THE SCIENCE OF WELL BEING

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THE G.I. JOE FALLACY

The G.I. Joe Fallacy is named after G.I. Joe, the cartoon. It's a fantastic show from the 80s. In
then end of every episode G.I. Joe would say, their kind of canonical phrase, which is that
"Knowing is half the battle." And so, this is the fallacy. Merely knowing something is not enough
to put into practice. Merely knowing something is not enough to actually change your behavior.
And that's the G. I. Joe Fallacy. This point is proved be optical illusion as:

VISION AS A METAPHOR

Which of these seem longer?

The lower one.

But both the lines are of equal length.

Now you know that in fact they're the same length. But this is the thing about knowing not being
half the battle. You can't teach your eyes not to see the bottom one as longer, even though you
know what the problem is, your eyes are still seeing in the wrong way. Merely knowing it doesn't
make it better.

Shepard's Tables after the vision scientist,

Roger Shepard

The illusion here is that the table on left hand side seems longer on depth. But if we rorate the
other table , both the tables will overlap completely. Again, even after knowing the optical truth
we can not make our eyes see the truth.

This is the part of the G.I. Joe Fallacy. This idea that knowing is half the battle. It's not. We
actually have to practise other than just knowing to change our behavior. If we really want to
change our behavior, we have to change habits. We can't just learn them.

SAVOURING
What is savoring? It's just the simple act of stepping out of your experience, to review it, and
really appreciate it while it's happening. Why should we take time to savor? Well, it turns out
savoring can boost our mood in at least three ways. First, savoring can thwart hedonic
adaptation. It can make us remember the good things in life. Second, savoring can help thwart
mind wandering. It keeps us in the moment. And finally, savoring can help us increase gratitude.
It can make us thankful for the experiences we're having as we're having them. How do we make
the most of the savoring activity? Well, first off, you just have to take part in a positive
experience, and then you have to savor during that experience. Take a second to realize why it
makes you happy. Then track what you savored today. As we've seen, tracking can help turn
savoring in one moment into a habit.
GRATITUDE
Gratitude is a host of positive benefits. Experiencing gratitude can increase your mood and lower
your stress levels. It can even strengthen your immune system and lower your blood pressure.
Experiencing gratitude also can make you feel a stronger social connection, which itself has this
whole host of positive benefits.

WHY DO WE HAVE
MISCONCEPTONS?

Some people are glass full people, some people are glass empty, that does seem to be borne out
by the data, but often way less than we think. 
It's only about 50%. 
There's a lot of movement there. 
The thing that's amazing is the life circumstances part. 
The thing we really think effects you, like if you had a car crash, or you're a paraplegic, or you
won the lottery, all these things, that actually is the smallest component of our happiness. 
It seems like only about 10% of our actual happiness is effected by that. 
The final part seems to be based on all kinds of actions, intentions, habits that people bring in. 
That big 40% seems to control a lot of our happiness, and the good news is that, unlike the other
things, that part really is under our control. 
It's under our control in important ways, we can work towards it.
We can work hard to be happier. 
The problem is that we seem to be working towards the wrong things. 
We seem to be putting our time into things like getting good grades, and 
getting the best job, and all this stuff. 
We plan for that things, but it's not the things that's making us happy. 
And so the upshot is, is that there are things we can do to become happier. 
But most of the goals we think are going to make us happy,don't actually make us happy.
So we have to kind of pick the right goals.
GENES AND CIRCUMSTANCES DON’T MATTER AS
MUCH AS WE THINK IT DOES

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