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Estimated reading time: 8 minutes Ever wonder why a good scare draws you in? Let’s take a walk through the science of fear and why we seek out the thrill of psychological thrillers. You’re snug under a thick woolen blanket. The house is quiet, or as quiet as an old house ever is. But then a floorboard creaks – a dry wooden sound that sounds like it’s coming up through the soles of your feet on the floor. And suddenly, your heart is like a trapped bird flapping wildly against your ribcage. Your skin is cold and clammy. You find yourself holding your breath, listening intently for the next sound. This is why we seek out psychological thrillers – even though we know we’ll be checking under the bed in an hour. But the strangest thing is: You’re grinning. Why do we do this to ourselves? Why do we seek out scary books in an already frightening world? Are we crazy? Are we asking to be punished? Or is there something more going on beneath the surface of our need for fear? So, let’s peel back the layers. The Chemical High of the “Safe Scare” First off, we tend to think of fear as a bad thing – an evolutionary imperative to flee from a predator or other danger. But in this case – in the case of a psychological thriller – it’s a little different. Our sympathetic nervous system kicks into overdrive as we read – flooding us with a cocktail of chemicals: adrenaline to give us energy, endorphins to block out pain, and dopamine to give us a good dose of pleasure. In short, a chemical rush. But when you finish a particularly intense chapter—or any late-night thriller that makes you swear you’re going to stop after just one more page—the brain realizes the danger was never there. The afterglow is a feeling of euphoria. It’s why people jump out of airplanes or ride roller coasters. It’s the feeling of being intensely, vibrantly alive without any danger. The Pivot: From Fear to Focus Today we’re surrounded by distractions. Phones beep, emails accumulate, and our minds wander through a dozen different to-do lists. It’s a constant barrage of noise, and it’s slowly sucking the life out of us. But a good scare is different. A good scare is a laser. If you’re reading a book where the protagonist goes into a dark basement, you’re not thinking about your taxes. You’re not dwelling on something embarrassing you did in high school, or a disastrous first date. You’re there. You’re totally absorbed in the kind of focus the best suspense novels are designed to require. Fear puts you in a state of hyper-focus. It snaps you into the present tense, heightens your senses, and suddenly everything else fades into a gray background. In a weird way, psychological thrillers are a path to mindfulness. A jagged, adrenaline-fueled path to finding your center. (Imagine this as the adrenaline-fueled version of your favorite yoga routine. Same result, different path.) Why We Bond Over the Boogeyman Fear is a social sport. Studies have proven that feeling fear in a safe place triggers the release of oxytocin, or the “cuddle hormone.” This is the same hormone that allows a mother to bond with her baby and allows friends to share secrets. By sharing a frightening experience, we are more likely to feel close to those around us. If you are curious about the science behind it, Johns Hopkins University research indicates that the reason we enjoy horror stories and the more personal terror of the psychological thriller is that we place ourselves in a safe frame of mind and know that we are safe. This is why we love book clubs that read the dark stuff. This is why we pounce upon our friends the next morning, bleary-eyed and coffee-starved, and say, “I was up until 2:00 AM last night with this book, and now you have to read it so I’m not the only one around here thinking about it.” We need someone to share in the terror. Confronting the Shadow There is also the psychological construct of “The Shadow,” or those things within ourselves that we do not wish to deal with: anger, dark impulses, secret fears. Thrillers and horror love to drag those into the light and say, “Okay, now what?” Reading the psychological thriller is a way for us to dance with our shadows, to explore the dark side of the world from a safe distance. It is a way of dealing with the stresses of the world by putting them onto the page in the form of a thriller or horror story, one reality-bending chapter at a time. It is liberating. Read a thriller that scared the pants off you? You are now more resilient because you faced the darkness and came out the other side. How to Enjoy Your Next Scare (The Rules of the Game) Are you ready to dive into the world of the psychological thriller/ Horror again? Here are a few ways to maximize the fun: For those curious about the inner workings of a dark mind even more, you can grab The Dark Mind Survival Guide on my site. It’s a little something I put together to help you stay grounded while everyone else is losing theirs. The Verdict So, we love reading about scary stuff because we love the truth. Life’s not a highlight reel. While the world is busy trying to sell us on a streamlined version of reality—complete with Photoshop and color grading—psychological thrillers offer us something much more raw—something that refuses to look away. Life’s messy, it’s frightening, and it’s full of stuff we cannot explain. So while we seek out the dark in this book, we’re not being morbid. We’re being brave. We’re facing the monster so it doesn’t surprise us anymore. Go ahead. Grab that book. Open it up. Turn the page. Creak those floorboards. For the scariest thing

