I’m in the midst of planning a family vacation and am learning things about myself that, apparently, everyone else already knows.
It turns out I am very, very good at illustrating to others why things are a bad idea. I have always thought of myself as a pretty positive person, but man, I can find every reason something won’t work like it’s my job. (to be fair sometimes it actually is my job)
This can be very helpful in some settings, but I’m about to drive my wife crazy letting her know all the possible problems or inconveniences that I can conjure related to a cruise to Mexico with our daughter.
The best part is that she gets frustrated by how negative I am and I just don’t understand why. I’m being helpful!
Of course, as is true in most situations, she’s right.
So I’m trying to give my skepticism a rest and just choose to give more weight to what is likely to go right than what might, in the worst case scenario, go wrong.
I think I might actually be happier and end up making a lot of things better.
There is a time and place to shoot holes in ideas and consider the possible negative outcomes, but it seems problematic that such a practice is my default. I mean, everything is not going to fall to crap if I don’t consider every single variable in every single situation.
So I’m going to elect to see the brighter side. For a while at least.
Who knows, things might actually turn out okay.
What about you? Do you ever sabotage your own happiness by dwelling too much on negative possibilities? Does your skepticism make it difficult to make things better? Or is it a necessary tool to vet ideas?
