Life tends to take on reflective aspects as the years pass. During the latter chapters of our Life Journey, pondering what aspects of my life I'm most proud of can be valuable for introspective learning and sharing with others.  Like writing a personal eulogy, this introspective process can provide challenges to consider the specific choices for the life we have chosen to lead. This is especially the case if we have been blessed to live for many decades.  For example, do I choose to focus...

 Two words from the field of psychology frequently make it into our daily dialogues. We use the words 'introvert' and 'extrovert' as labels to quickly convey our perceptions of how we see ourselves.  Like many labels we use in our language, these two words tend to be verbal shorthand in communicating quickly and efficiently a part of who we are.   Counselors are often interested in hearing from clients the processes they used in determining the descriptive labels one has chosen.  This...

With so many options available on how we see the world,, many of us tend to gravitate toward 'shortcuts in how we decide what is real or unreal, true or not true, good or bad, right or wrong, etc. Habituation and binary viewpoints from childhood allow us to more quickly make our personal choices without investing time and energy into individual evaluations. During the movies of my youth, it did not take long to learn that in western movies the 'good guys' were the ones who wore white hats....

 The physical and emotional currency of time is one significant characteristic that tends to equalize human beings. Each of us is given the gift of 24 hours, 1440 minutes or 86,400 seconds each day to spend and invest in living our lives by the choices we make.   Unlike many other gifts, this specific gift requires us to spend and invest as it is received.  While there is no delay in using time currency, we can actively choose to spend this currency in a wide variety of ways.  With...

 We begin life as children being dependent on others to survive. With adulthood we achieve and maintain the status of being independent. Our society tends to expect us to continue thinking and behaving as independent and productive adults for as long as possible.  The longer one lives, the more likely we may realize that with aging we may be returning in some ways to the dependency needs of childhood when the presence and assistance of others were essential for our survival. The...

Teachers expect their students to listen. However, how are we as listeners to our students? Listening is an important skill for educators and it's a skill many of us struggle with. Join us as we discuss the impact of teachers who listen.  For Dr. Hughey's “Power For Positive Living” podcast & blog posts  visit PFPL.US

The phrase "I love you" contains some of the most powerful words in our language!   The varied choices we make in using "love" as a noun or verb affects our daily attitudes, beliefs, feelings and behaviors as well as our overall physical and emotional health.  We have the choice to focus more on the pronoun "I" or on "you" when using this sentence to find a successful balance between the two. Wellness Psychology also encourages us to learn more of the various choices you and I make to...

Life for most of us is a series of choices.  How do we choose to view what is happening now and select our attitudes/behaviors in preparing for the unknown future? Being a victim of some situation is probably a part of each life path.  We choose whether our skills of managing victimhood rise to the level of becoming a professional.  A portion of our future is often unknown.  Our personal power lies in the attitudes, values, beliefs and behaviors we choose to prepare ourselves for...

The frequent appearance of fatigue can be an alert that some system within us needs attention for some degree of healing.   Many of us recognize the appearance of physical fatigue and know of attitude and behavioral options to make changes.    The appearance of other system symptoms like psychological fatigue frequently leaves many without available pre-planned options.   Learning and preventively implementing information from a number of sources such as wellness psychology can be most...

Each generation receives input from previous generations on the important behaviors, values and beliefs that make our relationships and life journey have meaning. One recommendation from Ann Landers in a previous decade focuses on the important words to be used in relating to others. Wellness psychology also offers relationship guidelines to be considered and evaluated for use in one's life journey.  --- Send in a voice message:...

 Active and passive acts of suicide continue to be a behavioral option for many who struggle with the hurts and pains of their life issues. Active suicide can offer the appeal of being a quick and spontaneous decision to end the inner pain of life circumstances. For others, reaching this same decision can take more passive and indirect forms evolving over many days, weeks or months. The processes of considering and eventually reaching an active or passive suicide decision by others can often...

