I was standing in line for coffee, sweating like I’d just sprinted through a marathon made entirely of awkward social encounters. Nothing dramatic had happened. No screaming toddlers. No spilled oat milk. Just me, alone with my brain, convinced I’d somehow messed up the simple act of ordering a latte.
“Did I say it too weird? Did the barista think I was rude? What if I said my name too softly and now they’re going to call it wrong and then I’ll just stand there like a total idiot while everyone stares…”
If that sounds familiar, congratulations—you might also be playing Seth Godin’s anxiety game: “experiencing failure over and over again in advance.”
And wow, that quote hit me like a ton of emotional bricks wrapped in passive-aggressive to-do lists.
Living in the “What Ifs”
The thing about anxiety is that it’s sneaky. It wears different outfits depending on the day. Sometimes it’s dressed as perfectionism, whispering that if I just do everything flawlessly, I’ll be safe. Other times it’s a full-blown doomsday prophet in my brain, predicting terrible outcomes to things that haven’t even happened yet—and probably never will.
Like, I’ll be about to hit “send” on an email and suddenly, my brain’s like:
“You’ve definitely used the wrong tone and now they’ll hate you and you’ll be blacklisted from polite society and also probably die alone.”
Cool. Thanks, brain.
It’s wild how vivid the mind gets when it’s scared. It paints entire failure montages—job interviews where I say something stupid, parties where no one talks to me, dentist appointments where I somehow offend the hygienist and she never flosses me again out of spite.
I’m not just worrying. I’m mentally rehearsing disasters like a Broadway understudy for disaster scenarios that don’t exist.
Fear Without a Trigger
What’s especially frustrating is that nothing needs to happen for anxiety to show up. It doesn’t need a cue. There’s no “and now presenting: the stressful event!” It can kick in while folding laundry, checking the fridge for the fifth time, or walking through Target trying to remember what I came for (usually deodorant, always forgotten).
And then comes the guilt loop:
Why are you anxious?
You have nothing to be anxious about.
Other people have it worse.
Get it together.
Which, by the way, never helps.
Because anxiety isn’t always logical. It’s not always triggered by trauma or current stress. Sometimes it just is. And that’s okay. It’s not a character flaw. It’s not something broken in you. It’s just your brain trying to protect you by showing you the worst-case scenario on repeat, like a glitchy PowerPoint.
The Mic Drop of the Seth Godin Quote
When I first heard Seth Godin’s line—“Anxiety is experiencing failure over and over again in advance”—I felt like someone had cracked open my head, peeked inside, and nailed it in one sentence.
It reframed things for me. Made me pause. Made me realize that I was running disaster drills for fires that weren’t even smoldering.
What if I just… didn’t?
Not in a flippant, “just stop being anxious!” way (if only), but in a small, curious way. What if I noticed the fear spiral before it swallowed me and said, “Oh hey. I see you. You think we’re going to fail. That’s sweet. But maybe let’s wait and see?”
Sometimes I even write down my worst-case scenario and then, right below it, the most realistic one. And below that, the best possible outcome. It’s weirdly grounding.
A Tiny Bit of Peace
Here’s what I’ve learned—and I’m saying this both to you and to future-me who will 100% need to reread this:
Anxiety is trying to keep us safe. It means well. But it’s also not a prophet. It’s not fate. It’s just a loud narrator with terrible timing and a flair for melodrama.
You don’t have to rehearse failure to protect yourself.
You can just show up.
You can let life surprise you.
And maybe, just maybe, you can order your latte without mentally planning your exile from society.