Daily Stoic on scenario thinking

After flying cross country 2 times in the last month, a Daily Stoic post hit my inbox the day I returned. Perfect timing. I traveled over 500k miles on airplanes over the last 20 years, and find airplane travel way stressful … still. The situations are so out of a person’s control that it drives me nuts, and anxious; and, I firmly believe that airlines intentionally fuel anxiety to sell us more ‘services’.

As a program manager and financial advisor to family and friends, I have always pushed people to talk through and ‘try on’ future scenarios. My belief is that if you think through different scenarios (& your responses), you will better handle the situations when / if they occurred. Seems without knowing I practice an old Stoic method, and one that I repeated this last airplane trip with positive, rewarding results. Then, upon arrival this post is in my inbox – the fates?

Here’s the snippet from Daily Stoic:

Airports are stressful and traveling can be a nightmare. Dealing with a toddler’s tantrum at the grocery store tries the best of us. The confrontation with an employee or a colleague. The phone call where we get the news that somebody passed away.Life is full of these situations. They challenge us. They overwhelm us. There is no foolproof way to prevent them or to manage them. But there is something that helps.

Seneca talked about premeditatio malorum. He said that we had to meditate on all the things that could happen to us and that by thinking in advance, let’s say, about a nightmare travel day or the eventual death of a grandparent, we lessen it—if only slightly. The unexpected blow, he said, lands heaviest. Even just saying that to yourself: The airport is stressful. There may be delays. But I’ve dealt with that before, and it’s important for me to try to relax and take things as they come. This doesn’t seem like much but it is. It helps!

Dr. Becky Kennedy, whose book Good Inside we’ve been raving about (great podcast episode, too!), calls this “emotional vaccination.” In the same way that a vaccine exposes our body to a manageable amount of the virus or the disease, teaching it how to fight the illness, talking to ourselves (or our children) about what is going to happen in advance of it happening helps us deal with it. It removes the surprise, it removes the suddenness of it.
Daily Stoic

Scenarios are like new clothes before buying – try them on, feel if they fit, and put back the ones that don’t.

Featured image from Edge Copilot