I wrote above that it may work better for optimistic people and not well for pessimistic people, but you know gave me another perspective. It may work for people with actual problems on their hands. If you have an okay life and mostly just anxious that nothing unusually bad should happen, it does not work that well, because you keep worrying about a million things that don't happen.
Montaigne: “My life has been full of terrible misfortunes most of which never happened.”
At some level having problem is better than not having problems because you see only a few negative outcomes, while with not having problems your mind is free to imagine ANY disaster to worry about.
For example in a relationship crisis one my worry about divorce, but one stops worrying about things like one's partner dying in an accident, becoming forever bed-ridden etc.
I guess a real worry displaces a thousand imagined ones?
As for employment are you sure you did? The worst thing is not having to live a year or two off savings / welfare / loans. The worst thing is never being able to work again.
Example: when my dads business went bust he was like 57. Too early for pension. Had he not had some savings, and nobody will employ an 57 years old ex entrepreneur partially because nobody employs 57 years old people in general but in also because entrepreneurs are too independent. My dad radiated I-am-the-boss from all his pores. Nobody would employ him because they would not think he takes orders from a boss, too independent and bossy to be an underling of someone. Perhaps if a business would have a subsidiary or department that would function very independently he would have been a good candidate to lead it,but his expertise was in construction projects under €2M and in that line of business there is no such thing, everything is led by owners.
Or, like, imagine being a 45 years old COBOL programmer. Sure you could learn something else. But why would anyone hire you and pay you to learn something else when they can get flexible 25 years old minds at half price?
Agreed. I didn't visualize the worst (compare to this xkcd). But it was still some steps worse than the situation at that point already was. And I compared that to subjectively worse situations like my children dying - which would be horrible but I have the vague feeling that it wouldn't cripple me permanently.
In anxious, frustrating or aversive situations, I find it helpful to visualize the worst case that I fear might happen, and try to accept it. I call this “radical acceptance”, since the imagined worst case is usually an unrealistic scenario that would be extremely unlikely to happen, e.g. “suppose I get absolutely nothing done in the next month”. This is essentially the negative visualization component of stoicism. There are many benefits to visualizing the worst case:
Let’s say I have an aversion around meetings with my advisor, because I expect him to be disappointed with my research progress. When I notice myself worrying about the next meeting or finding excuses to postpone it so that I have more time to make progress, I can imagine the worst imaginable outcome a meeting with my advisor could have - perhaps he might yell at me or even decide to expel me from grad school (neither of these have actually happened so far). If the scenario is starting to sound silly, that’s a good sign. I can then imagine how this plays out in great detail, from the disappointed faces and words of the rest of the department to the official letter of dismissal in my hands, and consider what I might do in that case, like applying for industry jobs. While building up these layers of detail in my mind, I breathe deeply, which I associate with meditative acceptance of reality. (I use the word “acceptance” to mean “acknowledgement” rather than “resignation”.)
I am trying to use this technique more often, both in the regular and situational sense. A good default time is my daily meditation practice. I might also set up a trigger-action habit of the form “if I notice myself repeatedly worrying about something, visualize that thing (or an exaggerated version of it) happening, and try to accept it”. Some issues have more natural triggers than others - while worrying tends to call attention to itself, aversions often manifest as a quick flinch away from a thought, so it’s better to find a trigger among the actions that are often caused by an aversion, e.g. procrastination. A trigger for a potentially unhelpful identity could be a thought like “I’m not good at X, but I should be”. A particular issue can simultaneously have associated worries (e.g. “will I be productive enough?”), aversions (e.g. towards working on the project) and identities (“productive person”), so there is likely to be something there that makes a good trigger. Visualizing myself getting nothing done for a month can help with all of these to some degree.
System 1 is good at imagining scary things - why not use this as a tool?
Cross-posted