There's nothing wrong with looking ahead and preparing for anything that could go wrong. In this episode, Dramos takes lyrics from Meek Mill and a quote from Seneca to show the importance of hoping for the best while also preparing for the worst.
Yes, yes, I am Dramas and this is the Street Stoic Podcast, bringing your daily dose of timeless stoke philosophy remix for the.
Hip hop generation.
We are combining ancient philosophy with lyrics or quotes from some of the greatest to ever grace a microphone. Now, with that in mind, let's get things started with your daily shot of inspiration. Now today we're refocusing all around the Stoic practice that is entitled premeditationo malorum, right, which translates to pre meditation of evils or even in more layman's terms, the idea of looking ahead. And this was inspired by a blog on the Daily Stoic dot com. But first of almost let's start with the lyric that kind of came to my mind as I was reading through that article and inspired by this conversation of just looking ahead and kind of almost planning for the worst so that you're ready for whatever gets thrown your way, right, and a lyric that kind of came to my mind. When we think about this.
Idea of visualization, right, because there's.
Good visualization that you know, you sort of anticipating what you want to happen, there's also you visualizing it going awry and planning for that. But I think in general, we're all visualizing all the time, whether we realize it or not. Right, And in this record, meet mail, dreams and nightmares, which we've all heard before. At this point in a club is usually like the high point of the night. This this line right here, I think kind of I want to talk about it as a practical sense of visualization that I'm sure all of us have done at some point. Right, he says, I used to pray for times like this, to rhyme like this, and I promise I'm going somewhere with this connecting to this idea of of looking ahead.
But I think a lot of times.
We get caught up in sort of the wackiness of like when people talk about the law of attraction and just visualize it and it's going to come, and that brand new Bentley is going to show up your driveway for no reason whatsoever. You just have to think about it really hard. And this idea of visualization, it's preparing you for your future.
Like it just.
Sounds crazy when you talk about it in practical terms, right, But people have been praying for a long time, right, People have normalized the idea of praying. I'm sure many of us have prayed at some point in time, ask God, asked the universe whatever it is, for something, right.
And that was normal.
And prayer is just another form of visualization, right. And that's what makes prayer so powerful, because it's you getting very specific on what you want.
It's you picturing what you want.
You want to picture that situation, right, And that's what Meek is talking about here. And obviously in this case, he is visualizing the positive that he wanted to happen, right, the positive outcome to happen. But we also forget that it's important to think about all that could go wrong on the flip side of visualization. And that's sort of what we're getting in too, with the grandiose idea of today's show. And that leads to a quote from one of the stoics, Senego, where he says, rehearse them in your mind.
Exile, torture, war, shipwreck, all the.
Terms of our human lot should be before your eyes. I love this because this is a practice that I recently developed, but I think, without sort of knowing it, this is just as important of a tool as the positive sort of visualization is right. And again, we've heard a lot of the manifestation stuff and that's sort of always what gets focused on. But what's also important is being able to react in the best way possible when things don't go according to plan.
Right.
This is what the blog post I'm referencing from Daily Stoe was talking about, and this is Ryan Holliday's website, and it talks about how before Ryan Holliday gets on stage for a big speech, he runs through everything that could go wrong, any trouble with the microphone, the clicker not advancing, the slide, the audience not reacting as anticipated.
He is able to see.
Potential problems before they arise and come up with solutions before anything actually happens, and leading into kind of how I've applied this to my life.
I went away.
I've talked about this before, I think on the show, but I went away to like a personal growth retreat called the Hoffmann Process, And one of the tools they teach you is called pre cycling, where you visualize like a big moment. Right, So if I'm going to be in a big meeting, I'm going to be doing a talk, I have a big event, I'm djaying a really big gig, whatever it might be. And what I do is I visualize the worst case scenario. All my fears that I have that are making me really nervous, I visualize them, take a deep breath in and exhale all of those negative emotions, and then I visualize all the positive things. What would happen if the event went as well as humanly possible. I visualize that and allow those feelings to come over me.
