Summer break has officially started. All of the end of the school year things are done and it’s time to enjoy popsicles late at night, sun tans, and pool parties.
In theory.
It also means parents across America are preparing themselves for one of the great modern fears:
“How much screen time are my kids going to have this summer?”
For many parents, summer creates an immediate sense of pressure and guilt around technology. During the school year, schedules help regulate things naturally. Kids are in class. They have sports. Homework. Activities. Bedtimes feel more structured.
Then summer hits.
Suddenly kids are home more.

Bored more.
On devices more.
And almost immediately the panic begins.
I think we worry that our kids can’t be bored, that they shouldn’t be bored.
Modern parenting seems to treat boredom as a parental failure.
I also think we have engaged in a lot of all or nothing thinking with technology.
I’m enjoying technology right now as I write this and that technology isn’t my computer.
It’s AC.
In a few moments I’m going to go benefit from another technological breakthrough: indoor plumbing.
But of course, those aren’t the technologies that we are warned or worried about. We’re worried about phones, tablets and apps.
Parents start hearing the same warnings everywhere:
Phones are destroying kids.
Social media is rewiring their brains.
Technology is ruining attention spans.
Video games are creating addiction.
Screens are killing social skills.
To be clear, I am not arguing technology has no risks.
It obviously does.
But I do think we have drifted into something unhealthy in the broader cultural conversation. Somewhere along the line, many parents started believing the primary goal was to “win the war” against technology.
That war is over.
Technology won.
Phones are not going away.
AI is not going away.
Social media is not disappearing.
The internet is not going backward.
Honestly, I am not even sure that should be the goal.
Instead of eliminating technology, maybe our goal should be teaching our children how to live wisely in a world where technology exists.
Because every generation panics about the newest form of technology.
People once argued novels would damage minds and weaken morality.
Radio was going to destroy conversation.
Television was going to ruin families.
Rock music was corrupting the youth.
Video games were supposedly creating violent criminals.
Now it is smartphones.
That does not mean phones are harmless.
It means human beings have a long history of turning fear into certainty.
What fascinates me most is how much the modern conversation around phones reminds me of older parenting debates around spanking.
Years ago, when I would tell people I did not spank my children, there was often an immediate assumption:
“Oh, so you just let them do whatever they want.”
As if the only two parenting options were:
Hit your kids or have no discipline at all.
Now I hear a very similar logic surrounding technology.
If you are not completely panicked about phones…
If you are not treating screens like radioactive material…
If you are not trying to ban every app and lock down every possible risk…
Then some people assume you must not care what your children are doing online.
That is a false dichotomy.
Healthy parenting has never been built on extremes.
The answer is not unrestricted chaos.
The answer is also not fear-driven obsession.
The answer is engaged parenting.
Our job as parents was never to create a fantasy world where our children would never encounter temptation, distraction, manipulation, comparison, loneliness, or unhealthy influences.
Yes, we want those encounters to be pushed out as far as possible. That world does not exist.
Our responsibility was to help prepare them for the real world they are actually going to live in.
In our house, this reality meant technology and its proper use was something we talked about often.
Not one time. We talked about it through thousands of small conversations over the years. It was just a normal conversation.
We talked about all of it. How does our use of anything reflect our values? Who do we want to become? What do we need to do today to become that person tomorrow?
We talked about the dangers of technology and the benefits.
In a recent letter to his subscribers, of which I am one, Charles Duhigg wrote this:
But you’re not thinking about those kinds of technologies! You’re worried about iPhones and TikTok and Insta! Too much screen time rots the brain, right?
Well, it’s nuanced. A study of 120,000 teenagers found that some screen time is better than none, but too much can make you miserable. People who spend about two hours a day surfing online are happy — but more than three hours is linked to anxiety and self-esteem issues.
So in our house, phones were not treated like forbidden treasure because forbidden treasure tends to become obsession.
The more emotionally charged and mysterious something becomes, the more power it often gains.
