A few weeks ago I soft nexted my favorite plate because she was being shitty, but even though I understood it was the correct and most logical response to her shittiness, I couldn’t help but have second thoughts. I found myself asking if I have overreacted, and that I should initiate and see how she’s doing, I even made a post on askTRP until an EC gave me a swift kick to my ass. This made me wonder, why did I feel the way I felt, why was my gut telling me I should ignore TRP teachings, why was my emotional self doubting my logical self?

That was when I remembered the book “Thinking, Fast and Slow” by Daniel Kahneman, on loss aversion and endowment effect. I’m no scientist but I’ll try to explain them as best as I can, since it helped me understand my internal conflict.

Loss aversion is the idea that when we lose something, the feeling is twice as powerful than when we gain something. Put it in another way, to balance out the feeling of a $5 loss, you’d have to gain $10 just to be back to neutral. Endowment effect is the idea that we give more value to things just because we own them. An example would be you would decline a $500 offer for your favorite watch, even though you only paid $200 for it; the pain of giving up the watch just because you own it is more powerful than gaining the same watch when you didn’t own it.

Putting the two together, I got a better understanding of myself; I gave more value to my favorite plate just because she was “my plate”, and by soft nexting her I triggered loss aversion in me which really made me doubt my action. If I had given into my emotions and try to get my favorite plate back, I would pacify them but revert back to my old BP self; in exchange for short term pleasure I’d stunt my long term growth. By understanding why I felt the way I felt, I was better able to handle my emotions and stick to TRP teachings.