The first mindset shift to adopt if you want to be successful in personal and professional life is to switch your What-ifs from negative to positive. This may seem obvious but when it comes to starting new projects, trying new things, and challenging your status quo your brain is doing all it can to make up as many worst-case scenarios as possible. And the funny thing is that it is doing it to protect you from potential risk. 

All of a sudden, at one time, your goals become unattainable, your vision extremely distant and excitement turns into anxiety. And as a result, you get stuck and can’t move forward.

The way to avoid becoming paralyzed by the worst-case scenario and take action on your goals is to realize that the human brain is designed to keep us (humans) safe, comfortable, and relatively bored. Hence, the worst-case scenarios aimed at stopping us from taking (potentially risky) action. We’re not supposed to take any risk, even a calculated one because that would cause an increase in our cortisol levels and cause a potential danger to our health.

The reason for that is simple: the human brain doesn’t know the difference between challenging yourself to reach your goals and putting yourself in dangerous situations. Fortunately, your conscious self knows that difference. So when your brain tries to stop you from succeeding you need to take charge and make a conscious shift from “what’s the worst that can happen” to “what’s the best that can happen”. In reality, your outcome is almost always somewhere in between.