Have you ever dreaded doing something and then found out it wasn't so bad after all?

Oh yeah. Generalizing that discovery to the guiding principle that “It’s almost never as bad as I imagine it’s going to be, so just do it” has been one of the most liberating insights of my life. How ridiculous that an idea (“ugh, I just can’t deal with that”) can end up making my life so much more complicated than it needs to be.

Every day for the past four and a half months I have stalled and stalled before doing my knee and related exercises. Then, once I start, I find (particularly recently now that I can spend 30 mintues on the treadmill and also justify watching “Judge Judy”), I enjoy the sessions.

Oh—only ALL THE TIME! Things I dread or have dreaded in the past include flying (especially over the ocean for the first time), medical tests and doctor’s reports, first dates, parties and other large gatherings, all kinds of work situations like meetings and making presentations, and so many other social and work-related things I’d fill up pages listing them.

But, to quote my mother’s favorite mantra when I was growing up, the things you worry about (or dread) rarely happen. And through they years, I’ve found she’s been mostly right.

Yes. This happens all the time. However, there are also plenty of things that I feel will go fine, and end up being dread-worthy (my recent spinal injections, for example). It’s clear that my predictive abilities are shit, and they only seem to be getting worse. There is no use dreading or thinking something will be easy. It seems that the only logical thing to do is to just approach each event without expectation and see how it plays out.

That pretty much describes my life. I will include going to the dentist.

No, everything is always much worse than I anticipate, since I’m such a wide-eyed, Pollyanna-ish optimist ;^)

Flossing, my teeth.

I used to spend my Sundays dreading going to work. Then I would get to work Monday morning and although it was far from fun, it was not dreadful, usually.

Oh, definitely. Recently, I was dreading a house-warming party because the only person I knew was the host. Twenty strangers at once, small talk…that’s just not my thing. It turned out to be so much fun I didn’t want to leave.

Kissing my girlfriend… she had braces and gunk was in her teeth, so I started brushing my teeth and I asked her to do the same if we were to kiss. I tried it and it got boring but I kept it up then we broke up 4 months later when her braces went off… apparently my job was to straiten her teeth.