Negative visualisation

Part two in a sequence on Stoic ideas and techniques. If you are arriving fresh, start from the beginning.

“What fortune has made yours is not your own.” — Seneca, Letters from a Stoic, Letter IX (c. 62 CE)

Stoic techniques for flourishing

The Stoics were a group of philosophers from 350 BCE-200 CE that held human flourishing (eudaimonia) to be life's end goal, and developed a series of beliefs and practices to cultivate it. This sequence of blog posts introduces core Stoic techniques for finding joy and purpose in life.

Our last post looked at what's in our control, and the benefits we get from focusing on that. Today we'll look at a complementary technique called “negative visualisation”, or imagining the worst. It's heavily influenced by Chapter 4 of Irvine's “Guide to the Good Life”. Let's dive in.

Taking things for granted

When we are children, everything is new, and we can find great joy in discovering the world. But quickly we become used to things, and they bring us less joy than before.

The good side of this is human resilience, the way many people rebound from great trauma or loss and continue to find ways to thrive. The bad side of this is the great dissatisfaction many people find with modern life, and the unfulfilling endless stream of new things we try to inject into life to avoid this dissatisfaction.

Today we know of this phenomena as hedonic adaption, but it's a part of human nature that was as common in Ancient Greece as it is today.

Wanting what we have

The human desire for novelty leads us naturally to acquire new things: new belongings, a new car, new house, new relationship. However, these things only temporarily satisfy us, and they leave new problems in their wake, in the form of wasted money, lost opportunities and broken relationships.

The Stoics had a different approach: try to re-learn to want what we already have, by reminding ourselves how temporary life is.

For example, if you are in a relationship, one day you and your partner will be separated, either because you no long wish to be together, or because of illness and death. Similarly, you will not always live where you do, enjoy the friendships that you have now, or even have what health you have today.

The Stoics did not waste energy worrying about these things, but they did reflect on them regularly; doing this leads to a greater sense of gratitude for what we have, and leads us to experience a heightened significance and intensity to everyday events, bringing joy to our experiences.

Accepting what comes

Contemplating the loss of things will improve our wellbeing today, because we will appreciate our current circumstances more. But it will also bring benefits when, inevitably, we do lose things that are precious to us. We then find ourselves better off because we are less surprised, and because we have less regret.

Imagine a close friend dies suddenly of an unexpected illness. You will be shocked and grieve. But if you have imagined the possibility of losing them, you will have been more present with them, enjoyed them more fully, and have been aware: this may be the last time I see them. This will reduce the extent of your grief, and you will not experience regret — you already made the best of the time you had with them.

For this reason, the Stoics asked us to imagine the loss of our job, our home, our friends and our family, and to imagine how we might yet find it in us to cope and manage in each of these situations.

Driving change

One might ask, if Stoicism asks us to accept and appreciate everything as it is, will it then prevent us from noticing problems and improving the world? Could it even be harmful? In fact, this is a substantial critique of mindfulness, that it causes us to accept injustice and seek only to improve our own feelings about the world.

In fact, the Stoics were remarkably civic-minded, and believed that reason would lead us to conclude that we are social creatures that best thrive together. Contemplating loss didn't make them accept injustice; instead, it helped them to find the the courage to make great stands against tyranny, by looking at the potential consequences and making their peace with them.

By practicing these techniques, the Stoics were able to find joy in everyday life, whilst finding the courage to strive to make a difference.

Continue on to part three, on setbacks and framing.

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