Always Imagine The Worst Scenario

…because the best scenario will leave unprepared.

If you are preparing for a speech and you tell a friend or colleague that you are nervous, they will often say something like, “oh, don’t think about that, you will be fine, just imagine it going well!”

This is bad advice.

When faced with a big challenge where their is a chance of failure or embarrassment, always imagine yourself experiencing the worst case scenario…and then imagine how you would handle it.

Imagine your brain going blank during an upcoming speech. You reach for the next thought, but find nothing there. You start to sweat, you look out at the crowd as they stare at you, waiting for you to continue and then….you calmly take a breathe, peek down at your notes, find your place, and continue.

Imagine your relationship starts to sour. You feel distance between you and your partner. Maybe you start to fight. Some of the romance is gone and then…you go out of your way to take them out on a Friday night or bring them their favorite dinner or pop a bottle of wine and talk things out.

Imagine the speech going poorly. Imagine the early signs of a failing marriage. Imagine that thing at work going poorly. And then imagine yourself handling it.

You never want to face negative outcomes for the first time in the moment which they happen. Sometimes things go south. That’s life. But if you think through how you will handle them ahead of time, you will be able to take precautionary steps to minimize the probability of those negative outcomes occurring as well as have the confidence of knowing how you will handle them if they happen.

Confidence does not come from knowing you can handle life when it is going well, it comes from knowing that you can respond correctly when things go poorly. Confidence is believing that if the walls come crashing down, you will have the strength to hold them up and not allow them to crush you. That you can face a bad situation head on, calmy analyze it, and then act rationally.

It is much better to run in the bike lane against traffic than with it. You cannot see a car careening toward you if your back is to it.

Got a hankering for more? You can read more of my posts on Letters to a Young Professional, you can check out my blog 12HourDifference.co for my thoughts on launching an international career and you can connect with me on LinkedIn or Twitter to chat about…whatever you’d like!