The Power of Looking at Alternate Positive Outcomes

Tom* sat across from me, eyes fixed on the floor. He had just lost out on a promotion he had been quietly hoping for, and the sting of rejection was fresh.

“I knew it,” he said finally, his voice tight. “I’m not good enough. This always happens.”

What struck me wasn’t just his disappointment, but how quickly his mind had built an entire story around the event: failure, rejection, worthlessness. It was as if one closed door had convinced him the whole house was falling apart.

This way of thinking is something many of us slip into. Our minds are wired to notice the negative - psychologists call it negativity bias. It’s the instinct that kept our ancestors alive by spotting dangers quickly. But in modern life, it often turns everyday setbacks into mountains that feel impossible to climb.

What Tom hadn’t considered yet was that there were other possible outcomes to this story. Losing the promotion didn’t automatically mean he was failing - it might mean there was something else opening up, something he couldn’t see yet.

This is where NLP (Neuro-Linguistic Programming) and DBT (Dialectical Behaviour Therapy) come in.

With NLP, we worked on reframing. Instead of asking, “Why does this always happen to me?” I asked him, “What else could this mean? What might be possible now that wasn’t before?” At first, he resisted. His brain wanted to go back to the well-worn track of self-blame. But little by little, he began to imagine alternatives. Maybe the promotion would have overloaded him. Maybe another role - better suited to his strengths - was around the corner.

DBT offered him the balance of acceptance and change. Yes, it hurt to be passed over. That feeling was valid. But alongside the hurt, there was also space to choose a new perspective. We practised a simple skill called “checking the facts.” Instead of “I always fail,” the fact was: one application had been unsuccessful. One. That shift alone softened the blow.

Over time, Tom began to catch his mind when it leapt straight to catastrophe. He learned to pause, to breathe, and to ask: “What other outcomes are possible here?” Not pie-in-the-sky fantasies, but grounded alternatives that were just as likely - if not more so - than his automatic negative predictions.

A few months later, he landed a role in a completely different department. One that excited him more than the promotion ever would have. Looking back, he said something I’ll never forget:

“If I’d got what I thought I wanted, I’d have missed what I actually needed.”

Life rarely unfolds in a straight line. When we train ourselves to see alternate positive outcomes, we give ourselves a gift: the freedom to step outside of fear and open up to possibility.

NLP and DBT don’t erase the hard moments, but they do help us hold them differently - transforming setbacks into stepping stones, and reminding us that the story isn’t over just because one chapter didn’t go the way we planned.

*Tom is a fictionalised client, but the rest remains true.