Premeditatio Malorum: The Most Important Thinking Skill That Nobody Taught You

Negative thinking as taught by Stoic thinkers

Okabarack
The Apeiron Blog
Photo by Brooke Cagle on Unsplash

Before his death at just 65, Lucius Annaeus Seneca made huge footprints in the literary ecosphere — notably in the fields of philosophy, politics and satirical drama.

Right before his death, he hashed out fragments of private thoughts — later published under the title of "The Epistulae Morales ad Lucilium (Latin for "Moral Letters to Lucilius")". This work, which went on to be his best and most popular, is a compilation of the 124 letters he wrote at the sunset of his life.

It contains tons of amazing thought-provoking materials, which challenge most aspects of human endeavours, thoughts and existence. One of his famous thoughts is from Letter LXXVI:

"To-day it is you who threaten me with these terrors; but I have always threatened myself with them, and have prepared myself as a man to meet man's destiny. 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…

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