Reflecting on a pivotal decision from your fertility journey, you may find yourself questioning what you could have done differently. Perhaps it was a choice regarding a treatment plan, clinic, or timing of an intervention. With the benefit of hindsight, it may seem as though a better path was glaringly obvious, and yet, at the time, it was anything but. Welcome to the hindsight trap—a tendency to overestimate the predictability of events after they have occurred.

Hindsight is a double-edged sword. While it offers opportunities for reflection and growth, it also distorts reality and fuels regret. Understanding the mechanisms of hindsight bias can help us move beyond self-recrimination and instead approach past decisions with greater compassion and clarity.

Hindsight bias refers to the mental illusion that events, in retrospect, seem far more predictable than they were in the moment. This cognitive distortion leads us to believe we "should have known better," despite the reality that we were making decisions with incomplete information and under significant emotional pressure, or with the information we had at the time.

Hindsight bias is tempting because it offers a sense of........

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