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!"