Estimated reading time: 8 minutes The air in the room shifts. You know the feeling. That subtle tilt in the atmosphere just before a storm, or the way the hairs on your arms rise when you realize the smile before you isn’t really using its eyes to smile. In a psychological thriller, that’s often the moment the protagonist should bolt. But in real life? In real life, the shadows aren’t always under the bed. Sometimes they sit across from you at dinner, casually redrafting the reality you’re still standing in. Sometimes they text you hearts while quietly teaching you to doubt your own mind. Writing my first suspense novel taught me one thing: the scariest scenes don’t always unfold in dark alleys. Sometimes they surface in a perfectly ordinary kitchen. While researching how manipulators isolate their targets, I realized that the most effective cage is the one built inside a person’s own mind. Maybe you’ve just finished my “Find the Red Flag” game and practiced spotting the predators. Or perhaps you’ve seen enough of the real world to recognize what a trap looks like. Either way, spotting the lures is only half the battle. The real victory lies in becoming the kind of person a monster can’t touch. We spend so much time chasing the “Red Flags” that we forget what the “Green” ones look like. We grow so accustomed to the dark that light begins to feel suspicious. So, yes. Let’s talk about the Green Flags of a mind that cannot be undone. 1. The Internal Receipt The first thing the villain steals in the world of psychological suspense is not your money. The first thing the villain steals is your memory. They call it gaslighting. I call it reality theft. A Green Flag mind is the mind of someone who keeps internal receipts. If someone tells you, “I never said that,” and you have an internal receipt for exactly when, where, and in what way they did say that, you have a superpower. Arguments become a trap you do not have to step into. You do not have to prove them wrong. You simply have to keep the receipt. In my own writing, I often catch myself trying to ‘fix’ a character’s bad choices by giving them excuses. But when I step back and look at the ‘receipts’—the actual actions on the page—the truth becomes undeniable. Real life works the same way. The unshakeable mind is the mind of someone who trusts their own eyes more than someone else’s words. This is the mind of someone who is not a character in someone else’s story. This is the mind of someone who holds the pen. 2. The Open Door Policy The predator’s best friend is isolation. If the predator can get you to separate yourself from the herd, you can be convinced of anything. The sky is purple. The floor is lava. The unshakeable mind is the mind of someone who has an “Open Door Policy.” They have “reality testers”—friends, family, or even a therapist—who haven’t been engulfed by the shadow. If you can talk about your relationship to an outsider without needing to “edit” or “protect” the other person’s image, that’s a big Green Flag. So ask yourself: Are you hiding the truth? Or are you sugarcoating the fallout because you fear the verdict? Because if the answer is no, your world remains rich. And rich, complex worlds are hard to control. 3. The Slow Burn Things always seem to happen at breakneck speed in my fiction. But in real life, lightning-fast intimacy can be a snare. A Green Flag mind enjoys the slow burn. They don’t need to be your “soulmate” by the second date. They don’t need to move in by the second month. They understand that trust is built brick by brick, not assembled on a movie set overnight. If you feel calm, steady consistency rather than a frantic, drug-like high, you’re on solid ground. After all, consistency is the enemy of the manipulator. 4. The “No” Plot Twist What does a person do when faced with a “no” to something minor? Do they sulk? Do they retaliate by giving you the cold shoulder? Do they “forget” and ask again ten minutes later? An unshakable person sets a boundary and observes the reaction with pattern recognition (not a lab coat). But a Green Flag person, and a Green Flag you, respect the “no” without a post-game analysis. So, if you can say “I can’t do that today” and feel zero guilt, you have built a fortress that most manipulators won’t even attempt to climb. 5. Radical Ownership We have all encountered the villain who blames their childhood, their ex-spouse, or the alignment of the moon for their lousy behavior. This is a pretty common trope. The flip side of this is Radical Ownership. The Green Flag person is the one who says, “I messed up. I’m sorry. And here is how I’m going to fix it.” No excuses. No “you made me do it.” And the best part is, when you own up to something, you take the power to do so away from others. In other words, you become untouchable. You own your story, the good and the bad. 6. Straight Lines (No Word Salad) The manipulator loves to engage you in a “word salad”—a dizzying array of logic, diversion, and nonsense. The unshakeable mind craves straight lines. If the conversation is a maze, the Green Flag person stops walking. They ask for clarification. “I don’t understand how we went from you asking me about the dishes to you bringing up my college GPA.” Communication is a bridge, not a labyrinth. When someone talks to you in straight lines, it is not because they want to lose you in the woods. 7. Authentic Friction Beware the person who agrees with everything you say. This is not a person. This is a reflection. The Green Flag is “Authentic Friction.” This means they have

