The positive side of a crisis

• They pretend to be innocent, ignorant, or confused when they did something awful. This tactic is to make you question your judgment.
• They don't give a straight answer to a straight question, but evade the question or change the subject when cornered.
• They lie by omission or distortion by deliberately being vague.
• They may either respond with charm and flattery, of will suddenly be angry.
• They'll play the victim and make themselves out to be the one in distress.
• They rationalize by giving a plausible excuse for engaging in inappropriate behavior, or they will downplay their behavior.
• Covert aggressives don't feel bad, but they know you do. They will send you on a guilt trip so you will lighten your accusations.

• Let go of the pretense that if you play nice, they will play nice.
• Know your vulnerabilities and focus on the one thing that really needs to change: yourself. You can only control what you do.
• Set some boundaries for yourself. Be prepared for the consequences and set a support system.
• Memorize the list of tactics used by an aggressive person. Then it is easier to recognize the attack.
• If you're willing to accept an excuse, know that they will fling excuses at you until one stick.
• Stay calm and polite, and avoid sarcasm, hostility, or threats.
• Without being rude, be specific about what you expect or want from the other person. Aggressives will only participate if they can get something out of it. If they have to lose, they'll make sure you go down too. Ensure you propose win-win solutions

The most important emotions about money to become aware of are fear, guilt, and shame. Without awareness, these emotions will interfere with your rational thinking.

• Common fears include fear of having too little money, fear of looking foolish, fear of causing envy.
• Guilt is about feeling bad about a negative impact you've had on others. You may feel guilty because you have more than your friends, or are not charitable.
• Shame is feeling troubled when you don't live up to your own values. Shame related to money involves feelings of not having enough money, avoiding thinking about finances, avoiding doing what you're supposed to do with your finances, feeling ignorant, and overspending.

Other emotions that influence your handling of money include envy, greed, and over-excitement.

Mental health problems can have a significant effect on your finances.

• Excessive use of alcohol leads to poor judgment and inattentiveness to finances.
• Depression can cause a loss of employment. People with depression also lack energy and a sense of purpose.
• People with a mild expression of bipolar disorder can experience states with increased energy, decreased inhibitions, exciting plans, and are overstimulated to spend.
• Adults with ADHD/ADD have the ability to pay intense attention to tasks that really interest them while screening out the tedious or mundane.

Instead of making relationships complicated and overambitious, we can just take care of these three essential but overlooked aspects:

1. Kindness: A person who is humane and kind, gentle and not too serious.
2. Shared Vulnerability: A person who is a good, empathetic listener, and makes us open comfortably about our anxieties, problems and worries.
3. Understanding: Someone who has a deep understanding of our traits, quirks, features, obsessions, and the way we see the world. Someone who is interesting enough for us to want to understand.

Paradoxically, by limiting our expectations about our relationship, we can concentrate on the three critical ingredients of kindness, understanding and vulnerability, and have a simple yet loving connection.

By simplifying and clarifying, we can release ourselves from our complicated conflicts and pursue a deep and profound bond.

Ignoring problems in a relationship in order to avoid conflict will only mean that the problems pile up until they can no longer be ignored – and by then, it might be too hard to fix.

Keeping track of the things that you do, versus the things that they do is a way to create pressure and conflict where there should only be teamwork. 

Sit down together and work out a plan on things like chores or bills, and who does or pays what.

There is no such thing as the key to success.

However, being ambitious, lucky and persistent can really work. While nothing guarantees success, finding what you like and trying to become good at it are definitely important steps in that direction.

There is a certain temptation we all feel when it comes to other people's success: check out exactly how they made it u to this level.

Nevertheless, this is not really the appropriate approach, as each individual has its own path in life: so better focus on your goal and how you plan to achieve it.

The idea behind BAT is that we have to do happy to feel happy. Instead of our mood changing what we do, we need to change what we do to fix our mood. The first principle of BAT is to change what you do. Engage in the right activities and positive feelings will follow.

We can't wait until we feel better before we act. Emotions perpetuate themselves. We have to move now and break the cycle of our feelings. This is how we grab hold of happiness.

• Pleasure is vital, but we want the kind that will last and not leave you even more stressed than before you started. We're looking for a deeper satisfaction that comes from truly meaningful activities like relationships, exercise, and reading.
• Mastery can be thought of as a feeling of accomplishment. Progress in goals that are meaningful to you, whether it pays the bills or not.

Create a balance between leisure activities and mastery.

If we keep out a million distractions surrounding us and think about our goal day and night, we will succeed in our goal, no matter what. The key here is continued focus, and also making the right thing as our goal.

If the aim is only money, it may not help us much, but if we keep our aim towards learning or striving to become better at something, we achieve success in monetary terms as a bonus.

Emotional Intelligence, the ability to understand yourself and the people that you live and work with, is an excellent trait to balance and correct yourself.

Everything and everyone is connected to one another forming a huge ecosystem. Our endeavours, whether to get a job, to lose weight or to find a life partner is always related to others.