I just tried it and feel worse than ever, because I started to fear these things actually happening, instead of what I usually do, and suppressing these fears. I imagined my wife and daughter dead, me suffering from a debilitating illness etc. and got scared because I always fear these things but usually manage to suppress the fears or numb them with alcohol. Instead of appreciating what I have today, it made me less able to suppress the fears of losing them tomorrow. I am never able to enjoy anything unless I can convince myself it lasts forever, and a combination of compartmentalization, willful cognitive dissonance, wishful thinking, positive visualization and some numbing alcohol helps usually half-convince myself, so I am usually halfway happy. Good enough. I don't know if other people work that way... if I am eating a brownie, I have to convince myself it is an infinitely large brownie and I will never have to stop eating it, or else I could not bring myself to bite into it, because I would feel too guilty for every bite making it smaller and thus robbing my future self from enjoying that brownie.
My experience is almost entirely the opposite of yours. Counter-examples are valuable. Thanks.
Cross-posted
Nothing weighty or profound today, but I noticed a failure mode in myself which other people might plausibly suffer from so I thought I'd share it.
Basically, I noticed that sometimes when I discovered a more effective way of doing something -- say, going from conventional flashcards to Anki -- I found myself getting discouraged.
I realized that it was because each time I found such a technique, I automatically compared my current self to a version of me that had had access to the technique the whole time. Realizing that I wasn't as far along as I could've been resulted in a net loss of motivation.
Now, I deliberately compare two future versions of myself, one armed with the technique I just discovered and one without. Seeing how much farther along I will be results in a net gain of motivation.
A variant of this exercise is taking any handicap you might have and wildly exaggerating it. I suffer from mild Carpal Tunnel (or something masquerading as CT) which makes progress in programming slow. When I feel down about this fact I imagine how hard programming would be without hands.
Sometimes I go as far as to plan out what I might do if I woke up tomorrow with a burning desire to program and nothing past my wrists. Well, I'd probably figure out a way to code by voice and then practice mnemonics because I wouldn't be able to write anything down. Since these solutions exist I can implement one or both of them the moment my carpal tunnel gets bad enough.
With this realization comes a boost in motivation knowing I can go a different direction if required.