Analyze This

Not too long ago, I was chatting with a friend of mine about something I was worrying about. She thought I was being funny when I said: "if I just think it will horrible enough, when it isn't, even if it's just bad, it will seem like it's good, and if it's good it will seem like it's awesome". Her laugh caught me completely off guard because up until then I had deluded myself into thinking that most people thought this way. I do this all the time and am at a point now where I almost worry that if I don't worry about something or think it will turn out horribly then it will. For example, if I have a job interview I usually go into it thinking I'm going to stink it up (even though I'm actually quite good at job interviews, or so I've been told); when I do well, I convince myself that I didn't do that well because then I won't be disappointed and I won't jinx it by being overly confident. I also do this with papers (like the one I was sure was terrible only to get a call from my prof asking for permission to submit it to a policy conference). Jason can't believe that I was actually surprised to find out that my friend does not think this way as apparently neither does he. Some people are so odd.