I practiced this (or, some could say, the dysfunctional version of this) in a relationship context, wherein I was completely in the dark as to the other person’s feelings for me (very high uncertainty). The results were fairly disastrous for everybody involved.
Not knowing anything, anything at all, with sufficient certainty, I chose to give greater weight to all the negative feedback coming from the other, and barely any to the positive feedback. (I figured that the negative feedback wouldn’t even be there if the more optimistic scenario were true.) And I acted on it; I acted as if the worst-case scenario was true with high certainty, mostly because every time I tried to be optimistic about the situation, I got turned down. Again. I was coming from a baseline of zero hopes (a situation that had been lasting for years); the ambiguous, mixed feedback received from the other person prompted the wishful-thinking side of me to get my hopes a little up; and then I saw myself having to bring them back to zero again.
It was the most depressing thing I had ever done. I had to exert considerable effort to make myself believe the pessimistic side of the story, and found myself completely unable to regulate my emotions so as to actually cope with the scenario. I just adjusted my beliefs, and left my emotions follow suit.
The long version of the conclusion is that our relationship spiralled down towards rock bottom, I made some burning-bridges types of choices, and now I hear some clues from the other side of the burnt bridge that maybe I should have been a little more optimistic, because apparently I had left both of us pretty much emotionally broken.
Pessimism can be good, especially when you have an obviously optimistically biased side of yourself which you need to counter, but with two addenda: 1) either ensure you have ways to emotionally cope with the pessimistic scenario, or maintain your beliefs in a more optimistic state for the sake of your mental well-being; 2) don’t fuel a self-fulfilling prophecy with your pessimism.
P.S. To this day I don’t know exactly which side of story was true. The evidence pointed everywhere, all at once; there were only a handful of possibilities that I could rule out. I don’t know whether my (low) expectations were realistic or not.
I don’t think the stoic exercises of visualizing a worst cases and getting okay with that worst case scenario is about pessimism or interpreting feedback negatively.
I practiced this (or, some could say, the dysfunctional version of this) in a relationship context, wherein I was completely in the dark as to the other person’s feelings for me (very high uncertainty). The results were fairly disastrous for everybody involved.
Not knowing anything, anything at all, with sufficient certainty, I chose to give greater weight to all the negative feedback coming from the other, and barely any to the positive feedback. (I figured that the negative feedback wouldn’t even be there if the more optimistic scenario were true.) And I acted on it; I acted as if the worst-case scenario was true with high certainty, mostly because every time I tried to be optimistic about the situation, I got turned down. Again. I was coming from a baseline of zero hopes (a situation that had been lasting for years); the ambiguous, mixed feedback received from the other person prompted the wishful-thinking side of me to get my hopes a little up; and then I saw myself having to bring them back to zero again.
It was the most depressing thing I had ever done. I had to exert considerable effort to make myself believe the pessimistic side of the story, and found myself completely unable to regulate my emotions so as to actually cope with the scenario. I just adjusted my beliefs, and left my emotions follow suit.
The long version of the conclusion is that our relationship spiralled down towards rock bottom, I made some burning-bridges types of choices, and now I hear some clues from the other side of the burnt bridge that maybe I should have been a little more optimistic, because apparently I had left both of us pretty much emotionally broken.
Pessimism can be good, especially when you have an obviously optimistically biased side of yourself which you need to counter, but with two addenda: 1) either ensure you have ways to emotionally cope with the pessimistic scenario, or maintain your beliefs in a more optimistic state for the sake of your mental well-being; 2) don’t fuel a self-fulfilling prophecy with your pessimism.
P.S. To this day I don’t know exactly which side of story was true. The evidence pointed everywhere, all at once; there were only a handful of possibilities that I could rule out. I don’t know whether my (low) expectations were realistic or not.
I don’t think the stoic exercises of visualizing a worst cases and getting okay with that worst case scenario is about pessimism or interpreting feedback negatively.