What if You Don't Like This Article?

Have you ever had a bad case of the what ifs? They can keep you up at night, twist your stomach in a knot and ruin your weekend, sometimes even worse. The what ifs have kept many a person afraid and unwilling to live life to the fullest. The what ifs can be described as an imaginary illness in the truest sense of the word-imaginary yet quite real. A wonderful human faculty is that of the imagination and it serves many different purposes. The most obvious is in works of creativity where we combine things in new and interesting ways. We also use the imagination as a predictive tool, where we attempt to envision possible future outcomes. Sometimes what might be described as negative thinking can serve a useful function, such as when it alerts us to the possible negative consequences of a particular course of action. However, we are unconsciously drawn to whatever we focus on most and imagining only in negatives leads to stress, worry and self-defeating behavior. "What if I get rejected?" "What if I say the wrong thing?" "What if I fail?" "What if I can't handle this?" Eventually we can be held captive by our fears. Yet there is a tool that can help you defuse the what ifs and it is so simple to use, it just requires a little diligence. If you can remain aware of your thoughts and catch your what ifs as they present themselves, put the word so in front of your what ifs and a rational refutation at the end. "What if I fail?" gets transformed to "So what if fail? I'll get another chance" or something to that effect. This encourages us to put things in a more balanced perspective, that the worst case scenario for most of our worries is far from world ending. You can also use this technique to help the other chronic worriers in your life. "So what if you don't get the job, another will come up maybe even something better." I hope you enjoyed this article and "so what if you didn't, I am sure we will both recover!"