Realistically speaking, it may not be possible to become emotionally smooth and open no matter what happens, but who would want to? That condition sounds kind of boring. The goal is to reduce an emotional disturbance that would be an 8, 9 or 10 (on a scale of 1 to 10) to a 4, 5 or 6, and then even lower, on purpose!
The realistic goal is to be able to bring yourself out of depession, at will, and to alter the depression-causing mental pollution. The goal is to stop being disabled by overpowering emotional disturbances, and to enjoy your life as much as possible, no matter what happens.
I will admit that it has been a royal drag to have been discovering the full extent of my own mental pollution. I am still shovelling it out, and by the by, can you spare a bulldozer? It's no shame to have lice, but it's a damned shame if you keep them. By the same token, it's no shame to have mental pollution, but it is a damned shame to hang on to it.
Flash Bulletin: Try not to persecute yourself for having mental pollution. That is another double whammy.
It stands to reason that all of us will have an interesting collection of mental pollutants - the thinking errors and faulty beliefs that create our own personal hells-on-earth, for we live in a world noted for its dysfunction, illogic and irrationality. We cannot help but absorb some of it, and we are not usually taught the basics of mental housekeeping - it's almost unheard of. All of us know about dental hygiene and most of us practice it, brushing our teeth once, twice or thrice a day. How many of us regularly brush the mental plaque from our minds? Not a common practice unfortunately.
The mental housekeeping skills that you are going to learn in this manual are not one-time practices. As with teeth-brushing, it takes regular practice, daily, for the best results to show. It makes lousy sense to brush your teeth for a couple of hours once every month. Mental housekeeping skills are similar. A little practice daily adds up to a lot in the long run. It's the lazy way - and it is very effective.