All posts tagged: Wisdom

Anastacia on menopause, Dolly Parton’s wisdom, and why 50+ is her best act yet

Anastacia on menopause, Dolly Parton’s wisdom, and why 50+ is her best act yet

Published by Daniella Wilson

In this week’s episode of HELLO!’s Second Act podcast, host Ateh Jewel sits down with pop powerhouse Anastacia for an unfiltered, deeply personal conversation about midlife, health, and the power of Dolly Parton. At 57, the I’m Outta Love singer is proof that midlife isn’t about slowing down – it’s about stepping up. With her UK tour kicking off and a new album, Symphonic Revolution, dropping in November, she’s embracing her second act with full force. Listen to Anastacia on the Second Act podcast Menopause truths When menopause hit at 50, Anastacia initially laughed off the hot flashes. But as brain fog, heart flutters, and a frozen shoulder set in, worry took over. “I thought I had early dementia, a brain tumour, a broken shoulder… I had all the things,” she reveals. She is now passionate about shattering the stigma around perimenopause and midlife health symptoms, encouraging women to seek support, explore treatment options, and reclaim their energy rather than suffer in silence. Lessons from Dolly Parton Anastacia recalls meeting Dolly Parton in 2003 at …

BBC unveils first trailer for John Bishop’s “exciting” new game show Wisdom of the Crowd

BBC unveils first trailer for John Bishop’s “exciting” new game show Wisdom of the Crowd

Published by Daniella Wilson

BBC have dropped the first trailer for John Bishop’s “exciting” new game show Wisdom of the Crowd. The programme, which premieres at 9:15pm on BBC One and BBC iPlayer on Saturday 19 September, will pit the contestant against the studio audience and test out a scientific theory that dates back more than 100 years. In 1906, a visit to a farmers’ fair, where a competition was being held to guess the weight of an ox, helped scientist Francis Galton develop his ‘Wisdom of the Crowd’ hypothesis – that the average guess of everyone put together was so accurate it was even better than the best individual guess. Each episode of Bishop’s “exciting new quiz show inspired by a remarkable scientific discovery” sees an individual go up against the crowd for up to £30,000. Science says the audience should win the cash, but it’s up to the individual to prove it wrong – and, as the trailer below shows, there are some laughs along the way. Want to see this content? This page contains content provided …

Clinical Wisdom: More Secrets of the Therapeutic Alliance

Clinical Wisdom: More Secrets of the Therapeutic Alliance

Published by Jenni Sidey

This is Part 8 of a series. In Part 7 of this series on clinical wisdom, I discussed the so-called therapeutic alliance and its scientifically proven powerful role in psychotherapy. Here, we continue that conversation. Therapist Transparency: To Share or Not to Share? Psychotherapy, in actuality, is traditionally a unique kind of interpersonal and intimate relationship in which the therapist gets to know the client or patient (or, at least, as much as they are willing to reveal about themselves) while the patient typically knows almost nothing about the personal life of the therapist (beyond what can be gleaned indirectly in conversation and observation). Such relative anonymity on the part of the therapist, much like an enigmatic Rorschach inkblot, invites and promotes projection of the patient’s unconscious conflicts, feelings, and concerns. It is an extraordinarily one-sided relationship in this regard, but this is fitting because psychotherapy is all about the patient and their lives, concerns, and problems, not the therapist’s. Indeed, this lack of mutuality as regards self-revelation is what differentiates and distinguishes therapy from …

Ancient Wisdom Practices Can Help You Thrive This Semester

Ancient Wisdom Practices Can Help You Thrive This Semester

Published by Jenni Sidey

By Zishan Jiwani (Ph.D. Candidate in Counseling Psychology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison) and Nona Kiknadze (Ph.D. Candidate in Counseling Psychology at the University of Miami) As a student, you’ve likely come to the realization that this time in life can be both a source of growth and a test of endurance. Juggling classes, part-time jobs, financial stress, and the pressure to keep up socially can make you feel like you’re moving from deadline to deadline without much space to breathe. However, in the midst of these challenges, this time is also an opportunity to practice meeting difficulties with compassion and understanding. Many educators and researchers are turning their attention to helping students build on their strengths instead of only focusing on preventing burnout or treating mental health struggles. The idea is simple: when students develop skills like mindfulness, compassion, and emotional awareness, they’re better equipped to handle challenges and thrive. Studies show interventions that help cultivate these qualities can improve student mental health and even support better academic performance (Hirshberg et al., 2022; Jiwani …

The Books Briefing: The Genre That’s a Shortcut to Wisdom

The Books Briefing: The Genre That’s a Shortcut to Wisdom

Published by Daniella Wilson

This is an edition of the Books Briefing, our editors’ weekly guide to the best in books. Sign up for it here. “How are you on theory?” my editor asked me earlier this week. I knew what he was talking about—not my pet hypotheses about, say, the existence of cryptids, but rather a group of 20th-century French philosophers. Yet I didn’t know much else beyond that. I was familiar with Michel Foucault, partly from college coursework but largely from a popular meme that features his most famous concept, the panopticon. I know about Roland Barthes and the death of the author. I know that Derrida, Lacan, and Deleuze are names that I should know. “Not good,” I told him. First, here are four new stories from The Atlantic’s Books section: I could read their works for myself, of course. I could pick up Foucault’s Discipline and Punish at any one of the college bookstores that serve four major universities in my city. But frankly—and I don’t think I’m alone in this—I’d rather not. My preference …

