June 10, 2025- It always amazes me how bad memories can cloud the life of a person who actually has a lot of happy and good memories and positive things going on right now that will create more good memories. There is a belief this is because human beings needed in times past to stay away from dangers we no longer experience in our lives on a daily basis. A bad memory could help the person stay away from danger if in the past a particular food might have poisoned them. It also could help you stay away from dangerous persons, dangerous animals, or anything in the environment that could potentially be dangerous to a person. This does not mean that happy experiences are not things we love to think about and enjoy. No, that is not my point at all. The point is if a person honestly analyzes what they think about, they will admit they often think too much about times they have failed or did things they wish they had not done. While negative thinking may have been important in times past when matters of life and death could depend on using bad experiences from the past to effectively deal with the same potential problem in the present, such negativity is no longer necessary and something to try to overcome and not be allowed to darken your life in ways that you now cannot enjoy it. I can verify many persons I have worked with in my private practice as a psychologist or have known as I have walked the road of life have been consumed by fear, depression and high anxiety as they worry about the past and have problems dealing in the present because of it. To overcome the power of negative thinking resulting from overthinking on bad memories, it is important to put things in perspective by recognizing too much focusing on them can lead to high levels of anxiety and depression. You need to mindfully choose not to do this and focus on positive thinking and replacing negative thoughts with positive ones. As easy as this sounds, it is amazing how many people have problems replacing negative thoughts with positive ones. I actually believe it is the most important thing one can do when negativity is overwhelming them and they have problems seeing anything positive. It is important to make a mindful effort to think about positive experiences and keep them in your mind with the goal of having them happen again and not allowing negative thoughts to destroy the happiness that can come from remembering and ruminating on them. The saber toothed tiger is not going to eat you! So quit worrying about it and any other unreasonable things. A positive life with past and ongoing memory making is yours for the taking!

June 3, 2025- Do you find unless you are very intentional about it that you tend to forget so much of what you thought you had learned in the past week. Research shows that persons lose up to 90% of new information they are learning within a week. If you are honest, you will admit this has happened to you probably many times. A person can even see a movie that they enjoy and within a week or so forget a lot of the things that they saw and maybe even the name of it. This easily occurs in this technological age because there is so much information bombarding us at all times that we can find ourselves reading ,seeing or hearing seemingly countless different things in a very brief period of time . Unfortunately, because this is not how the brain is geared to work and for us to learn, very often very little is learned from information coming in so quickly, and not really being internalized. I might add it is not that a person is supposed to remember everything they encounter whether of major interest or not. That would be unreasonable as a person would be overwhelmed with information. The following are some basic suggestions on what to do with information you want to maintain and use in your life: 1. Control the input you receive 2. Write down in your own words the basic core of information of something that you heard, read or saw that you can then go back and review. The fact you have spent the time to review the information taken in and you now are trying to put in writing what you experienced, gives you a step up on the person who just hears something and then later cannot effectively remember what it was, and maybe not even remember it at all. 3. Utilize technology, including artificial intelligence, to arm you with a ton of information from which you can determine what is the most relevant and what you will focus on and make an intention to learn. This is important in school or in a job requiring new learning, whereby you use the information presented, but very specifically choose things that are of interest and value to you and go over them in your mind to understand what they say and to help you be able to utilize them. 4.Focus on what you have learned and determine what is valuable to you through a combination of thinking about it, talking about it and writing down the key points that you pick up in your mind. This will greatly help you to remember things that are important to you and necessary for you to learn. 5.Repetition is something that has been known about for centuries as something critical if someone wants to learn something. A most simple example is with language, For example, one needs to regularly say words and phrases to the point in the language being learned they become so natural to them that they can effectively communicate in another language. .

May 28, 2025- It is critical that parents do whatever they can to allow their children to find their success in life. Even with the best intentions, parents run the risk of pushing their children to achieve things they feel are critical but not necessarily what would be critical to them. I believe it is safe to say we have all talked to parents who look back at how they raised their children and wish they had done things very differently. It is not that persons can go back and redo things, but they can use what they have learned to be helpful as they share their insights with children, friends and acquaintances as they raise their children. All of us are different and it is important to know that children come through us and not to us. What I mean by this is that the role of a parent is to teach morality and also help develop the particular skills and interests their children have. They may be different from ours and we need to accept that. When children are strictly pushed to achieve and behave in the way their parents determine, this can cause anxiety, depression, substance abuse, low self-esteem, parent/child alienation , delinquency, difficulties maintaining relationships, and either being submissive or rebellious to their parents. My point here is not to say that parents do not need to give direction and encourage children to do things that would help them succeed in life. No, my point is for parents to allow their children to become who they want to be and find their success. For a simple example,a parent may be a mathematician and would like their child to be a mathematician. The child may have no interest in mathematics and may desire to be a high school teacher or whatever. In a situation like this, it is important we not push our child to be a mathematician. They might become a good one, but might hate the work and have mental health issues in the future because of it. It also is amazing how many parents are obsessed with their child being number one academically or in sports or both. Their self worth is directly related to the success of their children. This is very unfortunate unless the parents and children have the same goals and the child has the ability and desire to accomplish them. This seems simple enough, but it is amazing how many parents cause a lot of emotional havoc for themselves and their children by either trying to live their lives through their children or pushing them to behave in a particular way that they feel they must. Good advice for parenting with children is to always try to be positive and not push their children in ways that can overwhelm them, and cause them to feel like failures if they do not meet the standard presented to them by their parents. Positive things to do as parents to help their children would include being supportive when their children are attempting to do good things, focus on the process of activities rather than just the end result,help our children realize that not always succeeding is part of the process of being successful, focus on the child being motivated from within and not just externally by their parents or other persons, have open communication and willingness to accept different views, and never forget that as you are a person so are your children. This can emotionally allow you to get some distance from simply wanting the children to be succeeding in a way that is important to you as opposed to what is important to them in finding their success. Being a successful plumber or attorney can be a very worthwhile goal versus being the largest plumbing company or highest paid attorney in the country. I personally have seen children berated by parents for not functioning as they desire them to function in sports and academics while in both areas they were being successful and satisfied. Finally, my point is not for parents to discourage their children from trying to do their best, but rather to accept that millions of persons are leading successful, fulfilling, and happy lives without feeling the need to be number one and always competing against everyone. This has occurred because parents have allowed their children to find their success.