Estimated reading time: 7 minutes It starts with a hum, deep within the chest, that vibration that happens when a bass note hits just right. It’s the crisp scent of rain on sun-scorched pavement, or the feeling of a room warming up at the arrival of someone specific. It’s the feeling of coming home. It’s the feeling of finally being understood. And sometimes, “coming home” is just a nicely furnished prison. In the world of my upcoming novel, Justine: An Eye for Vengeance (coming October 2026), seduction isn’t about an individual; it’s about an idea. It’s the romance between a starving soul and a predatory ideology. We picture cults as matching robes on a rural farm—and while those definitely make an appearance in my story—the modern version is often much slicker: well-lit, well-worded, and weirdly familiar. It’s a dark romance. It’s magic. It’s an arrow-hearted longing wrapped in thorns—where the deeper you lean into “love,” the more you start bleeding in places you can’t explain. We like to believe we’re too smart to fall for it, that we’d spot the daggers early. But what if the dagger is wrapped in silk? What if it sounds like a promise? What if it feels like relief? In my Dark Mind Survival Guide (which you can grab for free by signing up for my newsletter), I’ve mapped out the 10 critical markers of manipulation. Today, I want to pull back the curtain on three that play a central role in the world of Justine. Marker #3: The “Chosen” High: When Being Seen Becomes a Narcotic Have you ever walked into a room feeling like just another face—another voice in the blur—and then someone locks on to you? And suddenly you’re not invisible. Not overlooked. Not ordinary. They don’t compliment your hair or your outfit—they compliment your potential. They name the greatness you’ve been trying not to hope for. They tell you you’re part of something bigger, older, necessary. This is Flag #3: The “Chosen” Feeling. In psychology, we call it love bombing. In real life, it feels like being crowned in secret. The ultimate seduction.The ultimate high. The group doesn’t want you—they need you. They can’t do it without you. You’re not just a member, you’re a pillar. Who wouldn’t want this? Who wouldn’t want to be special? To be the answer to a question the world is too blind to ask? To feel destiny settle on your shoulders like a warm coat? But here’s the noir part: if it takes the loss of autonomy for something to feel this good, then it’s not love. It’s not acceptance. It’s not being “chosen.” It’s being targeted. In Justine’s world (out in October 2026), “The Eye for Vengeance” isn’t only a concept—it’s a look. A leader’s look that catalogues your fears, reads your soft spots, and calls it all “potential.” Marker #6: The “Yes” Ladder: The Slow Crawl Toward the Edge But totalistic control doesn’t come about in an instant. No one wakes up one morning and gives their bank account and their sanity over to a stranger before breakfast. It happens one “yes” at a time. And this is Flag #6: The “Yes” Ladder. It begins innocently enough: a weekend retreat, a small donation to a worthy cause, a request to stop seeing a friend who “doesn’t support your growth.” And you can stop at any time. So you tell yourself. But the ladder only goes one way. And before you know it, there is no ground beneath your feet. You look around at the wreckage of your former life: the friends you gave up for, the hobbies you quit, the “old you” that the group assured you was broken beyond repair. It’s a rhythmic, hypnotic fall. You say “yes” to the community. You say “yes” to the mission. You say “yes” to the sacrifice. You say “yes” to the disassembling of your very self. In my novel, I also explore this “Yes Ladder” in the context of rituals. There’s something comforting—almost cozy—about having someone else dictate exactly what to do (especially when life feels loud). But if choice gets removed, so does humanity. You become a tool in someone else’s kit, a specimen in someone else’s vial—and the story turns into the kind of psychological horror books love to build: the slow, careful unmaking. Marker #1: Reality Theft: The Gaslight in the Dark The final—and perhaps most deadly—flag is the one that denies you the truth of your own senses. Flag #1: Reality Theft. You may have experienced this as gaslighting, but in a cultic environment, it’s even more insidious. This is the group’s judgment that your perceptions of the past are wrong, your emotions are merely “projections,” and your intuition is a “traitor.” When someone steals your reality, they own you. They become the only source of truth in your life. If they say the sun is really blue, you start to question the color of light hitting your skin. If they say your family is toxic, you start to alter your recollections of childhood to fit their story. This is a sharp and cold unmaking of the self. Why do we stay in these groups? Because the alternative is the void. If the group is wrong, then we weren’t really chosen. If the leader is a liar, then all we have suffered has been for nothing. But to admit the truth may be more terrifying than to stay in the lie. We stay because we have been assured that “Love is a Spell,” and we fear what happens when the spell is broken.If this resonates with you—or if you’ve ever felt the pull of a group that promised all the answers—pause and check yourself. You are not a specimen. You are not a tool. I’ve spent a lot of time exploring these psychological pitfalls in my story, especially in the dark corners of Justine (out October 2026). It’s the same engine that powers a lot of thriller novels: the moment

