Career tra­jec­to­ries are full of unknowns, and we can’t always know future out­comes. If you’re like most peo­ple, you’re some­times plagued with what-if’s—a voice in your head that makes up neg­a­tive sto­ries about what the future holds before it ever hap­pens: “What if I can’t reach the dead­line?” or “What if I flop in the job inter­view?” or “What if I get a bad per­for­mance review?” or “What if I get Covid before my keynote address?”

What-if’s are end­less exag­ger­at­ed thoughts stream­ing through our minds that we latch onto as fact—worries, warn­ings and rumi­na­tions that inter­rupt our enjoy­ment of the present moment. They swoop in, mag­ni­fy a con­cern with the worst-case sce­nario, play the dis­tort­ed pic­ture over in our minds, and we end up stress­ing over a mag­ni­fi­ca­tion of the prob­lem, not the real prob­lem.

When The ‘What-If’s’ Hit Home

Case in point. An attor­ney told me that he and his wife had always rent­ed homes in the five years they had been mar­ried. When she pushed him to pur­chase a house, he pan­icked. “What if we don’t stay togeth­er?” he remem­bered think­ing at the time. “What if I lose my job and can’t afford the mort­gage?”

Six years later—still rent­ing and finan­cial­ly able to pur­chase a home—the same men­tal refrain haunts him. “With the bad econ­o­my, what if I get laid-off?” Or “What if one of us becomes seri­ous­ly ill, and we can’t make ends meet?” The attor­ney was plagued with emo­tion­al what-if’s that kept him stuck from mov­ing for­ward with his life.

In anoth­er sce­nario, sup­pose your boss walks by your desk. You hook eye con­tact with her, smile and nod. She looks straight at you with­out acknowl­edg­ing your pres­ence. She might as well be star­ing at the wall. “Holy cow,” you say to your­self. “I must be in hot water.” You shrink inside, and the cru­el what-if’s stalk you. What if you did this or what if you did that to deserve her dis­missal. Your heart races, and you’re shaky. Sleep­less nights stalk you just a few days before your per­for­mance eval­u­a­tion. You toss and turn as what-ifs spin with the made up sto­ry, and you buy it hook, line and sinker.

The day of your eval­u­a­tion, your boss calls you into her office. Your stom­ach flip-flops. You trem­ble the way you did in sixth grade when you were sum­moned into the prin­ci­pal’s office. But, to your cha­grin, she greets you with a smile and gives you a glow­ing per­for­mance eval­u­a­tion. Not only are you not in hot water, but she also calls you a high­ly-val­ued team mem­ber, a laud­able success—the exact oppo­site of what your what-if’s pre­dict­ed. All that wor­ry and rumi­na­tion for noth­ing, but the stress of the made-up sto­ry has already tak­en a toll on your mind and body.

The ‘What-If’s’ Are Your Friend—Say What?

I’m con­stant­ly amazed by how often and how many of my clients say, “But what if?” when we’re talk­ing about the future. And they don’t even real­ize they’re say­ing it or that the thought is an obsta­cle that, left unchal­lenged, can sab­o­tage their careers. In fact, sci­ence shows that 90% of what-if’s are false alarms that rarely hap­pen in the way we pre­dict.

Truth be told, what-if’s are the sur­vival brain in action. They don’t exist to frus­trate us; they exist to pro­tect us. Our work­ing brain is hard­wired with the hefty respon­si­bil­i­ty of keep­ing us safe and secure. Inevitable career uncer­tain­ties instant­ly arouse fight-or-flight reac­tions, and we auto­mat­i­cal­ly inter­pret uncer­tain­ty as a threat.

The brain is like Vel­cro for neg­a­tiv­i­ty and Teflon for pos­i­tiv­i­ty. Work-life’s inevitable uncer­tain­ties instant­ly arouse our fight-or-flight reac­tion. Your sur­vival brain is con­stant­ly updat­ing your world, mak­ing judg­ments about what’s safe and what isn’t. It will do almost any­thing for the sake of cer­tain­ty because you’re hard­wired to over­es­ti­mate threats and under­es­ti­mate your abil­i­ty to han­dle them.

