Normalcy bias leads us to assume the future will resemble the past, so we explain away warning signs.

Deciding in advance "if this happens, then I'll act" can help distinguish crisis from normalcy.

Pre-mortems and a designated devil's advocate surface problems while there's still time to fix them.

Growing up, my family faced considerable financial strain. I would overhear my parents worry that our credit card payments were delayed, but out of a desire to stay upbeat, we never spoke about it.

Like many families facing similar challenges, we remained in denial and reassured each other: “We’ll catch up next month.”

It’s an understandable instinct. But the warning signs kept adding up until a true crisis hit. We were turned down for a home loan.

Looking back, what we were missing wasn’t effort or love. It was a moment when someone, any of us, felt able to say what no one wanted to hear: “I know this is hard to discuss, but our spending is unsustainable.”

Instead, we assumed things would work out because, until then, they usually had. That isn’t unique to my family. It’s a common pattern in human thinking.

Psychologists call this normalcy bias, the tendency to assume that things will continue as they always have and that the future won’t diverge too far from what we expect.

You probably have some examples in your own life — a relationship you couldn’t accept was falling apart, or a shrinking job market you swore couldn’t affect you. Our brains favor familiar patterns and struggle to simulate extreme disruptions.

We assume that if something hasn’t happened before, it probably won’t happen now. And when a threat persists over time without causing direct personal harm, we can begin to normalize it.

So how do we counter normalcy bias before a problem becomes impossible to ignore?

Decide in........

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