I started thinking about this after watching Wild Wild Country, Keep Sweet: Pray and Obey, and other documentaries about cults. What stayed with me was the scale of control, and how often it was wrapped in the language of care, devotion, protection, and purpose. As I’ve been working on my upcoming novel, Justine, I found myself returning to that same question: how does control first learn to sound like care? It does not always begin with obvious cruelty or threats. It can arrive with a calm voice and words that sound loving at first. Sometimes, it looks like someone simply wanting what is “best” for you. There is no official, universal list of “the seven protective phrases.” But this pattern shows up again and again. Women’s Aid describes coercive control as abuse that creates “invisible chains,” limiting a survivor’s liberty and ability to act. DomesticShelters defines it as a pattern of behavior used to dominate a partner and restrict their freedom. This is why controlling behavior can be hard to spot at first. It does not always begin with commands. It often starts with language that sounds caring while slowly undermining your confidence, freedom, and self-trust. A single phrase on its own does not tell the whole story. People can say awkward things and partners can worry. Friends can be protective. The true warning sign is the pattern. Do these phrases leave you feeling supported or smaller? Expand your life or constrict it? Strengthen your judgment or replace it? The phrases below are examples drawn from documented patterns of coercive control and abuse education resources that show how control can disguise itself as care, concern, or protection. These patterns can appear in romantic relationships, families, groups, workplaces, and high-control communities. Here are seven protective-sounding phrases to watch for when “care” turns into control. 1. “I only want what’s best for you.” This phrase sounds generous and loving. However, in the wrong hands, it becomes a shortcut past your own judgment, suggesting that the other person knows your life better than you do. The problem is not concern itself. The problem is when concern starts to act like authority. Healthy care says, “I’m worried about you.”Control says, “I know what’s best.” 2. “You need me to help you.” There is nothing wrong with support. We all need it sometimes. But help becomes unhealthy when it carries a hidden message: you cannot manage your own life without me. In a healthy relationship, help creates stability. In a controlling one, it can slowly teach you to doubt your own judgment and depend on someone else’s approval. Real support strengthens your independence. It should not make you feel smaller. 3. “Your friends are a bad influence.” This is one of the ways control begins to narrow your world. A controlling person may never say, “I want to isolate you.” Instead, they use more reasonable-sounding language. They question your friends, plant doubt, and make outside support feel suspect until distancing yourself starts to feel like your own idea. This is why cutting someone off from supportive people makes control easier to maintain. 4. “You don’t need anyone but me.” This can sound intense, romantic, or even flattering at first. But healthy love does not ask you to collapse your entire support system into one person. The danger is that dependence gets rebranded as intimacy. Outside voices begin to seem unnecessary. Friendship starts to feel disloyal. A full life slowly shrinks around one central figure. Love should add to your life, not replace it. 5. “Work is stressing you out.” Sometimes that is true. Work can be stressful. But context matters. This phrase can become a way to push someone away from structure, coworkers, money, and independence. Coercive control resources describe controlling everyday life, restricting independence, and becoming the primary decision-maker as part of the pattern. Support helps you cope with stress. Control uses stress as an opening. 6. “You don’t need to work. I’ve got us covered.” At first, this can sound reassuring and generous. But financial dependence can become one of the strongest tools of control. When one person controls the money, the schedule, and the options, leaving, disagreeing, or acting independently can become much harder. There is a difference between shared support and imposed dependence. 7. “Why do you need to spend time with them? Aren’t I enough for you?” This phrase can sound vulnerable rather than controlling. It can come across as longing, insecurity, or love. But underneath, it often carries a quiet accusation: if you need anyone else, maybe you are doing something wrong. Abuse education resources consistently note that jealousy, monitoring, interrogation, and discouraging outside relationships are common signs of coercive control. This is one of control’s favorite tricks. It does not always forbid. Sometimes it just makes freedom feel expensive. The Pattern Beneath the Phrases What makes these phrases dangerous is not just the wording. It is the effect. Do you feel more free or more confined?More connected or more isolated?Confident in your judgment or more likely to second-guess yourself?More like yourself or less? That is the real test. Women’s Aid and DomesticShelters both describe coercive control as a pattern that limits freedom and gradually erodes a person’s sense of self. Care should not cost you your voice.Concern should not require obedience.Love should not make you less free. What Healthy Care Sounds Like Healthy care does not erase your autonomy. It makes room for it. It sounds more like this: “I’m worried about you, but I trust you to decide.”“I want to support you. How can I help?”“I may not agree, but I respect your choice.”“I miss you, but I want you to spend time with people you love.” That is the difference. Control talks over your instincts.Care helps you hear them. Final Thought Not every uncomfortable phrase points to abuse. Not every worried partner is trying to control you. But when the same kind of language keeps leaving you feel smaller, doubtful, isolated, or more dependent, I think

