About 85 to 90 percent of the time, the things we worry about never happen, according to multiple studies. These studies asked participants with Generalized Anxiety Disorder—a condition involving chronic, excessive worry—to track their daily worries and report how many were justified after a period of 30 days. Almost none of their fears transpired. Those studies also found that when something a participant feared did occur, they were able to handle it better than expected. So even in the small percentage of cases where the worst did come to pass, that encounter with suffering turned out to be bearable, and sometimes even an opportunity for personal growth.
If it’s true that many of our darkest predictions never materialize, why do we spend so much of our lives worrying, criticizing, and doubting—in a word, being negative? The short answer: our brains.
