Possible or only Preferable?

Another 651,000 Americans out of work, unemployment up to 8.1% (officially, although the real number is certainly much higher), and the Dow is flirting with 6500. What will things be like in the next six months?

The reality is that no one knows. Literally anything is possible, but since most of us skew either to the optimist side or the pessimist side, we tend to read most closely the signs that support our optimism (or pessimism). Gauging the real probabilities should perhaps be left to emotionless computer models. Except that the models are all built by emotional people....

My recommendation is to build a decision tree, with every possible alternative I can think of. I then share it with friends and colleagues, because they'll invariably come up with possibilities that I haven't considered. Especially the possibilities that I don't want to think of.

The hardest part of all is coming up with reasonable probabilities for all these various possibilities -- and not letting the possibilities that are most preferable win out.

And after all that, thank the Lord for the blessings I have, and try to let go of the anxiety about the things I can't control.