Wake Up, It’s Just a Bad Dream

“Clear your mind and get a hold on yourself and, as when awakened from sleep and realizing it was only a bad dream upsetting you, wake up and see that what’s there is just like those dreams.”

MARCUS AURELIUS, MEDITATIONS, 6.31

Most of the things we fret about aren’t real. They come from hypotheticals that never come to pass — but that doesn’t stop us from expending an enormous amount of energy (and surrendering our peace of mind) in the pursuit of thinking waaaay too much about it. We do it to ourselves!

But our fear is often worse than the thing we’re afraid of. That is to say, the effects of the fear outweigh the actual threat. We worry about things that never end up happening, but that worry creates all kinds of anxiety and stress in our minds, which robs of us joy and happiness.

Why do we put a down payment on misery like that? Perhaps it’s human nature — we’re just weak and prone to overthinking and worry. Or what’s more likely is that we simply don’t realize that we are turning what is just our imagination into something real and harmful, by giving it more weight than it deserves. That’s the point made in today’s page in The Daily Stoic — we risk “real consequences” by reacting to the imagined fears of our mind.

So instead of overreacting and letting our emotions get out of control and run away from us, we should wake up, because it’s just a bad dream.

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