Chris said: “As a survival trait, positive self-deception gets things done, and that’s why everybody does it.”

I agree with your observations, Coherent. I belive I am a “realist” yet that is not generally accepted as much as the “optimist” positive perception. Recently I was accused of being “negative” when someone asked about the weather for the weekend and I replied “bleak.” “Stop being so negative!” was the response. “Negative?” I replied. “I just saw the weather report and it said 70% chance of rain.” Now, I would rather have nice ,rain free weekend, but since when is stating the most likely a “negative?! Not what they wanted to hear!
Anyway, great article! And that is a “realistic” answer!”

Dear Chris,

You comment is in fact negative, a realistic one would have merely reported the chance of raining without much subjective judgement.

What makes someone depressed is the overall idea based on actual facts that the subject comes to realize about the world, himself and what is around him in terms of opportunities and ability to influence his own future. This ideas are true but dysfunctional for himself and the way he interacts in social groups, leading to being marginalized and eventually seen as mentally ill.

Yeah, I can recommend installing an inner chill center. If you want both the pessimistic view of humanity, the chill factor, and laughter, just seek out George Carlin. He should be able to balance out your worldview

I would argue against delusion and optimism being useful for humankind at this point in civilization. In fact, I think much of the current unhappiness in America, as well as serious mental illnesses, is due to the collective delusional belief enforced by Disney, Hollywood and the other media that we can and should all be rich, beautiful, “successful”, and famous.

One modern alternative for finding happiness without delusion is Rational Emotive Behavioral Therapy (REBT), invented by the famous psychologist Albert Ellis. His therapy is based on acceptance of the world, ourselves, and focusing on what we can do and what we can change.

For example if you are in a bad job or bad relationship:
1. acceptance of the situation: this job sucks
2. validation of your emotions: the fact that it sucks depresses me, depletes my energy, makes me angry, makes me feel hopeless, etc.
3. Now that you have addressed your emotions, which is a necessary step, time to focus on what you can do to change the situation. In some cases leaving your job or partner is the only viable alternative.

Above all, stop saying things like “my life *should* be better” or “that person *should* not have cut me in line”, or “I *must* be richer”, or “the government *should* do a better job at X”. This is what Ellis humourously called “musturbation”. Such patterns of thought do you no good. This is not to say that these things will not upset you, but “shoulding” just leads to a cycle of unhappiness, anger, and hopelessness.

See wikipedia for more
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Albert_Ellis
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rational_Emotive_Behavior_Therapy

You can also read his many books such as
“The Myth of Self-Esteem”.
“How to Stubbornly Refuse to Make Yourself Miserable About Anything: Yes, Anything”

Above all, it would probably serve all of us well to stop following half-baked advice from TV sound-bites and self-help snippets from talking heads, magazines, the 10 minute guide to XYZ etc, and this article!

i’ll strive to be as smart as you guys >:]

hope you guys will continue posting articels in this site. THANKS!

Agree, we can’t pretend it’s not suffering involved. Although the labeling of mental illness is out of hand considering how few diagnostic methods we have, appearantly no one is normal any more, we all have a ‘disorder’.