Optimism and Reality: Goldfish21 Response to me

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If only I had the focus to have that sort of "one-track" mind.

I'm more the ADHD type than the OCD.

It's more like I have "tunnel vision" at times, because stimuli from many different directions tends to befuddle me. Rather like an illustration of the "Intense World" theory.

In the 1960s, people tended to have a One-Track-Mind about a Wide-Track-Pontiac......

It's 9 bucks to get it on kindle. The book by Dr. Burns.

Did you take a bath in epson salt?

Many people use Epsom Salts.

It's not some hokey thing.

I've done that, but no, I made a lotion out of it w/ organic beeswax, organic hemp oil, water, and epsom salts. Or you could just mix it into any regular lotion. Or buy a commercially made epsom salt lotion at a pharmacy. When I've been too lazy to make lotion, I've just mixed it with water in the palm of my hand and put it all over my chest/shoulders/back after I shower - but with no lotion it makes for a bit of a salt flakey mess on bedsheets etc.

Hundreds/thousands of years ago people believed that soaking your feet in hot water an epsom salts would draw toxins out through your skin and that's how it helped them. The opposite is true. You absorb the salts and then they enable your body to urinate out acids that they bind to.

I always say: whatever works.

If a placebo saves someone's life, then I believe it's an efficacious drug.

Placebos have been proven to be very effective.
A member here sent me a documentary where phobia sufferers were given a placebo which greatly reduced or even cured their fears.
By the power of greyskull.

The example I used wasn't the placebo effect. People just didn't understand how the medicine worked yet at that point in science & assumed it worked in a different way instead of how it actually does what it does.

That's basically what Freud thought religion was: an efficacious placebo.

Yes, I know you weren't describing the "placebo effect," Goldfish.

Now, I hope the mods will forgive me on this but this is something I don't get. Didn't ASS-P have a positive attitude about a. trying to store his stuff and b. going to college? He was persistent on this and believed in himself? Yet, he was considered panhandling. I don't get it. Are some types of optimism wrong?

I see a person who doesn't feel like he could handle some of this stuff alone--so he was asking for help. I don't see "optimism"--rather, I see either realism or pessimism.

I don't believe he was really "panhandling" in the bum sense. It was more like he was asking for help in the "hippie" sense, the human camaraderie sense.

got it

I wouldn't call his attitude positive about anything. He's fairly negative/depressed/frustrated/disgruntled etc, not positive.

He wanted to store his stuff but didn't seem to have the ability to Do anything towards enabling himself to do so, including trying advice he was given. Same for college.

He was persistent in stating what he wished for, but he didn't seem to even make an attempt to try obtaining either for himself. He said he was asking for help, but really he was asking for people do do things for him. He said he wasn't asking for money, only "help," but then asked for either things of monetary value or money itself to pay for storage. That's why others got frustrated/annoyed and called him out for pandhandling. Pandhandling might be about the only way he's ever made any money so maybe it's all he's ever thought to do when he wants or needs something. Either way, it's inappropriate to do on these forums, and is especially hard to swallow when the poster is being rude to people. Even here there are social norms and unwritten rules. If it were a regular contributing member who was generally a positive contributor to the forums who had fallen on hard times and asked for a handout, the response may have been different.

I don't think there are any truly wrong forms of optimism.. I just don't think ASS-P was optimistic about anything.

Ah guys I was referring to how this thread did seem to turn trippy. Wasn't the original intent to suggest that we shouldn't preset limits on individuals and later it became to appear as if everything is possible for every person?

Than came the discussion of multiple realities and perceptions. That's what led me to the Lucy comment.

There was also a fair amount of condemnation here as well.

Perhaps we should encourage one another. Not everyone has access to all the same opportunities. Don't make someone feel bad for doing all they can.

Nice summary. The point is that people should do all they can, strive for 100% of their capability.. not justify not even trying, or giving up, based on what others can or can't do, or have or haven't done etc.