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Growth and Positive Mental Attitude

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In our daily interaction with ourselves and the world, we deal with multiple factors that will impact the way we look at ourselves and the capacity we have to keep moving forward in life despite of possible drawbacks. These drawbacks are entirely subjective and they don't necessarily mean anything, unless we label them being positive or negative. For example, do we tend to see the glass as half empty or half full? Our answer to this question relates directly to the concept of positive thinking and whether we have a positive or negative outlook in life. In addition, our fixed beliefs about us and the amount of energy we give to negative or positive thoughts will either hold us back or push us to new heights respectively. Being aware of our thoughts plays an important role in our positive psychology, which is a sub-field of psychology devoted to the study of what makes people happy and fulfilled. (Ref -  https://www.jstor.org/stable/27858244?seq=1 ) Growth, Positive Mental Attitude, ...
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Uncertainty and The Art of not Knowing

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Because we - humans -  are hard-wired to prefer certainty to uncertainty, we experience this ambiguity as highly uncomfortable, even distressing. Indeed, the things we care about the most are often ambiguous and unknowable - right?. And considering that the future is uncertain and that being faced with the unknown is uncomfortable, we tend to develop strategies to avoid or reduce the uncertainty, the not knowing what's going to happen. These may work in the short term, but not forever and at some point - as the stock market - we eventually crash. When intolerance to uncertainty becomes the rule, however, striving to eliminate it altogether paradoxically contributes to increased anxiety and suffering, and ultimately impedes our ability to reach our goals (Ref -  https://link.springer.com/article/10.1023/A:1005553414688 ).  Definition -  https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/uncertainty How do we relate to uncertainty and not knowing? Do we often focus on mec...
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A Simple Truth - Discrimination and Education.

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Have you been in a situation in your life where you confronted or failed to confront a person who you thought was expressing prejudice or discriminating someone else? If you did, why did you confront that person? What made you want to move forward with this option? Or, if you didn't how not doing it made you feel about it?  Let's face it, we know that social categorization is kind of a basic part of us - humans. Of course this intrinsic nature of ours (taught - find ref -  https://sites.psu.edu/aspsy/2015/04/05/prejudice-and-discrimination-is-learned/ ) drive us to conclusions about others very quickly. The silent discrimination engine may drive us to prefer to socialize with people who share our race or ethnicity, but without particularly disliking the others groups. But, the very nature of this, may lead us to prejudice and discrimination and it may even do so without our awareness.  The question of love and compassion comes to my mind. If we were able to truly lov...
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A Silent Symphony of Uncomfortable Events

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Our lives are often overshadowed by terrorism, nuclear weapons, and cyber-crime at all times - not to mention the changes to earth and humans conditions every day, but I would like to suggest that pandemics may actually be a more existential threat to human civilization that any of the above categories. And most experts agree: "We’re woefully unprepared, and crucial funding for basic research, foreign aid, and preparedness is on the chopping block." (CNBC). It seems that our busy world - full of expectations both corporate and personal interests - is moving in the wrong direction around the idea of COVID-19. We seemed to have lost interest in what a pandemic means for the world, countries, families, and individuals. Granted, we need to move forward with our daily lives and try to find some sort of numbing reason to pretend that things are OK, and they may be so, but not according to the data presented by the W.H.O. and other "experts" in the field.  https://www.who....
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