Don’t Drown in Your Pessimism (How to 10X Your Growth)
I had a consultation with one of my students, who was dissatisfied with their learning system.
They were tired of all the problems they had.
They claimed that they were making many mistakes.
They identified over 20 individual issues.
Overall, they thought that their system was trash.
On further inspection after:
Mapping out their entire process
Measuring their level of success (performance in exams, retention and level of mastery of content)
Diving deep into each of their processes
Their system was easily one of the best I had seen.
Consistency was high.
Time efficiency was almost maxed.
Execution and performance were high.
So…what truly WAS the problem, mistakes or issue?
What were all of these things that were making them worried?
The answer is complicated. Let me explain.
Pessimism VS. Optimism
Getting shrouded in our pessimism is easy.
The reason I say pessimism is because humans tend toward pessimism than they do optimism.
I heard this story in the podcast “Philosophize This!” by Stephen West. (Episode #42 - Optimism).
Take two hunters looking for a large feast for their starving tribe.
The two hunters hear rustling and movement in the tall grass.
The optimist hunter thinks there’s food nearby and is ready to dive straight in.
The pessimist hunter thinks there’s a lion in there and wants to play it safe and return.
In this situation, there is a lion in the tall grass. The pessimist is safer and has a higher chance of survival than the optimist, favouring the pessimist.
However, there is another scenario that favours the optimist.
The pessimist might never hunt for food and be paralysed in their thought. Since the worst thing might always happen, what’s the point of hunting if they die in the process?
I go through this analogy with you because negative thoughts are not always bad.
Negative thoughts and pessimistic tendencies help us mitigate risk and survive.
Negative thoughts and pessimistic tendencies can also be the cause of death and failure.
Most of us are (very) fortunate not to have to worry about our survival and basic needs.
Rather, a lot of our worries relate to:
Losing money
Not getting a certain job
Failing a test or exam
Wasting time and energy
Student struggles
For my student, they were worried about failing their exams.
And they listed out EVERY reason why they would potentially fail exams.
They started to label things as “problems”, “mistakes”, and “issues” to things that were NOT any of these.
I remember my student telling me they felt they were doing their note-taking process incorrectly.
This is because the new method they had learned felt harder than their older method. They perceived this difficulty as bad since if they were struggling, it HAD to mean that they were doing something wrong.
Since studying felt hard, they thought they would perform poorly on their exams and tests.
This then leads to even more stress, uncertainty and dread.
They were desperate to change their system. To get rid of all of these problems, issues and mistakes.
Plot-twist
However…..
I had found that:
They invested more cognitive resources into learning the material, which led to more active learning and a feeling of difficulty. This, in turn, resulted in higher-quality learning.
They had a very high retention of the content they learnt even weeks after the notes, indicating quality initial encoding.
They could apply the content in different contexts and orders, demonstrating high mastery over the content.
They were achieving top marks in their class, well beyond their initial goal of scoring a passing grade, and their output showed an objective improvement.
After a 10-minute chat I realised:
There weren’t any problems.
There weren’t any issues.
There weren’t any huge mistakes.
My student couldn’t come to this realisation in 3 months.
This is the mental checklist I use when interacting with students:
Understand their perspective. What are their perceived problems, issues and mistakes?
Identify their blind spots. What are the actual problems, issues and mistakes?
Reframe their perspective. What do they not know is causing them to overestimate or underestimate their abilities?
Through this checklist, I had saved them months if not years of their life not coming to one perspective.
I tell you this because, as educators, we just need to reframe things for our students.
You could extrapolate this to any of your other relationships. Whether that’s with family, friends or colleagues.
We don’t need always to give advice.
Sometimes we need to listen and reframe.
My students were too busy digging a hole for themselves to look back and see how far they had come.
I had to tap them on the shoulder and show them how much they’d progressed.
And that they didn’t have any problems, mistakes or issues.
And that they were doing very well.
That’s all it took.
I didn’t have to suggest that they change something about their process. Rather, they needed the perspective and reframing.
If you’re a coach or usually in a position where you provide your expertise to your clients, students or colleagues.
Instead of giving them tips and tricks, try this framework instead:
Understand their perspective. What are their perceived problems, issues and mistakes?
Identify their blind spots. What are the actual problems, issues and mistakes?
Reframe their perspective. What do they not know is causing them to overestimate or underestimate their abilities?
Notice that this can be applied to any conversation; you don’t need to be a subject matter expert.
If someone is conversing with you about a certain challenge, it means that they trust you enough with this information. Take the time to listen, and without offering direct advice, first see things from their perspective and reframe.
If you’re in a position where you feel like you have many problems, mistakes and issues.
Consult an expert.
If you feel like your health is bad; Consult a doctor.
Consult an engineer if you feel like your car is about to break down.
If you feel like your ability to learn and manage yourself is lacking; Consult a learning coach ;)
Whatever it might be, don’t leave the guesswork to yourself.
Have conversations, have discussions, and find out if things are better or worse than you think.
See you all next week.
- Tanzeer
