Every outcome contains benefits. The real risk is forgetting that.
Most of us were trained to consider the pros and cons. The traditional pros-and-cons list assumes your happiness depends on choosing the objectively better option. Pros and Pros begins from a different assumption: every path contains gifts and every path contains challenges. Since challenges exist regardless of what you choose, compare the opportunities each path offers rather than obsessing over what each one might cost.
Instead of pros and cons, you can view decisions and events with a Pros and Pros™ mindset. We usually compare each option against itself. Option A's benefits minus Option A's costs. Option B's benefits minus Option B's costs. But negativity bias often means we are looking at the cons. It's not really a comparison between two futures — it's a comparison between imagined disappointments and fear of missing out. Pros and Pros asks a different question: if every path will contain challenges anyway, which opportunities genuinely excite me?
Try this instead: take only the pros of Option A and the pros of Option B, and put them side by side, nothing subtracted from either. No ledger closes against itself. What's left is a comparison between two genuinely good things — not a referendum on which one might be worse.
If, after honestly exploring the possibilities, both options still feel equally rich with opportunity, that isn't indecision. It's evidence that you're fortunate enough to be choosing between two equally good choices. A Pros and Pros™ mindset serves two purposes. Before a decision, it reminds you that multiple futures all have benefits. After an outcome, it reminds you that every reality contains something worth discovering.
Instead of asking "what do I stand to lose," ask: what is useful about this outcome — and what is useful about its opposite? This isn't about ignoring real challenges. If a genuine problem rules one option out, focus the exercise on the pros of the choice you've actually decided to make.
Right now, most of that energy is going toward defending a choice before it's even made, or rehearsing a disaster that hasn't happened. Redirect it toward something more durable: the capacity to meet whatever arises — sale or silence, promotion or redirection — with the same steadiness. That capacity, unlike any single outcome, never has to be defended.
A friend cancels plans an hour before you're set to meet. The automatic move is disappointment, maybe a quiet story about being deprioritized. Try viewing the pro of the situation instead: what does the cancelled dinner open up — a task you can now get ahead of, or an evening of self-care? Both directions carry something real.
A two-year offer arrives where a one-year offer was expected — more prestige, more debt delay, no clear "right" answer. Weighed the usual way, both options come loaded with what they'd cost. Weighed pros-against-pros, both are simply good, and the paralysis lifts before the phone call is even made. Read the full story →
Partway through writing Left Brain Spirituality, fear washed over me like a warm shower: am I wasting my time? What if the book never sells? I caught myself before the spiral and ran a Pros and Pros check. If the book sells — that's amazing. If it doesn't — I genuinely had fun writing it, learned a lot in the process, and a few early readers already told me how much it impacted them. That alone made it worth writing. The outcomes differ. The value doesn't.
If you're having difficulty with a decision, ask yourself this first.
Then take the decision you're most stuck on right now and write down what's useful about each outcome.
"The Great Way is not difficult for those who have no preferences." Traditionally attributed to Sengcan, Third Patriarch of Zen, in the Xinxin Ming, one of the earliest Chan texts. The instant you rank one outcome above another, heaven and earth are set infinitely apart. Pros and Pros is the same move — refuse the ranking before it starts.
Motivation research draws a sharp line between pursuing a gain and guarding against a loss — the same decision can be driven by either, but only one keeps you clear-headed. Fear of missing out is avoidance wearing prudence's clothes. Pros and Pros is a way of noticing which one is actually running the decision.
Decades of research show people facing real adversity — illness, loss, hardship — reliably identify genuine gains alongside the difficulty: perspective, resilience, clarified priorities. Not denial. Accurate perception of what's actually there. Benefit-finding tends to happen on its own, after the fact. Pros and Pros makes it deliberate — and usable whether the outcome already landed or you're still choosing.
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This is part of the Tanisms™ collection — ideas worth sitting with. Each one is a different handle on the same door.