The Importance of Realism
Once you become aware of options for achieving life satisfaction, you need to keep in mind that your options must be realistic to work effectively. By realistic, I mean that these options must be things that you can actually do and that the options will actually bring about desirable results. If I tell you that an effective way to reduce stress is to meditate daily, but you are unable to get into a meditative state or to stick with a regular schedule of meditation, this option simply won’t work for you.
The world of common-sense psychology and pop psychology in self-help books, on television, and on the Internet if full of claims about options that will bring you true happiness. Many of these claims are simply false. Harry Browne calls these erroneous claims traps. An important part of this course is learning to develop a critical, skeptical attitude to help you figure out which options have a good chance of working and which are simply a waste of time (and sometimes money).
There are three things that I would like you to keep in mind that keeping a critical and skeptical attitude about recipes for living a good life. First, a skeptical attitude does not mean automatically rejecting new ideas. Rather, it means asking for evidence, asking for reasons why you should believe the idea. Second, you do not always have to be absolutely convinced about an idea to try it. It is possible to maintain a balance between doubting and being open to new ideas. In the end, sometimes the only way to see if an idea works for you is to try it out yourself. Third, it is useful to test old, established ideas as well as new ones. Human beings have a natural tendency to keep believing ideas they have always believed. But believing an idea for a long time does not make the idea correct. Again, testing old ideas does not mean automatic rejection; it is simply asking for evidence.