What If It Goes Well?
Imagine you’ve just sent an important email, posted on your socials, or finally made a decision you’ve been putting off for weeks.
Within moments, your mind starts asking questions.
What if I’ve made the wrong decision? What if they don’t like it? What if this all goes badly?
It feels productive, as though you’re preparing yourself for what might come next. In reality, you’re often solving the same problem for a second or third time.
Our brains evolved to anticipate threats. This tendency, sometimes called a negativity bias, helped our ancestors survive by paying more attention to potential dangers than opportunities. Even today, our brain continues scanning for what could go wrong, often long after we’ve already made a thoughtful decision. Research in neuroscience suggests that once the brain perceives uncertainty, networks involved in threat detection can remain active, even when there is no immediate danger. For people experiencing ongoing stress, this effect can be even stronger.
The interesting thing is that if you’re someone who tends to worry, you’ve almost certainly already considered what could go wrong before you acted. You weighed the options, thought through the risks and decided the action was worth taking.
Continuing to ask “What if it goes wrong?” afterwards is not likely to improve the outcome. It just keeps your nervous system believing that danger is still present.
It’s a bit like packing for a hike. Before you leave home, you check the weather, pack some food & water, throw in a rain jacket and maybe a first aid kit. That’s sensible preparation.
But once you’re walking, you don’t stop every hundred metres to unpack your bag and check that the rain jacket is still there. It doesn’t make you safer. It just slows you down and distracts you from the track beneath your feet, and what’s coming up.
Our thinking often works the same way.
Once you’ve prepared and committed, rather than thinking ‘what if it goes wrong’ a more useful question becomes:
What if it goes well?
This isn’t about blind optimism or pretending things can’t go wrong. It’s about reminding your brain that success is also a possible outcome, one that our threat-focused minds often overlook.
From the perspective of The Interference Window, this small shift reduces unnecessary interference. Your attention moves away from imagined threats and back towards the present moment, where your experience is actually unfolding. As interference reduces, your thinking becomes clearer, your body settles and you are better able to respond to whatever happens next.
There’s another benefit too.
Each time you deliberately ask “What if it goes well?”, particularly in everyday, low-risk situations, you’re giving your nervous system evidence that uncertainty does not always lead to danger. Over time, noticing that things do sometimes go well, helps build new expectations about the future.
Studies on neuroplasticity also show that repeated patterns of thinking strengthen the neural pathways that support them. The more often you practise balanced, adaptive thinking, the easier it becomes for your brain to access those patterns again.
Start with the small things, like
- When you send an email
- When you make a phone call
- When you suggest an idea in a meeting
- When you try something new.
Step 1: Notice:
See you can notice when your mind asks, “What if it goes wrong?”
Step 2: Acknowledge:
Thank it for trying to protect you.
Step 3: Ask a better question:
then gently ask a different question.
“What if it goes well?”
You may not know the answer yet, but your brain doesn’t need certainty to begin relaxing. It simply needs to recognise that safety and success are both genuine possibilities.
(You can find out more about reducing stress through understanding your thoughts at www.InterferenceWindow.com)