Cognitive Distancing
Observing one's thoughts and impressions with detachment prevents automatic identification with them and creates space for rational choice.
Stoics practiced what we might call cognitive distancing — observing their impressions (phantasiai) without immediately assenting to them. Labeling a thought as 'just an impression' rather than reality creates the gap in which rational evaluation can occur. The Stoic term for granting or withholding this assent is synkatathesis.
Your mind will take the shape of what you frequently hold in thought.
Stoic training in examining impressions (phantasiai) before assenting is set out at length in Epictetus's Discourses and Enchiridion.
Meditations
Written about in
- What Stoicism says about anger
Calling a thought an impression rather than a fact puts a small distance between you and it. Marcus Aurelius watched what he held in mind, on the view that the mind takes the shape of it.