It is very easy to decide with a lot of optimism.

Most often, it is the result of our desire to make it work.

It sounds laudable to act like that. However, the risk in such situations is that optimism can blind us to the details that indicate upcoming trouble.

The risks seen and pushed aside in these moments are not the problem. It is that the optimism we believe in helps us to brush these risks aside without paying attention to their relevance. Instead, we’ll trust our ability to deal with the situation when it appears. In everyday life, this is perfectly fine. If we didn’t trust ourselves and our ability to deal with problems, we’d quickly feel lost.

In situations in which our task is to decide on an opportunity, things are different. That is the moment in which pessimism is our best friend. That is, if we use our pessimism to verify what is grounding our optimism. Pessimism allows us to become aware of the little problems bugging us a bit, but not too much. Our task is to verify whether what is bugging us is worth our attention or not. The awareness may not provide us with the answer we are looking for, but it can help us see what and how we may verify our intuition.

It can be considered a rule of thumb: add pessimism when making a decision and engage in optimism once the decision is made.