   Improving thought life?
  Perhaps in this setting there are some people out there that have this problem.I seem to have a knack for hearing a potentially ambigious statement and immediately extracting the most negative meaning from it. Usually I can say, "no Matt, that's just ridiculous," but occasionally it just sort of slips out and it causes some problems. This sort of pathological worst case scenario mindset can be helpful in coding, but I'd love to have it a little more under control. I find I'm really slow to trust people because of it. I suspect I have a somewhat flawed and pessimistic world view that is contributing to it, but it can be hard to pin down what the problem is exactly. I think it is related to the fact that some people see me as really tense all the time. Anyone have any similar experiences or ways to deal with it? I'm working on going to the gym twice a week to do cardio, and I'll be seeing a counselor hopefully on a weekly basis for some talk therapy.   
  Yeah, I think that way too.   ;  At uni we did some personality tests as preparation before we started our group projects, where the outcome is matched with a colour corresponding with your personality. Blue I think was people who are leaders, purple was for people who tend to be quiet in the group, green being the people who are worried about everyone else outside the project team etc. One of the colours though was black, which was what I ended up with. It came as no surprise to me that it basically repeated a similar thing to what you posted. Whereas the white personality always looks for the good in an idea, the black always looks for reasons it will fail. For example, in our groups we had to decided on a name for a fictional web design company as part of an activity. When one person suggested 'Internet One', I immediately blurted out 'how are customers supposed to know its a web design company? What does the one stand for? Number one in the business? Why are we focusing on the Internet side instead of the web design side? Would it really look best on a poster? Could the name be too long?'. This is what I do with every single thing I work on, every single idea people tell me about, and everything I see others do. If someone tells me they are thinking of buying a new car, I will immediately think of why now might not be a good time to buy, which places might be better than where they are buying, the problems with the car they are looking at, and so on. I try to keep a lid on it so I don't come across as just being pessimistic (which is something I had to learn after giving one of my friends the shits BIG time after he gave me one stupid idea for his next career after another over the period of a few months, which was way to easy for me to find thousands of flaws in). It's also why I am so critical on my own work. I am never happy with any work I produce, and I always think it can be better. I tend to focus on the flaws rather than what works. For example, I still refuse that to this date, I have ever produced a funny comic. All I see them as is something that did not work out as good as I had hoped, and something that I could never get to the level I wanted (which I realise is never really attainable). It's also no surprise that when I read reviews on movies, devices or whatever, I only one good review for every 10 bad reviews [grin]I think the main thing is learning how to control it. Just as the person in the test who got white could give everyone the shits by praising the good parts of every single stupid idea we put out, I can give people the shits by focusing on why every suggestion could fail. At that point, you cross over from being overly critical (which is what I describe myself as) to just being a pessimist. And sometimes, it's all about just keeping your mouth shut, regardless of what happens to come out. It’s hard to do sometimes when you hear a person say ‘Oh man, I’m so buying a xxx brand car. I heard they are great!’ and try to refrain from going off on an hour long rant as to why they are so crap. My latest rant on why I hate PSP’s to a friend who just bought one comes to mind!Anyway, this post is getting very long. I’ll wrap up by saying it is a common trait to be overly critical/borderline pessimist, but for some people it just comes down to the fact they can’t keep their mouth shut when it comes to opinions, in which case it's an entirely different problem.   ;  I get that too.  I took a course in Negotiation and Mediation a few years ago, and that helps a lot in changing people's minds without making them feel wrong about something.  Instead of blurting out "Thats's retarded!", I learned to instead calmly say things like "I think we can make a few improvements", or "perhaps we should also look at it this way", etc..  Making people do what you want them to do and have them think it was their idea all along is quite useful.In the cases when you're just not sure wether someone said something stupid or not, just ask them to repeat using other words, to get a better concept of what he's saying, or something to that effect.And about trusting people, if you think that what they're saying is meant as insulting, just remember that not everyone out there is a prick that takes the time to think of witty double-meanings to get at you.   