Right, It's this.
Idea of getting yourself to a relaxed place so that when things do not go according to plan, because there's always going to be something nothing goes exactly according to plan, you don't freak out in that moment. You can calmly address it. You can commonly take care of it and not allow it to completely derail you. Now we've been obviously talking about this practice of in Layman's terms, looking ahead, so meek Mill visualizing the positive, Seneca talking about the visualization of all that could go wrong, and even me kind of this idea of pre cycling being such a big part of my life. Now, let's talk about how you can make it your.
Mantra for today. But first it's take a quick break and then we'll be right back, all right.
So day we're talking all about the stoke practice of premeditatio malorum, or the premeditation of evils. Really, we're just talking about visualization and how important it is to not only visualize the positive things that you want to happen, but also being able to be aware of all that could go wrong so you can be best prepared to embrace it and move past it when it inevidly happens. And we've heard Male visualizing the good that he wants in his life, for his career, for being an artist. We've heard Seneca visualizing literally the worst case scenario of things that could happen for him. I've talked about how I use both of these visualizations before every big event or gig that I have. Now let's talk about how you can make it your mantra for today, and literally it's applying the same thing that I've applied to my life, this idea of pre cycling. And it doesn't just have to be like you're about to go and give a public speech or you're about to go in a big meeting. I use this practice all the time, even if I'm going into like a big family party, and there's people there that I know I have different opinions from, and I don't want to get into an argument with them. I will precycle on my way to that family party, where I will think of the worst case scenario of this cousin pissing me off at something they said and me having to clap back at them, and then I'll think about the positive one where they say something I don't react to it. We all move forward happily, you know, enjoying ourselves at this family party.
Right.
This is something I do on a consistent basis, where I am just mentally preparing myself for every situation so that the sort of emotion of the event when something goes awry doesn't overcome me. That's sort of all that we're talking about today is just giving yourself the tools to be in the best place to react when something happens in your life. Now, to recap all that we've been talking about, you have meek mil being somebody who's obviously displaying the idea of visualization, right, and I wanted to introduce this for anybody who is just not there yet.
Right.
You're not somebody who like meditates, You're not somebody who sits there and just like allows yourself to daydream about all that you want and to manage and all these different things, breaking this sort of the barrier to entry in that for a lot of people, the world of self help and wellness and all these things, it just seems weird. So putting it in the more practical sort of form, when you're praying, that's literally what you're doing.
You're asking God for what you want.
You're visualizing what it is that you want and then asking for it. Right, and you have to have a picture of what you want in order to be praying to God for And that's so incredibly powerful because it gives you a bit of direction in your life. Right when you can actually see what you want in your mind, it allows you to make decisions that will help you get there.
And on the flip side of it, right, more.
Specifically, the visualization of all that could go wrong, Right when you have somebody like Seneca talking about preparing for exile, torture, war, and shipwreck, mentally rehearsing that in his mind, essentially saying that, listen, he hopes none of this happens. But life always throws things our way. Things don't always go a course to plan, and rather than having the rug pulled out from under him, he would rather be as mentally prepared to make the best decisions of its chaos as humanly possible. Right, And that's all that we're doing when I talk about the idea of pre cycling and rehearsing things in my mind, I'm literally just trying to give myself the best chance at making the most of every situation that I'm in visualization. Just being an incredibly important tool for all of us. And it's something that's been around for centuries at this point. Be it in prayer, be it in the mindset of the Stokes, whatever it might be, it's been around, and I think it's something that we all can implement and a tool we can kind of add to our tool belts to help bring out the best of us even when life throws some of it's worst at us. Right, I think that's sort of the key towards growth and wellness and all these things. It's not about being perfect, it's about just having the tools to handle all the nonsense that life is inevitably going to throw at us. And with that said, thank you so much for checking out the street Stoke Podcast.
Do your best to apply.
These concerts we discussed into your everyday life and I will catch you next week. The Street Stoke Podcast is a production of Iheart's Michael Podcast Network