Think of something you didn't start because you weren't sure it would work out.
A business idea. A conversation. An application. A trip. A relationship. Most of us have a list, and some of those lists are long.
Now look at what actually happened in your mind before you decided not to. It probably went something like this. You imagined going ahead. Then, quite quickly, you imagined it going wrong. The rejection. The embarrassment. The money lost, the time wasted, the look on someone's face. The unhappy ending played out in some detail.
And then you used that ending, the one you'd just made up, as the reason not to begin. Nobody asked for evidence. The imagined ending was treated as if it were a report from the future.
When you see it laid out like that, it's a strange thing to do. It's also one of the most common things people do.
I've done it myself more times than I'd like to count. Most of the people I've worked with, over twenty years of this work, have done it too, including many who look, from the outside, like fearless achievers. The habit hides well.
Why do I always expect the worst?
Usually because your mind learned early that preparing for bad outcomes kept you safe. So it uses its imagination to write unhappy endings in advance, and then treats them as predictions. It isn't a lack of creativity. It's creativity pointed against you, working hard to make your world smaller.
That's the part I find most useful to understand. The person who always expects the worst isn't unimaginative. They're often very imaginative indeed. They've just been using that gift in only one direction.
Where does expecting the worst come from?
Almost always from somewhere that made sense at the time.
A child who was often disappointed learns not to hope. A child in an unpredictable home learns to scan for danger. A child who was criticised whenever they tried something new learns that trying is risky. In each case, expecting the worst was a kind of protection. If you see the blow coming, maybe it won't hurt as much. If you never hope, maybe you'll never be let down.
That protection gets carried into adult life, long after the original situation has changed. The mind keeps writing unhappy endings, not because they're likely, but because it learned that writing them was how you stayed safe. It's the same root I write about in why anxiety is always about the future.
It's worth saying clearly: nothing about this makes you weak or foolish. A mind that expects the worst is a mind that's been working very hard, for a very long time, to keep you safe. It deserves some gratitude before it's asked to change.
Does expecting the worst actually protect you?
Not the way it promises to.
The idea is that if you expect the worst, you won't be disappointed. But look at what really happens. If the bad thing doesn't come, you've suffered for nothing, sometimes for weeks. If it does come, it usually hurts just as much, and you've already suffered in advance. Either way, you pay more than once.
And there's a bigger cost that's harder to see. Every time the unhappy ending decides for you, your world gets a little smaller. The thing not started. The door not knocked on. The risk not taken. Over years, those small retreats add up to a life that feels safe and narrow at the same time. That's often what sits underneath a fear of failure, and underneath procrastinating on the things you most want.
What would happen if you used your imagination for you?
This is the question that changes things.
If your mind is capable of imagining a failure in vivid detail, it's equally capable of imagining something else. A good outcome. A surprising one. A path you hadn't considered. The creativity is the same. Only the direction is different.
Most people have never tried this deliberately. They've spent years rehearsing the worst and almost no time rehearsing anything else. Ask them to describe what could go wrong with a new venture and they'll give you twenty items without pausing. Ask them what could go right and they struggle to name three. So the worst feels realistic and everything better feels like fantasy. But that's just a matter of practice. The endings you rehearse most are the ones that feel most real.
What I've seen, again and again, is that when people let themselves imagine a better outcome as vividly as they used to imagine the worse one, something shifts in how they act. They show up. And showing up, fully and with all of themselves, changes what's possible far more than any forecast could.
How can I practise imagining a different ending?
This practice is written, and it takes about fifteen minutes.
Choose one thing you've been avoiding because of how it might turn out. Take a sheet of paper and divide it down the middle.
On the left, write the unhappy ending your mind has been playing. Be specific. What goes wrong, what people say, how you feel. Get it all out.
On the right, write a different ending, just as specific and just as vivid. Not a fantasy. A realistic good outcome. What goes well, what people say, how you feel. Take as much time over this side as you did over the other.
Now read both. Notice which one your body believes more easily. For most people, it's the left. That's not because it's more likely. It's because it's more rehearsed. Familiarity feels like truth, even when it isn't. The more often a story has played, the more convincing it becomes, whatever the evidence says.
Read the right-hand side once a day for a week. You're not trying to force a positive outcome. You're giving your imagination a second option, so the unhappy ending stops being the only one on the table. Some people add a third column after a few days: the ending that surprises them. It's often the most useful of the three, because it reminds the mind that the future isn't limited to the two stories it already knows.
What if the fear runs deeper than a habit?
Sometimes it does. When a long history of hard things has taught someone to brace, expecting the worst can feel less like a habit and more like simple realism.
On our stories page, Nihal Amin wrote: "I got rid of my chronic pain which I had for over 15 years." That's Nihal's own report, not a promise about anyone else, and if you're living with pain or illness, please keep working with your professional. I share it here because after fifteen years, the worst-case forecast would be the most natural thing in the world. And it turned out not to be the final word.
Where can I start releasing the fear itself?
With the way your mind stores time.
I made a short, deep session called Anxiety Release. It's about twenty minutes. It shows you the mechanism behind anxiety about the future, then walks you through a process for releasing it, one you can use on your own the next time an unhappy ending starts writing itself.
Your imagination was never the problem. It just needs somewhere better to point.
Robert Simic, guiding the remembering.