| Some personal and shared stuff | Monday, 6 January 2025 - 21:08 |
There’s almost no end to popular sayings and advice to live by. Often the most profound life truths are summed up in what most would consider mundane platitudes and clichés. Irrespective of the banality, these messages can teach us essential lessons to help us live more meaningful and fulfilling lives if we follow their wisdom. Here are 15 truths to help you live your best life yet.
Every day in June, the most popular wedding month of the year, about 13,000 American couples will say “I do,” committing to a lifelong relationship that will be full of friendship, joy, and love that will carry them forward to their final days on this earth.
Except, of course, it doesn’t work out that way for most people. The majority of marriages fail, either ending in divorce and separation or devolving into bitterness and dysfunction. Of all the people who get married, only three in ten remain in healthy, happy marriages, as psychologist Ty Tashiro points out in his book The Science of Happily Ever After, which was published earlier this year.
Social scientists first started studying marriages by observing them in action in the 1970s in response to a crisis: Married couples were divorcing at unprecedented rates. Worried about the impact these divorces would have on the children of the broken marriages, psychologists decided to cast their scientific net on couples, bringing them into the lab to observe them and determine what the ingredients of a healthy, lasting relationship were. Was each unhappy family unhappy in its own way, as Tolstoy claimed, or did the miserable marriages all share something toxic in common?
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(This article is part of our series on Mindset.)
You’re a good parent. You want to help your kids grow up to be happy and successful. So, when you notice them doing something right, you jump in with praise and encouragement.
“Good job!”
“That’s brilliant!”
“You’re awesome! Way to go!”
But is all that praise and encouragement doing what it’s supposed to? Is it sending the right message?
Turns out the answer is, yes and no.
You’ve got the first part right – as parents we are our children’s first and foremost cheerleaders. Our children need to hear encouragement from us to go on to have a healthy level of self-confidence and eventually a healthy self-esteem.
I’ve posted about the research behind happy families and solid marriages, but what does science say about good parenting skills?
Po Bronson and Ashley Merryman do an excellent job of rounding up the latest research in their book, NurtureShock: New Thinking About Children.
Here are my highlights:
