“…the worst thing you can do to make yourself crazy and unhappy is to imagine that other people are rational even some of the time. People are irrational all of the time but sometimes it makes sense to you.” -Scott Adams

Starting at 9:03 into this video  Scott Adams says the above quote in an interview with Mike Cernovich. Scott goes on to discuss a few skills that he feels people should work on in today’s world. The entire video is worth watching.

I’ve been interested in self-improvement (or the modern term might be life-hacks) since 1991 when I read the book Unlimited Power (a book I highly recommend) by Anthony Robbins. And when I ran across this Scott Adams video it struck a chord in me and I thought it might be something a lot of other people might be interested in as well.

Scott Adams is of course the creator of Dilbert. It is only recently that I learned that Scott is also an author of quite a few books – just do a Google (or Amazon) search on “Scott Adams books.” I have not yet read any of them but would definitely like to read a few. He seems to be brilliant at not just creating cartoons but also many other topics. His blog can be found here and well-worth following.

Beliefs don’t have to be true in order to be effective. That is one of the core principles of Unlimited Power and is also true of the belief mentioned in the quote which starts this blog post. As long as beliefs are ecologically sound (are not harmful to others or yourself) why not choose beliefs that empower you? Especially in today’s world it might just help people get along better if they did adopt a belief like the above quote. I know that I will keep this quote in mind the next time I’m dealing with a stressful situation.