Sometimes it feels like life is happening to us. We’ll stub our toe, break a nail, get cut off in traffic, or someone refuses to hold an elevator despite our hustle. If we’re not careful, we will take personal offense to happenstance, internalizing these inconveniences and counting them as another score of personal hardships. There goes another drop (or two) in the bucket. Everything feels like a lesson learned or worse. It’s another dreaded, “You should have known better” or “I told you so”. Those are the phrases that haunt the people who have been let down too often. We strive to find the good, but opt for realism to maintain our sanity. “I’m not a pessimist. I’m a realist,” we say. What we don’t realize is that we’ve activated defensive pessimism. It becomes our battle cry, placated disposition, and ultimately the coping mechanism of choice.