Now that I have the time to respond, my replying will probably be superfluous. aelephant (explicitly) and shminux (implicitly) have already mentioned this technique. On the off chance that I am wrong or you want to know more, then you might want to check out the following texts: A Guide to the Good Life: The Ancient Art of Stoic Joy by William Braxton Irvine contains an entire chapter on how to perform Stoic meditation, A New Stoicism by Lawrence C. Becker tries to explain the efficacy of Stoic meditation (among other Stoic techniques) using principles from evolutionary psychology and neurophysiology, and A Man in Full provides a fictional account of a practicing Stoic.
I currently face a pretty major life decision. After some careful analysis, I've concluded that my final decision depends on the answers from some queries that I have made, but whose answers I won't receive for days or perhaps weeks.
In the meantime, I've had great difficulty not obsessing over the pending decision. It warps my priorities and kills my motivation; I'm doing less, with less vigor, and enjoying it less. I've noticed, in the past, that compulsion to worry correlates tightly with depressed mood; given what I know about the mind, I assume that each can cause the other.
In general, this connection seems to make changing one's mind painful, and probably conditions people to hold their ideas with certainty, rather than uncertainty. As such, ways to stave it off should be of major use to this community...
I know some things to do to stave off a depressed mood (e.g. get exercise, eat well, talk to friends, achieve small-but-satisfying goals). I don't know any ways to avoid the compulsion to worry about an uncertain future decision, except, possibly, to notice the worrying and tell myself, verbally, that uncertainty is ok. Which brings me to my
Question: Does anyone know any methods for avoiding fruitless worrying over properly-uncertain facts or actions?