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Showing posts from December, 2017

What I See Friends As: F-R-I-E-N-D-S

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How to Build Real Friendships That Don’t Hold You Back: A No-Nonsense Guide We all know friends are important. But for a lot of us, friendship just… happens. We meet people at work or school, we hang out, and if we click, we become friends. It’s pretty random. Sometimes it works out great. Other times, we end up with friends who drain our energy, pull us into drama, or slowly nudge us away from the person we want to be. What if we stopped leaving our friendships to chance? What if we started being more intentional about who we let into our inner circle? That’s what this  F-R-I-E-N-D-S  acronym is all about. It’s a step-by-step way of thinking about how to find, start, and keep good, solid friendships, the kind that help you become a better person, not hold you back. It’s built on one big idea:  You are in charge of your own life.  That means you get to set the pace for your relationships and make sure they line up with what you believe in and where you’re trying...

Falling in Love: The Illusion of Intimacy

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Falling in love is one of life’s most intense and captivating experiences. At first, it gives us the illusion that we share a perfect, intimate relationship, a feeling that we truly belong to each other. In this state, it seems as though the challenges of life can be conquered together, and every desire is directed toward making our partner happy. One young man described his feelings for his fiancĂ©e: “I can’t conceive of doing anything to hurt her. My only desire is to make her happy. I would do anything for her.” This sense of obsession creates a powerful but often misleading illusion. We feel that our egocentric tendencies have disappeared, replaced by a selfless devotion reminiscent of Mother Teresa. The freedom with which we give comes from the sincere belief that our lover reciprocates these feelings. We assume they are equally committed to meeting our needs and would never intentionally hurt us. In these early stages, the world seems to shrink into a private universe shared by t...

Which Subject Best Explains a Kiss?

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A kiss is one of those universal languages that every culture, every generation, and every person understands in their own way. But if you ask different school subjects to define it, each will give you a playful answer. Let’s take a little journey through the classroom of life and see which one truly captures the magic of a kiss. Mathematics says a kiss is the shortest distance between two lips. Neat, precise, and calculated, math reduces the mystery of love to a formula. It’s cute, yes, but love has never really been about perfect equations. Biology jumps in and calls a kiss the exchange of germs from one mouth to another. Technically, this is true—millions of bacteria do pass between two people when they kiss. Yet, describing a kiss this way makes it sound more like a science experiment than a tender moment. Chemistry takes a romantic yet scientific view: a kiss is the process of testing the pH of the lips. But beyond the humor, this subject digs deeper. Kisses actually do spa...