Hello and welcome to a new series of short blogs that I’ll be posting starting with this one. I don’t know yet what the frequency for these will be, but the idea is simple: I share a quote and my thoughts on the quote and how to apply the wisdom of the quote in real life today. Most importantly I keep it short. So let’s dive right in with this very first one by Seneca, one of my favourite stoics.

“We suffer more in imagination than in reality” — Seneca

We often spend much more time thinking about the things that happen in our life than we should. Seneca tells us this in one easy sentence. Why do we often spend so much time thinking about our suffering, when we all know this is a fruitless exercise? Why then bother thinking about our troubles when this is one of the most unproductive things we can do? Especially if it’s something outside of our control, the Stoics say we should not even bother keeping ourselves busy with these issues. It is our opinion of things that we can change, not the things themselves. So, why then bother thinking about our suffering when most of the things that happen in our lives are outside of our control? I find one of the best ways to train your mind not to pursue unproductive thoughts is to meditate daily. Meditation teaches us to let go of our thoughts and in doing so, we will suffer unnecessarily much less.

Have a good one!

Jeffrey