Begin the morning by saying to yourself, I shall meet with the busybody, the ungrateful, arrogant, deceitful, envious, unsocial. All these things happen to them by reason of their ignorance of what is good and evil. But I, who have seen the nature of the good that it is beautiful, and of the bad that it is ugly, and the nature of him who does wrong, that it is akin to me, not only of the same blood or seed, but that it participates in the same intelligence and the same portion of the divinity, I can neither be injured by any of them, for no one can fix on me what is ugly, nor can I be angry with my kinsman, nor hate him. For we are made for cooperation, like feet, like hands, like eyelids, like the rows of the upper and lower teeth. To act against one another then is contrary to nature.
Marcus Aurelius
In this widely known passage, Marcus Aurelius reminds himself to be prepared for the obstacles that he will encounter. The day ahead could be hard. People he will meet might be difficult. But he anticipates that and tells himself to accept it. Seneca also talks about preparation. In Letters from a Stoic, he says that the unprepared are panic-stricken even by insignificant happenings.
The takeaway is that we can use this technique to become better by simply preparing for what lies ahead. Neglecting the fact that we are certain to face challenges will make us less ready for the moment when we need to deal with them. By reminding ourselves that we will need to tackle the obstacles sooner or later could put us one step ahead. When we do need to face adversity, we will face it much better prepared.
This idea can be applied to a great variety of situations. Recently, I used it to be ready for what I predicted might be a difficult night. My kid had the stomach flu and there was a great chance that he’ll wake up crying several times during the night. Instead of hoping for a quiet night (the first in several days), I accepted the reality and told myself before going to bed: chances are, he will wake me up a few times and I will not get a lot of sleep, but that’s OK–I am his father and I need to help him.
My son did cry a few times later on, and it was a pretty rough night, but since I prepared myself, I handled the situation in a better way.