One of the key foundations of healthy relationships is when the participants can really listen, hear and understand what is being said by each whether there is agreement or a degree of difference.   Being quiet while another speaks physically and emotionally can be a start.   Active listening takes effort and offers understanding of self and others with whom we have built relationships. --- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/power-for-positive/message

Whether we choose an active or passive pattern in spending our time currency, the connection and disconnection choices we make with our human relationships tend to strongly affect our physical and emotional health.   Wellness psychology encourages us to better understand our daily personal time currency expenditures with an active introspective evaluation of our choices to connect and/or disconnect with the persons in our various relationships.  --- Send in a voice message:...

Our interactions with others in our society take many forms.   When society embraces polarization of absolutes like "either/or" or "winner/loser" as a valued behavior, we are likely to find ourselves with many invitations to participate in various types of life drama frequently known as culture wars. Since the various culture war dynamics can be important to many family/friends with whom we relate, it can be significant for our emotional health to actively choose how and to what degree we...

Two topics seem to be most difficult for many in our society:  the wealth we have accumulated on our life journey and the various ways of confronting and managing the last days of our life chapter.   Some individuals seem to determine the value of their life journey by the amount of wealth they have accumulated.   Many other factors such as generosity and kindness in sharing may take a secondary role.   The arrival of death gives each of us the opportunity to confront our beliefs and...

Research indicates that most people tend to accept and agree with new people and information when they are similar to what we have recorded as being positive on mental 'tapes' from our previous experiences.    People or information that do not 'fit' into our previous experiences tend to be viewed with some degree of apprehension or suspicion.   This behavior makes it most difficult for us to be truly "open-minded" when faced with new/different people or situations.    Wellness...

People like to be with people they perceive as being similar to themselves in beliefs, values and behaviors.Are we being dishonest when we choose not to disclose certain information about ourselves to our family and friends so as to maintain personal privacy?Can we understand and accept what others need to know about us within an honest relationship?  Can too much shared information be harmful to our relationships?  Can we respect the boundaries others choose for themselves?We tend to be...

One of the most significant decisions that each of us makes during our life journey is how and to what degree we want to share our inner self with individuals with whom we have created various types of relationships.   Humans do choose many types of personal secrets which can vary throughout our life journey.  The individual criteria you and I select for being open and/or closed to others with various aspects of our emotional nudity tends to be a significant factor for our facade that we...

One of the major choices we each make in developing positive mental health for ourselves is discovering various ways to understand and assign responsibility for various mental blame games.   When we decide to assign some degree of blame for our thoughts, feelings and behaviors we can choose to place responsibility for them entirely on ourselves or on some continuum to the other extreme of placing blame entirely on other people and situations.   Reality indicates that most of the...

Friend Print processes were developed for those persons who seek information to better answer the introspective question of "Who Am I?".  Friend Prints are structured to better understand the value of psychological exercising in developing and maintaining ones personal mental health.   Using an initial list of five persons that a listener calls friend,  one is encouraged to create their own Friend Print beginning with 25+ categories of description. Having this completed Friend Print allows...

Seeking and understanding our individual friendship circles can be a powerful contributor to our personal mental health system. One analogy which can be useful is comparing our behavior in a book store with what one might do in  their individual Friend Store whether shopping for a book or a friend.   Another possibility to consider is what we each write on our personal billboard as we offer ourselves to others as bringing value into a friendship.   --- Send in a voice message:...

If we are fortunate with our friendships we encourage ourselves and others to adapt to the life changes that are taking place within ourselves and others.  Much of our emotional life is finding healthy ways to handle the frequent changes that we and others make with our daily choices.  Making healthy changes in self tends to be one of the most difficult challenges we humans have.   Some may choose to change their friends or seek new friends as our life path varies.    We can build...

As humans we tend to believe that how we see the choices of living and relating to other people tend to be correct and good.   Persons who have a different viewpoint from ours may be seen as misinformed, untruthful or ignorant.   We may be called to correct the errors of other viewpoints with our family and friends by imposing our specific beliefs and values.  We can easily believe that we are helping another person when we impose the opportunity to see 'the truth' as we see it.   ---...

Wellness Psychology's foundation of personal power is that each of us has many individual life choices.  In so many ways the type of life path we choose for ourselves is a result of the internal and external relationship choices we make.  Structuring the personal 'spices' we bring into our life both internally and externally can allow better understanding of our relations with self and others. Comparing and contrasting our relationship choices with the daily spices we make for food...