Marcus Aurelius would start every day by reminding himself “Today I shall be met with interference, ingratitude, insolence, disloyalty, ill-will, and selfishness – all of them due to the offenders’ ignorance of what is good or evil…”
We know there will be instances in our everyday life that we do not want to face. We will have stressful rushes at work, we’ll interact with rude customers, traffic will make us late, we’ll be too tired to exercise, etc.
We know these things will happen and yet we let them weigh on our minds. We dread the day ahead, anticipating the negative emotions we’ll feel with each inconvenience and rude interaction. We consider all the things that will go wrong and upset us until we’re left stressed and anxious to take on the day.
Why not do something with the knowledge of what will happen? Why let the day tear us down before we’ve even gotten out of bed?
My most recent experiment in changing my mindset is to predict, plan, and act – predict the hiccups, inconveniences, and stressors, plan for the best ways to prepare and deal with them ahead of time, act on your plan. This way, if those things you dread do arise, they won’t bother you because you were prepared for them. Or if they don’t occur, then hell yeah! You had a great day.
I can predict how my shift will play out based on past experience. I know we’ll have a few rushes, I’ll start running out of coffees, dishes will pile up, and people may grow impatient. So I can either let this knowledge weigh me down, or I can do something about it.
So I determine the steps I can take to prepare for the day ahead – weigh out coffee early so it’s ready, keep everything tidy so I have room to work, make sure everything is well stocked, and most importantly, put a smile on my face to ward off rude customers.
Now I have a plan, so all I have to do is act on it and actually do these things to prepare.
There’s no harm in over-preparing – if your predictions are correct, you’re ready to go, if your obstacles fail to arise, your day was easy and you can be grateful.
You know life doesn’t play out how you’d like it to. You know with each day you’ll face a lot of bullshit. You do not have to let that knowledge consume you and make you dread the day ahead. You have the ability to predict, plan, and act, making every day easier and less stressful.
July 11, 2022
