Imagining a better future is only the beginning.
A What If can help someone imagine that a different life is possible. What we’re building now is what comes after: the practices, tools and people that can help turn possibility into action.
The questions changed direction
A future becomes visible.
The most interesting thing we saw early on was not a score. It was which way people were facing.
People arrived with questions about the past. What if I hadn't served. What if it hadn't happened. What if my life had gone differently. After a while, some began asking a different kind of question, and it pointed the other way: what if I changed careers, what if I moved, what if I pursued a different life. They had started using MyWhatIf to look for a future rather than to revisit the past.
An observation from early use, not a clinical outcome, and the reason for everything else on this page.
200 veterans enrolled across Israel, the U.S. and Canada. A reason to test this properly, not clinical proof.
160 of 200 (80%) completed the program
of enrolled participants reported increased hope, agency or motivation (n=200)
of program completers reported lower PTSD symptoms (n=160). Responders averaged a 10–20 point PCL-5 reduction.
of enrolled participants would recommend the program (n=200)
Single-arm proof-of-concept. Self-report. No randomised control condition and no longitudinal follow-up. Preliminary: it does not establish causality, efficacy or durability.
Since then: 800+ people across five languages.
This is broader reach, not the evidence cohort. The percentages above do not apply to it.
What happens after someone can imagine a different future?
A future a person can hold has to be one they can settle into, act on, and keep going with other people.
So we are building outward from the narrative experience into five dimensions a Hero can move among as they need them. Not a fixed sequence.
Understand yourself, honestly.
See a future you can want.
Steady the body while the work is moving.
Turn possibility into a first step.
Don't do it alone.
That is why these layers belong together. The narrative work is the engine: envision opens what is possible and reflect deepens what a Hero understands about themselves. Everything built around it exists to carry that opening into a life, which is what regulate, act and connect are for.
What if the story didn't end when the session did?
Somewhere in a What If journey there is usually a moment that lands: an image, an idea, a version of a life that suddenly seems available. Today that moment can vanish when the session closes. The Vision Board is where a Hero will be able to keep it.
It becomes a living collection of the futures worth returning to: the moments that resonated, the strengths a person recognized in themselves, the directions they keep circling. And it does not stay a collection. A Hero will be able to keep working on a saved future with the system: exploring it further, drawing out the themes and values inside it, seeing it represented visually, and asking the practical question underneath it all, which is what would actually have to happen next.
From there the help gets concrete: paths toward the future in question, relevant training or education, people and communities already on that road, and the first steps a person could take this month.
From the future I can imagine to the future I can begin to build.
AI can open a door. People help each other walk through it.
The more personal the technology becomes, the more human the system around it has to be. We are deliberately adding people back in.
Not just people with the same diagnosis. Moderated peer-support groups, run with the STAR Network Foundation. A shared diagnosis matters, and it is rarely the whole of what makes a group work. Because MyWhatIf already understands something of each Hero’s experiences, goals, needs and stage of the journey, matching can consider more than the diagnosis alone. The group is human and so is the facilitator. The system helps with matching and supports safety.
A Hero can choose to be matched with another Hero: a peer, a mentor, an accountability partner. Not an authority and not a clinician. Someone who has been far enough along the same road to walk beside you, by video, phone or in person. What it is for is encouragement, accountability and motivation that outlasts a session.
Moderated forums where Heroes can share their What If journeys, reflections, questions and what they have learned, between live conversations. Communities can form around recovery, life transitions, relationships, work, health and daily practice. No feeds, no followers, no likes. The goal is not engagement. It is support.
On this“Ultimately there has to be a human component and a human connection in this too.”
A different future has to be felt, not just imagined.
Imagining a different future is hard to do in a body that is braced. We are building an optional layer of practices, from breath work, movement and grounding to body awareness, meditation and other somatic exercises, to sit alongside the narrative work.
Their job is specific: help a Hero notice what is happening in their body, steady an emotional state, and stay in contact with physical experience while the rest of the work is moving. A support layer around the recovery process rather than a treatment in itself.
One Hero, five ways in
There is no prescribed order. A Hero moves among these according to what they need. The line connects them because this is one evolving experience, not five separate products.
Trauma recovery is where we started. The vision is a new model for chronic care.
Long-term conditions are rarely solved by one narrow intervention. Where outcomes depend on how a person sees themselves, what they are motivated to do, how they live day to day and who is alongside them, the pieces have to work together.
We are exploring how the same architecture, personalized narrative change, action, body regulation and sustained human support, could complement care for chronic conditions where hope, behavior, identity and ongoing support influence a person’s ability to move forward. This is a long-term vision and a direction for research and collaboration. MyWhatIf does not replace condition-specific medical or clinical care.
We are not building for engagement. We are building for outcomes.
We do not want Heroes dependent on MyWhatIf. We want them increasingly able to imagine, act, connect and keep moving without this platform at the center of their lives. The intensive narrative work can be time-bounded. Community, peer relationships and accountability may stay useful for much longer. The measure is progress, not screen time.
What the one million means
1,000,000 unique people with a measured positive outcome.
A measured positive outcome is at least one predetermined, meaningful improvement in Hope & Agency, Mental Health, or Forward Movement. Each person counts once.
A person whose measured result shows an improvement against a threshold set before the measurement, in at least one of the three areas. One person, one count, however many areas improve.
- Marketing reach
- Awareness
- Single sessions without follow-through
- Indirect effects on family, community or systems
From access to a durable outcome
Five steps, measured separately. Only the fourth counts toward the one million.
A person is able to take part.
They begin the program.
They finish the program.
A predetermined, meaningful improvement. This is the one million.
The improvement holds at a fixed six-month follow-up.
Offering, starting and finishing a program describe activity. None of them is counted as impact.
A person can finish a program without improving. Only a measured improvement counts.
An improvement measured at the end does not show that it lasts.
Change can reach beyond one person
A person who moves again may also change the lives around them. We describe these as potential indirect effects. They are our hypothesis. They are not measured as outcomes here, and they are not counted toward the one million unless a person is directly measured under the framework above.
With a measured positive outcome.
Scale is limited by reach. Replicability multiplies impact.
Serving people directly has a ceiling. If programs are validated and others can copy, adapt and deploy them, the same work can reach further.
People with a measured positive outcome, counted as defined above.
Programs others can copy, adapt and deploy
As programs are validated, MyWhatIf intends to make programs and appropriate technology available to qualified, mission-aligned NGOs, researchers, scientists and public-benefit institutions.
The aim is that they can copy, adapt and deploy them, free for qualifying nonprofit and public-benefit use where appropriate. The terms are not settled, and the arrangement may take different forms as the evidence develops.
This replication model is an intention. It has not yet been proven.