Reverse Eeyore’s Syndrome : The only Cognitive Bias you’ll ever need.

Eeyore’s Syndrome: DSM-XVII candidate for best new Cognitive Bias.
Special notes: Voted most likely not to succeed.

Classification: Bad for you.

Symptoms: High chance of imagining all of your most feared moments of a given day to be much worse than they usually actually are when time catches up to you. Statistically significant chance of causing self anxiety or depressing any joy you may have carried through the day. Patients tend to simulate their predicted malaise, causing actual suffering for things that have not happened yet.

What would you do if I gave you the cure right now and it was this simple: Recognize you are suffering voluntarily and stop predicting all the dread and circumstances fit for a nightmare unless an actual problem is occurring and you are in it. Or more simply, just stop doing this.

People who name this tendency and practice doing the opposite are reporting fantastic days.

I know this sounds ridiculously simple. It is. That’s why it works.

Do you want to try reversing this crippling mindset right now? Let’s go!

First think about the next part of today or tonight that you are not so excited about navigating or enduring. Now for this exercise, let’s loop back on this unsavory event or activity you have to get through before bed time. Visualize just how bad you think this is going to be, whatever happens in your imagination, be sure to give it a good once over. Because it is not going to happen! Period, it just won’t. Not exactly like you thought, often not even close. So now replace it with something far more satisfying: Curiosity.

That is it, just be curious about how anything that hasn’t happened yet will go for you and expect at least some of it to be better than you expect. If you want to get real into this, imagine every part of it to be better than you would expect. Come back when you are turning in for the night and let us know how it went in the comments. If you had a better time today than you expected and you want to put this syndrome to bed, leave a Night Night in the comments.