#bad-luck

#bad-luck

The concept album is a response to the brutal murder of Breedlove's father and stepmother at the hands of his stepbrother. The frame—the first song and the last—of the album is about the murders and their aftermath. But this is not a true crime record.

The only thing worse than making a mistake is keeping it bottled up inside. Learning from the mistakes of others could help you embark on the healing journey of sharing and working through a mistake of your own, with someone you trust.

The oil tycoon J. Paul Getty was rumoured to have said that his three rules for how to become rich were: Rise early. Work hard. Strike oil. It's one of those eminently quotable remarks because it captures something we all know to be true, that luck and chance have as much to do with success as anything else. Yet we don't value people for their luck.

An old definition of the word fate is "the will of the gods." We might say that it is a fitting metaphor, as it suggests that fate comes from a source much larger than ourselves. Its immensity will stretch way beyond what is in our control. We can ask: How can we create a life that reflects our dreams and what we hold to be important, when so much lies outside our sphere of influence?

Patience is a capacity to endure difficulties, frustrations, and suffering with some sense of calm. Perseverance, self-regulation, and judgment are components of patience. Patience can help you manage your emotions, reactions, and responses in stressful situations. While positive psychologists don't specifically name patience as one of the top 24 character strengths, it is seen as an important element of human behavior. Strengths researchers propose that patience is an amalgam of several recognized character strengths, including perseverance, self-regulation, and judgment (Niemiec, 2018; Peterson and Seligman, 2004).

A clear diagnosis can be life-changing. An accurate diagnosis can be life-saving. But I think acceptance of these labels and their positive aspects should live alongside healthy skepticism of the diagnostic system itself. Considering diagnoses within the sociocultural context in which they're derived can help us avoid turning these tools into weapons against ourselves. The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual (DSM)-that thick clinical text that gives us our official mental health labels-is as politically influenced as it is clinical.

We're experiencing chronic stress, which blocks our ability to hope. Here's why: the amygdala, the brain's alarm center, reacts with fight, flight, or freeze (Akil & Nestler, 2023; LeDoux, 1996). This reaction can save our lives in an emergency. When we're in a crosswalk and see a car speeding toward us, we can react by stopping or jumping out of the way.

If you have ever experienced proper rejection and that would be most of us it may stand out in your mind for a long time, like a boulder lodged in the landscape of memory. And it can hurt literally. The late anthropologist Helen Fisher, who studied human behaviour in the context of romantic love, showed that rejection and physical injury have much in common.