Am I Prepared for X?
Success breeds complacency. Complacency breeds failure. Only the paranoid survive. — Andy Grove
If an evil has been pondered beforehand, the blow is gentle when it comes. To
the fool, however, and to him who trusts in fortune, each event as it arrives ‘comes in a new and sudden form,’ and a large part of evil, to the inexperienced, consists in its novelty. This is proved by the fact that men endure with greater courage, when they have once become accustomed to them, the things which they had at first regarded as hardships. — Seneca
In your lifetime, you’ll deal with all kinds of losses and setbacks.
The death of loved ones, pandemics, natural disasters, economic crashes, wars, health problems, divorces/break ups, major business/career problems.
The occurrence of these things will fall largely outside of your control and certainly can feel devastating when it strikes out of the blue.
Premeditatio Malorum
Instead of letting the events land a heavy blow, you can choose to take away some of that power by anticipating such things in advance and prepare for the storm that you know is inevitable. Tragedies are an inseparable part of our condition. You may as well learn to get comfortable with that reality. Your relationship with unavoidable setbacks…
