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The Best Articles in Psychology and Self Improvement

The Emotion Machine has 500+ articles on many topics related to psychology and self improvement. Here are the most popular articles we’ve published over the past 8 years.

Each section is separated into categories by: happiness, emotions, thinking, habits, goals, relationships, creativity, meditation, and society.

Check them out and get started on your self improvement journey!

Happiness

3 Sources of Happiness that Aren’t Tied to People or Stuff

Why It’s Worth It to Pay the Costs of Being Yourself

How Perfectionism Destroys Happiness

Reframing Your Dark Side: Embracing Your Shadow Is Key to Genuine Mental Health

5 Attitudes Wired in Happy and Successful Brains

Radical Acceptance of Life’s Never-Ending Bullshit

Happy With Less: Trying Living With One Less Desire

Unconscious Positivity: 5 Ways to Ingrain Happiness Into Your Way of Life

Emotions

The 4 Fundamental Pillars of Emotional Intelligence

How to Communicate Your Feelings Without Becoming an Emotional Manipulator

The Complete Guide to Stress

How to Create Psychological Distance Between You and Your Past

How to Completely Forgive Yourself

5 Signs You’re a Slave to Your Emotions

Question Your Feelings

7 Ways to Connect More With Your Emotional Self

How We Use Music to Manage Our Stress and Emotions

Thinking

Accepting Your Bias

How to Be a Skeptical Thinker About Facts and Statistics You Find on the Internet

Be Careful of What You Let Enter Your Mind

The Healthy Challenge of Explaining Your Beliefs

3 Types of Exaggerated Thinking That Create Unnecessary Drama

Rewriting the Story of Your Life: A Process of Self-Exploration Through Writing

Metaphors We Live By: How Metaphors Frame Our Experiences in Different Ways

The 20 Most Common Logical Fallacies We Fall Victim to Everyday

The Pragmatic Thinker: Keeping Our Beliefs Grounded in What Matters

The “Five Whys” Exercise: How to Recalibrate Yourself During Periods of Turbulence

Habits

Identify Your Habit Loops

The Power of Nudges: Insights on How to Influence Human Behavior

Creating Boundaries Between You and Your Bad Habits

The Power of a Checklist: How to Stay Disciplined and Avoid Stupid Mistakes

Organized Home, Organized Mind: Why a Tidying Marathon Can Change Your Life

Make a Complete List of Your Daily Routine

How to Maximize Your Willpower

Why You Should Believe in Hard Work Over Genes

The “Everything Counts” Mindset for Exercise

7 Simple Principles Behind a Good Night’s Sleep

Relationships

How to Become a Master of Nonverbal Communication

How to Defuse Heated Arguments Before They Spiral Out of Control

3 Reasons to Give People the Benefit of the Doubt

5 Improvisation Exercises for Improving Your Communication Skills

Good Manners in the 21st Century (And Why It’s So Hard to Be Nice in Today’s World)

9 Tips on How to Be Honest With Someone Without Being Negative

Body Language Is More Revealing Than Words: How to Read People More Clearly

How to Learn From Guilt and Improve Your Relationships

The “Over-Sharing” Epidemic: How the Internet Makes Us Devalue Our Private Lives

How to Build Thick Skin and Stop Being So Sensitive

Goals

Start Living More as Your Future Self

What Stands in the Way Becomes the Way

How to Overcome Your Fear of Success

How to Overcome Awkward Phases of Self Improvement

What Do You Live For? A 5 Minute Exercise to Discover Your Most Important Values

How to Stop Being Jealous of Other People’s Success

Systems vs. Goals: Why Sustainability Is More Important Than Temporary Success

Grit and the Need for Achievement

Creativity

How to Build a Creative Mind That Will Never Run Out of New Ideas

3 Paths Revolutionary Thinkers Take Before They Arrive at Insights

The Psychology Behind What Makes Ideas Popular

The 5 Key Stages of the Creative Process

How to Improve Your Intuition

Mnemonics: The Forgotten Art of Memory

Practice Improvisation to Become a Faster and More Creative Thinker

How to Develop Your Own Creativity in a World of Conformity

Curiosity and the Advantages of a Hungry Mind

Meditation

Breathing Meditation

3 Common Problems When First Starting Meditation

Urge Surfing: How to Overcome Addictive Behaviors

Open Mind Meditation

The Wisdom of Body Awareness

Beginner’s Mind: How to Look at Old Problems in New Ways

STOP Meditation: Daily Injections of Mindfulness

Naked Meditation

Society and Culture

How Culture Influences Our Minds in Profound Ways We Don’t Even Realize

Effective Altruism vs. Feel Good Altruism: How to Make a Bigger Difference in the World

The Origin of Us: Campfires As The Bedrock of Human Civilization

The “Taste Buds” That Shape Our Morality: Why We Have Different Beliefs in Politics, Religion, and Morality

Circles of Empathy: Why We Care About People To Different Degrees

What Great Apes Teach Us About Emotions, Morality, and Civilization

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“I loved him very much - more than I could trust myself to say - more than words had power to express.”

— Charlotte Brontë

Why do I cheat on my partner so easily in a dream?

Have you ever noticed in a dream you can cheat on your partner without having even a shadow of a doubt it’s the right decision? Well, it is definitely not your unfaithful nature; it is all about our brain’s workings, especially some parts of it which we are going to examine here.