Dream Wisdom: A Guide to Self-Discovery

Dream Wisdom: A Guide to Self-Discovery

Published by Jenni Sidey

Humans have been fascinated, inspired, and guided by dreams since our early history. Our ancestors regarded dreams as messages from the divine and considered them bridges between the ordinary and spiritual worlds. Dream interpretation was sacred to the Aztecs, Mayans, Egyptians, Greeks, Indigenous Peoples of the Americas, and African peoples, among others, who looked to dreams for guidance on life and death issues such as health and preparation for impending disasters. Although prophetic dreams appear in the Bible, the early Church forbade congregants from connecting with God through dreams unless a priest mediated.1 In the Middle Ages, dreams were often considered the work of the devil. During the Salem witch trials, the accuser claimed the accused witch visited them in dreams and tried to choke or kill them. Enlightenment philosophers and thinkers, René Descartes and John Locke among the most famous, viewed dreams as neither messages from God nor a visitation from Satan. In his Meditations on First Philosophy, Descartes argued that dreams mimic reality but are not reality, and we cannot trust our senses …

Hidden Secrets of Psychotherapy: What Is “Clinical Wisdom”?

Hidden Secrets of Psychotherapy: What Is “Clinical Wisdom”?

Published by Jenni Sidey

This is Part 2 of a series. In Part 1 of this series, I introduced the concept of what I call “clinical wisdom” in the practice of psychotherapy. What is it, where does it come from, and how can we make constructive use of it in clinical practice? What Is “Clinical Wisdom”? I define clinical wisdom as an eclectic, collective compendium of archetypal and pragmatic psychological, philosophical, existential, and spiritual knowledge derived and distilled from more than a century of psychotherapeutic practice or research, as well as from other more venerable religious, spiritual, or healing traditions. Psychotherapy has evolved dramatically since its beginnings, first described by Freud as “psychoanalysis” (see Breuer and Freud, 1895), and was further developed by Adler, Rank, Jung, Frankl, Rogers, May, Perls, Ellis, Beck, Linehan, and many others. Indeed, much has been discovered over the past hundred years about the enigmatic and mysterious human mind, psyche, or soul: what truly motivates, drives, influences, sustains, and inspires us, what causes us to become depressed, anxious, sad, or angry, and what helps to …

AI and the Wisdom of Uncertainty

AI and the Wisdom of Uncertainty

Published by Jenni Sidey

New research shows that people with access to AI-generated answers are less willing to admit “I don’t know,” even when those answers are wrong. In the study, researchers asked participants very specific, obscure questions about films. Participants could always decline to answer and admit they did not know, suspending judgment instead of guessing. The stakes were raised with a monetary penalty for mistakes. But across every version of the experiment, having access to AI advice nearly eliminated participants’ willingness to say they did not know, even though AI advice was usually wrong on these questions. In another study, researchers found that intellectual humility, the metacognitive awareness of one’s own limited knowledge, acted as a protective cognitive filter against AI-generated health misinformation. Participants with higher intellectual humility rated pseudoscientific content as less credible. The Known Problem of Automation Bias Longstanding evidence on automation bias illustrates the human tendency to over-rely on and defer to automated outputs. This has been a concern in medical decision-making and other fields like aviation. In the case of AI chatbots, some …

The “Let Them” Theory: Therapeutic Wisdom or Pop Psychology?

The “Let Them” Theory: Therapeutic Wisdom or Pop Psychology?

Published by Jenni Sidey

The Let Them Theory by author and podcaster Mel Robbins may be the latest viral self-help craze that people discount as “pop” psychology. But the “let them” theory actually offers a powerful tool for the therapist’s toolbox and a potentially powerful guide to achieving inner peace. Simple on the surface but rooted in age-old wisdom, the ability to “let them” frees people from unnecessary suffering. But letting go of what we can’t control is not easy. “Let them” requires us to rise above natural feelings like jealousy, envy, anger, and the need to control others. Needless to say, reaching the “let them” state of mind requires discipline, practice, and mindfulness. Reading the book carefully, and even more than once, can provide guidance toward a peaceful state of mind if the reader is open to it. If someone has a nicer car or house then you do, then “let them,” Robbins advises. Instead of dwelling on what others have and we don’t and feeling envy, the theory advises us to think about what is important and …

How a mother’s love and Sikh wisdom are tackling a rare childhood disease

How a mother’s love and Sikh wisdom are tackling a rare childhood disease

Published by Sam Flores

(RNS) — In 2021, I wrote a column about a Sikh mother fighting a rare childhood disease. The mother is Jo Kaur, an attorney I had worked with at the Sikh Coalition and became friends with over the years. Her son Riaan had been diagnosed with Cockayne syndrome, a genetic disease that is both ultrarare and fatal, causing growth failure, severe neurological degeneration and premature aging. I wrote then about my admiration for Jo, who stepped away from her career to seek an unlikely treatment to try to save her son’s life.   Today, nearly five years later, I’m writing again with incredible news. On April 21, Jo’s years of effort came to fruition. Riaan, now 6 years old, is the first child in history to be treated with the gene therapy that their organization (Riaan Research Initiative) fundraised for and helped develop. This included raising millions of dollars, assembling scientists and clinicians from UMass Chan Medical School and Weill Cornell Medical Center, supporting preclinical research and a toxicology study, manufacturing the gene therapy and …