PSTM: Stress, Danger, and Hope

The Idea: Things are changing.

Everyone can feel it. Everyone is stressed.

Pretty much every business is raising prices, citing the difficulties in the economy, the rising prices.

There’s fear mongering about job losses. AI is coming to get you. To replace you. To automate your existence to oblivion.

There are a few things that I tell myself for comfort when things seem to spiral out of control.

We are always living in the good old days. When you look back, the sense of nostalgia is almost inevitable. In retrospect, the fears and concerns that bothered you so deeply drop away. You know that the worst didn’t come around. You know that you figured it out. Or that tragedy turned out to not be as bad as you feared. Any period of difficulty will be followed by a period of mental whitewashing that sanitizes out the bad parts and leaves things pleasant.
Play it out. This is in the stoic camp of “premeditatio malorum” : thinking through the worst that can happen.
If everything negative happens, what then. And don’t leave it vague, really look at it. You will lose the car, the house. Spell out the timelines, spell out the worse case scenario. You’ll be surprised by how often it turns out that the vague anxiety becomes an unpleasant, but manageable thought.
These three quotes:

"If a problem is fixable, if a situation is such that you can do something about it, then there is no need to worry. If it's not fixable, then there is no help in worrying. There is no benefit in worrying whatsoever." -Dalai Lama

"What are you so afraid of losing when nothing in this world belongs to you?" -(incorrectly attributed to Marcus Aurelius, but too good to judge)

"You are free to do whatever you like. You need only face the consequences." -Sheldon B. Kopp
The Advice: this is for me this week mostly. Remember your value. If you’re out there reading this, then you’ve done stuff in life. You’ve survived difficulty. You are still here, alive, fighting. There are always options.

Yesterday really did end last night. Today is a new day. Fight on.