I don't know how many people here are familiar with TED but it's a great website/movement. The following video is about how we defend our belief that we are right at great costs and how we miss out by doing so. Take a look:

http://www.ted.com/talks/kathryn_schulz_...wrong.html

I really appreciated the ending of this. As I've mentioned on another thread in this forum, the past few years when I discovered both pick-up and self-help really installed this strong sense of 'everything I think is right'. It made me feel like the worlds problems could be so simply solved if everyone just knew the same things as me. It's only in the last few months that I've finally been able to start to lose that arrogance and replace it with a little more open-mindedness.

I'm reminded of two things Mark has written about by this video too. One was in his post about self-help, where he concluded that being able to rest with the reality that "the only thing we really know is that we don't know anything at all" is crucial for developing a deep sense of calm and confidence within ourselves.

The second is another post where he linked to a video of someone describing a study they did on self-help. Basically he immersed himself in the self-help world and studied the effect it had on his happiness. He concluded that overall it did make him slightly happier. He thought that the biggest factor he discovered in all of this was the ability to experience wonder, whether at the physical world around us, or at the actions of other people.

In the lecture above, a similar conclusion was reached, when she said that if only we could let ourselves be comfortable with being wrong, we could step outside that bubble and see the amazing things happening around us.

I think this is my biggest step to recovery from the close-mindedness that the last couple of years of pick-up and self-help have instilled in me. Looking back I can remember the peak of this phase, and how nothing in the world seemed that impressive, because jargon about 'the ego', self-deception, or 'being in the moment', had stolen the beauty away. I really feel like I was looking through the world as a dull and predictable place, devoid of colour. I'm moving out of it now I feel though.

Anyway, would love to hear what any one else has to say about this video, or whether they went through a similar phase as the one I just described.

Thanks for this.

When I got into personal development and seduction, I thought that knowing what I learned about social dynamics (through RSD's Blueprint and other sources) made me 'better' and more 'enlightened' than other people. I felt that I knew everything already and everyone else was lost. I couldn't be further from the truth. Recently I've had to admit to myself how little I know and that I must embrace the wonder of the world.

There was a time a few months ago where I was depressed because I felt like everything was meaningless and that I lost the ability to be happy. The way I was living was wrong, and I realized that my journey of personal development is continuous and will never end.

I haven't seen the video yet but I will take a look.

"Every day you may make progress. Every step may be fruitful. Yet there will stretch out before you an ever-lengthening, ever-ascending, ever-improving path. You know you will never get to the end of the journey. But this, so far from discouraging, only adds to the joy and glory of the climb."
--Sir Winston Churchill