I recently (within the last year) came to the conclusion that it is a fallacy to project my current emotional state far into the future. For example, I often worry that I'll become locked into the same job for the rest of my life with no opportunity for change. However, the reality is that opportunities present themselves regularly and I always possess the freedom to find some new career.
I realized that this fallacy could be generalized to many different things and have given it as advice to others under some sort of stress. I was rather proud of this idea and thought it to be original. Like many intellectual constructs, however, I was merely reinventing the wheel.
While reading through the comments on a post at LessWrong I discovered the idea of impact bias. It's precisely what I had in mind, though much more developed. For example, it also states that we have a tendency to project positive emotions too far into the future. Take a look at the link. It's interesting and to keep it in mind helps to alleviate a lot distress we inflict upon ourselves.
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