The definition given is almost word for word the definition of an engineering mindset, regardless of field.
I’d say it’s not a bad way to think about your life as well, as long as you limit the scope to things you realistically have the ability to impact and focus most of your energy on the actual problem solving.
Maybe inverse thinking for you could be tempering all that with what might go right and leveraging that as a way to honor both the negative and positive capabillities of your mind.
You’re telling me you couldn’t literally just reverse whatever your pessimistic insights were as a thought experiment and find a way to take both into consideration to inform your final approch or strategy for whatever is at issue?
The best way I’ve come across to illustrate this is
Hope/ideate for the best but plan or mitigate the worst
How could this go wrong; tell me where I’m going to die so I can avoid thar
The problem with anxiety and experiencing this inversion thinking is that it is a constant bombardment of everything that can go wrong. Combined with PTSD/CPTSD, the brain is in constant “danger mode”, looks for all kinds of dangers, not just the ones we have control over. It is a terrifying way to go through life. I’ve been in therapy for years and yes, countering with what can go right is one of the coping techniques, but it takes extreme effort. Constant effort over years and years to change these thinking patterns, to lessen the anxiety of what can go wrong to the point that it is actually useful again. Until then, the brain rapidly rejects thoughts of what can go right, because it is so strongly convinced that things will go wrong.
The goal is what you are saying, yes. But for a lot of us it takes completely rewiring our brains to escape the constant bombardment of thoughts of danger, to avoid the fear and anxiety. It isnt as easy as just flipping it around.
This is similar to the advice people give to depressed people about looking for positives in life, sure thats true and will help eventually, but there is so much more work that needs to be done when the brain is in a really bad place. It doesnt really help to say “just think of the bright side!”
I’m emphatically stating I had and still have all that, I frequently gloom/doom and think I’m going to fail massively and it rarely happens at all or even close to that extent. And then there’s a little bit of relief which may be addictive.
Like, what I’m suggesting is for a time to write out all your doom and panic projections for whatever is at issue and literally reverse them and see if that can help leverage you out of that pattern once you’ve paid sufficient attention to the risk/that which comes most immediately and natural.
I’m not necessarily saying you have to immediately mentally rewire yet (thats a process), but simply turn whatever first comes up on its head and see where that takes you conceptually
Seriously, its a good thing you can access that side of the thought process, you may just need to consciously do the opposite as a daily practice to even things out. I habitually assume the worst and I enjoy being proven wrong because it means it worked out well but I might not always get so lucky so im glad the other part’s got me covered
Inversion thinking also works the other way around. If you see negatives most of the time (which is a strong suit by itself, but the pitfall is that you don’t dare to take any risk), it can help to sometimes consciously think “What if it goes right?”
That is not what I have observed. I do kinda wonder sometimes however
Me: right so we said we would be there by 630. If we leave within the next five minutes we should be there at 6:25
Wife: it’s fine
Me: just you know we could leave now and no one has to have any anxiety about being late.
Wife: they aren’t going to care
Me: true they won’t really care that much but we did say 6:30. Wouldn’t it be nice to not be worried? Like what if we make a wrong turn and have to double back? We would still be on time if we left now.
Right??? Like wtf I thought everyone just thought about how everything could go wrong all the time. You mean people do things and expect to succeed instead of expect to fail??? This is legitimately wild to me.
I wish I could do that. Currently I’m trying to start a bussines, but my mind just keeps coming up with the most unlikely terrible scenarios that might happen and convincing me to never try anything new so that I can’t fuck it up.
The entire world is going through this right now. Many of us will never own a home - and no I don’t mean just Gen-Z and maybe Millenials, I mean people your age even. Fwiw, you/we still are doing better off than at least 95% of the world, but that is not to diminish the pain that we are losing hope b/c we are not doing as well as we thought we would. Find a way of coping that works for you - I am still searching for mine…:-( I just thought it might help to say that you are not alone:-).
don’t mean just Gen-Z and maybe Millenials, I mean people your age even
They said they’re 36. That’s millenial. At 41, I’m what Iliza Schlesinger coined an Elder Millennial (a little under two months older than Iliza herself).
Great comment otherwise, though, and I sincerely hope you find your coping method(s)!
The above is what I probably should have said. Interestingly (to me at least:-D), historically “Millenial” used to refer to what is now called “Z”, it once having been the term used to describe the generation that came after “Y”, but has shifted all the way over to now having absorbed Y and then replacing it entirely.:-P But yes, in 2018 (according to Pew) that situation finished switching and the old Z is now the new Y - though if you google search these terms, most results are how to market to these groups, and that likely confuses things further.
What I mean is that imho it is best to take these terms extremely loosely - e.g. an elder Millenial may share more in common with a late-stage Gen-Xer (“righteous dude!”, e.g. having watched similar TV programs even if as re-runs) than with the later half of what is now called “Millenial”, and similarly late Millenials with earlier Gen-Zs (no cap no skibidi, def no Ohio), and so on.
Though whether someone has rich parents or not seems to override all other factors such as generation or responsibility to work hard and save money for the future, when talking about owning a home:-(.
It is really weird how no one can imagine generations getting old. It’s like they think millenial is slang for teens, and Gen z is slang for younger kids.
I wouldn’t mind splitting the difference and being 30 again tbh 😄
It’s that perfect middle where you’re (just barely) old enough that most people take you seriously (or at least don’t dismiss you based on youth alone), but also young enough that your body doesn’t ache from approaching middle age yet 😉
Old people squeeze their eyes & ears shut so that they will neither see nor hear the cries of pain screams of agony as the world burns, and they say: “This is fine”.