Many of the strategies we are now using with technology were tried with food a generation ago The result was one of the largest cohorts of eating disorders ever seen.
Religious people did it with alcohol. Most research is clear, those kids had a far higher chance of becoming alcoholics as adults than those who were taught to use it in moderation.
So, this summer, let’s try something. Let’s center our technology discussions with our children around the reality that technology is just a tool.
A useful tool at times.
And at other times, a dangerous tool.
It can connect or distract.
Which honestly describes almost everything human beings interact with.
Food can nourish or destroy us.
Money can help or corrupt us.
Work can create purpose or consume identity.
Entertainment can refresh us or numb us.
The “thing” itself matters, but our relationship to the thing matters more.
That is why blaming phones alone often feels incomplete to me.
Sometimes we blame technology the same way people blame food for diabetes while refusing to examine eating habits.
The issue is more than just access. It is growth and formation. It’s who we are shaping our children to become as they age.
And that means parents still matter enormously.
Boundaries matter.
Conversations matter.
Oversight matters.
Modeling matters.
You cannot spend six hours a night scrolling your phone while telling your teenager technology is the problem.
Kids notice hypocrisy quickly.
You also cannot outsource parenting to software.
Filters can help.
Monitoring apps can help.
Restrictions can help.
But none of those things can replace relationship.
At some point your child will encounter the world.
At some point they will have freedom.
At some point they will face temptation without you standing beside them.
It also means we need to teach our children something many adults no longer know how to practice themselves:
Boredom.
One reason phones dominate our attention so thoroughly is because many people have completely lost the ability to sit quietly.
Every moment must now be filled.
Every pause interrupted.
Every silence medicated with stimulation.
Kids need unstructured time.
Conversation.
Creativity.
Play.
Reflection.
Stillness.
Not because phones are evil.
Because human beings need balance.
Of course, this means we might need to consider how the adults will feel about this.
Dad might not be able to play his video games for three hours with his buddies.
The house might be a mess—let me guarantee it probably will be a mess.
Mom might not feel fulfilled as though she is living her best life in every moment.
Whatever the magazine photo shoot of your life is in your head might not happen exactly as it looks in your head.
And maybe that is the deeper issue underneath all of this.
Most of strategies for dealing with technology treat it as though it creates something in us. As though little Johnny would have been a good boy if that pesky phone had never come along. I think tha’s wrong.
Technology amplifies whatever already exists inside of us.
A lonely person can become more isolated online.
A curious person can learn endlessly.
An insecure person can become consumed with comparison.
A disciplined person can use incredible tools productively.
Technology reveals.
It magnifies.
It accelerates.
Which means the deeper work has never really changed.
We are still trying to help our children become wise, emotionally healthy, grounded human beings capable of handling freedom responsibly.
That has always been the assignment.
Summer break probably will include more screens.
More gaming.
More YouTube.
More texting.
More boredom scrolling.
But maybe instead of turning summer into another season of panic, parents can see it as an opportunity.
An opportunity to teach.
To guide.
To model.
To walk alongside their kids instead of merely policing them.
Please let me be clear, I am not saying that there should be no policing. I personally don’t think kids should have their own app store account. This is one layer of protection. My thirteen year old has no social media accounts except YouTube because he’s constantly learning on that app.
We need guidelines. We also need to model what we expect our children to become. We can and should delay privacy of the device. If you’d like more concrete steps that I think every parent can take to help their children navigate their use of technology check out episode 348 of The Joe Martino Show.
Eventually our children will carry enormous freedom into the world.
And our greatest gift to them will not be perfect control.
It will be helping them become the kind of people who can handle freedom and the temptation that comes with it.

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The post Am I a Hypocrite? Technology, Kids, Screen Time and Growth first appeared on .

The current conversations around phones and our kids reminds me a lot of past conversations around our kids, spanking and what it means to train our children. There was a lot of all or nothing fallacies thrown around back then.
I think that’s happening often today with the conversation around phones and our kids.

