If things are too good to be true

they probably aren't.

Life as a narrative

Fiction isn't only the object of writers. We illude ourselves as much as we need to in order to make sense out of reality.

If I were to learn a new language, it would be Greenspanese

"I know you believe you understand what you think I said, but I am not sure you realize that what you heard is not what I meant."

Alan Greenspan

Expectations shape experience

I stereotype, so what? (Version 2.0)

"A stereotype, after all, is a way of categorizing information, in the hope of predicting experiences. The brain cannot start from scratch at every new situation. It must build on what it has seen before. For that reason, stereotypes are not intrinsically malevolent. They provide shortcuts in our never-ending attempt to make sense of complicated surroundings."


Dan Ariely in Predictably Irrational

The happiness formula

Happiness = achieved results ≥ expected results


It's not so much a question of what might make you happy as how to make you believe that what's more likely to happen is what you want to happen (or more). And that's not exactly the same as keeping low expectations: I never met a pessimist who was very happy with his life.

Happiness

is when everything stops and you look at yourself and wish you could be forever like that or just die before it fades and the clock starts ticking again.

An atheistic kind of spirituality...