Why I Intentionally Think About Failure (and Why You Should Too!)

Feb 24, 2026

Since I was very young I've had this belief that if I thought of the 'bad' thing first, it wouldn't happen. Coupled with being slightly cynical and, I'd like to think, 'realistic,' I developed this habit of saying the 'bad' things to deal with them emotionally and mentally. To be totally honest I was secretly wishing that meant the bad thing wouldn't happen. I jinxed it.

Fast forward in my life: I became a mom, a yoga teacher, and a life coach which all led me to think I needed to couch everything I thought in positivity.

Manifest!

Positive mantras!

If I thought anything negative, I would be reverse engineering my well developed jinxing magic!

Then one day I started studying the Stoic philosophy and I landed on

praemeditatio malorum which translates literally to "the premeditation of evils" or "the pre-meditation of bad things."

It's a Stoic practice — most associated with Seneca, Epictetus, and Marcus Aurelius — that involves deliberately imagining negative outcomes, hardships, or losses before they happen. The idea is that, by mentally rehearsing worst-case scenarios, you reduce the shock and emotional blow if they actually occur, build resilience and psychological preparedness, and separate what's in your control from what isn't.

My jaw dropped at this discovery. How long had this Stoic philosophy been around and why was I just hearing about this practice? I'm slightly embarrassed to admit not knowing about this earlier in my life. Suddenly I felt permission to do what I think a lot of us are already doing anyway.

Be honest...when someone tells you to write down your goals or manifest your dreams, what's the first thing that pops up? For a lot of us, it's

The fears
The buts or what ifs
The reasons it might not work

We're already pre-meditating the bad things. But, most of us have been told to push those thoughts away and get back to the positive.

What if instead I just...let them in?

The exercise became:

Part 1: write your goal.

Part 2: deal with all the fears surrounding this goal. Go through each of your fears and ask yourself:

Is this based in reality?
Could this really happen or are you making something up so you don't have to go for the big goal?
Can you do anything about it?
What will you do about it if it happens?

Then, you can create contingency plans based on what you think might happen. I now create a Plan B and C just in case.

Part of the exercise is knowing when to stop the ever-flowing list of fears and actually start dealing with them instead. Give yourself a time limit. 30 minutes to dump all the fears. 24 - 48 hours to deal with the fears that aren't based in reality, the ones that are, and the stories you've been telling yourself.

Let's be honest and realistic: more fears will happen that you need to deal with as you inch closer and closer to your goals.

All this to say, pre-meditating the bad things is okay. We all do it, and it looks like it has been in practice for a very long time and designed by very wise people. Why not make it part of our own practice so we face what could go wrong from the beginning? Instead of sweeping them under the rug and hoping for the best. Or worse, giving up too soon. Now that I've given myself permission to go ahead and think about the negative things and then deal with them, not only have I had more positive outcomes but I do a much better job at knowing how I want to respond when the fearful thing does happen.

I'm still slightly cynical, but give it up to the Stoics for helping me use that as a tool so that I feel better equipped and confident about the decisions I will need to make if a fear happens to show up. Because they will. They always do. And although I still like to believe I have jinxing magic, the truth is, I'm better prepared.

Try the 30-minute fear dump this week, on any goal you've been sitting on.

Write the goal. Write every fear. Then ask yourself honestly: which of these are real, which are just reasons to stay comfortable and what are you going to do about it?

Ready to go deeper?

This is the kind of work we do together inside SEAR, a community built for coaches who want practical tools, real conversations, and real growth.

Join us at: searcoach.com

Get Coaching Tools That Actually Work

Get the frameworks, support, and expert-backed coaching tools we don’t teach in textbooks — straight to your inbox. Early access and insights included!

We hate SPAM. We will never sell your information, for any reason.