The Daily Stoic for August 21st. Don’t Be Miserable In Advance.
—SENECA, THYESTES, 309
Have you experienced a time wherein you were so worried about something that has not happened yet?
I’m sure you do have one. All one us have experienced that in one way or another.
Looking back, why were you like that? Was it because you were afraid of this certain event that even though it hasn’t happened yet, your thinking capability or emotional one was hindered already?
When you worry about something that hasn’t happened yet, you are anxious. According to this healthline.com, anxiety is your body’s natural response to stress. It’s a feeling of fear or apprehension about what’s to come.
The key point here is “about what’s to come“, which means to say, you are already feeling things or or getting stressed on something that hasn’t happened yet.
This means that the anxiety you are feeling usually is totally voluntary. But that is a normal reaction. We all become anxious about some things. We worry about things that have not happened yet.
Sometimes, our stomach feels sick, or there’s a feeling of butterflies in our stomach. Sometimes you cannot sleep. At times we feel worried or anxious that when people try to comfort us, we also ignore or brush them aside. We are too focused on something that hasn’t happened yet.
And at times, we are too worried to do anything. We are so worried that something bad might occur soon.
On the other side, there are pragmatist. According to the Ryan Holiday’s Daily Stoic, a pragmatist is a person of action. This person is too busy to waste time worrying about what’s about to come. The pragmatist can’t worry about every possible outcome in advance.
The best-case scenario when what you are worried about happens is what you are worrying about didn’t happen or was better than expected. In this case, you wasted your time and energy with needless fear.
Other the other hand, if the worst-case scenario did happen, and if you were too worried about it, you were miserable for extra time by choice. That means you yourself caused your demise to be much longer because of all that worrying that you did.
What better use could you have used of that time worrying? It might be your last day but you spent it in worry.
If it would be your last day, do you still want to spend it in worry? Or would you rather be at the moment and make use of what time you have? In what other areas could you have progressed given that time?
Don’t spend your time and energy worrying about what’s to come. Focus on the things that you can actually do and change to address your worry.
What’s gonna happen will happen. Let the future version of you take care of what will happen. Be too busy taking action to care.