Creating Your Own Reality - A Placebo For the Good Life

I get these random ideas all the time.  Some juxtaposition of facts, current events, old school learnings that I have from way back, lead to some kind of epiphany that lends itself to my current philosophy of life.

Much of which ends up in here.  This is today’s version of exactly that ….

It is most often the case that when someone is discussing or describing the test results for a new drug (or process or whatever … I’ll use a drug in my example), that they focus on the number of subjects that reacted positively or “recovered” from whatever the drug was designed to address.  This makes sense as the reason for having developed the drug in the first place was to cure the condition, disease, etc.

The number of people who reacted positively to the drug are quite often compared to a control group that was given a placebo or something to give them the impression that there was nothing different between what they were given and what those receiving the actual drug were given.

There are typically 4 subsets of the test subject population we can identify including the various combinations of who took the drug vs. placebo and showed improvement vs. did not show improvement.  The researchers are most interested in the ‘took the drug/showed improvement’ group.  This is the subset they care about to determine how effective their drug was on the test population.  You typically want it to be a “statistically significant” percentage larger than any other subgroup, particularly the group that took had the placebo and showed no or little improvement.

This is the basic testing process I was first exposed to when I was a psychology major.  However, what I find interesting about this now is that I think there is a way more interesting subset of the test subject population that we should be looking into. This is the group that had the placebo and still managed to improve.

Why?  Because they expected to improve.  I am being given a drug that will (likely, I hope, should) improve my condition.  Then, guess what?  They get better.  Even though they were given a placebo.

What if we looked at life this way - If we expected that things were going to improve?  If we assumed success?  If we “pretended” we were given a drug that was going to make everything better?

We can: it’s called positive thinking, aligning with your purpose, prayer, intentionality …. etc.  There are all sorts of variations on how you can shape your attitudes and beliefs to be consistent with the life you want.  Pick the one you want based on your particular spirituality, religion, success belief system, etc.

Try it, you’ll like it!  Take the placebo for the good life.