Remembering and Fearing Failures Over Successes
Another trait that kept us alive in the past was remembering and avoiding
negative experiences from the past. We humans tend to remember problems,
trauma, and things that didn't work.
If you nearly drowned trying to forge a river or got bitten hunting a wild
beast, and remembered not to try doing so again, you were more likely to
survive.
The worst-case result (death) was more important than the best-case
result (finding more food). There were a number of ways to get food, but only
one life to spare. So evolution has encouraged us to remember and fear our
failures over our successes.
But in the modern world we have reduced the consequences of failure, and
most of the things we try to do don‘t involve life-or-death situations.
Nowadays, the risk-to-reward ratio is usually the reverse of what it was in our
evolutionary past.
In particular, there‘s almost nothing to be lost by taking a chance in dating.
Talking with a woman isn‘t likely to get you killed.
Yet there’s a lot to be gained by just talking to her.
It‘s time to consciously recalibrate the risk-taking strategies with which
evolution has left us. It‘s time to value success and stop caring about the
failures, since they don‘t actually hurt us anyway.
We humans base our expectations for the future on our past experiences.
When we think about what might happen, our evolutionary tendency is to
imagine failure. Now when you look to the future, remember your successes
over your failures and imagine a future filled with success instead.