Practicing the Worst Case

Premeditatio malorum — the premeditation of evils — sounds grim, but it is surprisingly liberating. Seneca recommended imagining the worst outcomes regularly. Not to wallow, but to defang fear before it arrives.

When you have already mentally rehearsed losing your job or getting rejected, the actual event loses some of its power to destroy you. Modern psychologists describe a related habit, defensive pessimism, and studies suggest it can genuinely lower anxiety for some people. The Stoics arrived at the same idea two millennia earlier.