This tension inspired me to write a dark Valentine story. I’ve always been intrigued by how a tradition meant to symbolize love can quietly transform into pressure—obligation, performance, and even control. That’s a horror premise lurking in plain sight. And if you’ve ever felt that pressure, you’re not alone. If Valentine’s Day is meant to celebrate love, why does it sometimes feel like a scoreboard? Why does it feel like you’re being evaluated—as if love is something you can fail at? It’s as if everyone else got the script, and you’re left improvising in front of an audience. Can one simple date undermine a healthy relationship just because chocolate and flowers weren’t on the menu? And just as troubling—can our perception swing the other way just because they were? The harmless origins: a box, a bouquet, a message Let’s start with the sweet part. Chocolate: the “keepsake” that became a signal Heart-shaped chocolate boxes didn’t begin as a timeless romantic symbol. They were a Victorian-era marketing win. In 1861, Cadbury popularized decorated heart-shaped boxes for Valentine’s—designed to be kept long after the chocolates were gone, used to store mementos and love letters. That’s kind of charming, right? A treat—and a little ritual object. Flowers: the original “text message” Flowers weren’t just decoration either. During the Victorian era, “the language of flowers” (floriography) became a way to send coded messages when social rules made direct feelings harder to express. A bouquet wasn’t random—it meant something. (Victorian floriography was popular enough that multiple “language of flowers” dictionaries were published.) So chocolate and flowers began as symbols. And signals are beautiful…until they become tests. When symbols turn into expectation Somewhere along the way, Valentine’s Day stopped feeling like a choice and started feeling like a grading system.  The holiday became easier to mass-produce and easier to compare. After the Uniform Penny Post launched in 1840, Valentine cards exploded through the mail. In the same century, floriography turned flowers into coded messages, revealing “meaning” in every choice.  And when Cadbury introduced heart-shaped Valentine chocolate boxes, romance became something you could buy, present, and keep — proof of effort, preserved in packaging.  That’s when symbols began turning into expectations: once love became a product with a template, it became something people could measure. And today, we’re not just exchanging gifts. We’re exchanging proof. That’s the pressure: Valentine’s doesn’t only ask, “Do you love me?”It asks, “Can you show it in a way that counts?” The modern Valentine script Suddenly, a holiday built on symbols becomes a quiet threat: Meet the expectation, or manage the fallout. That’s when something sweet starts to feel… like a trap. Why Valentine Pressure Feels So Unsettling Here’s the part people don’t say out loud: A lot of Valentine stress isn’t about romance.It’s about belonging. Valentine’s Day concentrates one of the oldest human fears into one neat date on the calendar: And because the holiday is so symbolic, it turns tiny things into big meanings. A chocolate box becomes a verdict.A bouquet becomes a ranking.A reservation becomes a relationship review. That’s why it can feel like a trap: not because love is dangerous… but because expectations can be. So here’s the exit:  The Valentine reset (3 small moves to keep the holiday from eating you alive) 1) Name the script Ask yourself: “Whose Valentine rules am I following—mine, or the internet’s?”A lot of the pressure comes from comparison—and from the way certain dates make us stop and evaluate where we stand. Valentine becomes a kind of relationship check-in. Whether we asked for it or not. 2) Choose one symbol (not the whole checklist) Pick one gesture that feels true. One is enough. Research on the psychology of rituals suggests it’s often the meaning of a small act—not the size of the production—that creates impact. 3) Replace proof with presence Try one honest sentence instead of a perfect plan… Relationship research highlights perceived partner responsiveness (feeling emotionally understood) as a key ingredient of satisfaction. That’s it. That’s the reset. Valentine’s doesn’t have to be a test. You’re allowed to write your own version. Why I wrote this While writing my dark Valentine novel, I kept thinking about how easy it is for something romantic to turn into something controlling—not through violence, but through pressure. Through rules you didn’t agree to.Through expectations that tighten quietly.Through a tradition that starts “sweet”… and ends with a cost. That feeling—sweet on the surface, terrifying underneath—is the heartbeat of Feast of Valentine. If you want a dark Valentine read Feast of Valentine is a dark Valentine suspense with a supernatural bite.https://books2read.com/feastofvalentine And if Valentine is starting to feel like a test, remember: you don’t need a bigger performance—you need a truer one.

