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Some new research that was just published suggests that there may be a connection between the size of a certain part of our brain and our likelihood of conforming to social pressures.

Study leader Professor Chris Frith says: “The ability to adapt to others and align ourselves with them is an important social skill. However, at what level is this skill implemented in the brain? At a software (information processing) or hardware (structural) level? Our results show that social ...

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22
FEB

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As some of you know, I spent a large part of my childhood in Santa Cruz – in many ways, I still consider it home, even though I’ve lived in Sacramento far longer than I lived in SC. When I think back to my first week of college in New England, all I remember is an endless stream of other freshman asking me “do you surf?” after learning where I was from. While I never did take up surfing, I ...

When people ask me what I do for a living, I generally try and keep it simple: “I help people with their relationship problems.” That work takes a number of different forms – sometimes, it means helping a couple put their relationship back together when it’s been damaged. Or, I may be working with someone who wants to learn how to change the things they are doing that keep them from having fulfilling relationships and how their past experience influences ...

If you follow me on Facebook or Twitter or have looked at the Location page on my website recently, you already know this news item: I’m moving my office! Effective 1/30/12, my office will move to 1006 4th Street, Suite 302, in the old California Fruit Building in downtown Sacramento. It turns out that this a building with some interesting history attached to it – it is the oldest reinforced concrete ‘high rise’ west of the Mississippi, and at ...

Things change. Fast. It’s easy to forget that when we’re in the midst of a rough week at work, a fight with our spouse, or a child’s tantrum, but it’s true. As more years add up in the rear-view mirror of my life, the impermanence of everything in our world gets more and more airtime in my mind. For me, it can be easy to slip into a state of sadness about this when I realize how fleeting some of ...

Who doesn’t like Pixar? (Actually, I do know one person who doesn’t, but it seems like just about everyone is a fan, with good reason.) How is it that a movie studio has been able to have such a run of critical and commercial successes?

Well, it’s built into their culture – and it turns out that they take a very different approach to mistakes than many of us. Rather than try to avoid mistakes, cover them up, or ...

Big Think is a great site for learning more about different ideas and some of the new knowledge we’re developing in different areas, I enjoy it a lot.

Recently, they posted this article about a new book on decision making from a Nobel Prize-winning Psychologist, Daniel Kahneman, “Thinking Fast & Slow“.

Essentially, it explores our two different mental systems – “fast thinking” and “slow thinking”.

“According to Kahneman, there are very few circumstances in which system ...

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14
DEC

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We live in a fast-paced world where just about everyone seems to be concerned about how to get more done in less time. While there are a lot of great ways to be more efficient, shortcutting your decision making process is not one of them. (Shrinking your to-do list, on the other hand, is a great tool, but that’s a subject for another post.)

It can be tempting to rush the decision-making process, but it’s often a bad deal in the ...

When I made the decision to become a parent, I did it with a clear awareness that one of my ‘jobs’  as a parent would be that of teacher. While my parents had many strengths, teaching, especially for my father, was not one of them. From an early age, I was often self-taught, and that has created some challenges and frustrations for me in adulthood. As a result of this, I have been particularly determined that my daughter gets a ...

Ran across this article yesterday, important information for those of you with young children.  The main point of the article:

In a study published in the November issue of the Journal of Adolescent Health, nearly 40 percent of young adults who said they had tried suicide said that they made their first attempt before entering high school.

The researchers also found that suicide attempts during childhood and adolescence were linked to higher scores of depression at the time of the attempts…

It’s ...