Negative Visualization: The Most Valuable Stoic Technique
November, 2020.
Not long ago, I would hate reading an article like this — let alone writing one. However, here I am, and I think this will be a good one.
Negative visualization has found a place in my daily routine since I became intrigued by this Stoic practice that many distinguished people perceived as "the single most valuable technique in the Stoics’ psychological tool kit", as William Irvine put it.
And, indeed, I think it might be. Practicing negative visualization has made me happier, healthier, and more productive in the last few months — even considering we are amidst a pandemic.
It has been game-changing.
1 What is Negative Visualization?
The Stoics had a mental practice of visualizing misfortunes long in advance. The obvious reason they had was a better preparation for those events. They would embrace whatever might happen and figure out what they could do about it, in a very action-oriented approach. Nevertheless, this technique has deeper consequences, being regarded by them also as a way to find tranquillity, virtue, and, therefore, happiness.
☕ For the Stoics, happiness was not something to be sought directly because it would be a by-product of virtue. Living virtuously would be the same as living happily.
Michel Foucault described the Stoic premeditatio malorum as:
“1 - Rather than imagining the most likely future, the Stoic practises imagining the worst-case scenario, even if it’s unlikely to actually happen.
2 - The Stoic pictures the feared scenario as if happening now, rather than in the future, e.g., not that she will one day be exiled but that she is in exile already.
3 - The primary rationale is for her to rehearse freedom from irrational distress (apatheia), by calmly persuading herself that these external ‘misfortunes’ are really indifferent, and to be accepted as merely situations calling on us to exhibit virtue and strength of character.”
The Stoics were really smart. By imagining the worst-case scenario, they would not only get ready for the worst, but they would also see how "the worst" wasn't as terrible as expected and usually less likely to happen. By pretending the calamity is happening now, they would appreciate the present moment even more. And, ultimately, premeditating adversity was a practice, a rehearsal, to conceive all events as indifferent. In Stoicism, there is no good or bad fortune: our reactions that make it so. By being indifferent, they pursued to avoid fearing or worrying, which would allow them to confront fate calmly, patiently, and rationally. Only in this way, they would be prepared for the "full scope of Fortune’s power as if she would surely do whatever is in her power to do." [Seneca]
Therefore, negative visualization is utterly different from worrying. Rather, it is more like a weapon against it. When we visualize what might happen and how we would best perform, we make a default map of action in our minds, and we tend to stop worrying because there's nothing to worry about since we already know what we can do about it. And, if we can't do anything about it, it is not a problem, is it?
“My philosophy is that worrying means you suffer twice.”
Lastly, when we hear the term "premeditation", we usually remember the more familiar idea from Buddhist meditation. Albeit Stoicism and Buddhism have some similar origins, Stoicism disregarded the Eastern spiritual beliefs establishing a rational and systemised approach suitable for the Western paradigms. In Buddhism, we need to "let go" of the thoughts. Conversely, Stoicism motivates us to be engaged with them. And, because I can't put it better myself: "Stoic premeditation is no more than a matter of taking a quiet few minutes to consider the day ahead from the robust, yet open perspective that comes from absorbing their principles." [Derren Brown]
2 Why you should practice it
Preparation and Regret
When we are only reacting to fortune's tricks due to our lack of preparation, we assemble a reaction that relies mostly on our emotions, our intuitions, and on the what we are reacting against. And, all these three elements, believe it or not, become an extra weight preventing us from performing in alignment with our best selves.
Firstly, emotions tend to cloud our thinking. Some more than others, such as anger. The emotion, once established, will nudge our action towards its benefit. When we get sad, we play a song that makes us even sadder. When we get happy, we try to do more of whatever is providing us happiness. In any case, it is our rational mind that drags us away from these emotions. We need to intentionally decide to stop. To change. To do something that will free us from the chains of the emotion. So, instead of going opposite the flow after the emotion has been on command, Stoicism teaches us to control our feelings all the way since the beginning. For instance, since anger and worrying do nothing for us, we should stop them as soon as possible. Being a Stoic is not an emotion-free life. It is only a life full of emotion-free reactions.
In the domain of things that disturb our reasoning, there is intuition as well. Many like to say their intuition will be more than enough when considering that something unfortunate might occur. We, for some reason, like to romanticize it. We like to be proud of the intuition we somehow had once when things went horribly wrong. We enjoy not knowing how we knew, ascribing it to our coruscating intelligence or mystical influences. Nonetheless, the science of intuition is already straightforward. In a simplistic example, an engineer would help much more with a problem full of numbers than in one full of words because intuition thrives where people are already skilled. In similar lines, why would it be that a doctor with ten years of daily clinical practice has better "intuition" than an intern when facing the same unusual situation? Haven't they both studied the same physiology? Some even from the same books? Same university?
Experience is an asset that feeds and shapes intuition. The doctor had enough opportunities to see more patterns and have valuable feedback about them to recognize what works best or not. Then, intuition is merely the result of learning to discern patterns in a regular environment. As Herbert Simon explained: "the situation has provided a cue; this cue has given the expert access to information stored in memory; and the information provides the answer. Intuition is nothing more or less than recognition."
Finally, every reaction, considered or not, depends on the thing it is about. However, the more considerate the reaction is, the less its result depends on the thing, and the more it is under our control.
Let's say you are in a car with your family and you need to go back home from a trip to the beach. You have a long road ahead. You are fine, listening to a podcast when someone calls you and says there are all sorts of monsters at loose on some roads nearby. She says there is no way to know if there is a monster down your road because it would need someone to get dangerously close. Then, she goes on to ask if you are at the beginning, at the middle, or at the end of the road.
If you are at the beginning, you can simply turn around and get a safe road.
