Rehearse the setback

Writing after a fire destroyed the city of Lyons, Seneca makes an argument about surprise: what shocks us is rarely the misfortune itself but the fact that we had ruled it out. Nothing, he suggests, ought to be unexpected to us.

This is commonly mistaken for gloom. The difference is testable. Rehearsal is bounded, specific, and ends in a decision. Rumination is unbounded, vague, and ends where it began, several hours later.

If you have pictured the same difficult moment forty times and still have no sentence describing what you will do, you have not been preparing. You have been practising the anxiety.

A practice for today

One obstacle, one response

1. Name one realistic obstacle for tomorrow: a delay, a hard question, a no.
2. Write, in one sentence, what you will do if it appears.
3. Stop. One obstacle, one sentence; the list does not grow tonight.
4. If the thought returns, reread the sentence rather than starting again.

Rehearsal does not make the setback less real and will not guarantee composure. It removes the surprise, which is often what costs the most in the first minute, and the first minute is usually where the avoidable damage happens.