The human brain prefers to know an out­come. If it does­n’t know what’s around the cor­ner, it can’t keep us out from har­m’s way. The what-if’s are the brain’s dis­dain for uncer­tain­ty caus­ing it to make up all sorts of untest­ed sto­ries hun­dreds of times a day because uncer­tain­ty equals dan­ger. A cowork­er does­n’t respond to a text. Your boss wears a frown and uses a cer­tain tone of voice. You’re not a final­ist for the posi­tion. You assume the worst, over-per­son­al­ize the threat and jump to con­clu­sions.

Had you thought about it, you might have real­ized there are sev­er­al benign rea­sons your boss did­n’t acknowl­edge you when she walked by your desk. Per­haps she was dis­tract­ed by her own wor­ries, deep in thought over an upcom­ing meet­ing or sim­ply just did­n’t see you. But your what-if’s jumped into action with­out your per­mis­sion, focus­ing only on the dis­as­trous pos­si­bil­i­ties, blow­ing your thoughts out of pro­por­tion and send­ing you into spi­rals of rumi­na­tion.

It’s pru­dent to con­sid­er facts and weigh pos­si­bil­i­ties before you make impor­tant career deci­sions. But in the heat of the moment, it’s easy to for­get that fore­cast­ing the worst with­out proof does­n’t make it true. It sim­ply makes us mis­er­able and halts us from tak­ing the nec­es­sary risks to build a suc­cess­ful career. So how can you man­age the what-if’s?

Use Hindsight To Turn Foresight Into 20/20

Some­times you have to wait for an out­come to con­vince your­self of an exag­ger­at­ed what-if. Oth­er times you can get a real­i­ty check from friends or cowork­ers. But the best stress-reduc­tion rule is to catch the what-if’s in the act and sus­pend them until you have con­vinc­ing evi­dence. Stay­ing open to the future and let­ting things hap­pen instead of think­ing about how they might hap­pen or try­ing to make them hap­pen to suit you can alle­vi­ate your stress.

When you wait to con­nect the dots after, instead of before, the hard evi­dence is in, you’ll dis­cov­er that what-if’s are unre­li­able sources of infor­ma­tion most of the time. Find­ing the hard evi­dence first before jump­ing to con­clu­sions saves a lot of self-loathing, unnec­es­sary wor­ry, rela­tion­ship prob­lems and time.

The next time a what-if clouds your mind before an uncer­tain sit­u­a­tion, inter­cept it and notice your inter­nal reac­tion. Think of your­self as a pri­vate detec­tive and ask, “Where’s the evi­dence for this con­clu­sion?” You won’t find any because there is none. Your evi­dence lies in hind­sight.

Think back to a few weeks or a month ago. Track some of the neg­a­tive pre­dic­tions you made about future events that have since hap­pened. Write down some of the wor­ries you had about a rained-out ball game, miss­ing your plane, fail­ing a test, or some­one not lik­ing you. Beside each neg­a­tive con­clu­sion, cir­cle the wor­ries that turned out the way you thought they would. Star the ones that turned out the exact oppo­site of your pre­dic­tion. Chances are you’ll have more stars than cir­cles. When all is said and done, you won’t find evi­dence for your what-ifs; you’re more like­ly to find evi­dence that con­tra­dicts them.

Next time a what-if slams you, remem­ber that it’s not an upcom­ing event that stress­es you but the way you’re think­ing about and treat­ing your­self before the sit­u­a­tion takes place. It’s like­ly that the what-if’s have hijacked your out­look, you’re believ­ing it and unwit­ting­ly reject­ing the truth. Use that proof to revise your cloudy fore­cast and start ask­ing pos­i­tive what-if ques­tions: “What if I get the pro­mo­tion?” or “What if the wed­ding goes off with­out a hitch?” or “What if I land the job of my dreams?”