When my cousin Maria was pregnant for the first time, she and her husband decided to have an ultra-sound test so they'd know the gender of their first-born a few months early. The doctor smiled broadly and handed my cousin the photo. She took one look at it and immediately burst into tears.

Both the obstetrician and her husband rushed to her side, anxious to know what had upset her so. She stabbed her finger at one part of the x-ray and sobbed. "I knew it," she hiccoughed her syllables. "It's a girl, isn't it? And that's her nose. I was afraid this would happen. A daughter who's inherited our family's prominent Roman noses."

The doctor scolded her. "First of all," he chided, "it's not a girl. It's a boy. And secondly, that protuberance is not his nose."

Maria had taken her worst fears into the x-ray room and had acted on them even before she had complete information. So many of us do that, far too often. Promise yourself that you'll operate from today forward on the basis of facts. There will be more than enough time for being upset if you find your worst fears are confirmed. Before then, though, use the time not to worry but to prepare so that a worst-case scenario--if it moves from the realm of the possible to the realm of the real--doesn't seem so bad after all.

More than four hundred years ago, poet Samuel Butler noted that "belief, like any other moving body, follows the path of least resistance." Put barriers in that path--barriers like truth and fact. Avoid unnecessary worry.

Dr. Marlene Caroselli, author of 53 business books (see Amazon.com) is an international keynote speaker and corporate trainer for Fortune 100 companies, government agencies, educational institutions, and professional organizations. You can reach her at mccpd@frontiernet.net .