It’s important that you set aside time each day to focus on the things that will lead to an improved mind and self. Put yourself somewhere that makes the walls feel like they’re closing in order that you may deliberately develop more physical strength for the purpose of furthering your mental resilience. Then push and thrust them away from you.
The worst thing that could happen to you may not have even happened yet and it is therefore still to come. So in the meantime, develop your spirit so you might be able to endure the most difficult of hardships for whenever whatever could still possibly come your way. Make yourself tougher in the meantime. Spend time during that time when there is nothing else you can do between the time. Wait, but by continuing to always improve the self while waiting.
Physical endurance activity not only assists increasing your mental endurance muscle, but it’s also just very good for you. Stress can kill you. And that’s not a good place to be. So you have to have this ability to be able to reverse whatever situation causes you to experience the sensation of stress. If stress is a killer, then eustress is a beneficial strategy for achieving far more life and a much higher quality of living as it counteracts the negative effects of stress.
Make sure then what you are doing today is contributing or adding some sort of future benefit to your physical and mental self tomorrow. For if you don’t or aren’t, then what you are doing is probably almost pointless.
This is why I always need to be engaged with reading books, writing, exercising, physical and creative mental acts. It’s actually how one manages to stay sane. We can’t just sit and dwell to wait and see if it will get any worse. What’s the point in doubling up on your suffering by compounding the weight with anxiety to go along with it too?
If there is nothing else you can do then leave what is out of your control to see to itself. You cannot do anything about that which is out of your control. So in the meantime do what is in your control and achieve damage control by reversing whatever injury or effect you have suffered as a consequence so that your health may not get any worse. What you want to do is achieve eustress instead during that interim and reverse the distress and eliminate all stress.
That’s why I frequent the sauna and ice cold showers, in order to achieve this, increasing my ability to sustain pain for long durations by staying locked inside isolated extreme heat conditions forcing myself not to be allowed to leave for a set time regardless of how uncomfortable it feels or how hard it gets to breath in order that I may alleviate my suffering from any problems I’m having or had to recently deal with. I know how to look after myself and that is probably one of the most important gifts you can give to yourself. And there is no better thing to do but that.
And whilst it is better to not have problems that cause pain the solution is never to amplify your suffering by going out of your way to make a bad situation worse than it already is. Someone has done you a wrong? Yes. That is a problem, but making yourself worse as a consequence is not a winning strategy either. What you do is make yourself better in spite of the situation in order that it may not only teach you but also make you even better as a result of it.
Read more books and write all the time. Its therapeutic. It’s meditative. It’s also medication. For the mind. For the self. For the soul. We grow from knowledge which is always best in the form of physical books. Never TV. So I need to read each day and write each night otherwise that would sooner cause me to lose my mind if I couldn’t. There is nothing more enjoyable, at least to me, than finally being able to stop and pick up the books, then write to relax.
Patience is the most valuable skill you can develop. Extreme patience then is the most important thing you can posses. This is what philosophy calls for from us. This is what stoicism teaches us. A bad thing has happened to you? Yes. So what? Bad things happen to us all. The question is, what are you going to do about it?
Even this itself is an example of what I mean. I drew this by going and doing the very thing that helps me to navigate these problems. As I frequent here it gives me time to think, reflect, ponder and plan ahead. Many times while doing this, new thoughts will emerge. This is why you should never stay in one place. If you need to get somewhere, then standing still is a mistake. You must always be moving.
“The problem, Paulinus, is not that we have a short life, but that we waste time. Life is long and there is enough of it for satisfying personal accomplishments if we use our hours well. But when time is squandered in the pursuit of pleasure or in vain idleness, when it is spent with no real purpose, the finality of death fast approaches and it is only then, when we are forced to, that we at last take a good hard look at how we have spent our life; just as we become aware that it is ending.” – SENECA, ON THE SHORTNESS OF LIFE.
