How I use negative thinking to achieve positive outcomes
Murphy’s law is just an observation. But you can use it to achieve success and prevent critical mistakes. Here’s how.
Having just written about the Law of Attraction and Positive Thinking, I want to address another aspect of achieving goals and success. Murphy’s Law: How I use negative thinking to achieve positive outcomes.
We have heard it before: When the phone runs out of power just as the boss is about to call. When we were running late and picked the route with the traffic jam. When we worry about bumping into the boss as we sneak out during office hours to run an errand, we bump into the boss.
Murphy’s Law. It’s inevitable.
Conventional interpretations suggest that. It isn’t. Murphy’s Law is just an observation.
So what is Murphy’s Law?
The popular version of Murphy’s Law states that, “Anything that can go wrong, will go wrong.”
“Anything that can go wrong, will go wrong.”
Edward A. Murphy Jr. was an aerospace engineer for the U.S. Air Force. During a 1949 experiment, an assistant technician wired a set of sensors the wrong way, causing an error in the data that Murphy was monitoring. Embarrassed and frustrated, Murphy uttered the phrase that would become legendary:
“If there is any way to do it wrong, he (referring to his assistant) will.” — Edward A. Murphy, Jr.
Eventually, it became “Anything that can go wrong will go wrong, and at the worst possible time.” There were many versions circulated thereafter.
Although attributed to Edward A. Murphy Jr., it was John Stapp, a USAF colonel and flight surgeon who made this adage popular. When asked in an interview why there were no injuries in the sled test, Stapp said that they always use Murphy’s law during experiments. They will consider all possible faults before doing a test and take measures to prevent them.
It is Stapp’s perspective of Murphy’s law, though less popular, that is the point of this article: That predictable mistakes can be effectively managed with enough planning and foresight.
Popular variations of Murphy’s Law include:
that bread will always land butter-side down when dropped
that there will be rain as soon as you wash your car
that when queuing, the other line will always move faster
These observations are usually the result of biases.
Confirmation bias is the tendency to remember events that confirm our pre-existing beliefs or expectations, and ignore events that contradict them. If you believe that a slice of bread will always land butter-side down when dropped, you will remember those moments when it actually happened. Or when it rains as soon as you wash your car.
The “grass is greener” effect is another form of bias. It is the tendency to see alternative options as better than the one chosen, even if there is no objective evidence to support it. A queue is essentially random, and if many people think that the other line is faster, it becomes self-fulfilling.
Unless the butter has made one side of the bread heavier (Physics), the bread will land, on average, 50% butter-side down (Mathematics).
There will not be rain as soon as you wash your car. That’s ridiculous since the weather is random. The same goes for crowds queuing up.
“Anything that can go wrong, will go wrong,” should be “Anything that can go wrong, may eventually go wrong. So what can we do about it?”
Like when you encounter the Tiger
There’s a Chinese saying that goes, “If you go up into the mountains often enough, you will eventually encounter a tiger,” (上得山多终遇虎). Eventually.
This doesn’t mean you never go up the mountain. It means don’t go alone, bring weapons, and don’t apply BBQ sauce on your hair when you do.
It means that if you know something bad could happen eventually, do something about it.
Can negative thinking lead to positive outcomes?
If we subscribe to the idea that positive thoughts can lead to positive outcomes, then negative thoughts should lead to negative outcomes. They should be opposites.
They are not.
Knowing that things can go wrong implies that you can take measures to prevent things from going wrong. “Negative thoughts” can help prevent negative outcomes if you use it properly.
While optimism is a good thing, the key is to see the potential success of an undertaking while knowing the worst that could happen, and reduce the chance of it happening. It is a kind of realism that falls between the extremes of “half full and half empty”.
“How can I do it?” should follow with “Can it fail? And what can I do about it?”
This is where “negative thinking”, often as experience or foresight comes into play. “Negative thinking” means you have seen it often enough to know that shit happens. It is essentially a kind of “What if…” analysis. What are the chances of these happening? And what if it happened?
What if the boss finds out?
What if the application was rejected?
What if this knot in the parachute slips?
My take on Murphy’s Law is this: Use “negative thinking” as a tool when making important decisions. The lesson from the mistake during the experiment helped the US Air Force eliminate errors when actual pilots were involved.
While it is important to have a positive mindset for most things in life, it is more important to know what to do if things do not go as planned. If the goal in life is to achieve happiness and success, then Murphy’s Law will play a more important role than just having a positive outlook.
I hope you enjoyed this article. While "What Matters" is free, I do appreciate your support as a paid subscriber. If you don’t do subscriptions, you can also buy me a coffee. Either way, it means a lot.
Thank you for being here. Please remember to like, restack, and leave a comment.