Phones are not going away. Social media is not disappearing. AI is only becoming more integrated into everyday life. So what if the goal of parenting is not to eliminate technology, but to teach our kids how to live wisely with it?

In this episode of The Joe Martino Show, I tackle the growing panic around kids, screens, and technology. From smartphones to social media, the modern conversation often falls into extremes: either technology is destroying children, or parents simply do not care. I think there is a better path.

Drawing comparisons to past moral panics around television, radio, novels, and even the parenting debates around spanking, this episode explores why fear-based parenting rarely produces maturity. Instead of treating technology like forbidden treasure, I discuss practical ways parents can guide their children through the digital world with wisdom, boundaries, discernment, and ongoing conversation.

This is not an argument for unlimited screen time or passive parenting. It is a conversation about raising future adults who know how to handle freedom responsibly in a world where technology is everywhere.

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The post Parenting in the Age of Smartphones and Social Media first appeared on .

Mental health diagnoses can be incredibly helpful. They can bring understanding, reduce shame, and help people find the support they need. But somewhere along the way, many of us started turning diagnoses into identities.

In this episode of The Joe Martino Show, I talk about the growing tendency to define ourselves by anxiety, trauma, ADHD, depression, and other labels instead of seeing them as part of a larger story. I explores how social media has amplified identity-driven mental health culture, why explanation is not the same thing as destiny, and how overidentifying with struggle can quietly keep people stuck.

I have no interest in a conversation about denying mental health. I am hopeful, we can have a conversation about reclaiming agency, responsibility, and hope without dismissing pain.

If you’ve ever felt trapped by a label, overwhelmed by mental health language online, or afraid that your struggles define you, give this episode a listen. See if it breaks something loose for you.

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The post Your Diagnosis Was Never Meant to Be Your Identity first appeared on .

This morning, on my way to work I was inundated with parents being willing to break traffic laws and what I can only assume was an attempt to make sure that their student wasn’t late to school.

That got me to thinking about this time of year and all of the “lasts”  that will be remembered by graduating students.

Their last Monday.
Their last Tuesday, etc.

This year has been a cacophony of lasts for them. Everything they did was their last time to do it in High School.

We applaud that.
Celebrate it.
And we should.

But today’s post is going to be less celebratory. Yes, I have multiple other posts actually ready to go, but I felt I should interrupt the regularly scheduled post to talk about our lasts.

When I woke up this morning, my first thought was this could be my last Tuesday to ever wake up. Not in a morbid way. Not in a way that I hope it is my last Tuesday, but there is a fact that it could be my last Tuesday.

Now that we’re done with the feel good emotions, let’s talk about what brought me to this moment. If you’re a NASCAR fan, you know that Kyle Busch died last Thursday. He was 41 years old and he died in a race car simulator. He leaves behind a wife and two young children.

He was my favorite NASCAR driver to the extent that I watched NASCAR. I liked him because I thought he was extremely talented and people either loved him or severely disliked him, a reality that I can relate to on a much smaller scale.

I can’t help but wonder when he woke up last Thursday if he knew that would be the last time  he had the opportunity to see a sunrise, what would he have done differently?
Would he have gone to the simulator?

This question seems to create no small amount of stress for people when I bring it up, but I think it’s an important question for us to consider.

What would we change if we knew today was our last day?

Would chasing the promotion at work still matter as much?
Would we still tolerate the person who is abusing us?
Would we attempt to make up with someone?
Would we not change anything?

An ancient writer, one wrote that if we learned to number our days, we will have a heart of wisdom.

I think about how many days I have left often. Time seems to go faster every day.  It seems every day, that I know more people who have passed away.
A few weeks ago a man I knew here locally died in his sleep at the age of 40.

I can’t help but wonder what did they leave undone? 

I have lived 19,089 days to this point.

How many of those days have I squandered?
How many have I truly sucked the morrow out of?

I don’t know how many I have left.

In twelve days, I will celebrate my Mom’s birthday.

