The Power of Prime

The cluttered mind uncluttered

by Jim Taylor, Ph.D.

Personal Growth: How to Align Your Values and Your Life

It is one thing to recognize what values you possess and to admit that some of them may not bring you meaning, fulfillment, or happiness. It is an entirely different thing to understand what values will actually bring you the life you want. This process involves aligning your values with your “ideal life” in the future. Read More

Pride in My Bride: A Mother’s Day Tribute

For all the challenges my wife faces, all of the “moments” she has, and all of the angst that she can feel, I truly marvel at how she keeps it all together. She does so much so well for our girls (and me). Sarah is loving, patient, and calm. She is giving, supportive, and generous. Sarah is also tough, consistent, and persistent. Read More

Personal Growth: Your Values, Your Life

Your values form the foundation of your life. They dictate the choices you make and determine the direction that your life takes. Your values will influence your decisions related to your relationships, career, and other activities you engage in. Despite this importance, few people choose their values. Read More

Personal Growth: Identify Your Needs and NEEDS!

Understanding your needs and NEEDS! often brings some sense of relief because you have greater clarity in your life—you finally see why your life inertia has placed you on the trajectory you have been on and, more specifically, why you have thought, felt, and acted in unhealthy ways for so many years. Read More

Technology: Is Technology the New Opiate of the Masses?

Karl Marx famously called religion the “opiate of the masses.” Well, to paraphrase Reggie Hammond, Eddie Murphy’s character in the film 48 Hours, “There’s a new opiate in town and its name is technology.” Read More

Parenting: Should Parents Raise Their Own Children?

This is, I realize, a rather heretical question to ask given the size of the “parent-industrial complex,” the fact that the word parent has morphed from being a noun into a verb, and the recent proliferation of “I am a better parent than you” genre of books (e.g., Tiger Mom and Bringing Up Bebe). Yet, it is a question that I have been asking myself a great deal lately. Read More

Personal Growth: Do You Have ‘Complete Freedom’ in Your Life?

Complete freedom involves knowing what you don’t want and liberating yourself from those obstacles that have propelled your life down its current unsatisfying path. Complete freedom also means knowing what you want and propelling yourself down a new and fulfilling path. Read More

Personal Growth: Blame Your Parents for Your Problems!

You may have come to believe that you didn’t deserve having your life-affirming needs met by your parents in a healthy way. These perceptions may have created in you a profound sense of inadequacy. But it's not your fault! You should blame your parents, then... Read More

Personal Growth: Do You Have Needs or NEEDS!

Because of our inability to satisfy our most basic psychological needs on our own when we are children, we are vulnerable to the neuroses, pathologies, and just plain whims of our parents and the environment in which we were raised. Read More

Personal Growth: Changing Your Life “Inertia” Takes Courage

Courage may be the single most important characteristic for changing your life inertia. Making a change requires risk and risk is scary because when you risk, you may fail (of course, the other side of the coin is that only by taking risks can we truly succeed). Read More

Crisis: Emotional Threat or Challenge?

Emotions lie at the heart of how you respond to crises. They are the starting point for all of the reactions that we have toward a crisis. They are also be the first obstacle to establishing a positive response to a crisis. Read More

Sports: Inside the Minds of the World’s Best Athletes

I delve into the minds of some of the world’s best athletes and uncover the mental lessons you must also learn to play your best and achieve your goals. These mental lessons are especially important as you head into the most important games of the season, such as March Madness. Read More

Sports: Competitive Lessons from the World’s Best Athletes

I define Prime Time as the most important game of your life in which you’ll be up against your toughest opponents and competing under the most difficult conditions. Prime Time is what sports are all about. The question is: How can you prepare mentally to perform your best in Prime Time? Read More

Sports: 5 Ps for the Big Game

The greatest challenge that athletes have is to play their best when it really counts. A healthy attitude will set you up for a psychology that will allow you to play your best. An unhealthy attitude, by contrast, will only set you up for failure. Read More

Parenting: Freak Out or Geek Out? Children’s Emotional Reactions to Achievement

These days, children seem to be given every opportunity to achieve success in school, sports, and the performing arts. Children receive private tutoring, coaching, and instruction. They attend summer camps devoted to their achievement activity. They seem to be assured of having every possible skill necessary to achieve success. Except one: Emotional skill. Read More

Parenting and Popular Culture: Is This the Future of American Values?

