How to Lean Into Negativity and Overcome Anxiety

Research in the 80s has identified a strategy that really helps draw out the positives in anxiety and it's called defensive pessimism. The important part of this is that you're not simply setting low expectations, right? It's not a passive approach. You're actually mentally working through potential outcomes,. What would it feel like if the situation or this event ended up poorly.? And then making a plan to kind of circumvent potential negative outcomes. So what this does is number one, it gives you a sense of control, which is a key part of anxiety - feeling like you're not in control. And number two, it allows you to essentially reverse engineer your own success, right?