Ever been surprised by an outcome that was completely different than you expected?
- The stock market didn’t reward the quarterly earnings report. And the price of gold moved down instead of up.
- Your idea was not greeted with enthusiasm.
- The purchase didn’t make you happy after all.
- Your competitor didn’t do what you thought was the most logical thing for them to do.
- Your friend betrayed you for another.
Treat surprises like this as an opportunity for reflection. Your mental model was wrong, somehow. You may have missed a critical piece of information. You may have oversimplified, or perhaps you made it more complex than reality. You may have underestimated or overestimated some factor.
Reality is what happened. Don’t fall into the trap of blaming reality because it didn’t match your mental model – that’s just wasted energy.
Reflect, ponder, update your mental model.
