"What if…?" thinking is anytime you try to guess the future outcome of an action you take. For example, "I want to ask for a pay raise but what if…?" Your mind then fills in the blank with many alternate scenarios, almost all of them negative.
It's a powerful combination of focusing on the negative and the unrealistic. It causes you to suffer through events that may not even happen as you try to predict the future and work out how you'll cope with all these possible（yet unlikely）scenarios. But the absolute worst thing about "what if…" thinking though, is that it tries to convince you it's helping. You tell yourself that you're just preparing yourself, you're protecting yourself. But "what if…" thinking rarely leads to taking practical, preventative actions. Instead, you torture yourself by imagining all sorts of terrible outcomes, all in the name of being "prepared", the idea of which is captured beautifully by this quote:"Do not be fooled by 'what if…' thinking! You are not a fortune teller. Even if you were, mentally rehearsing how you'll cope with a negative outcome has limited usefulness. You're much better off just coping with the situation once when it happens." By torturing yourself imagining all the possible bad things that could happen, you end up living through all these horrible possibilities that you don't have to.
Even if you do get it right, and one of the negative scenarios is the outcome, you're unlikely to remember your well-rehearsed comeback or safety strategy in the heat of the moment.
Another separate problem with "what if…?" thinking is that it makes you so fearful of all these potentially hideous outcomes that it stops you from actually living through the situation, if you can at all avoid it.
By stopping yourself from acting, not only do you cut off the potential benefits of actually asking, but you also cut off the opportunity to see that your predictions were wrong—because you don't test them out by entering the situation regardless. Unchallenged like this, "What if…" thinking seems like it actually protects you and seems even more "helpful" next time around.
Once you've decided on a course of action, "what if…" has got much louder and soon will stop you from taking action. I like to not give them an opportunity. Once you've made a decision, force your own hand: make the phone call straight away, enroll and pay for the course, make an appointment in your calendar, etc. before your fears and negativity even get a chance to get up off the couch.
"What if…" thinking actually protects one because it cuts off the opportunity to see that one's predictions were wrong.