If you are at the middle, you can ask someone to send you a gigantic weapon to try shooting the monster, if needed.
If you are at the end of the road, there's nothing the external world can do for you, and, if needed, you'll have to fight the monster with all the strength and creativity you muster to have.
This is not a perfect analogy, but the difference is still clear. The closer you are to the monster, the less considerate your reaction can be, and further from your control the outcome gets. There is no comparison between everything you'd have to do to survive the possible monster versus only redirecting for basically the same, if not better, result.
It is this comparison that insidiously becomes a regret. Even when we manage some kind of solution, the latent voice whispering in our ears saying how we could have done it better make us feel worse than if we had failed due to any other reason outside ourselves. Failing is natural and sometimes necessary, whereas regretting is only a sign we didn't bother trying.
“Fortune falls heavily on those for whom she’s unexpected.”
Anxiety
A common misconception is that premeditation is a way to ruin the present moment. We should not "worry" about things until they occur as if this was a method to avoid anxiety. Nevertheless, more than 2000 years ago, the Stoics already knew that this aversion actually reiterates and maintains anxiety. This reasoning is well-established in current Cognitive Behaviour Therapy (CBT) by its most frequent therapeutic strategy. Through a technique called "imaginal exposure", CBT enables a process of habituation to the stimulus that is causing anxiety to get people familiar with the "fear" as a way to make its power withers.
“The proper course with every kind of fear is to think about it rationally and calmly, but with great concentration, until it becomes completely familiar. In the end familiarity will blunt its terrors; the whole subject will become boring, and our thoughts will turn away from it, not, as formerly, by an effort of will, but through mere lack of interest in the topic. When you find yourself inclined to brood on anything, no matter what, the best plan always is to think about it even more than you naturally would until at last its morbid fascination is worn off.”
Joy & Happiness
Many would still dare to point out that premeditating adversity can be too pessimistic and sad. If so, why the Stoics were seen as highly optimistic people? Even more optimistic than most non-Stoic individuals. The thing is: their endorsed optimism was nothing more than a prudent pessimism. It is not about seeing the glass as "half-full", but appreciating having a glass at all.
The Stoics comprehended that what is outside our control — everything else than our thoughts and actions — is under fortune's sovereignty. Every day they would reflect upon the possibility of fate taking everything and everyone away from them. However, instead of getting upset, they would channel their energy towards actions. They would appreciate everything and everyone, and, consequently, they would be deeply immersed in the present. They would cherish moments instead of things. They would make people around them feel loved whilst not getting attached to them. They would crave what they already have instead of new things.
“Negative visualization, in other words, teaches us to embrace whatever life we happen to be living and to extract every bit of delight we can from it. But it simultaneously teaches us to prepare ourselves for changes that will deprive us of the things that delight us. It teaches us, in other words, to enjoy what we have without clinging to it.”
Ah! New things... Let's talk about them.
We tend to desire new things because they hold an obvious "excitement stamp". And, it is not that our old possessions lose their charm, but we just got used to them. That's a classic fact amongst lottery winners. After some weeks of sudden almost unlimited hedonism, they come back to their default level of happiness. It is the hedonic adaptation in action: as we get used to things, we take them for granted, which takes all the joy we would have from them. So, when we deliberately accept that everything can disappear in the thin air now, we highlight their value and how they impact our lives. We combat the hedonic adaptation by "keeping things new", praising the excitement they intrinsically always had and making us behave with all the care we usually have for new things.
However, beware. When we genuinely try to discern how we would feel about losing things, we can realise what we don't matter losing, and what we would be better off without. A win-win situation either way.
Furthermore, accepting the present doesn't mean being enslaved to a future we don't want. We can embrace the life we have while architecting the one we truly desire. I like to think that I am satisfied now, but my future self wouldn't feel the same if she could time-travel to now. Nonetheless, we have a responsibility to our future selves. They trust us to build a future worth living in a present that also would make a good story.
3 Paved Ways
Even when we try our best, sometimes unexpected things do happen. Life has too many variables we have no control over for us to expect being able to acknowledge all its singularities and nuances. Sometimes, what happens is not bad in itself, but only different from what we wished at that moment. In any case, we need to accept it and give a chance for serendipity. There is a subtle beauty in things not happening the way we wanted.
Not rarely, we are bad judges of what would certainly make us happy until fortune places it exactly in front of us. Unexpected events bring out our unexpected features even to ourselves. They can also make us face our fears and most neglected feelings. And, many times, what we fear is what we most need to do.
I used to resent the several obstacles fortune enjoyed putting on my way. I would never write an essay like this. However, later I realised that we need them for us to be able to know ourselves and to provide guidance because life is these obstacles. As Janna Levin sublimely stated:
“I started to see life as a series of obstacles that were test trials, teaching modules of how to be a better person and to pave the way behind you, not in front of you. And it’s really been a pretty important principle for me, I guess. That when I see something happen I don’t think, “This is so unfair. Why are they doing this to me?” That I think instead, “Okay, am I able to rise to figure out a solution to this?” And I’m not always able to do that. But when I do, I feel like it’s genuine progress.”
Janna Levin, Astrophysicist and Author.
In this way, premeditation is a form of making genuine progress in advance. It also is a tool to nurture joy in our lives through the sheer appreciation of what may not be here the next time. It is perceiving that our judgments draw the line between the good and bad sides of things, while understanding that it is better not to draw one at all.
Main Resources
Stoicism and the Art of Happiness: Practical wisdom for everyday life, Donald Robertson.
Happy: Why More or Less Everything Is Fine, Derren Brown.
Thinking Fast and Slow, Daniel Kahneman.
A Guide to the Good Life: The Ancient Art of Stoic Joy, William Irvine.
Moral letters to Lucilius, Seneca.
