This is exactly the correct mindset. Better be too cautious than blindly run into problems 
Yes, there is a lot to learn when coming from Windows, I am on the same journey since a year now, but I see it this way: on Windows, I had no choice but to blindly trust the updates I got. And I had no chance to “review” the update beforehand or even know which packages were updated.
Here, the information is pretty overwhelming at times, but you get a very clear understanding of what is happening in the background of an OS, and when you keep an eye on the I&A section here in the forum, you get a feeling about which issues are around and how people fix them.
At least for me, that resulted in a deep trust in the whole process, because most of the “issues” I see happening around here are people carelessly doing profound changes to files like /etc/pacman.conf without making a backup first (or doing even worse things) and then wondering when their system behaves all weird all of a sudden 
or the issues vanish with the next update 