We’ve all laid in bed at night reminiscing on the day or the week we’ve had trying to fall asleep. Our mind travels to embarrassing moments we’d hoped to forget and situations where we ask ourselves, “what would have happened if this happened instead” or “if only I had.” We dwell on the past even though there’s nothing we can do to change it.
What ifs are inevitable. They come with memories and most of the time those are inevitable, too. So, what makes this little question so toxic?
We live in the present, planning for the future. The past is only a memory, and unfortunately the DeLorean time machine doesn’t exist. Even if it did, we all saw where meddling with the past gets us — nowhere.
Of course, it’s hard to not think about the past and where things could have gone differently. However, doing that gets us caught up in an endless cycle and we end up frozen in time. We tend to focus so much on the past that we ignore what is right in front of us and the impact our future decisions can have. These words also leave us with anxiety and unneeded stressors which lead us to more “what if” questions, and the cycle continues.
If you find yourself asking these questions, ask the follow up question “what will this do for me?” What benefit will you gain from envisioning a scenario where a situation played out differently? Once you answer that, remind yourself that it has already happened, and nothing can change it. What you wanted to happen is a reality that cannot happen, you must remember.
Think about the future and how you can alter certain situations based on past mistakes. Turn the question into an opportunity for education. As far as “what if” questions for embarrassing situations, just remember it will be a funny story to tell one day.
These “what if” questions aren’t all bad, so don’t stress if you find yourself thinking it a lot. They don’t always come up with past situations either. Sometimes uncertainty can be helpful in making decisions for the future because we end up thinking from all different points of view which yield different outcomes that we can then look at and decide what is best.
The moral is that “what ifs” are normal. The danger comes when we let that tiny question invade our mind and focus on things we can’t change. As the Ghost of Christmas Past said, “These are the shadows of the things that have been. That they are what they are.”
Tweet us, @VALLEYmag, with a time you asked yourself, “what if?”
