Definite Pessimism

The Patterns

Indefinite Pessimism
You perceive negative potential futures. What futures that will come to pass are unknown but the future can’t be better than the present. You are unsure of what you can do and simply react to changes as they occur in the present and hope for the best while expecting the worst. You dare not plan for the future as you may be disappointed.

Learning patterns that will assist you in developing your aegis (agency, influence, and active engagement in creating the desirable futures) would be of great benefit to you.

Definite Pessimism
You believe that the future will be worse than the present and so you must prepare for it through accumulation of assets, skills or money. Your drive is security.

If in business you are likely to focus on shorter term outcomes that generate quick profits. If an employee you prefer security over risk taking.

You would greatly benefit from a series of coaching sessions or training programs that focus on developing your aegis and a growth mindset. Creating and implementing a medium term set project with measurable criteria to create feedback would be an excellent project for you that would support you in having more choice about how you relate to the future.

Definite Optimism
You plan for the future. You execute and adjust your plans based on feedback. You are most likely a Definite Optimist. Potential futures are knowable, and specifically a desired defined future for your business is possible and you actively plan and work towards realising your dreams.

“I look at the future from the standpoint of probabilities. It’s like a branching stream of probabilities, and there are actions that we can take that affect those probabilities or that accelerate one thing or slow down another thing,” – Elon Musk

If you have a business it is a defined future driven business. You and your employees operate with a present to future cause-effect pattern. The vision in the future that you have for your business influences the plans that you make and execute in the present. You realise that there is a relationship between the actions and decisions you make in the present and the outcomes you will realise in the future

You perceive the future as something that you can create actively. You view the future as being better than the past and that it can and should be planned for. You believe that you can create the type of future you want to have. You are active in the present implementing your plans for creating the future that you intend to have.

There are some specific patterns that we have modelled from successful entrepreneurs that you can learn that will assist you in enhancing your ability to generate, select potential futures, develop and implement your plans to create the future you want.

Indefinite Optimism
You believe that the future, while being better than the present, is unknowable. Rather than making medium and long term plans for your future, you tend to focus on what works now and in refining what you do already.

It would be useful for you to learn some patterns that would enable you to congruently represent desirable futures for yourself or your business. Useful patterns include a values audit, engaging your unconscious mind in generating potential ideas, outcome selection, planning and execution exercises would also benefit you. Learning and applying patterns for developing and implementing major projects would be useful.

For organisations having a significant and vision focuses the business and creates a frame for developing a powerful culture of employee engagement. For individuals having a challenging major dream that’s aligned with their core values creates a focus for how they operate in the present.

As an individual you believe that the future will be better than the present. What will come to pass in the future is unknowable so you focus on activities in the present trusting that it will all work out in the end. Your business is more likely to focus on what’s worked in the past and iterating gradual improvements to products or services that you already have. Your business is likely competing in market segments with other businesses that have similar offerings to your own.

You and your business could benefit in setting multi-year goals. In your business shifting from innovating minor changes to existing products or services and instead innovating new offerings that support medium to long term growth. To do so you may need to revisit and revitalise your vision/mission for your organisation. Define a specific market and consider how you can add significant value that no other organisation is delivering or delivering well.

Learning and applying our processes for values and vision elicitation, vision development, chunking and resource identification would benefit you.

Setting Specific Objectives with Defined Evidence
People who set specific objectives with defined evidence criteria and act in the present to realise those objectives are more likely to have their businesses succeed. This is a pattern that is more commonly exhibited by Definite Optimists. They hold a presupposition that possible futures are definable by the individual or business and that there is a cause-effect between effective action in the present and the creation and realisation of a future vision. Individuals who do this exhibit Aegis (In psychology referred to as an internal locus of control). In our work the term Aegis is broader and includes an active engagement and an extension of one’s influence into the contexts that the individual or business is operating.

Setting concrete plans is done by people with Definite Pessimist tendency as well. It’s just that they are planning for a definite negative future.

People with a weighting towards Indefinite Pessimist perceive an unknown negative future and if they plan at all they do so in an unsystematic and unsustained way. These people exhibit a lack of Aegis in relationship to the future and could benefit from learning to;
Be confident in the future,
Learn to generate a desirable future,
Develop skills in breaking objectives down into manageable actions (chunking) sequenced through time (planning).