Four weeks after that, I will mark her passing. 

The point of this post isn’t to discourage anyone. It’s not a quiet signal that I’m depressed or need help.

The point is that living a life of meaning means we recognize how fleeting life is.
To live a meaningful life, we need to live intentionally.
We need to remember that someday we are going to die and we have no idea when that day is coming.

We need to choose wisely the things that matter.

Most of us know what those things are already.
We know what we need to do.
We know what we want to do but are too scared to actually try.
We know the boundary we need to set.
We know the apology we need to give.

We just assume that we’ll see another Tuesday.

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The post Kyle Busch, My Mom and The Value of Living with the End in Mind first appeared on .

People love blaming phones for everything.
Social media is ruining kids.
Technology is destroying families.
Phones are why people don’t want children anymore.
But what if that explanation is far too shallow?
In this Mental Health Awareness Month episode of The Joe Martino Show, I push back on the growing tendency to blame objects for deeply human problems. This conversation explores why technology may not be creating our cultural struggles as much as it is exposing and amplifying values that were already there.
From comfort culture and instant gratification to sacrifice, meaning, parenting, resilience, and the loss of transcendence, this episode wrestles with the deeper questions underneath rising anxiety, loneliness, and emotional fragility.
Because maybe the real issue isn’t the phone in our hand.
Maybe it’s the worldview shaping the person holding it.

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The post What If Phones Are Just Exposing Us? first appeared on .

Last week I talked about shame and Brené Brown. I also talked about Neil Postman and how I think he is one of the most underappreciated thinkers of the last century. Perhaps the most controversial thing I said was that I thought Brené Brown might be wrong when it comes to shame.
More than a few people reached out to me personally and asked me what I meant by that sentence. In part, because I was the one who introduced them to her and her Ted talk, which can be found here. I have loudly and proudly lauded many of her assertions in her work. Many of my clients have found real and lasting change that began with questions that she brought up and statements that she made.
I want to come back to Postman’s book, The Disappearance of Childhood, which could be more aptly titled, “The Disappearance of Adulthood.” But that Post needs to wait another week.
This week, I want to talk more about shame and how we interact with it in society.
In her Ted Talk listed above (which has a lot of amazing information) she states some excellent things such as:

1. Vulnerability is not weakness. I agree with her and believe this message needs to be proclaimed loudly for all to hear.
2. To create is to make something that has never existed before and that is intensely vulnerable. Agree again.
3. We have to talk about shame and no one wants to talk about it. I also agree with this. We do need to talk about shame and very few people are willing to do that. Dr. Brown has been rightly credited with being perhaps the first person to bring the conversation to the public.
4. She quotes my favorite Teddy Roosevelt quote. The Man in the Arena. Find it here.
5. The critic in our head is mostly us. This is so true. Most of the time, we are our greatest roadblock.
6. She correctly shows us how much what she calls shame (I’d call it something else) is correlated with bad outcomes such as addiction, and other life difficulties. The research on this is robust and extensive.
7. She tells that we all feel some shame and those who don’t are probably sociopaths. Research would support this idea.
   So what’s the problem? Especially if you read my first book, The Emotionally Secure Couple, you know that I devote an entire chapter to the reality that relationships fall apart when they are run by guilt, fear and shame, so what’s the problem.
   Words Matter.
   Well, words matter. A lot.
   They shape how we communicate and how we communicate shapes how we form our beliefs, our actions and ultimately our way of being.
   In her TED talk she gives examples of shame that are our inner voice reminding us about what other people have done to us (the other person part is important).

