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Ancient art of stoic joy

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    Rammy
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Negative visualization

Ever heard "Negative Visualization" is positive for you. This is in contradictory to what we often hear like be positive & think positive. However its seems necessary to have negative visualization once in a while in life.

Why ?

Lets say you finally land your dream job or married the love of your life whatever it is, with time things are taken for granted. Tranquility is replaced with apathy and you start looking for alternatives, its just a matter of time before the loop resets.

Very often we don't appreciate what we have and instead grave for what's missing. Which is why periodically we need to imagine the things we already have are gone... Be it your parents, job, spouse, kids, friends.

You don't have to wait for a tragedy to find a profound new respect for life and the joys it offer.

VOLUNTARY DISCOMFORT

It sounds a bit bizarre to voluntarily create discomfort to our lives, common who would wanna make their life's harder, it's hard enough already.

But then again since childhood I have heard the phrase "Get out of your comfort zone".

Well I always assumed that phrase is meant for professional growth, may be it is. However reading this book has changed my views.

It's very much necessary to create basic discomforts to our daily life once in a while.

What's the outcome of this voluntary discomfort ????

  1. Be able to appreciate the comforts I have.

  2. Should the future bail on me, I am mentally well equipped to withstand.

  3. Finally, Everyone of us strive hard for these comforts. We spend considerable time and energy to attain them. So it makes sense to check if these comforts are really needed for a joyful life by giving them up once in a while.

Voluntary discomfort is like a vaccine, by exposing ourselves to a small amount of weekend virus we create ourselves an immunity.

How can you ever appreciate a meal when you are always galloping even before you are hungry :)))

Book: Ancient art of stoic joy

Author: William B Irvine

Status: #paused

Tags: #book #stoic_joy #psychology

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