Dear Mina:

Regarding the “what ifs”- if the circumstances were different… you can build, in your mind, an alternative universe for each what-if, and not only with him. You go about your day, a nice looking young man smiles at you while you are distracted and didn’t smile back. Later you regret not smiling back: what-if I smiled back? Maybe a wonderful friendship, maybe a lifelong relationship would have followed my smiling back?

Thinking this way is ineffective. You build possible scenarios of what-ifs, positive and alluring, but highly impractical.

anita