I came across several recent studies that I found truly disturbing.The results don’t paint a pretty picture for the future of our children or our society as a whole. Even more damning is what it tells us about how parents are raising their children these days. Read More

Personal Growth: Five Steps to Positive Life Change (And the Big Payoff!)

Change can be scary, tiring, and frustrating. And change takes time. How much time? It depends on your ability to remove four obstacles and embrace five building blocks to change. It also relies on your ability to commit to the minute-to-minute process of change. Read More

Personal Growth: Five Building Blocks of Positive Life Change

Nothing of value in life, including life change, is easy or fast. In attempting to change, you are swimming against the tide of many years of baggage, habits, emotions, and environment. If you can dismantle those obstacles and commit yourself to a new direction in your life, positive change can actually occur. Read More

Personal Growth: Four Obstacles to Positive Life Change

On the face of it, change doesn’t seem like it should be that difficult. If there is something that you don’t like about yourself, just change it. But the reality is that meaningful change can be slow, frustrating, and painful, filled with struggles, setbacks, and disappointment. Read More

Personal Growth: "Know Thyself" Is the First Step to Life Change

I disagree with Marcus Buckingham, the co-author of "Now, Discover Your Strengths," who asserts that the way to achieve goals is to focus on your strengths. I believe that it is our weaknesses that prevent us from making substantial changes in our lives. Read More

Personal Growth: Motivation: The Drive to Change

The reality is that change is difficult because, in all likelihood, you have been the way you currently are for a long time and your habits are deeply ingrained. Your ability to find and maintain your motivation for meaningful and long-lasting change will ultimately determine whether you're able to break long-standing habits and patterns. Read More

Sports/Parenting: Red Flags for Over-invested Sports Parents

Perhaps the greatest obstacle to your children gaining ownership of--and enjoyment from--their sport participation occurs when you commandeer their athletic lives to meet your own needs. Read More

Four Forces of Life Inertia

I believe there are four major forces -- needs, self-esteem, ownership, and emotions -- that govern the direction of our lives. The good news is that if we are aware of the four forces and understand them, we can take control of those forces and, in turn, our lives. Read More

Business: Too Much Input, Not Enough "Innerput"

Such large and never-ending quantities of input interfere with your ability to “innerput,” a word I created to denote your thought processes in response to input, including analysis, synthesis, judgments, and decisions. Read More

Life Inertia: Like an Asteroid Hurtling through Space

Sir Isaac Newton's Law of Inertia: A body at rest tends to remain at rest. A body in motion tends to stay in motion. Taylor's Law of Human Inertia: The tendency of people, having once established a life trajectory, to continue on that course unless acted on by a greater force. Read More

Parenting: Have Consequences with "Bite"

Establishing reasonable expectations for your children in all aspects of their lives, including school, home, and family, is essential for raising children who are responsible, respectful, successful, and happy. But expectations without consequences are like a dog with a loud bark, but no bite; scary at first, but ultimately harmless. Read More

Business: Change Your Performance Mindset

When I work with businesspeople and companies, my first challenge is to convince them that profitability, whether individual or corporate, though important, should not be the primary focus. Read More

Popular Culture: I'm Terrified for My Daughters

I'm terrified for my daughters because there is ample evidence that our society has taken several giant steps backwards in how women are viewed and treated in popular culture and the media. Read More

Parenting: Message Blockers: Why Your Children Don't Get Your Messages

Have you noticed that sometimes your children just need to hear a message once and they get it? And, frustratingly, you can send a message dozens upon dozens of times and it is as if they had never sent the message at all? Well, what is keeping your messages from getting through? Read More

Parenting: Five Rules: So Your Children Get Your Messages Loud and Clear

Here are a five simple rules to help ensure that your messages get through to your children loud and clear. Read More

Jim Taylor, Ph.D., is a clinical associate professor at the University of Denver.

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About The Power of Prime

The goal of The Power of Prime is to be "disruptive." I want to look at issues in ways that upset the conventional wisdom. My hope is to initiate a conversation with readers that will offer new knowledge, perspectives, and insights that will challenge and extend the intellectual marketplace. Always entertaining, frequently thought provoking, sometimes controversial, and occasionally outrageous, I want The Power of Prime to be a place for readers to go where, after reading my posts, will say, "Mmmm, that was interesting."