even unwelcome transitions are usually seen differently in retrospect than they are in real time. Indeed, Feiler finds that 90 percent of the time, people ultimately report that their transition was a success, insofar as they made it through in one piece and with no permanent setbacks. Even better, research shows that we tend to see important past events—even undesirable ones at the time—as net positives over time.[9] This is in part because unpleasant feelings fade more than pleasant feelings do, a phenomenon known as “fading affect bias.”
