The Good What-ifs

I taught my first class as a real-live teacher this week, and I just about threw up on myself.

I’ve been teaching in some capacity for years, presenting at events and conferences of up to 400 people without completely losing my s**t. But this – this opportunity to teach was big. It’s at a real college, with students paying to learn, with expectations to turn into professionals. No pressure.

The high stakes revved my What-if brain into high gear.

I envisioned putting up the wrong powerpoint, messing up on breakout rooms, tripping over my words, sounding like a complete fool. What-if and Impostor Syndrome are really good friends, too, so she jumped in there with a what if they figure out you’re a total moron and you have no business teaching at all? Thanks.

Every bad spiral begins with two horrible words: What if?

There aren’t many words as powerful. Uttered or simply thought, they have the power to turn you into a quivering, sweaty mess in seconds, make your heart rate kick up like a horse at full gallop, and have you running to hide under the covers instead of pursuing your dreams.

And that just won’t do. I have things I want to accomplish.

Goal setting and looking ahead to the next week, month, year is important for keeping us all sane. It’s like I always say: If you’re not growing, learning, and evolving, what’s the point?

But as an anxious person by nature, I knew I couldn’t cure the what-ifs. They’re going to happen. But could I possibly use them to my advantage instead of my demise?

What if I could? ;)

Turns out, you just need some forethought and a bit of imagination.

Here are my top tips to transform your barfy what-ifs into ones that elevate instead.

1. Answer your own questions.

Much of the bad feelings with what ifs comes because we don’t logically follow the train of thought to the end. What if I fail? We automatically go ‘omg that will be the most horrible thing ever!!!’ cue catastrophizing and crying into ice cream. But what if you do fail? What’s the worst that could happen, really? 99.9% of the time, the worst that will happen is that we will feel stupid, disappointed, angry, or some other negative emotion. And when you put it that way, we all have the capacity to tolerate bad feelings for awhile, don’t we?

2. Affirm instead.

What if I fail is the go-to because our brains are hardwired to bias toward the negative. It takes some imagination and practice to find affirming what if sentences instead of catastrophizing ones. And of course, any affirmation has to resonate with you or you’ll just end up rolling your eyes and thinking it’s cheesy. My own slant on this what if was simple: What if I do better than I ever thought I could? Just saying it opened up the possibility in my mind. And it gave my brain something more productive to snack on.

3. Remind yourself.

A lot. I wrote out my what if affirmations and stuck them to my mirror with a sticky note. I said them out loud when I saw them. I put them as my phone background. I asked my husband for reassurance (“I might do really well at this, right?”). Repetition works. Repetition with visualization works better. And repetition with visualization and belief is the best option of all.

So guess what? That first class I taught, I did mess up the powerpoint. I fumbled with the breakout rooms. I delivered a less-than-smooth lecture.

But despite that, I made it through. And I didn’t actually throw up on myself.