David Heinemeier Hansson has accomplished quite a bit for a 35-year-old. He created Ruby on Rails, an open-source web framework used by hundreds of thousands of programmers to develop applications like Twitter, Shopify, and GitHub. He’s the co-founder of Basecamp (formerly 37signals), a best-selling author, and if that weren’t already enough, a Le Mans class-winning race car driver. In this blog post, he shares a technique he employs in all areas of his life to lower his stress and help him make better decisions: he imagines the worst.

“If you imagine, clearly and frequently, the worst case scenario, you can work on coming to terms with its consequences. Usually, they’re far less dire than your worries would lead you to believe.”

I can see that technique alleviating the stress that many families, particularly those focused on prestigious colleges, are experiencing, as well as helping them make smarter college planning decisions.

Let’s say you’re worried you (or for parents, your student) won’t get into your dream college. Ok, so imagine that actually happens. Your dream college says no. What happens now? You go to college someplace else, a place where you’ll still get to learn, have fun, and be a college kid for four years. The worst-case scenario isn’t so bad (and if you think that worst-case outcome would actually be tragic, you need to gain some perspective).

Or what if you’re only interested in prestigious colleges and your worst-case scenario would be that if they don’t admit you, you won’t be left with a college to attend. Imagining that outcome might help you make the vital decision to add some colleges to your list where your chances of admission are much stronger.

I don’t want to encourage people to think negatively—there’s enough anxiety in the college admissions process, and helping to alleviate some of it is one of the reasons I write this blog.

But if you clearly imagine your worst-case college admissions scenario, you’ll likely see that such an outcome would be a first-world problem. And then you can get on with feeling positive about all the good things you have—and would still have—in your life.