Ngl, there is some merit to that - maybe that is how they survived as long as they have, as opposed to those that died young (selection bias). I too could become a zombie, numb to the world, and I would then exist even after it ceased to. But I choose to live - and that means to suffer, especially when my brethren and sistren all across the world suffer too.:-( It is not madness to feel pain when things are WRONG - I would argue that it is, in fact, sanity.
All that is the context for why I agree - we NEED to stay connected, but not 24/7; also it helps to balance doomscrolling with positive experiences: as described in what I thought was a super-excellent article on that subject.
I work in early years. Yes babies have a great understanding of body language and facial expression long before they can talk to communicate.
Young children are actually far more intelligent than most people give them credit for. Just because they can’t communicate it the same language as us yet doesn’t mean they don’t know what they’re doing.
If they didn’t understand body language, how would they bond with people? And people bond back with them? Not to be insulting, but it’s like with pets. We can build bonds with them because we learnt to understand each others body language even though we don’t speak the same language
it’s like with pets. We can build bonds with them because we learnt to understand each others body language even though we don’t speak the same language
Nice example :-)
I have read that cats use their meowing ONLY when they communicate with humans. Among other cats / animals, they use different languages.
And dogs have that look they use on humans that says help me. Also I have seen dogs present their rear for communication to other dogs but not to humans.
Yes babies have a great understanding of body language and facial expression long before they can talk to communicate.
I knew it!
My wife is a social worker and she said the opposite and we had like a big quarel over it. I was 99% sure I was right, but I since she’s a social worker, she’s more the authority on this matter than I am (I’m an engineer) and I thought I’d double check, just to be sure.
It’s amazing how people still deny evolution. The wild relatives of Guinea Pigs are silent only making noise when one is totally isolated from the group and needs to find it. The domesticated ones are loud making a variety of different noises for different needs and emotions.
The species evolved towards us because we are evolved to respond to “help me” noises from small cute furry things. Why? Because babies that were not responding and communicating ended up dead.
People didn’t seem to mind fugly coal plants but now that weve got a clean energy source usually built in the middle of nowhere they suddenly have a problem with “visual pollution.”
To me it sounds a lot like those dudes that spew smoke out the back of their truck for no other reason than to “trigger” anyone they think might not approve.
I’ve tended to find people against them want the same skyline their grandparents had 50 years ago, ignoring that even the trees changed shape. So to them its change and conservative rural people abhor anychange that doesn’t have an immediate and tangible benefit.
You offer anyone whose home is within sight of a wind turbine say… 5000kw/h a year in free electricity. With a little careful planning and given that your average turbine produces around 6 million kwh a year. Id imagine they shut up pretty fucking fast.
Makes sense to me. If people who have to deal with something are invested in that thing they will defend it. Never miss an opportunity to take someone outside pissing in and put them inside pissing out.
Whenever someone brings up that argument (windmills are ugly), which is quite a controversial topic in the country I live in, I take them to the open pit coal mines of the area. Those are really ugly.
I do understand the argument that the intermittent shadows the rotating blades may cast on residential areas are annoying.
Why the heck would you build that on residential area anyway? SimCity taught me since I was a kid that industrial factories and windmills shouldn’t be built beside houses
I love telling this story. I lived on the second story apartment above a restaurant, behind the restaurant was this shed. One sat morning, very hung over, I am awaken at sunrise with a bright bedroom. Wtf? Look outside and turns out the shed now has solar panels that just happened to catch the light at sunrise and reflect it into my window.
They can’t be set next to residential areas for many reasons. One freak reason most people don’t know is that ice can accumulate on the tip of the blades and get thrown into the air. Having a 5kg ice blocks randomly falling on your house isn’t nice.
This complaint about wind power has always come across as the kind of thing people say because they heard somebody else say it. imo, it's just stupid people who desperately want to have an opinion on the topic weighing in with the only piece of criticism they've overhead some Sky News host parrot at some point in the past, and because that host had authority on the matter in their minds, it gives them some kind of false confidence to then go forward and proclaim the visual pollution argument, as if it has any real basis in anything.
I have actually heard the “original person” complaining about this… but the original person is also the kind of person who wants a picture-perfect ocean view every single day. Wind turbines? Visual pollution. Ships passing by? Visual pollution. Their neighbor has too many holiday decorations up? Visual pollution.
They just genuinely expect the rest of civilization around them to comply to their demands for a fantasy-perfect oceanside existence.
Sounds like my dad. We don’t talk anymore. Remember his irrational anger to the idea that other people were using HIS highway when he was driving on it. Also he had a war against a neighbor who sublet to his cousin “cause it is zoned for single family and a cousin is a different family”. Just fucking admit you don’t want a brown family on your block, I would honestly respect honest bigotry more.
I’m good on things tied into the brain. Now things tied near the brain like sub vocalisation or little eye twitches or even somehow passive brain wave scans or something maybe. But actual hardware tied into my brain I’m gonna take a pass on.
If I had no other eyeballs probably. I would still hesitate if the hardware wasn’t open ( I don’t want an eye that they stop updating after 1 year or that gets ads when I switch insurance providers)
Watch out on those terms and conditions. Before long you’ll have to pay more to unlock an ad free vision experience that was previously ad free. Or maybe their licensing deal with Pantone or dolby vision will lapse and your “only licensed” capabilities will go away. Or maybe your one eye just veers off and focuses on any nearby advertisement that’s part of the manufacturer’s partner program and you literally could not take your eye off it? Non-partner brands are blurry and hard to see? I once dreamed of futuristic technological advances outside the gravity well of all consuming capitalism. Those were the days I tell ya!
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