Concept
Whatever happens, I can handle it
'Whatever happens, I can handle it' is Jeffers's sentence for dissolving a specific dread: not a prediction that things will go well, which cannot be made, but a statement about yourself that is almost always true, because the dread is not of the outcome but of not being able to handle it.
Most fear of a conversation, an interview or a decision is not fear of the event but of the imagined aftermath: rejection, embarrassment, a loss you could not recover from. Jeffers's sentence attacks the aftermath directly. Write the worst realistic outcome, then write what you would actually do the day after it: the call you would make, the alternative you would take, the person you would tell. In almost every case the day after is survivable, and the fear turns out to have been of an outcome you had never allowed yourself to picture to its end. The sentence is the shorthand for that exercise, said before the act. Harris's willingness to act with fear present rests on it, and Frankl's last freedom is its deepest form: whatever the circumstances, the attitude toward them remains yours.
A real-life example
A pharmacist writes the worst realistic outcome of asking her landlord to fix the heating, he refuses and is rude, and then the day after: a quote, a letter citing the lease, paying for it herself if she must. Written down, the day after is survivable, and the call is made.
How to use it
- 1Write the worst realistic outcome of the thing you are avoiding.
- 2Write what you would actually do the day after it.
- 3Say the sentence before the act, and mean the exercise behind it.