Premeditatio Malorum
Deliberate pre-visualization of potential adversity removes its sting and prepares the mind to respond with virtue.
The practice of premeditatio malorum — 'premeditation of evils' — involves regularly imagining misfortune, illness, loss, and death. Far from pessimism, this practice removes the shock of adversity and cultivates gratitude for current blessings. Seneca recommended imagining poverty, illness, and death to diminish their power over us.
Let us prepare our minds as if we had come to the very end of life. Let us postpone nothing.
Seneca calls this practice premeditatio malorum — rehearsing misfortune in advance so its arrival brings no shock.
Epistulae Morales
Written about in
- What Stoicism says about fear and anxiety
Seneca advises rehearsing loss, illness and death in advance, so that if they arrive they arrive as something already thought about. He treats it as preparation, not pessimism.