Psychologyspeaking topic
“To love means to commit oneself without guarantee, to give oneself completely in the hope that our love will produce love in the loved person.”
— Erich Fromm, The Art of Loving (1956)
practice with this topic
Set the timer (5-30 min), take 20 seconds of prep if you like, start talking. Jot your thoughts onto the sticky-note board.
similar topics
- Self-serving bias: success is our doing, failure is always the fault of outside forces? Why do we distort reality to protect our ego without even noticing we are doing it?
- Opportunity cost: every 'yes' is a whole bundle of simultaneous 'no's. Does weighing what we lose with each choice make us more deliberate, or just permanently unsatisfied?
- Dunbar's number: a human can sustain roughly 150 meaningful relationships, no more. With thousands of 'friends' on social media, why do we still feel lonely?
- Waking up when your body is done sleeping instead of when an alarm demands it is a profound privilege. What does that say about how we have organized modern life?
- Implementation intentions, Gollwitzer: saying 'if X happens, I'll do Y' instead of just 'I'll do it' dramatically raises the odds of following through. Why does tying an intention to a specific situation work so well?