After a particularly stressful event, most people prepare for a repeat of the same challenge they just faced. From the micro level to the macro level, we succumb to the availability bias and get ready to fight a war we’ve already fought.

We learn that one lesson, but we don’t expand that knowledge to other areas. Because we focus on the specific details, we don’t extrapolate what we learn to identifying what we can better do to prepare for adversity in general.

• Life has a tendency to surprise us, and we will be most likely smacked with something totally unforeseen and unrelated to the last disaster, that one was prepared for.
• A better strategy is to realize that it is inevitable that life will hit us unexpectedly, and to grow and learn fr...