... maybe you should!
A friend of mine is going thourough a very stressful period in her life. She's having a hard time relaxing and sleeping, she worries all the time, she can't focus at work. She tried everything: sleeping better, meditation, seeing a therapeut. Nothing really worked.
Sleeping was just a way of avoiding the problems and wasn't really restful.
Meditation is not useful when you can't focus on your breathing for even a minute. It takes time, she needs a solution NOW.
Therapy is good until the guy suggests pills. I think that's extreme and I am not a big fan of using pills that fast. Neither is she!
I told her: do negative visualizations every morning. Think of the worst things that could happen today. Focus on them until they're real. Then start your day.
She looked at me like I was crazy!
I wasn't surprise, it's not the first time I'm trying to convert people to my life philosophy: Stoicism.
Before I start to sound like a Jehova's Witness, please know that Stoicism is a very misunderstood philosophy but one that it can totally make your life better. There's a book that explains it pretty good, one that I read a chapter now and then to remember the good parts but in essence the BIG question that the book asks and what the Stoics kind of answered 2000 years ago is: What makes a good life?
Because you see, the answer is not simple at all.
Whatever is it that you want, lust for, hope for it will soon not be enough anymore. It's crazy but the stoics had a great insight: Human beings are insatiable. They always want more and more and more. That means there's no limit or boundary to our WANTS and no way to actually quench them. They concluded that wanting STUFF is never the answer...
...in fact the answer it eliminate or minimize this insatiability. Before you run to the comment section to tell me that this is either impossible or unwanted or stupid or "why do you hate capitalism" or other variations let me just say that this does not mean that you'll become a neutral robot who wants for nothing. In the words of MrMoneyMustache, who has a good post about the same book:
Stoicism, in short, is a series of mental techniques and ways of life that allow you to decrease and then virtually eliminate all negative emotions such as anger, fear, anxiety, and dissatisfaction, while simultaneously building up a tide of pure Joy inside you that eventually starts to make you jump around and boogie at unexpected moments, and occasionally shout out “AHH YEAH!!” as discreetly as possible to yourself when the Joy overflows.
That does sound too good to be true but it is what a Stoic works towards. There are two big ideas in Stoicism that might seem obvious but for the life of me, people seem to forget them all the time:
Some thing we can control, some things we can't control. Focusing on the latter is stupid.
It's not about wanting, it's about enjoying what you already have.
One of the technique and solutions is: NEGATIVE VISUALIZATION.
Essentially this means you should visualize on losing all you have, imagine the life as a cripple and or variations of this. To quote from the book:
[The Stoics] recommended that we spend time imagining that we have lost the things we value—that our wife has left us, our car was stolen, or we lost our job. Doing this, the Stoics thought, will make us value our wife, our car, and our job more than we otherwise would. This technique—let us refer to it as negative visualization—was employed by the Stoics at least as far back as Chrysippus. It is, I think, the single most valuable technique in the Stoics' psychological tool kit.
Seneca describes the negative visualization technique in the consolation he wrote to Marcia, a woman who, three years after the death of her son, was as grief-stricken as on the day she buried him. In this consolation, besides telling Marcia how to overcome her current grief, Seneca offers advice on how she can avoid falling victim to such grief in the future: What she needs to do is anticipate the events that can cause her to grieve. In particular, he says, she should remember that all we have is "on loan" from Fortune, which can reclaim it without our permission—indeed, without even advance notice. Thus, "we should love all our dear ones . . ., but always with the thought that we have no promise that we may keep them forever—nay, no promise even that we may keep them for long." . . .
It sounds dire, I know.
It is hard too. When you start doing these things, it feels a lot like tempting faith. But on further analysis, negative visualization will do a lot of good for the good Stoic.
In my view, it's a way to become unattached to your wants, possessions, loved wants...while similarly appreciate them more than ever. It's a beautiful backward technique.
The Stoics were really ahead of their time and the science we have today seems to point in their direction. The "think good things" and good things will happen movement is losing ground fast and that can be the alternative. The serenity that a Stoic philosophy can bring to your life is quit astonishing. I am certainly not there yet but I do recognize that getting annoyed, angry and frustrated are choices. That worrying about losing the people dear to me or something I hold dear is an anxiety that is not needed, time better spent appreciating and enjoying what I do have, now.
Again, this is not easy at all. Appreciating and living in the now, not WANTING when we are bombarded by ads that tells us we should want is difficult in today's world. It's also a way to step sideways and look at the bigger picture. No, that new perfume won't make all the ladies love you( though you might smell nicer, but you already do) and no that car won't get you at the table with the most powerful people or impress anyone worth impressing ( but sure, get it if you can afford it and it's what you need ).
It's important to understand that stoicism is not a way to be a passive member of society, or a passive observer of life as it passes. It's the opposite: the capability to live life fully, to be fully present, to influence what YOU CAN and let the rest play out as it should.
It's cool to see that the ancient Stoics really walked the walk. For example, Seneca's life, quoted above, "took a sharp turn in 41 A.D. once Claudius became the emperor as he exiled Seneca to the island of Corsica on the premises of supposed adultery with Julia Livilla, the emperor’s niece and Caligula’s sister. During his exile, he wrote a letter to his mother consoling her during his exile". You can read more here.
I guess I sounded and may still sound like a loony. We want to do our best NOT to worry and NOT to think of the bad stuff that could befall us. We certainly don't want to start our day facing these fears...I get it. But as with many things, doing it the hard way seems to get the most benefits, some more unexpected than others.
I also think you'll enjoy this comic more now that you read this post.