My mother loves mantras. One of her favorites is: KISS or Keep It Simple, Stupid. Throughout my life, she has applied KISS to many different situations. For example, she knows I love to plan fun events for friends and family. She also knows, however, that I like to go overboard and make really complex plans. She would have to repeatedly say, "KISS, Sarah, KISS!" Another example is when I was acting like the typical teenage girl and overanalyzing the actions of the boy I liked, she would tell me to calm down and KISS. Lastly, whenever I worried about a paper and getting a good grade, her advice would be KISS. 
Psychology 1001 taught me KISS is more universal than I once thought. Besides my mother, psychologists use KISS in the context of Occam's Razor. This guideline in psychology refers to when "[...] two explanations account equally well for a phenomenon [...]" (25), we should generally use the simpler one. By not getting muddled in the details of a complex explanation, we can embrace simplicity when considering explanations. While this method is not always correct, it has proven to be more reliable than not.
So the next time you're analyzing the "true" meaning behind someone's words, think KISS and apply Occam's Razor to your everyday life.
