Human beings aren't necessarily optimistic at unknowns

Optimistic or pessimistic, we can turn either way at any unknown situation. It all depends on how we perceive or expect the unknowns would be.

A number of factors contribute to the outcome of this mental process. Immediate and past experience is the number one factor. It weighs more than any knowledge that we possess on the same situation. Imaging you had met Ma Hu Zi with whom you turned out fond of each other, would grandma's doctrine still matter to you? Knowledge weighs in next to direct expereince in that it is something you believe but not have been conculded by yourself. How true a piece of information is to you depends on who and where you get it from. If it was a idiot you knew that told you Ma Hu Zi, will you still treat it as knowledge.

If the expereince/knowledge factor works in a way that a unknown situation is either a matter or no to you, another factor that works in a very different way. When you are more concerned of your own ability of dealing with the situation, you tend to be optimistic. Thing about when you are to quit a job because you want to start your own business. Opositely, when you are more concerned the probablity that the situation may turn agains you, you tend to be pessimistic. That is the case when you are told to loss your job and you have to start up your own business. The facts that you are leaving a job either layoff or quit, and you are starting up your own either proactive or passive, does not affect anything of your true ability to deal with the start up business. Your either way of perceiving it comes from your perception of the future. One way, you have planned it. The other, you do not. I should have said that your plan of startup does not matter for your future outcome. Any way, 98% of the business plans are going to be completed abandoned in 3 years.

So, what matters? It is the click-thoughs that you enjoy right  now:) Have a good weekend!