Your brain writes horror movies about Monday’s presentation. It’s a bad screenwriter. Cut its budget.

Anticipating disaster is a standard function and an uncalibrated one, so it produces vivid, detailed scenes without ever checking whether any of them are likely. The detail is what makes it convincing, since the imagination building the scenario is the same one that makes it feel real. Accuracy was never part of its job. Rehearsing catastrophe feels like preparation and is not.

When the film begins, answer one plain question: what would you actually do if the worst scene happened. Then go and rehearse the real thing. Preparation starves the imagination in a way reassurance never manages.