Western culture in my opinion is an instant culture. Look through ads for example. ‘Lose weight in a week … Lose weight without any diet or exercise … Build your muscles in a month … Lose your cellulite in a fortnight etc.’ How often do you come across and ad like this: ‘Train daily for 5 years and you will improve your self-image.’ It sounds ridiculous, doesn’t it? Yes, definitely, but only to a Westerner. Traditional cultures have known for millenniums that the only true satisfaction comes from hard work and patience over years. To oppose my argument I...

These are the words of Joe Kraynak, who reviewed my book ‘Balancing the Beast’. Read the whole book review on PsychCentral. Joe Kraynak is a co-author of ‘Bipolar Disorder for Dummies’.

Since the weather showed us kindness by covering Slovenia with snow last weekend, I have been thinking about kindness as human virtue. I recall my teacher Phyllis Krystal saying at various occasions: ‘Respect people who serve you. Do not treat them like your own personal slaves.’ With these words in my mind I witnessed some verbal attacks at a post office, a library etc. These attacks were performed by people whose outbursts of anger clearly showed that the clerk was just a scape goat. The clerk did a minor mistake and the customer was yelling as if somebody had been murdered. We all need...

Some people are lonely. And in some situations there is no help. Yet in many cases there is a solution. First check, if you are really lonely or you just feel that way, because you do not open up to anyone. One can open up only to a friend one can trust. Surely there is no such thing as a free lunch in life. To be able to make good friends, you should be a good friend first. You cannot expect someone to listen to you whine for hours and every time you are with that person. That person is like a ‘garbage bin’ then and you are filling it with your ‘emotional garbage’. To some extent that is...

The world is in a horrible state. Everyone agrees. You do not even need to buy a newspaper or watch the news on TV or on-line, for your neighbor can do a follow-up on new monstrosities of the human kind. So, what is the point of criticizing all around us, if the humanity clearly cannot fall any deeper anyway? Have you ever thought about a change in your perspective? What about developing empathy and kindness in your own heart and humbly waiting for others to follow? I dare you. Seriously, can the media really manipulate us to such an extent that we stop believing in the grain of good in all people?...