Alternative Explanations to Negative Outcomes

Freelancing can be discouraging. Losing a pitch, or being dropped by a client, or not hearing back from someone you admired can take a toll on your confidence. 

When I first started freelancing, I assumed the worst in people. When a creative I admired didn’t respond to me, I imagined them maliciously not responding to my message. Instead of just not responding because they were busy, or confused, or hadn’t seen it yet.

Over time, I learned a key to making freelancing more bearable. And it’s what I just did in the last sentence of the previous paragraph: imagining alternative explanations for negative outcomes. Instead of assuming the worst, and going straight to a negative mental state, I learned to come up with alternative explanations that kept me in a positive state.

They may have been true. They may not have been true. The interesting thing is that it didn’t matter. What mattered was keeping myself in a positive mental state, and continuing on. 

Some might find this alarming. A blatant disregard for the truth? As a strategy? Some might call this foolish. But I don’t. Because for things outside of my control that I didn’t know the answer to anyway, the truth wasn’t there to be uncovered. But through this process, I discovered a deeper truth: that positivity and consistency is completely worth it.