“The Ghosts of Christmas Future” and Your Charlotte Auto Accident Case
In our last post, “The Ghosts of Halloween Past,” we used a seasonal metaphor to examine how our perceptive errors in the passage of time can lead us to underestimate the risks of not taking action on a North Carolina auto accident case. For instance: waiting an extra day or two to collect a witness statement or go to the doctor can lead to a profound decrease in the likelihood that you’ll win your case.
It’s likewise useful to learn lessons from how we perceive future events. Christmas is around the corner, and so our collective attention turns to anticipate the future. But how, exactly, DO we think about the future? What commons errors do we make when we anticipate?
Research reveals that our ability to predict the future is surprisingly bad, in many was.
Imagine how you’d feel if you lost your Charlotte auto accident case. You’d probably feel pretty bad, right? Actually, research suggests that you wouldn’t over the long term! Likewise, you might think that winning a case would make you feel happy and good. It probably would in the short-term. But over the longer term, your happiness will remain surprisingly static at its current level.
This phenomenon explains why materialistic improvements — buying a new Porsche, for instance — don’t meaningfully impact our happiness. It also explains, conversely, why materialistic setbacks – such as temporary debt – also don’t make us depressed, long term.
This isn’t to say that you should not pursue your case. Quite to the contrary! However, our incapacity to predict our emotional futures creates challenges and opportunities.
Here’s another big mistake that many people make. If you’re ever called to the witness stand to talk about your car accident, you might imagine that you’d behave in a certain way. Perhaps, you imagine that you’d give an emotionally trenchant speech, or you’d get nervous and tongue tied. Again, odds are that your assumptions about your behavior are inaccurate.
The moral is: you need to be careful to avoid presuming too much about your performance.
The team here at the Law Offices of Michael A. DeMayo can give you an advantage, since we’ve gone through auto accident litigation so many times in so many diverse circumstances. We know what to expect, and we can use our experience to guide you towards a solid outcome. More importantly, we can also set your expectations more effectively, so you’ll feel more in control and more emotionally balanced as you deal with challenging circumstances.
