Fluff – feel good psychology is a staple feature of the hack-loving society we live in. Most people want the quick fix because that’s how they lived their whole lives.  The comfortable, easy way is the default setting for the human mind.

Psychology Today: “folks freely gorge on oversize portions of mental anguish, what Stanford neuroscientist Robert Sapolsky calls “adventitious suffering—the pain of what was, what will be, what could be or what someone else is experiencing.” Sapolsky has shown that over time such extra helpings of mental suffering can damage the parts of the brain involved in learning and memory, as well as the immune system.

Decades before Sapolsky’s studies, pioneering cognitive psychologist Albert Ellis put forth the then-radical idea that painful emotions spring more from people’s beliefs than from reality itself: Thoughts alone could lead to anguish. Today cognitive behavioral therapists, including an aging Ellis, counsel patients to relieve emotional distress by changing the content of their thoughts—challenging their beliefs and testing new possibilities.” -PT, Katherine Ellison

People always get in a rut, no matter how wealthy or accomplished they are. What do some rich folk like Paul Tudor Jones do ? They pay, say, Tony Robbins, $1 M a year (since the early ’90s) to shore up their spirits. What does a guy like Robbins have to to ? Get people to the basics. When people are off-balance, it almost always is because they’re “stuck in their head” with a story line about the past or the future (what if ? scenarios).

Fun Videos: AllPsychOnline

Perception Test Video

A lot of people have walked on hot coals to get it right.

Reality doesn’t sting, but the mind makes it so.