I grew up hearing a simple response to setbacks: it could be worse.

A scraped knee was better than a broken leg. A broken leg was better than a serious head injury. The examples were blunt, but the habit behind them stayed with me. Compare the first emotional response with the actual size of the problem before deciding what to do.

This resembles the Stoic practice often called negative visualization: briefly considering what could be lost in order to see the present situation more clearly. I do not use it to dismiss a real problem or tell someone else how they should feel. It is a way to interrupt my own tendency to turn a setback into a verdict on everything around it.

That distinction matters. “It could be worse” can become avoidance if it prevents a person from asking for help, naming harm, or fixing a recurring problem. Used carefully, it creates enough distance to choose a response instead of simply extending the first reaction.

At work, that may mean separating an incident from blame, or a missed deadline from a claim that the entire project has failed. The issue still needs attention. It just does not need extra drama before the facts are known.

This is a personal coping practice, not a clinical claim or a universal prescription. Its value to me is modest and practical: proportion makes the next decision easier.

This article first appeared as a LinkedIn post.