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Imagining failure and success

Our imaginations are extraordinarily active. Sometimes we think about the good that will happen but far more often we imagine the reverse.

One of my favorite authors once said, “Anxiety is experiencing failure in advance. If you tell yourself the worst possible outcome, you’ll soon come to believe it.”

Not getting in to the program we dream of. Not passing a difficult test. The mistakes we’ll make in our next big speech. Or things not working out with that special someone. It’s easy to think about and even expect things to go wrong. But it’s far more difficult to do the reverse. To put our worry aside. To channel anxiety into excitement. To have hope that things can be better tomorrow than they were before.

When you are anxious and think about why things won’t work, it probably increases the odds it won’t work. Even if it should work out for the best. On the other hand, when you imagine success instead of failure, you’ll be far more likely to actually succeed than you would be if you didn’t.

In short, thinking about failure is a bad use of time, and will probably make you fail more often.

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