Browsing: Inner

You may have a persistent negative voice in your mind, especially when you’re doing something new, make a mistake, or feel anxious and uncertain. This Inner Critic says, “You never do anything right,” “You’re always messing up,” “You’re not good enough.”

Feelings of emptiness and estrangement seem to be spreading in contemporary society, especially among the young. Why this is happening was the basis for an article, “A Brief History of Purpose-Seeking,” that I published in the January/February 2026 issue of Psychology Today. Not long after it came out, I received an astute letter from Sobia…

In the late 1950s, the humanistic psychologist Abraham Maslow set out to study the people he thought were doing the most fully human version of being human. He wasn’t looking for the happiest or the most accomplished. He was looking for what he called the “self-actualizing person.”