For everyone else, the entirety of this WSJ article can be accessed for free through Google News. Just search for The Power of Negative Thinking in the Google News search. That's how I read it.

I found the article a bit disjointed since the writer pulls together references about different, but somewhat related, topics. Some of it does talk about "preparing for the worst" rather than "hoping for the best" (as in normalcy bias), but he does go on to topics like goal setting versus more free-form "do your best" kinds of thinking when talking about positive vs negative thinking. Goal setting can be a trap for preppers just as much as head-in-the-clouds types. Just look at all the lists on the web and on Youtube. "The twelve must have types of firearms for a prepper!" a video might extol. Are you an abject failure if you can't afford to get all twelve? Some "experts" make you feel that way. Are you well prepared just because you have all twelve? That would also be a mistake.

For me, the nugget from the article that spoke to me the most was this quote:
Quote:
Just thinking in sober detail about worst-case scenarios—a technique the Stoics called "the premeditation of evils"—can help to sap the future of its anxiety-producing power.

So much of procrastination and putting things off is driven by overt or subconcious anxiety, and anything that can lessen that anxiety and allow us to break through and actually take some action is a positive thing.

As with all things, there is a downside to negative thinking, too. I just happened to run across this article this morning called When Daily Stress Gets in the Way of Life. It's kind of a counter-weight to this idea that thinking of the negative, worst case is somehow "better" than thinking of the positive. Not to say one way is better than the other, but it's informative to consider arguments for both ways.


Quote:
But for some people, anxiety is a way of life, chronic and life-crippling, constantly leaving them awash in fears that prevent them from making moves that could enrich their lives.

In an interview, Dr. Chansky said that when real calamities occur, “you will be in much better shape to cope with them if you don’t entertain extraneous catastrophes.”

By “extraneous,” she means the many stresses that pile up in the course of daily living that don’t really deserve so much of our emotional capital — the worrying and fretting we spend on things that won’t change or simply don’t matter much.

“If you worry about everything, it will get in the way of what you really need to address,” she explained. “The best decisions are not made when your mind is spinning out of control, racing ahead with predictions about how things are never going to get any better. Precious energy is wasted when you’re always thinking about the worst-case scenarios.”

Negative outcomes are associated with anxiety and many/most of us are not well equipped with deal with it, particularly on a chronic basis. It would be great if taking a hard look at bad things allowed us to lessen our anxiety, but that's a tall order in many cases. Unfortunately, in many cases, there are forces around us that encourage that fear for financial and political purposes. (Ugh, TSA comes to mind, but I digress...)

Especially with all the horrendous, almost Biblical calamities we have witnessed within a relatively short period of time, I'm sure there are many folks out there who are consumed with the negative, with the worst cast scenario. Oftentimes, that probably also leads to paralyzing inaction or indifference as well. And on a more community level, probably doesn't help either. Like one small example, do we worry more about hiding from looters by not running the genie and hiding in the dark at night after a hurricane, or more about keeping people warm and keeping the kids (and the adults) entertained and their spirits up with lights and inviting people over? There's not necessarily a right or wrong answer to this or many other choices, but your mindset can certainly shape the outcome so it's best to be careful about what we fill our thoughts with.