In a particularly glorious example of the New Zealand coffee shop, I sat down with my americano with hot milk and a magazine. On the cover was a title that had caught my eye, “The Upside of Anxiety”.

Now I don’t think of myself as particularly anxious, except in those situations bound to make anyone anxious, like moving house – and I’ve done that so many times in the last few years that perhaps the anxiety has stopped coming and going, and taken up residency. My daughter-in-law thought I had got more anxious and so I was thinking about it – I have seen a lot of people get more anxious as they get older and I was hoping that wasn’t happening to me.

It was a great article that fills in some of the background research, and teases out some of the complexity – like what is it that makes us anxious and how that can actually be helpful. It was the little quiz that got me excited though: “Are you a defensive pessimist or a strategic optimist?”. I answered Yes to every question except one (e.g. I spend lots of time imagining what could go wrong – Yes!) and so am clearly the former, with all the advantages that brings. It was that ‘no’ question that shook me:

“I imagine how I would feel if things went well”

No, I’ve never done that; I never do that! I didn’t even consider it a possible way to think!

Very tentatively, I tried to do just that. It was so alien to my habits that I had to begin with something really easy. How would it feel when I walked on the beach at just the right time of the evening?

Now I am regularly trying to imagine myself into things going well. It’s hard! Years of focusing on what can go wrong has set up a strong bias to pessimism. It feels like tempting fate to imagine things going well. But now I know that lots of people do this all the time, I’m allowing it into my life. wow…

You can read the full article here:

Click to access otago078715.pdf