Not any less optimistic

I live life like everything is certain. If you could take a glimpse into my life, you’d see that everything that can be planned has been planned. I plan with so much precision, the nitty gritty details, what to eat, what to wear, even when to drink water.

The problem is that life is so uncertain (a big problem in AI btw), and when my plans gets intruded by life I break down. I’m almost always in tears and today is one of those days. Instead of crying today I decided to do some reflection and questioning this mindset of mine that cannot handle uncertainty.

I think one attribute of mine that fundammentally affects the way I plan is that I’m dogheaded optimistic. I fundamentally believe that ANYTHING can be achieved so I only focus on the good, and plan for the best case scenarios.

What about the worst cases? Why am I blinded by my optimisim to see that even though the best is possible the worse is also possible. Are the worse cases bad? Am I suppossed to plan for them not to happen or plan on what to do when they happen?

Well, maybe worse cases are not neccesarily a bad thing. Yeah, they may seem bad in the moment, but in the long run and if handled properly they can eventually lead to something good.

I don’t think life is conscious of what is good and bad, life is a series of events and how we interprete an event is what makes it good or bad.

So planning how to navigate and manage worse case scenarios shouldn’t make you less optimistic, instead it would make you a better planner and would keep the bad days away.

Coincidentally, I opened one of my favorite newsletters, 3-2-1 by James Clear this morning and guess the first quote?

“The ultimate form of preparation is not planning for a specific scenario, but a mindset that can handle uncertainty”.

The worse case scenario is not the enemy, not planning for them is. Embrace them! Don’t be afraid to ask the question “What if X goes wrong?” What’s fun about everything always going according to plan anyways :)