If you could brew a hot cup of happiness, what ingredients would matter most? Back when my sweet tooth was tipping over the edge, my first answer would’ve been three tablespoons of sugar. Now it’s the occasional half-teaspoon of honey. Alright—back to the point. Growing up, I was told (or maybe sold) the idea that happiness is a matter of success: more money, more achievement, more recognition. But one of the longest-running research projects on happiness tells a quieter truth. Ever heard of the Harvard Study of Adult Development? I hadn’t—until I heard it mentioned on a podcast. I had hit that familiar wall of writer’s block, hoping it would magically crack. It didn’t. But stepping outside for some fresh air and listening to an engaging conversation in my headphones? That helped. That day, I was tuned into The Diary of a CEO, featuring Dr. Robert Waldinger, who leads what is often described as the world’s longest-running study on human happiness. While it surprised me, it also made perfect sense. What the Harvard Happiness Study Found About Relationships The study began in 1938 and has followed lives over decades, asking a simple question: What helps people stay healthy and happy over time? The answer keeps coming back to the same conclusion: Not fame. Not wealth. Not IQ. Instead, the research illuminates the importance of relationships, suggesting that the quality of our connections with friends, family, and even coworkers plays a crucial role in our long-term health and happiness. Strong bonds give us a place to land. They lower stress, soften hard seasons, and help us stay steady when life gets sharp. The study’s message isn’t complicated—just easy to forget: the people we keep close shape how well we live. “Good relationships keep us happier, healthier, and help us live longer.” – Dr. Robert Waldinger Which raises the question at the heart of the book I’m wrapping up now: What happens when the very thing we need most—connection—is turned against us? There have been moments in my life when my beliefs were questioned, my instincts felt blurry, and the ground under me started to shake. Most of us are wired for belonging. We want to feel chosen, understood, safe. When that longing is met with warmth, it can heal us. But when it’s exploited, it can quietly unmake us. And it’s more common than we like to admit. At some point, many of us stumble into an unfortunate connection—someone who doesn’t build bonds, but uses them. Sometimes the harm is subtle and confusing. Sometimes it’s devastating. And often it isn’t loud. It’s slow. It starts with charm… then small tests… then isolation disguised as “love,” “truth,” or “help.” While researching for my novel Justine—a story rooted in revenge horror and suspense—I fell down a few research rabbit holes—cult documentaries, books, survivor stories—and one thing kept echoing: the trap often begins with warmth. Healthy connection makes you more yourself.Manipulation makes you less yourself. The comforting part of the Harvard study isn’t only what it proves—it’s what it suggests: you can build a better life by building better bonds. And you don’t have to do it perfectly. You just have to start noticing what’s healthy for you. If you want a small check-in for the week, try this:Who helps you feel more like yourself—and who makes you feel less like yourself?Even noticing the difference is progress. Further reading: Harvard Gazette summary: https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2017/04/over-nearly-80-years-harvard-study-has-been-showing-how-to-live-a-healthy-and-happy-life/ UPCOMING RELEASE NOTIFY ME We respect your privacy. Unsubscribe at anytime. Built with Kit