Squeak 42 points 3 years ago

My whole life is inversion thinking and I’m depressed 🙃

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teft 32 points 3 years ago

Right? Inversion thinking just sounds like a fancy way of saying anxiety.

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Squeak 12 points 3 years ago

Yeah I don’t have to consciously do it. I have to consciously think of the positives.

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fine_sandy_bottom 8 points 3 years ago

That's exactly what it is. Most people are hard wired to do this automatically.

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dmention7 4 points 3 years ago

The definition given is almost word for word the definition of an engineering mindset, regardless of field.

I'd say it's not a bad way to think about your life as well, as long as you limit the scope to things you realistically have the ability to impact and focus most of your energy on the actual problem solving.

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cheese_greater 3 points 3 years ago

Maybe inverse thinking for you could be tempering all that with what might go right and leveraging that as a way to honor both the negative and positive capabillities of your mind.

You're telling me you couldn't literally just reverse whatever your pessimistic insights were as a thought experiment and find a way to take both into consideration to inform your final approch or strategy for whatever is at issue?

The best way I've come across to illustrate this is

Hope/ideate for the best but plan or mitigate the worst
How could this go wrong; tell me where I'm going to die so I can avoid thar

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Hagdos 4 points 3 years ago

Inversion thinking also works the other way around. If you see negatives most of the time (which is a strong suit by itself, but the pitfall is that you don't dare to take any risk), it can help to sometimes consciously think "What if it goes right?"

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cheese_greater 1 point 3 years ago

So invert it ;)

Seriously, its a good thing you can access that side of the thought process, you may just need to consciously do the opposite as a daily practice to even things out. I habitually assume the worst and I enjoy being proven wrong because it means it worked out well but I might not always get so lucky so im glad the other part's got me covered

-1 * -1 == 1

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