Whenever I’m anxious about something, my thoughts immediately go to the worst case “what if” scenario. I obsess over it, I lose sleep, and I’m generally miserable until the situation resolves.
Lately I’ve started instituting a practice where whenever I think to myself “what if it goes horribly wrong in this specific way?” I think “yes but what if it also goes right in this other, equally specific way?” I find simply the act of thinking of a positive outcome distracts enough me from the horrible outcome to allow me relax. As an added bonus, at the end of the day my good case scenario and my worst case scenario are often about equally likely to occur given the scarce information I might have in the moment.
I find this exercise makes me less anxious, more able to handle stressful situations, and more resistant to uncertainty.