Daily Stoic

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What are you worried about right now?

Your job?

Your family?

Your future?

Your health?

You’re not crazy to worry. Bad things could happen related to any of them. A car accident. An economic downturn. A surprise diagnosis.

But let’s go backwards in time a month, a year, five years. What were you worried about then? Mostly the same things, right?

And how many of those worries came to pass? And the ones that did…clearly the worrying didn’t help stop it, right?

It was Seneca who put the best one-liner to this feeling: “We are more often frightened than hurt; and we suffer more from imagination than from reality.”

It’s too facile to say don’t worry. But put your worries in perspective. Don’t let your worries grow out of proportion to what might actually happen. Don’t let imagination overtake reality. And for god’s sake, don’t conflate worrying with prevention or preparation…because you have a clear track record to show you how silly that is.

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MERRY CHRISTMAS AND A HAPPY NEW YEAR…