Expecting the worst, ensures it. In fact, I tend to go looking. Let’s face it: I would make a poor demolitions man. Everything would be blown up long before we ever got to the job site.
Step Ten: continued to take personal inventory and when we were wrong promptly admitted it.
It’s the recognition of the downward-spiraling loop, and the hopelessness that follows, that hits particularly often and hard. The recognition that I’m falling into the pool seconds before I hit the water. The drenching, depressing déjà vu. Why am I so ready and willing to accept that things are turning to shit? Do I really enjoy throwing my hands up that much? The ego-stroking! I knew I was right: the Apocalypse is nigh!
Like I’m some great prognosticator: predicting a ruined future that I’m actively crapping on in the present isn’t much of a reach. Every misstep, every down note, turns into another fact, another piece of evidence.
All I’m saying is that it doesn’t take a genius. It takes basic human awareness.
So, what to do about it? First off, I must remind myself that recognition equals success, not failure, as long as what follows is right-sized.
12 the hard way 