John and Julie Gottman are renowned relationship psychologists. They’ve been doing focused work with couples for decades. They’ve become so observant and attuned to the nuances between couples that they can predict, with a 97 or 98 percent accuracy rate, after watching a couple chat about something mundane for fifteen minutes if their relationship will endure.

Within his research, Gottman has come to find that about 69 percent of the problems in your relationship are unsolvable.

Yes, that’s right. A majority of current challenges in your relationship will still be there five, ten, fifteen years from now.

These can be…

Vulnerability is a crucial component of getting close to another person. We must reveal parts of ourselves to others, personal aspects, in order to connect deeply with and form meaningful, honest, heartfelt relationships. You cannot really have deep connections with others unless you do. Otherwise, your relationships will remain more surface-y.

Yet, some people confuse emotional dumping with emotional vulnerability.

They mistake revealing all (or most) of themselves quickly to another person as a connection. This is when things shift into emotional dumping and, unfortunately, is likely to repel a lot of emotionally healthy people.

A lot of us will…

Travel need not be hundreds of miles from your home, nor must it be out of the country, in order to result in emotional riches. Most travel experiences can result in very worthwhile experiences and emotions, whether to somewhere nearby or somewhere far-flung.

(Though I would recommend that everyone travel to an entirely different country, at least a few times, if able, for the cultural experience this offers. Heck, even more so, I’d recommend living in another country for at least a year. It’s a character-changing and life-altering experience).

Here are the ways in which travel enriches and even changes…

You Aren’t Truly Interested In Them

When we are genuinely curious about and deeply interested in getting to know the person we are talking with, we don’t need to mine our mind to come up with random questions to ask, searching for something, anything.

Instead, our questions come naturally, because we are listening carefully, and we hear our conversational partner say things about which we actually want to remark, “tell me more.”

Our interest is genuinely piqued, because we are actually listening and thus, hear things that prompt it.

So, if you’re spending time with someone and feel it’s dull, though believe that you are interested…

I came across a jarring graph recently in an article by Andy Hunter (who I credit more fully at the end of this article) that shows a projection of Amazon’s hold over the book sale industry. It’s not looking good.

Within just the next four years, it is projected that Amazon.com will have roughly an 80 percent command over the book market.

This is a terrible thing for several reasons, and it’s something that will change our culture at large in significant ways.

Authors and Bookstores Lose Money

Why does Amazon sell books at prices so low? Cheap books devalue books to drive competitors out…

#1- Books That Challenge and Upset the Status Quo Are Often Those That Evoke Necessary Change

Consider the novels: Lolita, Lady Chatterley’s Lover, Forever by Judy Blume, Ulysses, The Color Purple, The Catcher in the Rye, The Adventures of Huck Finn, Brave New World, Of Mice and Men, Lord of the Flies, American Psycho, The Perks of Being a Wallflower, and 50 Shades of Gray, to name a few.

All of these were considered highly controversial, offensive, obscene, or upsetting in some way.

All of them have become major hits, some of them even classics, many of which are considered important and awesome literature.

The Jungle by Upton Sinclair evoked public outcry over food sanitation.

1984…

Why have we come to decide that anything which offends or upsets us must suddenly be turned away from, blocked, or even erased altogether?

If this were to happen, our seemingly wildest wishes of shutting out and canceling anything that upsets us, what kind of society and world might this create?

Cancel culture is grasping for what we believe is “safety”, as we are sacrificing resilience, wisdom, and the opportunity to learn.

In Vermont at Middlebury College, Charles Murray, a libertarian scholar, was invited by a student group to speak about his 2012 book, Coming Apart. His book discusses the…

• When at home, you always grab your phone on your way to the toilet to bring it in there with you
• You don’t (aka, can’t) go more than an hour or two without “checking” it
• Much of the time, when you are out and about moving through the world, you are staring down at your phone clutched in hand (maybe scrolling, texting, etc)
• Your phone is the first thing you grab and look at upon waking up, and it’s the last thing you look at before going to bed (Exception: you are a surgeon or ER doctor or something along…