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It is to meditate on the wrong and evil things that can happen in the future and prepare ourselves to become mentally and emotionally strong. It's to be aware that bad things are inevitable.

This is the mindset we all desperately need...

We all try to pacify other people if something goes wrong to them and in their life. But when it comes to us we get devastated and can't handle the situation.

Why?

Because we lack this mindset to prepare ourselves from wrong happenings. Stoics call this Premeditatio malorum. In his Moral Letters, Seneca, the Stoic philosopher said:

“To-day it is you who threaten me with these terrors; but I have always threatened myself with them, and have prepared myself as a man to meet man’s destiny. If an evil has been pondered beforehand, the blow is gentle when it comes. To the fool, however, and to him who trusts in fortune, each event as it arrives “comes in a new and sudden form,” and a large part of evil, to the inexperienced, consists in its novelty. This is proved by the fact that men endure with greater courage, when they have once become accustomed to them, the things which they had at first regarded as hardships. Hence, the wise man accustoms himself to coming trouble, lightening by long reflection the evils which others lighten by long endurance.”

This stoic art of negative visualization was accompanied by the great Stoic Philosopher from Epictetus to Seneca to Marcus Aurelius

By doing this exercise, Seneca was always prepared for disruption and always working that disruption into his plans.  And this is the exact mindset we all need right now.

Lucius Annaeus Seneca (4 BCE–65 CE) was a Roman Stoic philosopher, dramatist, statesman, and advisor to the emperor Nero.

His teachings about accepting the hardship as a way of making ourselves strong is what we all need these days. The idea is called antifragility which means to enhance the capacity to thrive in stress, adversity, attacks and volatility.

Like most stoic philosophy, Seneca also had to go through lots of adversity. As a Roman senator, he was ordered to commit suicide by Caligula, only to be saved by severe illness that was supposed to kill him anyway. He survived, only to be exiled by the next emperor, Claudius.

He then returned to Rome as a tutor to the Emperor, Nero, only to again be forced into suicide accusing him as a part of a plot to assassinate Nero. So, he killed himself in 65 AD.

Check out Seneca's great quotes and his Four Important Lessons.

Ray Dalio provides three simple strategy to use and create principles in your lives to make a decision

1. Slow down your thinking so that you can know your circumstances/situation you are using your decision.
2. Write down these situation or criteria as a principles.
3. Acknowledge the outcome and refine them before the next “one of these” come along.
4. These three simple strategy works very perfect while you get stuck to make a decision.

Confucius (551 - 479 BC ) was born in State of Lu in current day Shandong in the East of China during the period of constant warfare and unrest period in the history of China. He was a Chinese philosopher and politician of the Spring and Autumn period who was traditionally considered the paragon of Chinese sages

Inspired by the statesmanship of Zhougong, Confucius harboured a lifelong dream to be in a position to emulate the duke by putting into practice the political ideas that he had learned from the ancient sages and worthies.

Confucianism, the way of life propagated by Confucius, may be understood as an all-encompassing way of thinking and living that entails ancestor reverence and a profound human-centred religiousness. The key terms involved in Confucianism are: a. Gentlemen (junzi) b. Benevolence ( ren), c. Filial Piety ( xiao), d. Ritual Observance (Li).

In Analects, he wrote about his persona; descriptions as:

At 15 I set my heart on learning; at 30 I firmly took my stand; at 40 I had no delusions; at 50 I knew the mandate of heaven; at 60 my ear was attuned; at 70 I followed my heart’s desire without overstepping the boundaries. (2:4)

Furthermore he wrote:

It is these things that cause me concern: failure to cultivate virtue, failure to go deeply into what I have learned, inability to move up to what I have heard to be right, and inability to reform myself when I have defects. (7:3)

Quotes

Before you embark on a journey of revenge, dig two graves.

Wheresoever you go, go with all your heart.

Our greatest glory is not in never falling, but in rising every time we fall.

It does not matter how slowly you go so long as you do not stop.

Choose a job you love, and you will never have to work a day in your life.

Respect yourself and others will respect you

Death and life have their determined appointments; riches and honors depend upon heaven.

By three methods we may learn wisdom: First, by reflection, which is noblest; Second, by imitation, which is easiest; and third by experience, which is the bitterest.

The man who asks a question is a fool for a minute, the man who does not ask is a fool for life.

Real knowledge is to know the extent of one's ignorance

"You could live life right now. Let that determine what you do and say and think."

-Marcus Aurelius

There are some decisions which can be made to avoid various decisions. And I desperately need it... Our every decisions are based on what we see, experience and think which is shaped by what we do everyday. The more book we read the more knowledge we get and the more decisions we make. However, this knowledge does not determine the result as it is not in our hands.

Let's begin with one decision to avoid multiple other decisions. What one decision you desperately need to avoid multiple decision?

(Mine is to delete my Instagram account )

In today's world, we can say that we don't live our own life. It shocks me how social media has shaped the way we live and it's heartbreaking.

Our exposure to social media has brought us to multiple negative impressions from overwhelmingness to unproductiveness to the loss of precious time.

Social media is just one example; there are multiple others that has been waiting for us that could change the way of life we live.

As Epictetus asked “How long are you going to wait before you demand the best for yourself?” How long are we going to wait before me make that decision to make our living according to nature and more productive?

PS: Deleted my Instagram account.

No one likes being wrong. It is the nature of humans. Once we ignore of being wrong then it becomes a habit. Habit then determines our character.

Aristotle once said, habits become our "second nature". The Ancient Greek Philosopher used to say:

True wisdom requires the capacity to delight in being proven wrong.

Epicurus said it even better:

In a philosophical dispute, he gains most who is defeated, since he learns the most. — Epicurus

This one is mind boggling and is quite the opposite of what we are and might be thinking. One who is defeated is the one who gains the most.

Marcus Aurelius, the great stoic philosopher used to be pleased rather than being offended if someone showed him he was wrong. In Meditations, Marcus wrote: "Be prepared to change your mind if someone is at hand to put you right and guide you away from some ill-grounded opinion."

Being wrong does no wrong; it's a opportunity to change and change is nature's will.

"Six mistakes mankind keeps making century after century:

Believing that personal gain is made by crushing others;

Worrying about things that cannot be changed or corrected;

Insisting that a thing is impossible because we cannot accomplish it;

Refusing to set aside trivial preferences;

Neglecting development and refinement of the mind;

Attempting to compel others to believe and live as we do.”

Cicero listed these way back 2000 years ago. The most tragic things is it's still prevailing. These mistakes are done by us every day and every night. It exists in our thoughts. No man exists who is free from these mistakes; but it's always worth to be aware of it and make our living with the best we can.

These are the quotes I'm pondering about today:

"These individual have riches just as we say that 'We have fever' when really fever has us."

-Seneca

What we usually consider as impossible are simply an engineering problem... there is no law of physics preventing them."

- Michio kaku, Physicist

"People think focus means saying "Yes" to the things you've got to focus on. But that's not what it means at all. It means saying "No" to hundreds of other good ideas that there are. You have to pick carefully. I'm actually proud of the things we haven't done as the things I have done. Innovation is saying no to 1000 things."

-Steve Jobs

.... there is a small exercise we all can do and it's saying Memento Mori: Remember that you will die...

Everything will fall in place when it faces death.

"I am busy" is one of the most unauthentic and lazy statement we make all most all the time.

"I'm busy" is an another way of saying this is not important enough. We only do the things we want to do, period.

Busy is a decision...

The point is: we don't find time to do something, we make time to do something.

PS: Check out Being busy is a choice