Tag Archives: Relationships


What Coaching Is and Isn’t

Before we start today’s post, answer the following question. What does coaching mean to you? In the past, I answered that question as telling someone what to do. That’s what I learned from the popular culture. Sports coaches tell you what to do and how to do it. Sure, a life or business coach would […]


Game Theory, Relationships, Entrepreneurship

Let’s divide games into two categories for the sake of this discussion, games with perfect information and games with imperfect information. Chess is an example of games with perfect information. You can see all the squares and pieces, all the time. Texas Hold’em Poker is an example of games with imperfect information. Each hand involves […]


The Reason and the Remedy of the Most Common Communication Problem

Google is great if you know how to formulate a relevant search query. To do that, you need to have some knowledge on the topic such as basic terminology. In other words, you need to know what you don’t know to search for it on Google. Most of the time, we don’t know what we […]


Dealing with Difficult People

We are all a bunch of programs. These programs are transferred from generation to generation through genes and culture. Some of these programs are very basic. On a deep level, we all want to survive and reproduce. A lot of our behaviors stem from those two basic instincts. We share those instincts with other animals. […]


Two Critical Success Skills You Must Develop

This week is an intense one for me because I’m visiting my parents. It’s easy to get triggered and get into arguments with them. Those arguments aren’t about anything essential. My parents just like arguing. That used to bother me, but now, I feel better about it. I understand them better thanks to a post […]


The Critical Principle You’re Violating

There’s a simple principle that gets violated often nowadays. This principle is a critical one in our personal and professional lives. It’s one of the 7 Habits of Highly Effective People. I’d call it empathy, but I’ll use Stephen R. Covey’s definition. Seek first to understand, then to be understood. Covey divides the 7 habits […]


Personal Development Can Be Detrimental to Your Self-Esteem

And this is what to do about it. We, personal development enthusiasts, are usually very harsh on ourselves. We set very high goals. We are never satisfied with our progress. We are critical of ourselves, finding flaws in ourselves and in our lives. Once we fail to achieve our audacious goals, we ignore the progress […]


How to Develop Superpowers in Business and Relationships

It all comes down to one simple principle. The pain and pleasure principle can be used to understand all human behavior and to modify our behavior. This is a superpower in itself. Today, we are going to go one step further and discuss how we can use this principle to modify the behavior of others, […]

Burak Bilgin

Software developer with a Ph.D. and 15 years of experience. I write daily on personal development and life lessons. Sign up to my email newsletter to receive a weekly overview of my latest content on personal development and life lessons.