also tend to be more intelligent.

A peek into the archives at the New York Public Library reveals the many (often zany) search queries lobbed at librarians in the pre-internet age.

American-born Buddhist monk Hwansan Sunim has written a series of articles with instructions and advice on how to meditate in various everyday postures and positions.

The sole purpose of a résumé or CV is to sell one’s expertise to a hiring manager. Losing track of this aim will inevitably lead to a lackluster résumé.

The revelation that Santa Claus is more an idea than a man can be a major turning point in a child’s life. Is he a “training-wheels Jesus” or a way to introduce children to cynical disillusionment?

Today’s featured Big Think interview is about hacking… but probably not the sort of hacking you’d expect. Learning expert Elliott Masie explains how Hackathons can help teams develop creative solutions.

Knowing what is acceptable to say creates predictability, and predictability frees group members from worry of possibly offending those around them.

Gross abundance of money and power, or the extreme lack of both, lie at the root of many mental disorders, according to a group of researchers at the University of California, Berkeley. 

Couples therapy is often a last-ditch attempt to save a faltering relationship. Navigating the potential obstacles that arise in therapy can be the difference between “let’s stay together” and “let’s break up.”

Friendly people tend to lead happier lives because they dwell more on positive experiences, defying the strong negativity bias found in humans.

Keeping your home and workplace in order can have a huge impact on your ability to work and your capacity for feeling calm and productive. Key to organizing clutter is finding a strategy for tidiness that fits your personal style.

You, at this precise moment, are doing at least two things that show… “It is in our first nature to need second natures.” These second natures give us access to a behavioral toolkit that is nowhere in our genes. 

How parents talk to their children about sex helps them understand what is acceptable and unacceptable behavior. In the United States, that conversation, about the, um, birds, and the, um, bees, is famously awkward.

It’s tough to take criticism, but it’s sometimes even harder to get it. However, there are a few tips for how to get the most out of your next performance review and set goals for 2015 based on honest feedback.

The ping of an email notification sounds and we jump to read it, dropping what we’re doing–disrupting our workflow. It’s stressing us out, according to a recent study.

Numerous studies have determined that the open office, while creating a sense of camaraderie among employees, is harmful in nearly every other respect.

Losing your temper will almost always make a bad situation worse. The key to keeping your cool during most frustrating times is to rely on acts of empathy, concision, clarity, and good organization.

Any attempt at self-improvement requires the establishment of sets of goals. Thorough organization of thoughts and intention is the cultivating soil out of which the best version of one’s self grows.

As a country, we find ourselves promoting marriage as an unequivocal social good yet failing to provide to the conditions under which marriage can thrive.

We all have flaws, but communicating them to your partner can be difficult–perhaps more so than hearing about your own. But it’s important to take and receive these criticisms with an open mind–be accountable for your imperfections.

Emerging marijuana conglomerates will use the same tactics as Big Tobacco to sell addictive substances to any market it can, including minors, argues former Rhode Island Congressman Patrick Kennedy.

Getting hired is only the first step. Achieving lasting success in your new position requires a lot of energy and effort in the first few weeks.

When it comes to making financial gain, people would sooner inflict a moderate amount of pain on themselves than on others.

To be a more virtuous person, surround yourself with emblems of higher moral standards.

The freedom associated with monetary gain is offset by other demands that the educated bear disproportionately: demanding professional lives, long work hours, and family matters.

We often can’t rely on ourselves to act rationally (or prudently). We know this, but influential social science models have a bad habit of ignoring it. We evolved to frequently act without “deciding.” We are habit-formers and habit-farmers.

Because the tone of a conversation affects how we react, and because physical cues help set tone, emoticons are much more than cute or trite.