Live like a stoic day six- Saturday(Resilience)
The stoics had a unique way to practise being resilient. They recommended that we think about situations that worry us and imagine them going wrong. This was something that I had always done, for quite a few years now, I’d always think about situations that worried me, such as not compelling an assignment that was due the next day or something more serious, such as what consequences I’d be facing for my bad behaviour- nothing too bad of course. I found it quite surprising that the stoics had recommended the same method of overcoming stress. Because essentially what this technique does is prepare you for the worst possible situation so that if it occurs then you won’t be impacted by it at all or you won’t be impacted by it as much as you would have if you hadn’t thought about the bad happening. The thing that’s really interesting about this is that, this practise is accepted by psychologists and they say it has positive affect on the individual. The way I practised this was by doing what the activity given in the handbook. I took something that has been stressing me the past week, the maths test. The topic is statistics and I feel unprepared for the test which will be conducted next week. I don’t fully understand some of the theory behind this and instead of understating I’ve tired to just memorise everything- which isn’t the ideal solution to the problem. As the stoics recommended, you should try to think of the worst case scenario for your worries. The worst case scenario for me is not fully understanding some of the theory and therefore reducing my chances of achieving full marks on the maths test. It took very little time for me to realise that this was the worst possible scenario and by thinking about this I noticed that I started to not worry about it at all. Accepting the fact that I may be unprepared for the test and understanding it made me not want to be in that situation. To get out of that situation I have to control myself and study. Resilience is a very affect strategy to overcome anxiety, this method that the stoics have told us to use to overcome our anxiety indeed works. This strategy works because if we accept our worst situations then if we end up in that exact situation we will be prepared to face it if it arises. Overall this method was useful and definitely had meaning to it and I will be using this more often when I face stressful situations.