choices on Personality

It’s hard to know how people select a course in life…the big choices we make are practically random. The big choices we make are practically random. The small choices probably tell us more about who w...

The pioneering work of Israeli psychologists Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky has been popularized in recent years by the gamut of notable thinkers, including Malcolm Gladwell (Blink) and, in this cas...

Sobriety is the counterweight that must balance out success. Especially if things keep getting better and better.

Our character is not merely the result of our choices, but rather the form our agency takes through our beliefs and intentions. So understood, the idea of agency helps us see that our character is not...

Attitude is more important than facts. It is more important than the past, than education, money, circumstances, than failures and success, than what other people think, say, or do. It is more importa...

You don’t need to look far today to notice that personal identity is a do-it-yourself project. A gym near where I live advertises itself with the slogan: “Be Fit. Be Well. Be You.” A new apartment com...

We must make the choices that enable us to fulfill the deepest capacities of our real selves.

Your decisions . . . along with your responses to other people’s decisions, which are also your decisions...are about the only thing you can control in life, which means your decisions are how you con...

I am not a product of my circumstances. I am a product of my decisions.

Carl Jung, one of the early pioneers of modern psychology, wrote this from his years of experience as a therapist: The acceptance of oneself is the essence of the moral problem and the epitome of ...

One's philosophy is not best expressed in words. It is expressed in the choices one makes. In the long run, we shape our lives and we shape ourselves. The process never ends until we die. And the ...

Change will happen whether you like it or not. Positive change, however, requires choice. You can choose to accept natural change or you can choose to fight it. . . . The power to choose is yours. The...

The way we are living, timorous or bold, will have been our life.

We are our choices.

It is always easier for us to want to purify other people, and attempt a moral reformation among our neighbors. (Yet) how much have I helped to make her what she is?

Guilt is a moral emotion, perhaps the quintessential moral emotion, and is therefore about values.

We might say that convictions are firmly held moral or religious beliefs that guide our beliefs, actions, or choices.

What the heart loves, the will chooses, and the mind justifies.

Angela Merkel breaks almost every stereotype we have about world leaders. Her appearances and actions are plain and modest.  She's humble. She couldn't care less about showmanship or fancy dis...

You have to decide what your highest priorities are and have the courage—pleasantly, smilingly, nonapologetically, to say “no” to other things. And the way you do that is by having a bigger “yes” burn...

If Jesus sets the divine standard for morality, I could now have an unwavering foundation for my choices and decisions, rather than basing them on the ever-shifting sands of expediency and self-center...

The things we say yes to and the things we say no to determine the terrain of our future. My convoluted journey is posted with invitations, and my RSVPs account for the twists and turns. Sometimes, ha...

We have the freedom to make choices that can lead to blessing and favor or painful consequences. Battling busyness requires me to take a look inside my heart to make sure that my choices align with my...

Richard Mouw, the former president of Fuller Seminary and a professor of philosophy, shares an amusing anecdote from a lecture by the esteemed Catholic ethicist Charles Curran. During his talk, Curran...

Choices will continually be necessary and -- let us not forget -- possible. Obedience to God is always possible. It is a deadly error to fall into the notion that when feelings are extremely strong we...

Life just gives you time and space—it’s up to you to fill it.

“The whole purpose of places like Starbucks is for people with no decision-making ability whatsoever to make six decisions just to buy one cup of coffee. Short, tall, light, dark, caf, decaf, low-fat,...

Sometimes the circumstances at hand force us to be braver than we actually are, and so we knock on doors and ask for assistance. Sometimes not having any idea where we’re going works out better than w...

The new life is not a matter of mere moral reformation, but of spiritual transformation.

The most powerful choices we will make in our lives are not about specific decisions but about patterns of life: the nudges and disciplines that will shape all our other choices. This is especially tr...