Tausi Insider

Photo : fizkes ( Shutterstock ) Oxytocin has often been described as a “love molecule” because it’s been associated with social bonding. When you look at your adorable child or puppy, oxytocin is probably sending signals in your brain and body to coordinate that “awwww” reaction. But it does a lot of other things, besides. Oxytocin coordinates the uterine contractions that are involved in giving birth, and it does that so effectively that when obstetricians want to start or speed up labor, they hook you up to an IV bag of it . It also has roles to play with other body parts, including the kidneys, heart, and testes. Even when we’re considering how the hormone makes us feel socially, it’s not all love and cuddles. In some experiments, it causes people to be more suspicious of those we see as different from us. It may also make us pay more attention to both positive and negative social cues, increasing feelings of fear in some cases. Not really what you would expect from a “love ho...

The most important part of a conversation may not be the actual conversation. It may be the stories in our mind that we bring to the conversation, hampering our contributions and understanding. “In our interactions, we aren’t transmitting and receiving data like TVs and radios – signal sent, signal received. Unlike radio antennas, our reception of others’ words is rarely straightforward because of our big, beautiful, filtering, sense making brain,” consultant and seasoned mediator Chuck Wisner writes in The Art of Conscious Conversations. Of course, the same thing is happening for our conversation partner. “What we say isn’t what someone else heard, and what someone else says isn’t what we hear,” he says. To have a healthy collaborative conversation, we need to hold our stories lightly and learn to ask questions. We need to seek to understand, not being afraid of the collaboration’s dynamic give and take. Conversations are with others, but we need to be aware of the conversation with...

Screenshot : Redactle We all fell in love with Wordle this year, and by “we” I mean all of us nerds who have five minutes to kill over coffee each morning and choose to do so with a word game. I’ve personally spent most of the year perfecting my Wordle strategy , and finding alternative games to occupy me once I’ve completed that day’s puzzle. In addition to standard Wordle, the past 12 months blessed us with dozens of other guessing games that borrowed one or more of Wordle’s features—five-letter solutions, or yellow and green squares, or sometimes just the concept of guessing and getting hints. Here are 14 of the best. https://www.tausiinsider.com/14-of-the-best-wordle-variants-of-2022/?feed_id=327300&_unique_id=64137ec266592

You’ve tried online dating, speed dating, and blind dating. If you’re still striking out in the love department, how about trying intuitive dating? “Intuitive dating means dating with information coming from your intuition or ‘internal barometer,’” relationship coach Carrie Jereslow explains. “This involves checking in with your ‘gut’—what is your gut feeling about a person? What does your gut say to do before or after a date?” According to Jereslow, intuitive dating differs from conventional dating where external judgements and expectations inform your choices. “For example, if you had a great date and you want to connect with the person and they seem interested, you may get a strong internal feeling or thought to text them. Intuitive dating would say that if you get that feeling, follow it,” Jereslow says. “Conventional dating would say that you aren’t supposed to text someone too quickly after a date so that you don’t seem ‘too’ interested.” Essentially, intuitive dating is ba...