She gives us examples like:
“I know those things that happened you growing up.”
“I know you don’t think you’re pretty enough or smart enough or talented enough or powerful enough.”
“I know your dad never paid attention even when you made CFO.”
She then tells us, “Even if we can quiet it down and walk in and tell it, ‘I’m going to do this.’ We look up and the critic we see pointing is laughing is who? Us!”
She further tells us that shame drives too big tapes, “Never good enough and who do you think you are?”
Then she makes a concerted effort to teach us that shame is not guilt. She says, “Shame is a focus on self, guilt is a focus on behavior.
Shame is ‘I am bad.’
Guilt is ‘I did something bad.’”
She is credited with the definition of shame as “Shame is the intensely painful feeling that we are unworthy of love and belonging.”
But!
And this is a serious question that I have. Is that really the definition of shame? I can’t find it in any dictionary.
In two dictionaries I found statements or third definitions that stated something to the effect of pervasive shame can lead to feelings of worthlessness, etc.
In other words, she gives us a brand new definition of shame. In order to help us, she massages the definition of word and gives us something to understand that can help us.
In her effort to help, she has succeeded.
Many people have listened to this TED talk with it’s millions of views and found something powerful in it.
In an attempt at full transparency, I’ve done something similar with my clients. I have told clients that stress happens to us, anxiety is how I respond to it. This separates the two words and is more faithful to my own theoretical orientation. In other words, someone screaming at me is stressful, but I get to choose if I engage in anxiety.
For psychology nerds, this is a fairly straightforward use of Rational Emotive Behavior Therapy (REBT).
So why worry about Dr. Brown who has more formal education than I do shifting a word a bit.
This is where I wrestle with the question of do I disagree with her or what we’ve done with her work?
What Came Next?
This talk came out 14 years ago. That’s an eternity in our modern world. Which is why I think it deserves our attention today. Fourteen years is long enough for us to see both the intended consquences of her helping people and the unintended consequences of what that shift in terminology might have cost us. And how much deeper that cost might go if we don’t address it.
We treat shame like a weapon in our society today.
Just the other day, I watched a video where a woman videotaped a man “following her” on a walking trail. She actually said, “Shame! Shame! Shame on you!” He responded colorfully asking her where he was supposed to walk on the walking trail.
I have heard countless people respond to be being disagreed with or criticized with, “Don’t shame me!”
I’ve sat in my therapy room and had people tell me their spouse was shaming them when in reality the spouse was disagreeing with them.
We’ve vilified shame. We’ve taken our own self agency and abdicated it to others. If you say something I don’t like about me or what I did you are shaming me. Therefore in order to protect my mental health, I need to disengage from you either by avoiding you or shouting you down.
Shouting the other person down is our modern day mini cancel culture.
If I were to be having this discussion with Dr. Brown (who has never been a Therapist), I’d ask her why? Why is shame focused on self and guilt on behavior?
Because that’s new.
For most of our usage of the word shame, it’s been about behaviors and let’s be honest, that’s a good thing.
There are some things, maybe many behaviors we should feel shame.
Here’s my biggest struggle with her work, she equates shame with identity.
Feeling shame and feeling like you are unworthy are not the same thing.
What Dr. Brown defines as shame is actually an inaccurate understanding of self. It could be labeled self-loathing or inaccurate self-view.
We could just call it a bad understanding of identity and worth. I can already here my social work friends losing their minds.
“You’re blaming the person struggling!”
No, I’m putting responsibility on them, which is bestowing hope to them.
I think we need shame. We need it to be focused on our behaviors and not on us.
Certainly, there can be people who are ashamed to be who they are.
But—
Doesn’t that create an existential question? How much of our actions make us who we actually are?
Shame means that there are higher ideals we aspire to and that aspiration is shown by our behaviors.
I think that student who put his teacher in a coma because she tried to take his phone should feel shame for that action.
I think the grandma who made her kid run around her trailer until she died should feel shame.
I think the parent that doesn’t take care of their kids should feel shame for not taking care of their kids.
Shame should not be a permanent state of being.
Not every criticism or disagreement is shame.
What happens when divorce shame from guilt which is what Dr. Brown did with her definitions in this TED talk and her subsequent works?
Maybe that’s part of why so many modern conversations fall apart so quickly. We no longer know the difference between being corrected and being condemned. If every criticism feels like an attack on our worth as a human being, then disagreement itself becomes the problem. Accountability starts to feel abusive.
Correction feels unsafe.
When that happens, growth becomes almost impossible because it almost always begins with the uncomfortable realization that something in us needs to change.
Let me be clear, shame should not become identity. I don’t think people should walk around crushed under the weight of self-loathing or convinced they are unworthy of love. It should not be a permanent state of living, but much of what we call shame is really the moment where judgment about behavior becomes creation of identity.
Some actions should bother us.
Some behaviors should sit heavy on our conscience.
That discomfort can become an invitation toward responsibility, repair, maturity and change.
Maybe the real danger is not shame itself, but what happens when we confuse behavior with identity. When shame becomes who I am instead of something pointing me toward what needs to change, it crushes people. But when we eliminate shame altogether, we risk creating a world where nobody can be corrected because every challenge feels like rejection. That doesn’t lead to freedom. It leads to fragility.”

