I’m standing backstage waiting for my cue to enter the stage, revising my dialogues, trying to bring my character, and wondering how my character is going to walk or speak or react. But suddenly something pops up “what if” - what if I forget my dialogue, or what if my voice isn’t loud enough, or what if I can't pull my character off well? And that's the moment, I drifted away from the character and made my character less confident and underdeveloped.
At some point in life, we all overthink by questioning our every step with "what if. "This question then creates a series of daunting thoughts and visions of negative effects that might follow. We fail to concentrate on our journey and start worrying about the stuff that might occur.
What if I don’t get placed in a decent company? What if I don't score well in GRE? What if I contract the coronavirus? What if she says this? What if he says that? We evaluate the situation with so many questions like these and fail to discuss how we can approach this when it happens.
Okay, but before continuing the loop we need to stop and take a deep breath. Ask ourselves two major questions:
How likely is that this could actually happen?
If this happens, will it even bother you after four years?
When I'm working with my directors and co-actors on a play, before knowing or learning anything about the script, I learn the art of improvisation. What if I forget my dialogue? I improvise. What if another character messes up? We improvise. Life is just the same, thinking about something that may or may not happen, will only cause you anxiety and a lack of attention. We all make mistakes and according to our condition, we improvise during the unplanned moments.
It's nice to be aware of what could go wrong, so you can have plans backed up. But not to the point where over-analysis begins. Infilled with negativity, we often forget to look at the other side of “what if?”. Yes there’s the “what if I don’t get a job?” but there’s also the “what if I get a job?”.
This is something you may not always consider if you’re focused on the negative. There’s a 50-50 chance of it going right so why dwell on only the negative? Needless to say, worrying is just a waste of energy. Worrying also causes you to miss out on enjoying the present moments of your life because you're so focused on something that isn't even real.
It’s good to plan and try to be prepared for anything you think could turn out badly. But this thinking was never meant to be our “permanent living lifestyle” we were given this capacity to use it when appropriate. It wasn’t designed to take up so much of our time.
Start living your life today and stop predicting events that may or may not happen because you never know, what if you die tomorrow?
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