Zoom out

In 2019, two psychologists at Penn State, Lucas LaFreniere and Michelle Newman, asked people with generalised anxiety disorder to write down their worries for ten days, then check over the following month which ones had come true.

Around nine in ten of the worried predictions didn't happen. For about a quarter of the participants, none of them did. And when a worry did come true, the outcome was often easier to handle than they'd feared.

Aaron Beck called the mind's leap to the worst outcome catastrophising. Worry plays the worst case on repeat, and because it's vivid, it feels likely.

Zooming out puts it back among the other possibilities. Name the worst case, then the best case, then the most likely one, which is usually somewhere in between and more manageable. Then zoom out in time: how much will this matter in a week, a year, five years?

If the worst case turns out to be real and likely, that's useful to know too: it turns worry into planning.

• Stoicism

  Marcus Aurelius pictured his troubles from high above, among all the lives and years around them.

• Buddhism

  Impermanence: what feels enormous now is already changing.

Pick one worry about how something will turn out.

Your answers stay in this page and aren't saved or sent anywhere.

You've sent a message with a typo to your boss. Which response is zooming out?