Seneca’s Brilliant Antidote to Anxiety
Focus on what you can do right now to make life less miserable. Reality is usually much less dramatic than we imagine.
The stoic first-century Roman philosopher Seneca wrote many letters to his friend Lucilius Junior, later published as Letters from a Stoic. He had a lot to say on putting time to good use now. And of course how not to waste mental and emotional energy on unnecessary case scenarios. His antidote to anxiety, worry, and future uncertainties was brilliant.
I’ve been applying his wisdom for years.
“What I advise you to do is, not to be unhappy before the crisis comes; since it may be that the dangers before which you paled as if they were threatening you, will never come upon you; they certainly have not yet come. Accordingly, some things torment us more than they ought; some torment us before they ought; and some torment us when they ought not to torment us at all. We are in the habit of exaggerating, or imagining, or anticipating, sorrow.”
Basically, don’t borrow trouble from the past or future. We often stress about dangers that might appear or what’s already happened, turning our minds into a battlefield of anxieties. Seneca thought we torment ourselves unnecessarily. We magnify problems. We make them up…