The post Healthy People Understand the Difference Between Shame and Identity first appeared on .

Life gets hard. That’s not a surprise. What throws people off is how they think we handle that reality.
Most people slow down, overthink, and wait for things to feel better before they move. And that’s exactly where they get stuck.
In this episode, I breaks down why growth doesn’t come from feeling ready, motivated, or certain. It comes from movement. Even small movement. Especially small movement.
You’ll hear a real-life story about pushing forward in a hard season, along with practical ways to keep going when everything in you wants to shut it down.
If you’ve been stuck, overwhelmed, or waiting for the “right time,” this episode will challenge that pattern and give you a different way forward.
You don’t need the whole plan.
You just need the next step.

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The post Growth Requires Movement (Even When You Don’t Feel Like It) first appeared on .

I think Brené Brown is wrong.

There. I said it. I said something I’ve been thinking about for years. I remember when I first saw her TED talk on shame and how powerful it was. I shared it. I had clients watch it.

And then…

And then, I started to wonder if maybe she didn’t go a little too far. First, she said that she believed that everyone was really doing their best (something I reject outright).
What happened next might not be on her, but as a society, we made this massive shift to vilifying shame.

We’ve moved to this place where all shame is bad.

I’ve started to wonder what the consequences would be for a society that made any shame a non-starter.

Recently, I read the book, The Disappearance of Childhood by Neil Postman. I think Neil is an undervalued American Treasure.

The basic premise is fairly simple.

Childhood, as we think of it today, is not just a biological stage of life. It’s something culture created and protected. Postman argued that literacy helped create childhood because adults controlled access to information. There were things children simply did not know yet. They had to grow into adulthood over time.

Then television changed everything. Today, we might say that devices or technology changed everything. Afterall, TV is technology.

According to Postman, TV flattened the information hierarchy. Suddenly children and adults were consuming the same content at the same time. Adult knowledge became instantly accessible. The boundaries between adulthood and childhood began to collapse.

Because of this, children grew up too fast and adults became childish.

He argues the collapse happens in stages. Literacy erodes first. Then education loses its distinctiveness. Shame disappears next. Eventually, childhood itself goes with it

As I read the book, I understand the source of my angst over the removal of shame from our society. Postman makes connections that I had churning in my head but was unable to bring into focus.

The right type of shame is important for development. The loss of it, actually leads to the disappearance of childhood. We might say that it leads to the disappearance of childhood innocence.

I think the problem runs deeper than even Postman realized.

When we lose childhood innocence, we lose maturity.

We now live in a world where almost nobody wants to hear the words “not yet.”

Children are exposed to adult conversations, adult fears, adult sexuality, adult outrage, adult politics, and adult anxieties earlier than ever before. At the exact same time, adults increasingly behave like emotionally reactive teenagers (why wouldn’t they? There’s no such thing as behavior to be ashamed about). We increasingly act as though the very idea of shame is abusive.

Someone suggesting that a person should feel shame over a behavior becomes a trauma. It’s a world that operates backwards.

Everybody performs while development withers like an overripe avocado left on the counter too long.

