AVERSION AND OPPORTUNITY
I’d love for some graduate sociology student to stumble across this post and make a project out of it under strict conditions with a control group and a generous sample size, but I’d also like to get feedback from just regular people.
Here’s the gist of it, in a very informal, non-scientific way.
Take a card game you know quite well and find an opponent of equal skill level and experience to your own. Katie and I would choose gin rummy because we’ve probably played a thousand hands during my cancer treatment and subsequent recovery, and we are fairly evenly matched. We know the rules and strategies and I assume we apply them relatively the same way. But use any card game where you don’t have to deal with a learning curve that may affect the results of the following experiment. I think this would work best with just two people.
Here it is: Start the game as usual. However;
one player approaches each move with a defensive mindset and focuses on what is lacking or needed, uses logic and/or probability to determine the next strategic move, and is playing to win. Maybe put some money on the game, or chores, to raise the stakes. We’ll call this the averse mindset.
The other player focuses on what he or she is holding, seeing those things as assets, sees winning or losing as learning experiences and therefore either one is fine, and most importantly, focuses on being open to whatever opportunity arises, trusting instinct and intuition over logic and probability (without disregarding logic and probability). We’ll call this the opportunity mindset.
Play five or ten hands this way, and then switch mindsets, start a new match, and play five or ten more. Then, try both players using the same averse mindset and both players trying the same opportunity mindset.
I am willing to bet that if both players using the same mindset results in more or less of a tie score, indicating the sides are evenly matched, the positive mindset will win more often.
The reason is not magical.
The averse mindset says, “I need a ten to complete this set,” and misses a card that might have completed some other set or run. The negative mindset is narrow and focused, and if that is combined with a desire to win and to play defensively, it also narrows options. You may hold onto a card you think your opponent needs, preventing you from taking a card that might have helped you. It also shuts down your ability to access intuition and to take risks. Attempting to not make a mistake, or worse, seeing a mistake as bad thing and obsessing over it, even slightly, beating yourself up, paralyzes the creative side of your brain. Try playing very fast sometime and when you accidentally make a play you don’t like, dwell upon it. You will likely make a mistake in the next round because you’re not focused on what is currently in front of you.
The opportunity mindset focuses on opportunity and sees each card and each run or trick taken as a gift. Both wins and losses are learning opportunities, and what you should see are seemingly random choices that work out. Sometimes you make a mistake, but if you view that mistake objectively and then immediately let it go, it only serves again as a learning opportunity.
My nascent and as of yet untested hypothesis is that the player who focuses on opportunity and accepts the hand with very little judgment will win more often than the player who focuses on need and lack and sees a hand as good or bad.
This is an important life skill that comes easy when the sun is shining and luck is going your way, like when you get lots of new clients, have a great job, receive a windfall, and in general good luck abounds. It’s harder to do when you lose your job, your business takes a downturn, you have a run of bad health, or just a string of bad luck.
Some people maintain an averse outlook EVEN WHEN THINGS ARE GOING WELL. Crazy, I know. Some people maintain an opportunity outlook and treat all things with curiosity and a neutral attitude. There are people, too, who feign a happy demeanor even in the face of great crisis. I think that might be overdoing it, and deep down inside they may be avoiding dealing with the reality of the situation.
Neutrality and curiosity in the face of both extreme good luck and extreme bad luck is a habit you can develop.
In any case, life problems are like what looks like a really bad hand in a card game. If you dwell upon them, you’ll miss the opportunities built into the situation. When I was undergoing treatment for an incurable form of bone marrow cancer, one of the members of the medical team told me that, “Those who do best in treatment and afterward are the ones who can find the gift in the situation.”
What gift in cancer? Many, such appreciation for many large and small things, a chance to reassess my life, and in fact treatment inspired several novels and a memoir.
So, if you are a sociologist or need a research project for any reason, please take this on. For the rest of us, we can just practice these principles in our lives:
View situations as objectively as you can. Try to see events as neutral, neither good nor bad.
See events in your life as learning experiences and don’t dwell on mistakes other than to learn from them.
Be open to opportunity instead of closed to risks.
Keep a positive attitude but don’t be a Pollyanna.
Trust your intuition. Hunches are often your subconscious seeing things and making connections that your busy conscious mind can’t.
Also, living in the moment, allowing life to unfold, accepting what is, and appreciating the gifts and lessons the Universe continuously offers, is just more fun than dwelling in resentment, anger, and frustration.
Caveat: if, according to your experiment, the opportunity mindset turns out to be significantly more effective than the averse mindset, DO NOT take your newfound ability to manifest to the casino.
THE ODDS ARE NEVER IN YOUR FAVOR THERE.
Remember the Five Crucial Mindsets of Meaningful Personal Accomplishment:
1. Forward-Facing
2. Mission-Driven
3. Goal-Focused
4. Solutions-Oriented
5. Allow-Accept-Appreciate
RECOMMENDED READING:
Thinking, Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman
In the highly anticipated Thinking, Fast and Slow, Kahneman takes us on a groundbreaking tour of the mind and explains the two systems that drive the way we think. System 1 is fast, intuitive, and emotional; System 2 is slower, more deliberative, and more logical. Kahneman exposes the extraordinary capabilities—and also the faults and biases—of fast thinking, and reveals the pervasive influence of intuitive impressions on our thoughts and behavior. The impact of loss aversion and overconfidence on corporate strategies, the difficulties of predicting what will make us happy in the future, the challenges of properly framing risks at work and at home, the profound effect of cognitive biases on everything from playing the stock market to planning the next vacation—each of these can be understood only by knowing how the two systems work together to shape our judgments and decisions.