“When you are a pessimist and the bad thing happens, you live it twice. Once when you worry about it, and the second time when it happens.”

Amos Tversky

I only came across this quote recently, but I internalised it many years ago.

Pedalling wisdom

When I was a teenager, I used to take part in an annual charity cycle. It was over 120km – Dublin to Wexford. I wasn’t much of a cyclist but I did play a lot of sport and was naturally fit. Natural fitness doesn’t prepare your bum for that long in the saddle though! It would be 6 to 8 hours, depending on the wind.

The advice from everyone who did the cycle regularly: get miles in the legs and onto the bum. My dad would constantly remind me to get out cycling in the weeks coming up to the event. I never did. 

The reason I never did is because I didn’t want to suffer twice. I knew I had the fitness to be able to complete the cycle. It wasn’t easy but I knew I’d be able to do it. 

But the pain in the ass, well, who’d volunteer for that more than once? So rather than suffer it in order to not have to suffer it, I decided not to train and just go along. Maybe it wouldn’t even happen this time. 

It always happened – but I could count on one finger how many times I had a sore bum that year.

Negative thinking cycles

Years passed but I can now see the parallels from what I intuitively knew as a teenager to what I wish I knew better as an adult. When you are worrying about a worst-case scenario, you’re suffering twice and you don’t need to.

Networking is what does it for me these days. If there is an event coming up that I am attending solo, I can be playing it through in my head for days in advance. In my head all I can see is a room full of clustered backs – nobody standing openly enough for me to engage. 

My thoughts can then move on to the poor soul who does say hello and the eternity that passes after we’ve covered local meteorology, why we are in the room and what we do. The jokes left unsaid and the rising crimson to my cheeks – that’s all I can picture.

This type of overthinking can keep me up at night. Fearing the worst will happen, which guarantees that it will – at least once, in my mind.

The lesson isn’t “don’t prepare”

My cycling analogy isn’t perfect – I had natural fitness, which meant I knew my worst-case scenario. Some preparation is useful: rehearse the speech, check the newspaper for conversation starters, think about what stories might be worth sharing.

But there’s a difference between preparation and catastrophising. Rehearsing a presentation? Useful. Spending days imagining yourself tripping on the way to the podium, forgetting your topic entirely, or going blank mid-sentence? That’s just suffering in advance.

With some preparation, your worst-case scenario becomes a poorly delivered speech rather than a total blank. The disaster you’re imagining probably won’t happen. And if it does, you’ll handle it once, not twice.

The reality is likely half as bad as you imagined. If you’re a stats person: that’s only one-quarter of the suffering! In fact, more often than not, the pain never arrives. Not all networking events are amazing, but I can count on one hand the ones that haven’t been at least OK. None have been truly awful (you are allowed to leave!). Some are even great. 

Only a real pain in the ass gives the advice to “just not worry” – but I come close. Catch yourself worrying and remember: catastrophising guarantees the pain. Save your voluntary pain for charity cycles.