Social media did not create this problem, but it poured gasoline on it. Social media is a wonderful tool to enhance and reveal us as humans.

Adults publicly unravel online for validation from strangers.
Teenagers learn branding before identity.
Children learn performance before character.
Politics increasingly functions like reality television.
Even spirituality often feels more curated than formed.

The strange thing is that both sides of our cultural divide contribute to this in different ways.

Some people blame capitalism and corporations for commodifying childhood. They are not entirely wrong. Children are marketed to constantly. Attention itself has become the product.

Others blame moral decline, weak parenting, or the collapse of traditional values. They are not entirely wrong either. Boundaries matter. Formation matters. Parents matter.

But I think both sides often miss something important.

A healthy society requires adults who truly want to become adults.

That sounds obvious until you look around. What we’ve made enemy number one is “adulting.” A term I despise more than a rash in my armpit.

We increasingly celebrate perpetual adolescence. We celebrate impulsivity. We reward outrage. We monetize emotional reactivity. We treat self-control like repression and wisdom like boredom.

Our children absorb it all. They learn what we model.

One of the great ironies of modern life is that we have access to more information than any generation in human history while simultaneously struggling to produce emotionally grounded, resilient, mature human beings.

Information doesn’t form us. Knowledge doesn’t automatically produce wisdom.

In some ways, endless exposure may weaken wisdom because wisdom often requires slowness. Reflection.
Silence.
Restraint.
Time.

Most of us no longer live in environments designed for any of those things.

That’s the part that feels most important to me. I don’t think what we are losing is merely innocence.

I think we are losing wonder.
Not childishness.
Wonder.

There’s a difference.

Childishness is self-centered impulsivity. Maturity, or becoming an adult as the concept of adulthood is the shedding of the same.
Wonder is the ability to encounter life with depth, awe, humility, and curiosity.

Modern culture is remarkably good at stimulation.
It is increasingly terrible at real growth..

We distract ourselves endlessly.
We entertain ourselves constantly.
We perform ourselves publicly.
But many of us never slow down long enough to become anyone. Becoming someone would require responsibility.
It would require us to become adults and have a clear distinction between childhood and adulthood.

Maybe that’s why so many people feel exhausted right now. You’ll often hear people say that they’re exhausted because life is so busy.
But who keeps asking modern life to give us something to consume while asking nothing of us in return, allowing us to avoid responsibility that naturally comes with consumption?

In the book, Postman mentions that at some point in history kids became society’s preferred “objects of conspicuous consumption.” (Chapter 3, pp. 44).

Maybe that’s the greatest tragedy in all of this.

In our refusal to become adults, we’ve stolen childhood from our children.

Sure, we entertain them. We buy them things. We have them play sports.

But maybe in our obliteration of shame, reading and education, we’ve made those things more about us and the kids are just the objects we use to show off. 

Proper shame is the result of having a clear line between childhood and adulthood. It’s the result of admitting there are topics, acts and even points of view that aren’t appropriate for children.

And maybe that’s why books like Postman’s still matter.

Not because they make us nostalgic for some perfect past that never really existed.

But because they force us to ask a harder question:

Who or what are we focusing on now? How is that focus shaping who we are becoming?

Most of all, his book (written before the modern social whipping dogs of social media and personal cell phones existed) might force us to consider do we even notice it happening.

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The post The Strange Cost of Treating Shame as the Ultimate Evil first appeared on .

Mental Health Awareness Month is everywhere. But awareness alone doesn’t change anything.
In this episode, I take a look at what helps beyond awareness. There is not vague advice nor is there an overcomplicated systems. Just simple, practical ways to start improving your mental health right now.
You’ll learn why waiting to feel better keeps people stuck, how your daily habits shape your mental state, and five actions you can start today to move in a better direction.
If you’ve been feeling off, overwhelmed, or just not like yourself, this episode gives you a place to start.

The post 5 Things That Actually Improve Your Mental Health first appeared on .