The Frontal Cortex

The Frontal Cortex is located at the very front of the brain and is responsible for not only long-term planning, decision making, knowledge analysis and regulation of emotions, but also for social behavior control. This means that the frontal cortex prevents different types of inappropriate behavior, such as aggression, desires to steal, compulsivity and sexually assaultive behavior. As a result, damage to this lobe might cause, for example, a complete lack of interest in sex or, contrastively, more active sexual behavior. So why does this matter in terms of sleeping?

The Sleep Cycle

Our sleep cycle consists of two main stages: non-rapid eye movement (NREM) sleep and rapid eye movement (REM) sleep. During the latter stage, our body experiences temporal muscle paralysis and, more interestingly, — dreams (if you don’t have any brain damage that could lead to dream loss). The question about the purpose of dreams is still in dispute, but there is a clear answer at why they are ridiculously illogical sometimes:

during REM sleep, the frontal lobe is “turned-off” affecting our social behavior in a dream

There is also a range of research supporting this statement. For example, in one experiment, scientists activated the frontal lobe of the participants during REM sleep and noticed that such stimulation “induces self-reflective awareness in dreams”. In other words, you act more appropriately and logically as your frontal cortex is stimulated while sleeping:

Recent findings link fronto-temporal gamma electroencephalographic (EEG) activity to conscious awareness in dreams, but a causal relationship has not yet been established. We found that current stimulation in the lower gamma band during REM sleep influences ongoing brain activity and induces self-reflective awareness in dreams. Other stimulation frequencies were not effective, suggesting that higher order consciousness is indeed related to synchronous oscillations around 25 and 40 Hz.

Noticeable effects on dreams

As you can imagine, this temporal “shutdown” of the frontal cortex has a huge impact on our social behavior in a dream: from aggressive conversations to having sex with your partner’s best friend. Don’t feel guilty; it’s just your brain! What about moments when you act consciously in a dream and do things with full awareness of your actions?

Lucid Sleep

Lucid sleep is a sleep during which you are aware of dreaming while dreaming (apologies for the tautology). Recent studies suggest that this phenomenon occurs due to “increased brain activity over frontal regions during REM sleep”. However, other researchers analyze it through the states of consciousness theory. These two points of view are not interchangeable but complementary.

Now let’s look more closely at different states of consciousness:

- Primary states of consciousness — states in which dreams “are concerned with the immediate present, with only uncontrolled access to the past or the anticipated future”

- Secondary states of consciousness — states in which people are able to manipulate with “higher order cognitive functions such as self-reflective awareness, abstract thinking, volition and metacognition”. In the case of sleeping, this mode is “turned-on” after awaking

So, when both states coexist together, a person experiences a lucid dream. It is like being simultaneously asleep and awake! What is more, humans are most likely the only species able to experience such a thing.

Source: Anastasiia (Medium). Image: Katherine Streeter for NPR.

Greetings for the day

If you wish to know the divine, feel the wind on your face and the warm sun on your back.

Wish you good health and take care

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How to get the most out of life

1. See each day as a fresh start and a new beginning.

2. Don’t be a copy of anybody else – enjoy discovering and being your true self.

3. Be proactive, take control and look for opportunities. You’ve only got one life so make sure you stay in control.

4. Don’t focus on the obstacles or things you cannot change. Just ask yourself “What next? or else “What can I do instead?”

5. Appreciate your limits and then set clear boundaries. You need to care for yourself to be the best “you” you can be.

6. Decide on your values and what matters most to you. Then live in a way that’s consistent with those values.

7. Don’t put life on hold as the months turn into years … and there’s always the chance that some important doors will close.

8. Set goals for yourself – then plan the steps to take you there.

9. Learn from other people that you value as role models – but ignore the naysayers and the hypercritical.

10. Let go of the past, and old hurts and grievances. Don’t be afraid to ask for help, or to see a counsellor.

5 Helpful Self Care Tips for Empaths

A person who is an empath is a rarity among our population: only about 25% of the human population are empaths. The difference between a person having empathy and an empath is that while it’s normal to have the ability of empathizing with others, empaths feel on a much deeper emotional and spiritual level. They are very sensitive to other people’s emotional energies, and can easily sense and take on another’s vibes, positive and negative. For example, if we see another person cry, we feel the urge to cry too. If our friend is really excited about something, we start to feel just as excited. If someone around us is spreading negativity, it can end up making us feel sick.

Science researchers have discovered what’s called “mirror neurons” which are a specialized group of brain cells that are responsible for compassion. Empaths are believed to have hyper-responsive mirror neurons, which means we can mirror others’ emotions easily and instantly.

Since empaths feel on such an intense level, sometimes this can feel like a disadvantage. The place we live, the company we keep, observations of the world around us, and life’s inevitable trials and tribulations can really take a toll on an empath. Empaths are very easily stressed and overwhelmed, so it’s especially important for us to practice self care on a regular basis. Here are some great self care techniques that can help empaths keep stability in their mental, emotional, and spiritual state. These tips are also helpful for people with anxiety disorder.

1. Aromatherapy

Aromatherapy is an excellent form of self-care for empathetic people. We tend to be sensitive and appreciative of pleasant  aromatic scents such as lavender, mint, hibiscus, lemongrass, florals, or exotic fruity aromas…

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Q: WhatCanUDo?

A: Do What U can!