Your brain is going to run worst case scenarios whether you want it to or not.
That's just what it does. You send an email and it immediately starts drafting the response where everything goes wrong. You go into a meeting and it's already three steps ahead imagining the version where you embarrass yourself. You start something new and before you've even begun it's already playing out the timeline where it doesn't work.
Most people treat this like a flaw. Something to fix, something to journal about until it stops. And yeah, chronic anxiety is real and therapy is great and all of that. But the overthinkers who actually figure it out don't stop overthinking. They just change the direction.
Because here's the thing nobody really says out loud, your brain doesn't run those simulations because it hates you. It runs them because it's trying to prepare you. It's scanning for threats, mapping the terrain, trying to make sure you don't get caught off guard. That's actually a useful skill. The problem is most people only ever point it at the bad outcomes. They stress-test the disaster and never once stress-test the win.
So flip it.
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If your brain can spend forty minutes building out a detailed scenario where you send that cold email and the person screenshots it and posts it publicly and your entire reputation collapses, it can spend forty minutes building out the scenario where they respond, you get the meeting, it goes well, one thing leads to another. Your brain is equally capable of both. You just never gave it permission to run the second one seriously.
This isn't toxic positivity. Toxic positivity is pretending the bad outcomes don't exist. This is something different, it's using the same compulsive simulation machine you already have and actually letting it map the upside with the same detail and energy it maps the downside.
Most people walk into a room already having played out the version where they say something stupid and everyone notices. What if you walked in having already played out the version where you say the right thing at the right moment and someone remembers it for years? Your brain would orient toward that outcome completely differently. The way you carry yourself, the risks you take, the things you say, all of it shifts based on which simulation you ran before you walked in.
There's actual psychology behind this. The brain has a thing called a reticular activating system, basically a filter that decides what information from your environment makes it through to your conscious attention. And it's heavily influenced by what you're focused on and expecting. Which means the person who walks around convinced things will go wrong genuinely notices more evidence that things are going wrong. And the person who walks around convinced they're lucky genuinely notices more opportunities, more open doors, more moments that confirm it. Same world. Different filter. Completely different experience.
The shift isn't about lying to yourself. You're not pretending the risk isn't there. You're just deciding that if you're going to run the simulation anyway, and you are, you can't stop it, you might as well run both. Give the good outcome the same airtime, the same detail, the same realness that you give the bad one.
Because the version of you who has already vividly imagined succeeding at something walks into that situation differently than the version of you who only ever imagined failing at it. And how you walk in changes what actually happens.
So yeah. If you're gonna overthink it, and you are , overthink the best version. Give it the full treatment. Let yourself actually believe for a second that the thing works out, that the right people show up, that it goes even better than you planned. Your brain already knows how to do this. You've just been aiming it in the wrong direction.
See you on the next stair,
Alastair