Sublime

From his walled garden cut off from the city, Epicurus introduced us to the revelatory notion that to become happier, we need to reassess our attachments to things in the world. We need to feel differently about things that cause (or have the potential to cause) anxiety. We wish to live with as little pain and worry as possible. Epicurus has, in hi

Operating under an illness model of care doesn’t just carry powerful implications for the way we conceptualize perfectionism, it impacts the way we conceptualize every aspect of mental health. The slightest pang of sadness, a drizzle of frustration—we register any decline in positive emotion with an assumption of pathology. It’s a cultural tic. The

Your life is finite, and you should make your art. Things will get in the way and you should still make your art. Return to your art, over and over again. You will find clarity and answers as you feed this vital part of yourself. As you build and maintain a consistent practice, you will find the other parts of living a modern life seem more managea

L’écartement des plaisirs comme des biens, la volonté de vivre en communauté et de participer au « soin de l’être » font émerger un véritable mode de vie des Thérapeutes, dont l’essence sera de se donner une existence complète 30

Many perfectionists are pushed into therapy by family and friends to address the problems of anger and hypercriticism and to work on their control tendencies and their insistence on being right.

The healthy ego—what Freud called “a coherent organization of mental processes”—is the part of us that can observe self, situations, and persons; assess them; and…

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Wanting to outperform another artist or make a work better than theirs rarely results in true greatness. Nor is it a mindset that has a healthy impact on the rest of our lives. As Theodore Roosevelt pointed out, comparison is the thief of joy. Besides, why would we want to create with the purpose of diminishing someone else?

Dan McAdams. He’s a brilliant and exceptionally creative professor at Northwestern University’s School of Education and Social Policy and the author of the influential book The Stories We Live By: Personal Myths and the Making of the Self.